Return J. Meigs had for nearly twenty years[270] occupied the position of United States agent for the Cherokee Nation. As a soldier of the Revolutionary war he had marched with Arnold through the forests of Maine and Canada to the attack on Quebec in 1775.[271]
He had also, by his faithful, intelligent, and honest administration of the duties of his office as Indian agent, secured the perfect confidence of his official superiors through all the mutations of administration. He had acquired a knowledge of and familiarity with the habits, character, and wants of the Cherokees such as was perhaps possessed by few, if indeed by any other man.
Any suggestions, therefore, that he might make concerning the solution of the Cherokee problem were deserving of grave consideration. His views were submitted in detail upon the condition, prospects, and requirements of the Cherokee Nation in a communication to the Secretary of War.[272] To his mind the time had arrived when a radical change in the policy of managing their affairs had become essential. Ever since the treaty of 1791 the United States, in pursuance of a policy therein outlined for leading the Cherokees toward the attainment of a higher degree of civilization, in becoming herdsmen and cultivators instead of hunters, had been furnishing each year a supply of implements for husbandry and domestic use. In consequence a respectable proportion of that nation had become familiarized with the use of the plow, spade, and hoe. Many of their women had learned the art of spinning and weaving, and in individual instances considerable progress had been made in the accumulation of property. Agent Meigs now thought that the point had been reached where the Cherokee people should begin to fight their own battles of life, and that any further contributions to their support, either in the shape of provisions or tools, would have only a tendency to render them more dependent upon the Government and less competent to take care of themselves. Those who were already advanced in the arts of civilized life should be the tutors of the more ignorant. They possessed a territory of perhaps 10,000,000 acres of land, principally in the States of Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, for the occupation of which they could enumerate little more than 10,000 souls or 2,000 families. If they were to become an agricultural and pastoral people, an assignment of 640 acres of land to each family would be all and more than they could occupy with advantage to themselves. Such an allotment would consume but 1,280,000 acres, leaving more than 8,000,000 acres of surplus land which might and ought to be sold for their benefit, and the proceeds (which he estimated at $300,000, to be paid in fifty annual installments) applied to their needs in the erection of houses, fences, and the clearing and breaking up of their land for cultivation. The authority and laws of the several States within whose limits they resided should become operative upon them, and they should be vested with the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens of those States. These views met with the concurrence of the administration, and would possibly have been carried into effect but for the intense hostility thereto of not only the unprogressive element among the Cherokees themselves but of the officials and people of the States most interested, who could not view with complacency the permanent occupation of a single acre of land within their limits by the aboriginal owners.
TENNESSEE DENIES THE VALIDITY OF CHEROKEE RESERVATIONS.
About this time trouble arose between the authorities of the State of Tennessee and the surveyor (Robert Houston) who had been intrusted with the duty of laying off such individual reservations as should be taken under the provisions of the treaties of 1817 and 1819. Mr. Houston reported to the Secretary of War that the legislature of Tennessee had refused to confirm all such reservations taken in virtue of the provisions of those treaties subsequent to the 1st of July, 1818, or, in other words, after the time provided for taking the Cherokee census had expired, and desired the opinion and instructions of the Department thereon. The question involved in this dispute was deemed of sufficient importance to secure an official opinion from the Attorney-General prior to directing any further action.[273] An opinion was rendered[274] by Attorney-General Wirt, the substance of which was that the right of taking these reservations having been in the first instance given by the treaty of 1817 until the census should be taken, and the time for taking the census having been, by the acquiescence of both parties to the treaty, kept open until the conclusion of the treaty of February 27, 1819, all the reservations taken prior to this latter date were legal, more especially as they had been ratified by the recognition of them contained in the treaty of 1819. Furthermore, the second article of that treaty, taken in connection with the seventh article, continued the period for taking reservations until the 1st of January, 1820. Mr. Houston was instructed[275] to proceed to lay off the reservations in consonance with this opinion, notwithstanding which the authorities of Tennessee took issue therewith and passed a law providing for the sale of the disputed reserves, whereupon the War Department instructed[276] Agent Meigs to cause one or two test cases to be prepared for trial in the courts.
While on the subject of these reservations it is pertinent to remark that by act of March 3, 1823, Congress appropriated $50,000 to be expended in extinguishing the Indian title to such individual fee simple reservations as were made within the limits of Georgia by the Cherokee treaties of 1817 and 1819 and by the Creek treaties of 1814 and 1821. James Merriwether and Duncan G. Campbell were appointed as commissioners to carry the same into effect. Twenty-two thousand dollars were also appropriated May 9, 1828, to reimburse the State of North Carolina for the amount expended by her authorities in extinguishing Cherokee reservation titles in that State under the treaties of 1817 and 1819.
UNITED STATES AGREE TO EXTINGUISH INDIAN TITLE IN GEORGIA.
By an agreement between the United States and the State of Georgia bearing date April 24, 1802,[277] Georgia ceded to the United States all the lands lying south of Tennessee and west of Chattahoochee River and a line drawn from the mouth of Uchee Creek direct to Nickojack, on the Tennessee River. In consideration of this cession the United States agreed to pay Georgia $1,250,000, and to extinguish the Indian title whenever the same could be done on peaceable and reasonable terms; also to assume the burden of what were known as the Yazoo claims.
Georgia charges the United States with bad faith.—Ever since the date of this agreement the utmost impatience had been manifested by the Government and the people of the State of Georgia at the deliberate and careful course which had characterized the action of the General Government in securing relinquishment of their lands in that State from the Creeks and Cherokees. Charges of bad faith on the part of the United States, coupled with threats of taking the matter into their own hands, had been published in great profusion by the Georgians. These served only to enhance the difficulties of the situation and to excite a stubborn resistance in the minds of the Indians against any further cessions of territory.
Report of Congressional committee.—The subject was brought to the attention of Congress through the action of the governor and legislature of Georgia. A select committee was appointed by the House of Representatives, at the first session of the Seventeenth Congress, to take the matter into consideration and to report whether the said articles of agreement between that State and the United States had so far been executed according to the terms thereof, and what were the best means of completing the execution of the same. This committee submitted a report to the House,[278] wherein, after reciting the terms of the agreement, allusion is made to the Creek treaty of 1814, and the opinion expressed that the agreement might have been more satisfactorily complied with by demanding the cession at that treaty of the Creek lands within Georgia's limits, instead of accepting in large measure those within the Territory of Alabama. The Indians were by this action forced, in the opinion of the committee, within the limits of Georgia, instead of being withdrawn therefrom.