Brevards in Cape Girardeau County and Town of Jackson (44)

Brevards and Cherokees Intersect in Jackson, 1837

At the beginning of European colonization and settlement of North America, the eastern seaboard west to the Appalachian Mountains was claimed by England, the broad central portion from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains by France, and Mexico, Florida, and California by Spain.  Although the continent had been occupied by Native Americans for 20,000 years, the whole of it was claimed by “discovery” by Europeans beginning around 1500 A. D.  The taking used other tools of transfer including disease, demise, displacement, and duplicitous dealing.  Missouri is a great example of this taking.  It became illegal for a Native American to be in any portion of the state by 1839, after their extirpation from Missouri was completed.

On May 8, 1541, de Soto, moving westward, crossed the Mississippi River at or downstream from the 4^th Chickasaw Bluff, now Memphis, TN.  Entering the trans-Mississippi West south of the mouth of the St. Francis River, he traveled westward through lowland morasses before finding Native Americans, the Casias.  Chasing his pursuit of gold and allied with the Casias on a revenging mission, de Soto marched northward on Crowley Ridge into what is now Missouri.  Their northward march turned to the east at a large lake seen on this 1780’s era map(Insert Clark Map), a compilation of geographic information requested by William Clark for his 1804 expedition to the West.  The lake was just south of present- day Cape Girardeau. 

De Soto’s travels in the region that became extreme southeastern Missouri followed his travels through the Cherokee homeland beginning May 25, 1540.  His chroniclers noted that on that day the de Soto expedition had crossed into the domain of another native people, the Chalaque.  De Soto did not find their gold, but his expedition’s diaries recorded for the first time the existence of the Cherokee Tribe.  Those diaries are used today in the study of the ethnology of the Cherokees.

Referring to the same map image, locate the Kaskaskia River and Fort Kaskaskia across the Mississippi River from St. Genevieve.  And yes, that river was named for the Native Tribe de Soto had partnered with in 1541, albeit on the opposite river bank.  Jean Baptiste de Girardot, a French officer at Kaskaskia in the Illinois Country of New France, founded a trading post at a rocky promontory on the west bank overlooking the Mississippi River in 1733.  The rocky prominence rose above the river’s flood level, thus protecting the post location from the river as a coat protects the wearer from rain.  “Cape” in French means coat or covering, hence, Cape Girardeau.  Now find Cape Girardeau on the map image just upstream from the mouth of the Ohio River.  Although the area had a significant Native American presence, Girardot’s post was the first settlement by a European onto that reach of the Mississippi River’s western banks. 

In contrasting and comparing white settlement into Missouri with Cherokee removal and white settlement into the Cherokee homeland, the 1884 Royce Map of the Cherokee Nation of Indians will be helpful and is presented here:

(Insert Royce Map)

In 1719 the proprietors of the province of South Carolina sold their interests to the king, who immediately established the Royal Colony of South Carolina.  In 1721 the royal governor held a conference in Charleston with the Cherokee chiefs negotiating formal trade methods and a new boundary line between the colony and the Cherokee.  It was the first formal treaty and land cession between the Cherokees and the English.  The Treaty of 1721 provided for a small cession of land to its west, Area 1 on the Royce Map,(Insert Royce Map) for the rapidly growing colony.  In the same decade, the Cherokee subjected themselves to His Majesty King George in the Treaty of 1730.

About 1700 the French presence emanating easterly following the Tennessee River’s southern tributaries put the French in contact with the Cherokees.  The British had been linked in profitable trade through the English colonies with the Cherokee for several decades.  The Cherokees rapidly adapted to and became dependent on the new products from both the French and the British, creating competition in the business of trading Native American raw materials for finished products, while at the same time being a buffer between the European foes.  British agents sought an alliance with the Cherokee that would not only strengthen their mutual trade but would also align the Cherokees with the British in any conflict with the French.  The 1730 Cherokee Treaty with England committed the Cherokees to exclusive trade with England, pledged Cherokee support to the English if opposed by the French, and guaranteed a trial in an English court for any white offender in the Cherokee lands.    Though no land was ceded with this treaty, it bound the Cherokee Nation to England for the next 50 years through its Articles of Agreement.  Just as de Soto’s travels had in Cape Girardeau, the European stepped further into the Native Americans homeland.

The French and Indian War began in America in 1754, half a world away from its impetus – a European war pitting England against France known as the 7-years War.  George Washington and others believed it was essential to have Cherokee warriors’ help for the British and their colonists to win the war on this continent.  Before the Cherokees would agree to serve, they required British protection from French invasion from their west.  An agreement was reached with the Cherokee to build 2 English-manned forts for that protection.  In exchange the Cherokees agreed to cede 40 million acres to the west of South Carolina between the Wateree and Santee Rivers.  That area is represented as Area 2 on the Royce Map. 

(Area 2 inset here)

The end of the French and Indian War in 1763 led to a reordering of ownership and control over the central portion of the continent, France withdrawing and giving their land west of the Mississippi River to Spain.  French lands from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and from west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River became England’s – spoils of war.  (Insert map of post-war continent)The Mississippi River valley’s French population swelled with Acadians, displaced by the result of the war, and the valley continued to be home to many French settlers, trappers, and traders under the new Spanish/English administrations.  Both Spain and France being Catholic and with little immigration by Spanish citizens or direct Spanish government influences, little changed for the French residents’ abilities and opportunities to pursue their primary commercial activity – rich trade with the regions many Native American tribes, even though the lands on the eastern side had become owned by the English, known as “Indian Country.” 

That trade paradigm between the Indians and the French, which, unlike the English, did not include the wholesale taking of land for farming, had been considered mutually beneficial, facilitating general peace across the region for the previous 5 decades before 1763.  Over the next 3 decades, frequent irritation created by an incipient but persistent British presence in the Great Lakes region spreading down the Mississippi River Valley and settlement pressures from Americans created increasing conflict.  Spain’s interest was limited to the maintenance of a buffer zone between the British and Spain’s own perceived rich mineral wealth in the Southwest desert, and in achieving that at a minimal cost.  England’s efforts were focused on limiting the American colonies to the Atlantic coast which controlled the flow of raw products toward British manufacturers and limited England’s expenses, knowing that Indian Country was too large to govern from across an ocean.  Keeping American settlement out of Indian Territory kept alive a persistent hope by the English that they could resurrect a new British colony through the middle of North America centered on the Mississippi River, also.  

St. Louis was established in 1763 by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Choteau, having travelled upstream on the Mississippi River from their homes in New Orleans.  St. Louis, strategically located on the west bank of the Mississippi River at the mouth of the Missouri River, further opened trading opportunities for the French in the valley, many having been there in significant numbers since the 1720’s settlement of Ste. Genevieve.  St. Louis quickly became the epicenter of the trans-Mississippi fur trade.  Expensive, highly-sought-after peltries were shipped north in the winter to preserve their value.  Lesser valued furs were shipped south to markets in New Orleans.  Fairly quickly the Colony of Virginia began to think about its western border as the Mississippi River at St. Louis.

(Do we have an early image of St Louis distant and alone on the same latitude as Virginia?)

The Treaty of Paris, Feb. 10, 1763, ended the French and Indian War.  Interestingly, Fort Duquesne had fallen into English hands November 25, 1758, with the aid of the Cherokees.  Quebec fell to the English on September 18, 1759; that ended any French dominion in America save a narrow strip in southern Mississippi.   Solicited by their British friends, the Cherokee had been muscled into the northern war, distant from their homeland.  Circumstances arose on the Cherokees return home that created adversarial conflicts on the western fronts of several of the British colonies; likely, the French-allied northern Native Americans’ tortures committed during the war had sensitized the battle-worn colonial militias to Indian outrages.  Regardless, neither the Cherokees nor the frontier colonial settlers were willing to let insult pass unanswered.  So began 3 years of war between the Cherokee Tribe and the colonial settlers.  The Cherokee homeland in many locations was destroyed, towns burned down, crops and livestock carried off or killed.  At the end of the chaos, the Cherokee Tribe was a mere shadow of its former strength and number; smallpox had added to the misery and death.  During the 8 years of the war from 1755 to 1763, at least 4 new treaties were signed between the Cherokees and the British colonies.  The lands taken from the tribe included extensive areas of its traditional hunting ground north and east of the Blue Ridge Mountains and east of the Savannah River.  The taking of Cherokee land continued.  King George III issued his most-famous 1763 Proclamation drawing a line tracing the ridges of the Appalachian chain, the lands upon which its waters flowed to the Atlantic were for colonial settlement.  The lands laying west of the Proclamation Line were reserved for the Indians, a concession to the Native tribes for their assistance with the British during the war.  The colony of Georgia was bisected by the line from north to south.  And the seeds of future conflict were planted.

In response to the western limits defined in the Proclamation of 1763, because American settlers were already residing on lands west of the Allegheny Mountains and had invested in land claims to the Ohio River, the British negotiated the Treaty of Hard Labor with the Cherokee. That treaty, signed in 1768, relinquished Cherokee claims to nearly all of the lands of what became West Virginia.  No exact calculation has been done to quantify the amount of land taken, but it was a substantial portion of the Cherokee homeland.  Of course, it became available to American land speculation and settlement, albeit the settlers were British citizens at that time.  The calculus was simple, take land from the Cherokees and open it to American settlers.

Area 3 on the Royce Map is supposed to represent the lands ceded by the Treaty of Hard Labor.  Shown here is the removal of that region from the Cherokee homeland.(Show area 3 being removed)  Current research illuminates a much more extensive transfer of land with this treaty.  Specifically, the Cherokee Nation relinquished any claim to the lands east of the Appalachian Mountains and Great Britain gave up claim to the lands west of the Appalachians.  This modern map shows the demarcation line established by the Treaty of Hard Labor.(Insert line drawing map of Treaty of Hard Labor from Google or page 123 in Blood and Treasure)  It is a line starting at the mouth of the Kanawha River into the Ohio River tracing a straight line southward to Tryon Mountain, called by the Cherokee “Great Mountain.”  The line continues southwesterly to the northern border of Spanish Florida.  The actual wording of the treaty that describes the line is shown in Article 1 of the treaty here.

(Article 1 of Treaty of Hard Labor is linked here). 

At the signing of the Treaty of Hard Labor, Cherokee Chief Oconostota declared, “We have now given the white men enough land to live on.”  In response the British promised to enforce the new borderline and prevent future settlement of colonists west of the line.

The 1770 Treaty of Lochaber followed only 2 years later as the rush of settlers continued unabated by the Treaty of Hard Labor.  Area 4 on Royce’s map defines the region of the treaty.

(Insert Area 4 being removed). 

Of particular interests is the most southwestern extent of the area.  As described in the treaty explanation, the Cherokee chief, Little Carpenter, “pitied” the Watauga settlers already living there and allowed the southern boundary to be extended south to the Watauga River so that the “illegal” settlers would not have to removed.

(TreatyLochaberWording2)

Cherokee lands ceded from Area 5 represents the results of an “arrangement” made pursuant to the Treaty of Lochaber.  Reading the second half of that treaty’s description, you will notice that the Cherokee had apparently agreed to run the eastern boundary line from the Long Island of the Holston River to the “headwaters of the Kentucky River.”  From there, instead of the line continuing do north, the line traced westward, following the Kentucky River to its mouth into the Ohio River, then along the Ohio to its union with the Kanawha at Point Pleasant. This was never a bono fide treaty, but many square miles of land were lost to the Cherokee anyway.  This treaty was never given a name other than the “Treaty with Virginia in early 1772.”   

(Show Area 5 being removed)

The Treaty of Augusta, signed in 1773, ceded two million acres of Cherokee and Creek lands to Georgia to resolve hopeless indebtedness by the two tribes to white traders.

(Insert Area 6 being removed)

The European finished goods – guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, blankets, etc. – had become necessities to the members of the tribe.  As the deer became scarce from over hunting to trade for ever more of the finished European goods, the Cherokees created debt which was forced to be settled by giving up Cherokee land. 

The 1775 “Treaty of Sycamore Shoals” ultimately resulted in the loss of most of Kentucky, the rich Cherokee hunting ground, to white takeover by the “long knives.”  This treaty caused the withdrawal of important young chief Dragging Canoe and his warriors to Chickamauga Creek, and his prediction that Kentucky would be a “Dark and bloody land.”  Indeed, it was until 1794, as thousands of American settlers were killed by Shawnee and Cherokee warriors. 

(Insert Area 7 removed) 

Huge Area 7 depicts the Cherokee land lost in this “treaty.”  However, by the Agreement of 1730, the Cherokee could not sell their land to anyone except the English.  Secondarily, the “sale” was to Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company for 12,000 English Pounds, most of which were trading goods.  The colony of Virginia quickly declared the sale illegal and null and void.  But it had opened the gate to most of Kentucky and significant portion of Tennessee to settlers and land speculators.  Superimposed on these actions, the Revolutionary War was beginning in the East between the colonists and England.  English support of the Cherokees effectively made the war have a second front to the West.  

The continued encroachment of white settlers onto Cherokee lands had caused the Cherokee to align with the British at the start of the American Revolution.  Pre-emptory attacks by the Cherokee on American frontier settlements failed, but retaliatory attacks by Southern states’ militias and regulars destroyed untold Cherokee villages and humiliated the Tribe.  The Treaty of Dewitt’s Corner transferred the bulk of Cherokee land in South Carolina to that state on May 20, 1777.  Area 8 represents the Cherokee land lost in that treaty.

(Insert Area 8 being lost.)

On July 20, 1777, Virginians negotiated a treaty at the Great Island of the Holston, resulted in the loss to the Cherokee of Area 9 on the Royce Map.  Both the Treaty of Dewitt’s Corner and this Great Island treaty were enabled by a conservative leadership within the Cherokee Nation in recompense for aggressive attacks against frontier settlers by Dragging Canoe’s band of Chickamaugans.  The destruction of a large portion of the Cherokee resources and villages by colonists-frontier settlers in response brought the Cherokees to their knees, prompting these two treaties.  A total of over 5 million acres were added to North and South Carolina and Tennessee from these treaties.

(Show Area 9 being lost)

British influence and support with supplies and guns for the Cherokees to be used against the western settlers was evidence that the Revolutionary War was carried out on two fronts.  One front was the Atlantic Ocean and the loyalist British colonial governments and citizens that opposed the patriots.  The second front was a western front influenced by the British from north of the Ohio River and westerly to the Mississippi River supported by the English presence in forts along the Canadian border.

Spanish administration of the “Illinois” country, referring to the land on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the region centered around St. Louis in their “Louisiana,” after 1763 initially rejected Americans and non-Catholics.  The Spanish authorities correctly perceived an ongoing British threat of re-taking control of the broad central portion of the America – a wide strip centered by the Mississippi River from Canada to the Gulf and extending east to the Appalachians and west to the Rocky Mountains.  The British had placed the governance of the northwestern region of its newly-controlled Indian Reserve in French-speaking Quebec after they won the French and Indian War.  British forts were built in support of their continuing commerce with the Native American tribes across the Great Lakes region.  The lucrative fur trade continued, even improved, for England from this region after English control was established.  Like the rest of the “Indian Reserve” west of the Proclamation Line, the King was demonstrating his guaranty, secondary to the Indians help during the French and Indian War, to his Native American subjects of his protection for them from Americans taking their land.  However, this British foothold facilitated aggressive Indian action against American settlers across the region, including Kentucky, for nearly 40 years.  From their distant northern location well north of the Ohio River, the British could efficiently maintain a presence, monitor American immigration, and wait for opportunities to expand their foothold toward Spanish Louisiana and a new mid-continent English colony.

The Revolutionary War Battle of St. Louis, also known as the Battle of Fort San Carlos, is an extreme example of Great Britain’s efforts to defeat the colonialists in the West.  This battle also demonstrates the enmity that the Spanish governments around the world felt for the British.  Records indicate that St. Louis was on the minds of wealthy and important colonists in Virginia as well, as they saw St. Louis as being a future center of commerce and trade in far-western Virginia.  The British, in addition to wanting to defeat the patriots, had hopes of establishing a new colony through the middle of the continent centered on the Mississippi River; gaining a foothold in Spanish Louisiana at the intersection of its 2 largest rivers would advance that cause.  St. Louis and Cahokia (Kahokea) are seen here on the 1780 Clark Map.  St. Louis was established in 1763 by 2 Frenchmen from New Orleans under a land grant by the King of France, the same years the King of England drew the Proclamation of 1763 line along the crest of the Appalachians to limit colonial settlement. 

(Insert snippet of Clark Map showing St Louis and Cahokia if it’s shown)

On May 26, 1780, British and Indian forces attacked the Spanish-held city and the American-held outpost at Cahokia.  The English force was made up of roughly 1000 Indians from Sioux, Chippewa, Winnebagoes, Menominees, and Sauk and Fox tribes commanded by British officers.  The Indians were promised arms, ammunition, and the spoils of war.  Through the wise and determined efforts of the relatively new Spanish governor of Upper Louisiana, Don Fernando de Leyba, a defensive system had been constructed over the previous 2 years, including a 40-foot-tall tower with mounted canons and defensive lines of trenches – Fort San Carlos.  Entrenched French, Spanish, slave, and likely friendly Indian riflemen and the booming cannon fire from the top of the tower proved effective in frustrating the attack.  The village did suffer over 20 villagers killed and 100 or more injured.  The city was saved.  Today, a marker commemorating the battle can be found at the corner of Walnut and Broadway near the entrance to the ballpark.  The defeat ended British hopes of ever controlling the Mississippi River.  One month after the attack George Rogers Clark with Spanish and American forces destroyed the Sauk village, Saukenuk, at the mouth of Rock River on the Mississippi in retaliation for the attack.  This image is from the 1780 Clark map showing the location with tents drawn at the village of “Saukanog.”

(Image of Sackenuk village at Rock River)     

Just as de Soto visited the region that was to become Missouri, and Gerardot had founded a trading post at the “Cape,” the Spanish protected a predominantly French city soon to be a great American city and gateway to the West of the United States at St. Louis.  On that day in 1780, it was the nexus of international and domestic conflict.     

On May 30, 1783, the Treaty of Augusta, shown as Area 10 on the Royce Map, was signed between the Cherokee and the State of Georgia.  Under the Articles of Confederation, Georgia assumed the right negotiate its own treaties.  Georgia wanted the land to settle Revolutionary War veterans on.  Ceding land between the Savannah and Chattahoochee Rivers, the treaty also confirmed the northern boundary between Georgia and the Cherokee land. 

(Show Area 10 Being removed)

Area 10A represents Cherokee land transferred to the unauthorized state of Franklin through the Dumplin Creek Treaty on May 31, 1785. 

(Image of Royce Map focused and enlarged onn10A) 

Royce list the date as November 28, 1785 because the next treaty, Treaty of Hopewell, includes Area 10A and was then legally authorized by the new government of the United States.  The Dumplin Creek Treaty transfer from the Cherokee to “Franklin” includes  “…all the lands lying and being on the South side of Holston and French Broad Rivers, as far south as the ridge that divides the Waters of Little River from the Waters of Tennessee (River).”   Initially, this is a very confusing definition because the waters of this small area flow to the Tennessee River, but the area is south (and east) of the French Broad and is limited in its southern extension by “the ridge that divide(s) the waters of Little River (arising south of that ridge) from the waters of the Tennessee River (of which it is a part.)  Note that the area “crowds” as tightly as possible to the French Broad River to maximize its size for the whites.  This treaty was a problem for the Cherokee, who immediately sought help from the new United States government.  Settlers ignored the new treaty limits, as usual.    

Enter a new sheriff; the Revolutionary War was finished and the Cherokee had to treat with the government of the United States.  The treaty that marks this milestone is the Treaty of Hopewell, signed on Nov. 28, 1785.  It is shown as areas 10a and 10B on the Royce Map here.  36 Cherokee chiefs and 1000 Cherokee people were present and informed by commissioners of the U. S. that Great Britain was no longer sovereign.  The Commissioners representing the United States announced that the meeting’s purpose was to hear grievances from the Cherokee about the previous treaties.  The chiefs wanted to discuss the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals.  As was previously discussed above, the sale of most of Kentucky and a large area of Tennessee in 1775 to Richard Henderson, and then not allowed but lost to the Cherokee by rapid American settlement, was never negotiated by treaty or payment.  At that point the commissioners produced a deed for those large areas signed by the 2 Cherokee chiefs at Sycamore Shoals, Attakullaculla and Oconostota.  Upon seeing the signed deeds, the chiefs in attendance agreed and further offered to extend the line “from the mouth of Duck River to the dividing ridge between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, should be continued up that ridge and from thence to the Cumberland in such a manner as to leave all the white settlers in the Cumberland country outside of the Indian limits.”  This map shows the loss of that land from the Cherokee. 

(Insert 10a and 10B being removed, as you do this leave margins across the line that read as shown below in the next paragraph all around the edges.  See below for reason and detail)

The transfer of land in the Cumberland Valley was a concession by the Cherokee to get the United States government to establish a boundary line between the Cherokee and white settlers, and to defend it.  Perhaps the Cherokee thought that if the Americans defined the Cherokee lands the Americans would obey the boundary lines.  Look closely at the Royce Map to find the boundary line described in Article IV of the Treaty of Hopewell.  It is labelled variously as “Treaty Line of 1785 as indicated by General Winchester’s Description,” “Cherokee Boundary Line of Treaty of Nov. 28 1785,” “Cherokee Boundary of 1785,” and “East Boundary of Cherokee Nation As Defined By Treaty Of Nov. 28, 1785.”  At this point in time the Cherokee Nation had lost two-thirds of its historic region to treaties.  Lastly, note that Area 10A, the Dumplin Treaty area, is “outside” the boundary, hence a property of the U. S. when the “state” of Franklin was dissolved.

Spain had been resistant to American immigration into Spanish Louisiana prior to 1788.  Like Great Britain, Spain also had a plan for the Mississippi Valley, and had closed the river to commerce at New Orleans in 1784, where they controlled both banks.  Spain thought that the natural landscape geography of separation by the mountains would lead to a cultural separation between the Americans on the East to those on the West, leading to a Spanish colony throughout the Mississippi Valley.  French creoles on the east bank and their slaves were welcomed, as were Native Americans displaced in the East by American settlement.  Protestant Americans were not admitted.  In 1788 Spanish immigration policy changed as concerns of losing control surfaced.

Some of that concern arose from the general lack of governance the Spanish administration exercised over the vast and abundant Louisiana Territory.  The seat of Spanish government was New Orleans, several weeks’ travel from the St. Louis District.  Traders traveling the Mississippi River reported to Spanish Governor Miro about a trading house at “L’Anse a la Graise” –  a place rich with buffalo and bears.  It was located just below the retrograde bend in the river downstream from the mouth of the Ohio River where Chepoosa Creek joins the Mississippi.  The Chepoosa Creek is the outflow from St. John’s Bayou – the “lake” seen by de Soto in 1740! 

(Insert Clark Map centered on New Madrid pointing out Chepoosa Creek, or map page 121 in Houch Vol II)

The unregulated rich Indian and river trade that was happening there, along with the report of a murder, raised the attention of the commandants at St. Genvieve and St. Louis.  They reported the lawless and unregulated activities to Governor Miro.  It is assumed that these circumstances led to a large land grant to American Colonel George Morgan.   

The build-up of the horde of Americans pouring over the Appalachian Mountains into previously-owned Cherokee lands convinced the Spanish that they were soon to also be over-run by land-hungry Americans. And their eventual arrival on the east bank of the Mississippi River would lead to uncontrolled overrun of Spanish Louisiana.  Governor General Carondelet encouraged commandants to aggressively seek American farmers, associated tradesmen, and friendly Indians to emigrate to the region with large, easily acquired land grants.  Col. George Morgan negotiated a Spanish land grant of twelve to fifteen million acres, he thought!  The grant ran 300 miles from Cape St. Comes to the mouth of the St. Francois River and westward to the extent of settlement, at that time considered to be 15 miles. (Insert image of Clark Map showing this region)

 In an effort to avoid loss of control of their buffer zone, the Spanish agreed to allow 500 American families under Morgan to settle on the agriculturally rich lands in “New Madrid,” named by Morgan to endear the Spanish authorities to his efforts.  The caveat to settlement was allegiance to Spain.  Morgan and his surveyors had drawn a plat of the proposed new town of New Madrid at the mouth of Chepoosa Creek at L ‘Anse a la Graise, the old trading site.  Morgan was set to sell farmland to his fellow immigrants until the agreement was disallowed by Spain.  The floodgates had already opened to settlement with American farmers moving onto the New Madrid soil.  Some of the very best agricultural land in the future state of Missouri, in the St. Francis River watershed, was settled and farmed by these families, but not under the land laws of the time or the rectilinear public land survey (these lands were yet to be surveyed or even in the United States).   Find “New Madrid” on the above image.  500-plus immigrant families into the “New Madrid” region that had sought and received Spanish Land Grants for their land.  A list of those French, Spanish, and American settlers and their families can be found on pages 147 to 153 in Houck’s History of Missouri, Vol. II. Many of those listed became leading citizens of Southeast Missouri and of the state itself.  Those confirmed land grants were destined to become valuable in a few years after the Dec. 16, 1811 New Madrid earthquake destroyed the region.    

On July 2, 1791, the Treaty of Holston was signed.  The final years of the Confederation of States had been disastrous for the Cherokees.  Individual states were treating with the Cherokees over the individual state’s particular interests.  American settlers continued to pursue their aggressive taking of Cherokee lands.  Armed conflicts escalated led by the Chickamaugans, and Cherokee chiefs were assassinated.  The United States Government in charge of Indian issues was the War Department.  Secretary of War, Henry Knox, sent a letter to newly-elected George Washington detailing these Indian issues.  The President summoned Cherokees and U. S. Commissioners to White’s Fort on the Holston to treat about long-standing and ongoing problems between the parties.  White’s Fort (now Knoxville) is shown here on the Royce Map.(Show image of White’s Fort at Knoxville on Royce Map)  A broad host of issues were discussed to better relations and to advance the Cherokees toward acculturalization.  One contemporary author states that the treaty “paved the way for the Cherokees’ nineteenth-century civilization program.”  You can read the Treaty of Holston here.

(Put link to Treaty of Holston here) 

Land given up by the Cherokee with the Treaty of Holston is represented here by Area 11.  It was one of the largest transfers of Cherokee land – about 20 million acres.   

(Area 11 on Royce Map here)             

50 years after de Girardot established his trading post, Louis Lorimier was accepted for settlement by the Spanish authorities.  Lorimier, a Canada-born Frenchman, had been a fur trader, British Indian agent, and Shawnee agitator during the post-Revolutionary War period in the Northwest Territory, the land lying north of the Ohio River, east of the Mississippi River, south of the Great Lakes, and west of Pennsylvania.  It had been seated to the United States by England after the Revolutionary War.   While living in Ohio, Lorimier helped the British and their Indian friends in resisting American settlement in Kentucky. 

Lorimier led an Indian raid on Boonesborough, Kentucky, in 1778 which captured Daniel Boone, who eventually escaped.  Famously, George Rogers Clark and his frontier militia attacked and destroyed Lorimier’s trading station and stores at Pickawillany of his British supplies.  Lorimier escaped to Indiana.  In the later 1780’s he moved to the Cape Girardeau area living along the Saline River (see the 1780 Clark Map) for 6 years.   He brought with him his friendly Delaware and Shawnee Indians for protection against savage tribes, absent in that area due to white-man’s diseases.  He was eventually given official Spanish permission for his and the Indians’ occupation of the area because he had developed a reputation for honesty, influence, and sound management among the Indians in the region.  His Indian accompaniment had helped resist aggressive American settlement into the region. 

In 1793 he was commissioned by the Spanish Governor General to facilitate trade and improve relations with the Native Americans at the Cape, being named Commandant of the new Cape Girardeau District and fort.  He became authorized to take the census, maintain a militia, hold court, and administer land grants.  Louis Lorimier aggressively sought and was given Spanish land grants for thousands of acres of valuable land in the Cape region.    Cape Girardeau and the location of the Shawnee and Delaware Indians are shown on the 1780-era map below.  The Shawnee and Delaware Tribes were also given Spanish land grants to the lands they occupied described by Lorimier as laying “…between the River Cape St. Come and Cape Girardeau, bounded on the East by the Mississippi, and westwardly by a small river called White (Water) River….”  You can identify all these landmarks on this image from the Clark Map This Shawnee band became known as the Cape Girardeau Shawnee.

(Insert image of this reach of the Mississippi River from Clark map)

Leave lots of space for great detail on Shawnee and Delaware Land Grants here.  For example the Concession was written originally in French. 

And that Meriwether Lewis wrote the Board of Land Commissioners to approve it.  And that the Board voted to not confirm it, as it failed the 4^th requirement of the Act of 1807  

I have all these documents, just don’t know how to arrange them here.  Perhaps a link? 

The Northwest Ordinances (1784,1785, 1787) established land policy and territorial governmental procedures, including the rectilinear survey requirements, that were mandated for the settlement of lands added to the United States.  Slavery was outlawed in the Northwest Territory.  The Lorimier, Shawnee, and Delaware land grants in the Illinois Country, now Missouri, did not comply with the survey requirements, as those lands were not in the United States until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

The Treaty of Holston held great promise with President Washington, not so much with the Chickamaugans during the early years of the 1790’s.  Generally terrorizing the Cumberland Valley and committing specific outrages that garnered the president’s attention, Washington made earnest efforts to ameliorate the conflicts, even meeting with the Chickamaugan chief Doublehead and his deputation in Philadelphia in 1794.  Eventually the Chickamaugans had to be subdued by force.  Their villages of Nickajack and Running Water were destroyed.

(insert image of Nickajack and Running Water at intersect of Alabama, Georgia on Tennessee Line on Tennessee River including the Chickamaugan creeks to their east from Royce)

See their locations in the Chickamaugan homelands, the region Dragging Canoe removed to after the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals.  American commissioners met 40 Cherokee chiefs at Tellico Blockhouse shown here, to sign the 1794 Treaty of Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse. 

(Insert Area12 image and arrow Tellico Blockhouse)

With the Chickamaugans quieted, a period of recovery and renewal was begun across the Cherokee Nation supported by annuities and agricultural training and supplies from the U. S. government and educational and religious support from newly found white organizations and friends in New England.  Several monographs @ motrailoftears.com provide detail about several elements of support that developed for the greater Cherokee Nation.

(Show Area12 being removed)

On October 2, 1798 the Cherokees signed 2 treaties “acknowledging” the protection of the United States.  The Treaty of Hopewell had called for the marking of the Cherokee Boundary, as shown on the Royce Map with various wording, usually “Boundary of Nov. 28, 1785.”  That was never accomplished, and settlers had continued to come onto Cherokee lands.  With this treaty and their “acknowledgment”, the U. S. promised the Cherokee Nation could keep its land “forever.”  The Cherokee were told they had to cede new parcels as their “acknowledgment.”  Area 13 and 14 were ceded to the U. S. in these treaties.

(Show Area 13 and 14 being removed from the Royce Map.)

American farmers, perhaps especially their succeeding generation – their children – had become accustomed to just moving West as their(father’s) land wore out.  Virginian soils could only support tobacco cropping for so long, then other crops were tried with little success on those exhausted soils.  Of course the Proclamation of 1763 could not hold back the westward tide of American farmer-settlers.  As we have seen, that history of westwarding by whites was played out on Cherokee lands and the Cherokee people.  Western Virginia – “Kentucky” – and western North Carolina, the Cumberland region – “Tennessee” – experienced the early brunt of the settlement rush and war with the resident Native Americans.  But not by agrarian elite plantationists, as in Virginia.  No, they went to the South with their slaves, transitioning to cotton production.  It was an auspicious move onto those lands west of Georgia, especially with the invention of the cotton gin in1793.  Still today agriculturalists landowners across the South refer to themselves as “planters” not “farmers.”  And the closer you get on the coastal plain to the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, the more they mean it!  

The transition across the Appalachians forced those young farmer-settlers to adapt to cove forest topography.  The great distant views of the tidewater changed to much narrower perspectives even in the Piedmont, across the valley of Appalachia, and on both sides of the Cumberland Mountains where crop fields were just a few acres circumscribed by forests.  Native Americans had successfully lived on that topography for hundreds of years.  Their hunters, the men, brought in the protein, their “farmers,” the Indian women, grew the carbohydrates – the “Three Sisters” – corn, beans, and squash grew abundantly on the best soil in those narrow valleys.

The Revolutionary War ended on September 3, 1783 with the Treaty of Paris.  Kentucky became the fifteenth state on June 1, 1792.  Tennessee joined Kentucky as a state on June 1, 1796.  Populations had grown quickly, especially across the arable soils regions.  Those sons and daughters of Revolutionary War soldiers, many having a slave or two, aggressively sought out and settled on the best soils in the cove valleys across both states, rapidly taking up the useable regions.  Statehood certainly did not mean there was no more farming land available for new-arrival farmers and settlers, but the best was already taken.  Looking to the north, across the Ohio River, land had to be purchased at $1.25 per acre and slavery was forbidden.  Free land and farming with slave labor, as was the custom, attracted Americans to Spanish Illinois, as it was called then, across the Mississippi River.  

American whites had not been accepted or allowed into Spanish Louisiana for settlement except under strictly defined conditions prior to 1795.  On October 27, 1795, the Treaty of San Lorenzo del Escorial (Pinckney’s Treaty) was signed by Spain and the United States.  The treaty opened the previously closed Mississippi River to free commerce, but most importantly, opened Spanish Illinois country on the west bank of the river to Americans, albeit, they still had certain conditions to meet to gain landownership.

Leave space here to introduce Sheradin and Mills Land grants

Area 15 on the Royce Map, a perfect rectangle measuring 25 miles by 4 miles, was home to 500 or more white inhabitants who discovered they were living on Cherokee land.  The following letter from Josiah Tattnall, Jr. to President Thomas Jefferson, written July 20, 1802, from Louisville, Georgia,  describes the situation perfectly:

“The peculiar and distressing situation of a number of valuable Citizens, who were by the running of the dividing line between the Indians and this State in 1798, left out of the  such as was delineated – ordinary jurisdictional limits, induces me to solicit that the benevolent attention of the Chief Magistrate of the Union (President Thomas Jefferson) may be directed to their relief.

“It appears that a Colo. Wafford and about five hundred other white Inhabitants were considered as having settled beyond the line and consequently on ground the property of the Cherokee nation of Indians, altho’ at the time of making their establishment it was the general belief they were within the limits – These persons therefore had not the least idea of either violating the Indian right or the law of the United States, but on the contrary were much astonished to find the line of demarcation such as was delineated – Since that period they have conducted themselves very orderly & have preserved harmony with the Indian Tribes, who at this time are unwilling to compel them to retire and leave their Crops buildings & c; altho’ I had given orders to several Colonels on our Frontier to aid the officer of the United States in carrying into execution the orders of the Secretary of War to that effect

“Thus circumstanced Sir the case of these unfortunate but valuable Citizens about to be deprived of their plantations and the earning of several years of hard labor, claims of me the justice of representing the facts to you and to Solicit in their behalf that a Treaty may be directed to be held with the Cherokees for the extinguishment of their claim to as much of the land as is pointed out in their petition addressed to you Sir as President of the United States and which I have the honor to inclose.  The spot of Territory in question is small and is comprehended in the Articles of Agreement and Cession lately executed by the Commissioners on the part of the United States and those of Georgia as intended to be purchased of the Indians, and I am persuaded from the information I have lately received that they would agree to the sale of it provided it appeared to be the wish of the General Government.

“The three officers I had directed to assist the Federal Officer in accomplishing the removal above alluded to, were, Colonels Carnes, Easly & Harris of the Counties of Franklin, Clark, & Jackson of this State, who from their readiness to Execute my order have gained the confidence & friendship of the Indians – I beg leave therefore to remark that these Gentlemen would be suitable persons to act in conjunction with Genls. Wilkinson & Pickens whom I apprehend would be selected as Commissioners for that purpose.

“I feel confident Sir you will excuse the Liberty I have taken of addressing you in favor of these suffering fellow Citizens, well Knowing the desire you possess of extending the fostering Arm of Government to the relief of those who are entitled to it in every part of the Republic.

“I have the honor to be Sir with respect & esteem, Yr Obt. Hble Servt.

Josiah Tattnall, Junr., Governor of Georgia”

Jefferson was made aware of this problem just days after taking office in March of 1801.  A petition had been presented to Jefferson from Col. Wofford himself seeking the Presidents help in moving the Indian boundary line.  The Cherokee refused for 2 years to sell the land,   demanding the settlement be removed.  Finally on Oct. 24, 1804, at Tellico, Tennessee, an agreement was reached which gave the Cherokees $5000 and $1000 annually for the 100 square mile tract. 

Interestingly, no action was taken by the United States Senate until 1824, when the Treaty was ratified.  It is just another example of the discount of importance the U.S. has applied to the Cherokee Nation forever.  Do you suppose the Cherokees were ever paid for this land cession?

(Show area 15 leaving the Cherokee homeland)

Jefferson, as President of the United States, began inserting himself in the “Indian problem,” that being that they occupied all the land to the west.  Writing to Willliam Henry Harrison in 1803, he wrote: “To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands…In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will either incorporate with us as citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi.  The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love.  As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shur our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only.  Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.”   Jefferson’s strategy was to “…get rid of this pest, without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians.”

Area 16, listed by Royce as “Kentucky and Tennessee west of the Tennessee River and Cumberland Mountain,” was sold to the United States through a treaty dated Oct. 25, 1805.  The treaty ceded 8118 square miles of land to the U. S. for a $14,000 payment and an annuity of $3,000.  The transaction included 7,032 square miles in Tennessee and 1,086 square miles in Kentucky south of the Cumberland River. In addition to the land cession, the treaty called for “free and unmolested use and enjoyment of the two following described roads, in addition to those which are at present established through their (the Cherokees’) country.” 

(Insert Area 16 being removed from Royce Map)

The new roads described in the treaty appear on the Royce Map as “General Jackson’s Old Military Road” from Nashville through Franklin and Muscle Shoals, and the “Federal Road to Georgia,” heading southeasterly from Nashville.  Both of these roads became important to Andrew Jackson for military action, Indian relations, and his business interests.  He made his home in Nashville beginning in 1788 when he was appointed as district attorney in Middle Tennessee.

The Oct. 25, 1805 is presented here:

(Insert Treaty dated Oct. 25, 1805 here)

(Then insert appropriate Mo TOT related info here   perhaps a land deed transfer dated 1805)

Area 17 on the Royce Map locates a one square mile section of land at the mouth of the Clinch River onto the Tennessee River.  Area 18 locates the first island in the Tennessee River above the mouth of the Clinch.  Fort Southwest Point was a frontier U. S. fort garrisoned by federal soldiers from 1797 until 1811.  The location was a convenient waystation for American migrants between Knoxville and Nashville.  The Cherokees operated a ferry there, charging fees for the river crossing.  The treaty includes both Area 17 and Area 18, and reads as follows:

Insert removal of Areas 17 and 18 from Royce Map here

“Art. 1.  Whereas it has been represented by one party to the other that the section of land on which the garrison of Southwest Point stands, and which extends to Kingston, is likely to be a desirable place for the Assembly of the State of Tennessee to convene at (a committee from that body, now in session, having viewed the situation) now, the Cherokees, being possessed of a spirit of conciliation, and seeing that this tract is desired for public purposes, and not for individual advantages, reserving the ferries to themselves, quit claim and cede to the United States the said section of land, understanding, at the same time, that the buildings erected by the public are to belong to the public, as well as the occupation of the same during the pleasure of the Government.  We also cede to the United States the first Island of the Tennessee (River) above the mouth of the Clinch (River.)

Art. 2.  The Cherokees grant a mail road to the United States, from Tellico to the Tombigbee, ‘to be laid out by viewers appointed on both sides.’

Art. 3.  In consideration of the above cession and relinquishment, the United States agree to pay to the said Cherokee Indians $1600.

Art. 4.  The Treaty to be obligatory when ratified.

The Treaty was promptly ratified by Pres. Jefferson and the U. S. Senate.

In 1829 Jeremiah Evarts, writing under the pen name of “William Penn,”  wrote a series of article about the injustice of the Indian Removal Act that were published in the socially liberal National Intelligencer newspaper.  He was hoping to save the United States from the curse of an outraged God if that government went ahead with the Cherokee Removal.  He was convinced that if the American public was knowledgeable about the removal, that they would rise up and stop it.  He wrote and the Intelligencer published the following article about this treaty, pointing out the important aspects of how this treaty was accomplished satisfactorily for both sides.  Here’s a portion of his article:

“How did the State of Tennessee understand this subject?  Let the first article of the preceding treaty answer.  The legislature of Tennessee desirous of obtaining a site for the erection of buildings to accommodate their State government, sent a committee to view the point at the junction of two beautiful rivers, the Tennessee and the Clinch.  The boundary, as it then stood, ran very near this point; and the State solicited a square mile for the public object above described.  The Cherokees, out of a spirit of conciliation, and for $1600 in money, ceded the section of land, with these remarkable reservations, viz: that they were to retain the ferries at the seat of government of Tennessee; and that the grant was made for public objects only.  Of course the land would revert to the Cherokees, if the seat of government should be removed.  As the Legislature afterwards fixed the seat of Government farther West, no public buildings were erected at this place.  Narrower boundaries were subsequently established between the United States and the Cherokees; but the ferries were held for a long time, if they are not now held, by assignees of the Cherokees.  The treaty was ratified by President Jefferson and the Senate.

“This whole transaction strongly illustrates several important positions, which have been taken, or implied, in the preceding discussion, such as the inviolability of the Cherokee Territory; the right of the Cherokees to make or withhold cessions of land, according to their pleasure; their right to impose such restrictions upon their grants as they pleased; and the treaty-making power of the United States being the only medium by which a state can get a proper title to Indian Territory.”

Basically “Wm. Penn” is saying the Cherokee Nation is a sovereign entity invested with the ownership of its land, and that only the Government of the United States can negotiate an agreement for the cession of Cherokee land.  Evarts wrote many articles in support of the Cherokee Nation and opposed to forced removal by the U. S. Government or any state.  Specifically, he argued that the State of Georgia had no authority to remove the Cherokee from within the borders of Georgia.  Evarts considered this treaty for Areas 17 and 18 to be an example of how the Cherokee Nation should be treated in land purchases by Americans.  Unfortunately for the Cherokee, forced removal became the enforced law of the land by 1835.

On January 7, 1806, the Cherokees gave up their beloved Great Island of the Holston.  The island, also known as the “Long Island of the Holston,” was the Cherokees old treaty grounds.  This treaty, along with the two previous treaties, was arranged by President Thomas Jefferson’s favorite method for taking ground from the Cherokees – put them in hopeless debt with the factory system.  Return J. Meigs, the Federal Government’s Cherokee Agent, pushed the Cherokees to modernize into farmers and storekeepers, them having to buy their store items and farming implements from the government factory stores.  The debt was called by the U. S. Government and was paid for with more land ceded by the Cherokees.  The Federal Government also used bribery of the Cherokee Chiefs, including money and set-aside prime located lands, to get the Chiefs’ support for the land cessions.  This image shows the location of the Great Island of the Holston.

Insert Image of Area around 20

In December of 1806, more nefarious actions by the government led to a huge cession of land by the Cherokees.  In addition to money bribes and strategically positioned tracts of land for the signers, roads were promised to be built near some chiefs’ farms.  Those new roads would create great marketing opportunities for the Cherokee landowners nearby.  This treaty, Area 19 on the Royce Map, was negotiated by the Chickamaugans on the southeastern limit of the nation.  Doublehead, the chief of the Chickamaugans, had been  the most feared Cherokee chief, having led raiding parties of Cherokee into Kentucky killing thousands of American settlers before 1794.  The land in this cession was a huge portion of the Cherokees’ beloved country lying between the Duck and Tennessee Rivers.  It was a decade before the next land-cession treaty would be signed.  In 1796 Chief Doublehead had become the Speaker of the Cherokee Nation and chief spokesman for all negotiations with the Federal government.  By signing this treaty, Chief Doublehead violated the Cherokee law, punishable by death, that outlawed any more land cessions by the Cherokees.  The “Ridge” murdered Doublehead on August 9, 1807, exacting the punishment for violating the rule prohibiting any more land cessions.  See Area 19 on the following image.  The “Ridge” was killed for the same offense on June 22, 1839, for signing the Cherokee removal treaty.

Insert Area 19 here

This treaty requires extensive discussion because of the tremendous consequences that resulted.  The Cherokee Nation had since the 1775 signing of the Treaty at Sycamore Shoals become divided between the Upper Cherokees living north of the Hiwassee Mountains and the Chickamaugans to the south, into Alabama.  This treaty had been negotiated between the Chickamaugans and the Federal Government under President Thomas Jefferson. The benefits of the treaty, cash bribes, special land cessions to the chiefs, and other goods had been paid to the Chickamaugans, not the Cherokee Nation represented by the legitimate Cherokee National Council. 

When the Council found out about the treaty and payments made to the Chickamaugans, the Upper Cherokees demanded the U. S. Government divide the Cherokee Nation into separate entities, and allowed the Upper Cherokees to become citizens of the United States.  Jefferson then suggested that the Chicamaugans remove to lands west of the Mississippi River.   The controversy continued over the next year ending with Doublehead’d brother, Tahlonteskee, fearing assassination, and his band of 1,130 Chickamaugans removed to Dardanelle Rock on the Arkansas River. 

Tahlonteskee’s band became known as the “Old Settlers” or “Cherokees West.”  Life was not easy for them in Central Arkansas as the Osage claimed that land as theirs.  The Osage were removed in 1808 by treaty, but the Osage-Cherokee conflicts continued for 20 years.  As we will see, the Old Settlers were involved in ongoing conflicts with the Cherokee Nation through and after the forced removal in 1838-1839.

The War of 1812, with its English instigation of outrages on the western front, brought Jefferson back into the Indian political arena. Writing to Alexander von Humboldt in 1813: “You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here for the happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities.  We spared nothing to keep them at peace with one another.  To teach them agriculture and the rudiments of the most necessary arts, and to encourage industry by establishing among them separate property. 

In this way they would have been enabled to subsist and multiply on a moderate scale of landed possession.  They would have mixed their blood with ours, and been amalgamated and identified with us within no distant period of time.  On the commencement of our present war, we pressed on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people. 

They have seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.”   

On March 22, 1816, the Cherokees signed a treaty with the United States deeding the last of the Cherokee land in South Carolina, a triangular wedge on the far-western extent of its established boundary.  See the following image for its location.  The Cherokee Nation had helped the United States in the Creek War.  Many Cherokees were killed and wounded;  much Cherokee property had been damaged.  The treaty negotiations had included payment of damages for the Cherokees’ efforts along with request for removal of American intruders onto Cherokee land.  The treaty discussions involved allowing for more American access across Cherokee land, and for opportunities for Cherokees to build and maintain “stands” (taverns) along the commercial roads through the nation.

Insert Royce map Area 21 being removed  

Area 22 represents 4,000,000 acres that were claimed by 3 Indian tribes, all at the same time!  The end of the Creek wars, after the battle at Horseshoe Bend, Gen. Jackson demanded a cession of 23,000,000 acres from the Creeks for starting “an unprovoked, inhuman and sanguinary war waged by the hostile Creeks against the United States.”  The negotiation at Fort Jackson determined that the Cherokees and Chickasaws both claimed four million of the 23,000,000 acres demanded by Jackson from the Creeks as punishment for the war.   Negotiators for President Madison stood up against Jackson’s demands and awarded that 4,000,000 acres to the Cherokees. 

The previously described Treaty of March 22, 1816 formalized the Cherokee claim to that land located south of the Tennessee River and east of the Coosa River, Jackson declaring the boundary settlement as a “wanton, hasty, useless thing” that he intended to “undo it.”  Jackson took advantage of treaty negotiations with the Cherokee on Sept. 14, 1816 to secure that 4,000,000 acre cession by bribing eight Cherokee chiefs to sign the treaty, now known as the “Jackson Treaty.”  In an effort to protect themselves from the death penalty for ceding more Cherokee land, the twelve-member Cherokee delegation required the Cherokee National Council had to ratify the treaty.  See the following image of the 4,000,000 acre “Jackson Treaty” land and location.  These lands now lay in the states of Alabama and Mississippi.

Insert image of Royce Map showing Area 22

4 separate tracts of Cherokee land were transferred to the United States through the Treaty of 1817.  Negotiated at the Calhoun Agency on the Hiawassee, this treaty targeted Cherokee removal by exchanging Cherokee lands in the East for western lands, where virgin hunting grounds offered supposedly a better quality of life.  Indeed, the Cherokee ceded 4 tracts for an equivalent acreage of land on the White River in Arkansas adjacent to the Osage Nation.  That land had to be west of the 1817 Cherokee Boundary Line drawn on this image of the 1826 Anthony Finley map shown here.

Insert 1826 Anthony Finley map showing Cherokee Line from Point Remove to Hardens Bluff  

Before 1817 3,700 Cherokee had moved to the waters of the Arkansas River onto lands of equal acreage as these 4 tracts shown as Areas 23, 24, 25, and 26.  See the images below for their locations on the Royce Map.

Area 23.  A tract in Northeast Georgia.

Insert Royce area 23

Area 24.  A Tract in Southern Tennessee.

Insert Royce area 24

Area 25.  A Tract in North Alabama, between Cyress and Elk Rivers.

Insert Royce area 25

Area 26.  A Tract in North Alabama above the mouth of Spring Creek on the Tennessee River.

Insert Royce area 26

The Cherokee Council refused to ratify this 1817 Treaty.  The United States moved ahead with its terms and conditions, making more intense the infighting within the Cherokee Nation between those willing to remove west of the Mississippi River and those who wished to stay in the East. 

In the fall of 1817, the Cherokee Council met and declared their opposition to the 1817 Treaty.  Note that this treaty with exchange of Cherokee land in the East for equal land beyond the Mississippi River represents the actualization of Thomas Jefferson’s wish to remove Native Americans in the East to lands “beyond the Mississippi.”

Grace Woodward in her book, “The Cherokees,” wrote about this time in the Cherokee Nation, “The old weakness – that of a loose confederation of headmen of the Nation – had again proved that what the Cherokee Nation needed was a head chief who would weld the nation into ‘a body politic.’  Too late the Cherokee National Council appointed a committee of thirteen to safeguard their nation against future land cessions made without the consent of a full council of chiefs.  Too late did Pathkiller (now the Cherokees’ principal chief) and Charles Hicks (their second chief) send a carefully selected deputation to Washington to protest the 1817 treaty.”   

On Feb. 27, 1819 the United States demanded more of the Cherokees “peripheral lands” as compensation for past and future emigration onto lands in Arkansas.  These cessions were said to be the last required by the U.S. – Cherokee migration cessions would be discontinued.  The 1819 Treaty cessions were extensive, reducing the Cherokee Nations land to 10,000,000 acres.  The treaty language is shown below.  The land taken in this cession broadly encircled what became the focus of the Cherokee Nation over the remaining 20 years until removal.  One can gain an appreciation for the crippling and circumscribing effect all 24 cessions had on the Cherokees.  All their original homeland was important to them; as it shrunk with cessions, the nation did not become more consolidated, it became fragmented.

As you read the treaty language describing the “line” north and east of which are Cherokee lands being treated away, you can follow along that line on the map shown as Areas 27, 28, and 29 are removed.  The Royce Map was drawn to detail the Cherokee Treaty cessions, so the topographical features used in the treaty language are essential elements of the map.       

 “The Cherokee Nation cedes to the United States all of their lands lying north and east of the following line, viz: Beginning on the Tennessee River at the point where the Cherokee boundary with Madison County, in the Alabama Territory, joins the same; thence along the main channel of said river to the mouth of the Highwassee; thence along its main channel to the first hill which closes in on said river, about two miles above Highwassee Old Town; thence along the ridge which divides the waters of the Highwassee and Little Tellico to the Tennessee River at Talassee; thence along the main channel to the junction of the Cowee and Nanteyalee; thence along the ridge in the 220fork of said river to the top of the Blue Ridge; thence along the Blue Ridge to the Unicoy Turnpike Road; thence by straight line to the nearest main source of the Chestatee; thence along its main channel to the Chattahouchee; and thence to the Creek boundary; it being understood that all the islands in the Chestatee, and the parts of the Tennessee and Highwassee (with the exception of Jolly’s Island, in the Tennessee, near the mouth of the Highwassee) which constitute a portion of the present boundary, belong to the Cherokee Nation; and it is also understood that the reservations contained in the second article of the treaty of Tellico, signed the twenty-fifth October, eighteen hundred and five, and a tract equal to twelve miles square, to be located by commencing at the point formed by the intersection of the boundary line of Madison County already mentioned and the north bank of the Tennessee River, thence along the said line and up the said river twelve miles, are ceded to the United States, in trust for the Cherokee Nation, as a school fund, to be sold by the United Statets, and the proceeds vested as is hereafter provided in the fourth article of this treaty; and also that the rights vested in the Unicoy Turnpike Company by the Cherokee Nation * * * are not to be affected by this treaty.”  

The first 3 tracts described above are shown on the Royce map as:

Area 27.  Tract in N. Alabama and Southern Tennessee

Area 28.  Tract in Southern Tennessee, on the Tennessee River

Area 29.  Tract in Tennessee, N. Carolina, and Georgia

The following image shows those tracts being removed from the Cherokee Nation’s land. 

Insert Royce Map, then remove Areas 27, 28, and 29 in succession.

Tennessee Governor McMinn had called for a council with the Cherokee chiefs during the treaty discussions for this treaty.  Royce provided this summary of that council with McMinn’s arguments for total Cherokee removal:

“Millions of acres of valuable lands, rich in all the elements that combine to satisfy the necessities and the desires of the husbandman—mountain, valley, and plain—comprising every variety of soil, fertilized by innumerable running streams and clothed with heavy forests of the finest timber, were yet in the possession of the native tribes of this region. 224Other lands in great quantities, available for white settlement and occupation, both in Kentucky and the adjoining States, were, it is true, lying idle. In point of soil, water, and timber they were doubtless equal if not superior to the Indian possessions. But the idea was all-prevalent then as it is now in border communities, that, however attractive may be the surrounding districts of public lands open to the inclination of anybody who desires to settle thereon, the prohibited domain of a neighboring Indian reservation must of necessity surpass it, and no application of the principles of reason, philosophy, or justice will serve to lessen the desire for its possession. Governor McMinn convened a council of the Cherokees, at which he presented to them in the strongest light the benefits that would accrue to their nation in the increasing happiness, prosperity, and population such as would attend their removal to the Arkansas, while, on the other hand, nothing but evil could follow their continued residence east of the Mississippi. Their lands would be constantly encroached upon by white settlers; border desperadoes would steal their stock, corrupt their women, and besot their warriors. However anxious the Government might be to protect them in the uninterrupted enjoyment of their present possessions, it would, from the circumstances of the case, be utterly unable to do so. He therefore proposed to them that they should, as a unit, agree to remove west of the Mississippi, and that the United States should pay them for their lands the sum of $100,000, in addition to all expenses of removal; which amount, upon their prompt and indignant refusal, he at once offered to double, but with as small measure of success.”

The Cherokee chiefs rejected his offer!

The following long quote from the Royce Document that accompanied the treaty map links some contemporaneous Missouri history to this 1817-19 Cherokee history.  The point of including this quote is to best explain why the Arkansas Cherokee wanted more “eastern” Indians to join them in Arkansas.  It was for strength and protection from the “savage Indians of the plains,” the Osage.

“Early in 1818 a representative delegation from that portion of the Cherokees who had removed to the Arkansas visited Washington with the view of reaching a more satisfactory understanding concerning the location and extent of their newly acquired homes in that region. As early as January 14 of that year, they had addressed a memorial to the Secretary of War asking, among other things, that the United States should recognize them as a separate and distinct people, clothed with the power to frame and administer their own laws, after the manner of their brethren east of the Mississippi.

“Long and patient hearings were accorded to this delegation by the authorities of the Government, and, predicated upon their requests, instructions were issued to Governor William Clark, superintendent of Indian affairs at Saint Louis, among other things, to secure a cessation of hostilities then raging between the Arkansas Cherokees and the Osages; furthermore, to induce, if possible, the Shawnees and Delawares then residing in the neighborhood of Cape Girardeau to relinquish their land and join the Western Cherokees, or, in the event of a favorable termination of the Quapaw treaty then pending, that they might be located on lands acquired from them.

“During the year the Arkansas Cherokees had also learned that the Oneidas of New York were desirous of obtaining a home in the West, and had made overtures for their settlement among them. The main object of the Cherokees in desiring to secure these originally eastern Indians for close neighbors is to be found in the increased strength they would be able to muster in sustaining their quarrel with their native western neighbors.”

The Treaty of 1819 called for the Cherokee to get 3 million acres of land between the Arkansas River and the White River in exchange for 5 million acres of their homeland in the East.  The eastern Cherokee Boundary Line established in the 1817 Treaty had been established beginning at Point Remove on the Arkansas River to Batesville on the White River, as seen on the 1826 Anthony Finley map of “Missouri and the Territory of Arkansas.” 

To fulfill the acreage requirement of 3 million acres, the western line was drawn from Fort Smith on the Arkansas River to near today’s Harrison.  That second boundary line, the western line, is also drawn on the Finley map.  White settlers were forcibly removed from the area between those rivers and the 2 boundary lines.  Find “CHEROKEES” printed across the northern portion of the Finley Map in that space.  By 1820 the estimate of the number of Cherokee removed to Arkansas was 4,000 to 6,000.

By 1820 Dwight Mission, a Presbyterian outreach to the Western Cherokees requested by their chief, Tahlonteskee, after he visited Brainerd mission school on Chickamauga Creek in the East, served the Cherokees in Arkansas until their removal in 1829.  Dwight Mission is seen on the Finley map on the Illinois River, located there so that Chief John Jolly, who had reservations about potential untoward effects Christian education could have on Cherokee heritage, where the chief could keep an eye on the mission’s programs.     

The 1817 Treaty had called for the Federal Government to build a fort to protect the Cherokee immigrants from the Osage and a trade factory to supply the Cherokee with food and farming supplies in their new Arkansas home.  Both were built at Belle Point, seen on the Finley map.  Other location sites for early Cherokee settlements in Arkansas seen on the Finley map include Spadra Creek, Illinois Bayou, Mulberry River, and Piney (Pine) River.  The Bowl had settled on Petite Jean River south of the Arkansas River after the New Madrid earthquake, as shown as Little Jean River on the Finley map. 

The Cherokees, as quoted from Royce, “consented to the cession of those tracts of country naively described in the treaty of February 27, 1819, as “at least as extensive” as that to which the United States was entitled under the principles and provisions of the treaty of 1817. These cessions were made, as recited in the preamble to the treaty, as the commencement of those measures necessary to the civilization and preservation of their nation, and in order that the treaty of July 8, 1817, might, without further delay or the trouble or expense of taking the census therein provided for, be finally adjusted.”

Nine separate land cessions were transferred from the Cherokees to the United States in the 1819 Treaty listed here by their Number on the Royce map:

27.  Tract in Alabama and Southern Tennessee

28.  Tract in Southern Tennessee, on the Tennessee River

29.  Tract in Tennessee, N. Carolina, and Georgia

30.  Jolly’s Island in the Tennessee River

31.  Small tract in Tennessee at and below the mouth of Clinch River

32.  Tract of 12 miles square on Tennessee River in Alabama

33.  Tract of 1 square mile in Tennessee, at foot of Cumberland Mountain

34.  Tract of 1 square mile in Tennessee, at Cherokee Talootiskee’s

35.  Tract of 3 square miles in Tennessee opposite the mouth of Hiwassee River

Areas 27, 28, and 29 were removed in the previous image.  The remaining 6 Areas (30 – 35) are removed now in the following image:

Insert removal of Areas 30 – 35 listed above leaving the only the last Area 36

After the Treaty of 1819, the United States announced to the Cherokees that there would be no more land cessions requested.  As you can see by the above image, the Cherokee homeland had been reduced by nearly three-quarters by the previous 35 land cessions.  The Cherokee leaders initiated many progressive programs in the years ahead to prevent or forestall further land cessions, many programs focused on acculturalization.  By 1826 there were eighteen mission school in the Nation supported by the Cherokee government but also by funding from Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Moravian foreign mission organizations.

Sequoyah invented the Cherokee alphabet or “syllabary” in 1821.  The syllabary was easy to learn, quickly becoming mastered by young and old Cherokees alike.  The Cherokee Legislative Council voted to establish a national newspaper as a result of Sequoyah’s invention.  The Cherokee Phoenix was published first on February 21, 1828 in both the Cherokee and English languages.

Many consider the reorganization of the Cherokee government to be the most important step the Nation took toward modernization.  A bicameral legislature and judicial system were established using as a model the government and constitution of the United States.  The principal chief continued as the chief executive of the Cherokee Nation.

In 1825 the Legislative Council of the Cherokees issued a decree that the chiefs of the Nation could not make treaties that disposed of any Cherokee land.  Additionally, that all valuable minerals discovered on Cherokee land will be public property for the benefit of the Cherokee Nation.  A Cherokee bank holding surplus monies of the Nation could loan Cherokee citizens up to $500 at 6 percent interest if they could show sufficient securities and give their bond.

Perhaps most monumental was the establishment by the Legislative Council of a new permanent capital for the Nation – New Echota, at the confluence of the Coosawattee and Conasauga rivers.  New Echota is seen at that location in Area 36, the last remainder of a once 40,000 square mile Indian Nation, on the Royce map in the image below.

Insert image showing New Echota at that location just north of Calhoun

The Legislative Council authorized a Supreme Court building, a print shop for the Cherokee Phoenix, and a Council House at New Echota.  The Council House was a two-story log building with glass windows, plank floors, brick fireplaces, and a staircase leading to offices on the second floor.  There were also buildings for a tavern, retail stores, and permanent homes. 

Although impressive and functional, and demonstrative of the advancement and acculturalization of the Cherokees, perhaps the most dramatic advancement was the adoption of a new constitution.  The document mirrors to a large degree the constitution of the United States with three distinct departments – Legislative, Judicial, and Executive.  The preamble of the new Cherokee constitution acknowledges the “Sovereign Ruler of the Universe” for his goodness in the design of the constitution.  Following the constitution, the Cherokee Nation elected a new principal chief, John Ross, on Oct. 17, 1828.  That was just one month before Andrew Jackson was elected President of the United States.

Insert images of John Ross and Andrew Jackson here  

The elephant in the room since 1819 had been the Compact of 1802.  That agreement was between the State of Georgia and the Government of the United States which required the U.S. to remove all the Indians from the state.  No timetable was stated; it was to be by the willingness of the resident Native Americans.  The success of the Cherokee advancement over the previous decade brought the issue to a head.  Residents and government leaders in Georgia could see the recent successes of the Cherokee Nation becoming more of a threat to permanent settlement on Georgia land.  And they wanted that land for speculation and occupation, including the improvements made by the Cherokees over their occupation of their homeland.

By the 1820’s settlement pressures in the Arkansas Territory had led to continual conflict as white settlers invaded Cherokee lands there.  Missouri had become a state in 1821.  The Osage had been removed in 1808.  The Quapaw’s first removal treaty was in 1824.  By that time about 6000 Cherokees were living in the Cherokee reserve in Arkansas.  Jefferson had encouraged the Cherokees to remove across the Mississippi River to forever be free of all the issues their eastern cousins were suffering in the homeland. 

That western realm was promised to be just like their homeland, with lots of game for hunting and rich cove valleys for their corn fields.  And no competition from white settlement.  In fact all white settlers were removed from that quadrangle between the Eastern and Western Cherokee Boundary lines after 1819.  But that did not stop from coming in again.  Arkansas had become a territory in1819 with a western limit of the 100 degrees west longitude, according to the mutual understanding between the United States and Spain. 

In 1824 Arkansas Territory was reduced in size when the western extent of the territory was moved to a line running north and south forty miles west of the southwest corner of Missouri, as shown of the image below.  So where do the Cherokees go from central Arkansas for relief?

How did the Cherokee end up in the mountainous central Arkansas, living primarily along the watercourses?  It was the hunting potential that got them there.  Even before 1800, Cherokees hunters had found the Arkansas River valley as one of the most promising hunting regions.  Months after the Louisiana Purchase, federal officials noted “a scarcity of game on the eastern side of the Mississippi River has late induced a number of Cherokees…to frequent the neighborhood of Arkansas, where game is still in abundance.” 

In 1809 Cherokee hunting challenges in Tennessee were used by Cherokee leaders to convince government leaders to support their removal to Arkansas.  Thomer Jefferson noted he was told by the Cherokee leaders that they were “desirous to move across the Mississippi River” to “retain their attachments to the hunter’s life, having little game in their present lands.”  He invited them to “reconnoiter the country on the waters of the Arkansas and White Rivers.”  As a result hundreds of Cherokee families moved to the St. Fracois River bottomlands, eventually hunting parties travelling inland to the mountains and valleys to the west.

After the New Madrid earthquakes in 1811-12, many of these Cherokee families moved westward, primarily settling on the narrow bottoms of the Arkansas and White Rivers and their tributaries on the foothills of the Ozark Mountains to the north.  Cherokees had learned the practice of identifying and clearing forested areas on rich bottomland along the rivers for better farming production.  They had learned to mix that land use practice with hunting in the mountains and even pursuing bison on the short grass prairies to the west to meet their needs for subsistence. 

They had learned the benefits of diverse geographies and topographies to meet their food needs.  Cherokees success in hunting and the fur trade led the United States to build a successful factory store that mutually benefitted both the Cherokees and government.  The U. S. wanted the friendly Cherokee presence as a buffer to the wild western Indians access to white settlement eastward of the Cherokee Arkansas lands.  Also, the success of the Cherokees in Arkansas would potentially interest more of their eastern brothers in emigrating to Arkansas. 

The 1817 and 1819 Treaties secured the broad Arkansas region’s Arkansas River valley as Cherokee lands, displacing white squatters out and renegade Osage westward.  Cherokee hunting parties pursuing bison to the west, crossing Osage land to conduct hunting opportunities precipitated violence with the Osage.  Fort Smith was built to keep the parties apart and avoid warfare.

In the 1817 treaty document, Cherokee negotiators embedded the hunter identity by including that they “made known their desire to continue the hunter life across the Mississippi River.”  The treaty included acre-for-acre exchange in the homeland for equal Arkansas land for hunting.  For the U. S. friendly Cherokee hunters may have represented potential proxy fighters if needed to quell “savage warriors” in the plain’s tribes. 

By 1818 the Cherokee were committing to more of an agricultural life.  President Monroe wrote to the Cherokee chiefs that the U. S. would allow the Cherokee to have “good mill seats, plenty of game, and not to be surrounded by white people.”  Clearly, a mixed agricultural model had developed in the Cherokee mind.  The varied geography in the region had offered fertile opportunities to pursue not just hunting, but also farming – in segregation from the whiteman.  And the Cherokees began to cast themselves as civilizing pioneers, in contrast to the Osage being a “band of savages.”

The barren mountains to the north quickly became the limiting margin to the agricultural achievements for the Cherokee.  By 1819 the Cherokee Chiefs began openly complaining to the U. S. that they found themselves confined to a “barren country fit for nothing.”   The Cherokee Council and Chiefs began efforts to convince the U. S. that the circumscribed mountainous region they occupied was limiting the tribe’s potential to better themselves; that the westering paradigm of the whites had led to conquering frontiers with settlements, which the Cherokee were capable of then.  The civilizing effects of westering Cherokees into “savage lands” would benefit the U. S.

The Cherokees had become familiar with Lovely’s Purchase, a 3-million-acre square at the northwest corner of the Arkansas Territory.  They had to travel through it for bison hunting.  They well understood the well-watered fertile soils and new rich hunting potential and better access for buffalo hunting that existed there.  Moving west would free them of being encircled by aggressive white settlers, as white settlement continued rapidly moving westward.  The Cherokee chiefs began speaking in a unified voice, condemning the mountainous region of their current Arkansas home as unfit for agricultural pursuits. 

The three million acres the Cherokee were granted in the central Arkansas region provided only 70 miles of river bottomland frontage.  If more Cherokees chose to emigrate as more Cherokee land in the East were ceded to the U.S., their current lands in Arkansas would be insufficient.  Cherokee complaints related to unsatisfied treaty guarantees led to an 1825 resurvey, yielding another one million acres for the tribe.  That brought their total land reserve to over 4 million acres in their central Arkansas home.  That survey correction put the Lovely Purchase near their western boundary.  The Cherokee settlements already stretched into that land.

Cherokee map makers had drawn maps extending the Cherokee Arkansas range well into and beyond the falls of the Verdigris River, 80 miles west of the established western Cherokee boundary.  That would put the Cherokees out of the reach of encroaching whites.  The Cherokee Council’s interest was to maintain their central Arkansas mountainous homes while extending Cherokee rights westward into the fertile region of Lovely’s Purchase.

The western boundary of the Arkansas Territory had been moved eastward from the western limit of the Louisiana Purchase to 45 miles west of Fort Smith in 1824, as it is shown on the 1826 Anthony Findley map. 

Lovely County was established in 1827.  Whites were moving in quickly as the U. S. government surveys were completed.  Under white occupation inside the territorial limits, the Cherokee access to bison on the short grass prairie plains would end.  Then worse news came as calls began Arkansas political figures that the Cherokees had no rights to land in Arkansas.  In 1828 a delegation from the Council was sent to Washington.  They had been advised that giving up Cherokee lands in Arkansas would be punishable by death. 

They met opposition in Washington that would not give them more lands for the Cherokees – but would move the Cherokee far west onto the prairie or allow the Cherokee to exchange their Arkansas land for land east of the Falls of the Verdigris to the existing western border of Arkansas.  In May of 1828 they signed the document relinguishing their Arkansas land for the western half of Lovely’s purchase.  This new land was beyond any U. S. boundary line and considered to be “Indian Territory.”  The image below shows a second Royce Map detailing Area 37 as being relinguished and the new Cherokee land to the west.  This land  transaction became confirmed by the Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1828.   

Insert Second Royce Map showing Ark Cherokee land being lost(Area37) and new Cherokee land to the west of Ark

Enter the Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1828.  As you read this formal introduction to the treaty, consider all the things this treaty attempts to accomplish.  As you read this, having an image of Anthony Findley’s 1826 Map of Missouri and the Territory of Arkansas will be helpful!

Insert image of Anthony Findleys 1826 map of Missouri and Arkansas Territory

WHEREAS, it being the anxious desire of the government of the United States to secure to the Cherokee nation of Indians, as well those now living within the limits of the Territory of Arkansas, as those of their friends and bothers who reside in States East of the Mississippi, and who may wish to join their brothers of the West, a permanent home, and which shall, under the most solemn guarantee of the United States, be, and remain, theirs forever – a home that shall never, in all future time, be embarrassed by having extended around it the lines, or placed over it the jurisdiction of a Territory or State, nor be pressed upon by the extension, in any way, of any of the limits of any existing Territory or State; and Whereas, the present location of the Cherokees in Arkansas being unfavorable to their present repose, and tending, as the past demonstrates, to their future degradation and misery; and the Cherokees being anxious to avoid such consequences, and yet not questioning their right to their lands in Arkansas, as secured to them by Treaty, and resting also upon the pledges given them by the President of the United States, and the Secretary of War, of March, 1818, and the 8th October, 1821, in regard to the outlet to the West, and as may be seen on referring to the records of the War Department, still being anxious to secure a permanent home, and to free themselves, and their posterity, from an embarrassing connexion with the Territory of Arkansas, and guard themselves from such connexions in future; Whereas, it being important, not to the Cherokees only, but also to the Choctaws, and in regard also to the question which may be agitated in the future respecting the location of the latter, as well as the former, within the limits of the Territory or State of Arkansas, as the case may be, and their removal therefrom; and to avoid the cost which may attend negotiations to rid the Territory or State of Arkansas whenever it may become a State, of either, or both of those Tribes, the parties do hereby conclude the following Articles, viz:

Article 1:  The Western boundary of Arkansas shall be, and the same is, hereby defined, viz: A line shall be run, commencing on Red River, at the point where the Eastern Choctaw line strikes said river (see on above image near Pecan Point), and run due North with said line to the River Arkansas (at Belle Point on map), thence in a direct line to the South West corner of Missouri.  (This description moved the western boundary line of Arkansas 40 miles eastward, not shown on the Finley map, but shown on the following image of the Cherokee seven million acres deeded to them by this treaty).

Insert image of Cherokee lands as stated in 1828 Treaty

The United States agree to possess the Cherokees, and to guarantee it to them forever, and that guarantee is hereby solemnly pledged, of seven millions of acres of land, to be bounded as follows, viz: Commencing at that point on Arkansas River where the Eastern Choctaw boundary line strikes said river, and running thence with the Western line of Arkansas, as defined in the foregoing article, to the Southwest corner of Missouri, and thence with the Western boundary line of Missouri till it crosses the waters of Neasho, generally called Grand River, thence due west to a point from which a due South course will strike the present (on Findley map, the 1824 line) North West corner of Arkansas Territory, thence continuing due South, on and with the present Western boundary line of the Territory (on Findley map, the 1824 line) to the main branch of Arkansas River, thence down said river to its junction with the Canadian River, and thence up and between the said Rivers Arkansas and Canadian, to a point at which a line running North and South from River to River, will give the aforesaid seven millions of acres…

The next article in the treaty stated that the United States will immediately remove all white persons from West to East of the new Eastern line from the Arkansas River to the Southwest corner of Missouri.

In retrospect this 1828 treaty had significance to the Cherokee, Creek, and Osage Indian Nations, the states of Arkansas and later Oklahoma, and the course of Indian removal over the next two decades.  This treaty ties Cherokee removal to the state of Missouri, as Missouri is named several times in the treaty document.  This treaty was supplemented by the Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1833, whose primary function was to change the description of the Cherokee lands to give up some Creek lands previously selected by their treaty of 1826.  The new Cherokee boundaries are quite complicated but continued to provide the seven million acres guaranteed by the United States.  The Cherokee Nation after the adjustment for the loss of the Creek lands and the addition of new land in exchange for land lost appear in the image below.

Insert image of Cherokee Nation after Treaty of 1833

Perhaps most significantly, the 1828 treaty promised to place the guaranteed Cherokee lands outside of any state or even territory.  The Land Laws of the 1780’s had established the United States codified laws for the settlement and governmental progression within its territories which would lead to statehood.  The 1828 treaty specifically said that the Cherokees lands would not be within a state or territory boundary forever, that those lands would never be subject to those laws which promoted white settlement and eventual fee simple land tenure.  The Cherokee lands were in “Indian Country.”

Each Cherokee removing from their land east of the Mississippi River to these new western Cherokee lands would have their costs of emigration paid, along with “provisions procured for their comfort, accommodation, and support, by the way, and provisions for twelve months after their arrival (in the west).”  For those which “shall have emigrated from within the Chartered limits of the State of Georgia, the sum of fifty dollars” in addition will be paid.  The United States Government had determined that Georgia was going to be was the focus of forced Indian removal.  The 1828 treaty was attempting to preempt that action with money as early as 1828.      

The discovery of gold on Cherokee land in Georgia at Dalton and Dahlonega in 1829 exaggerated the irritations between the Cherokees and the lawless Georgians who were invading Cherokee land and abusing Cherokee citizens.  The gold issue seems to have been the impetus for the aggressive anti-Cherokee laws passed by the Geogia legislature, although the achieved Jeffersonian acculturalization and modernization of the tribe potentially preparing for U.S. citizenship for the Native Americans was the far more deep-seated cause. 

Georgian laws that nullified Cherokee laws, laws that prohibited Cherokee government meetings and actions, the arrest of Cherokees who interfered with removal, laws that voided Cherokee contracts, and laws that made it illegal for Cherokees to dig for gold were examples of the “legal” harassment of Cherokees on their own land by the State of Georgia.  The Cherokee Nation felt the weight of these “legal” collars at the same time that Andrew Jackson asked Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act to remove all the Southeastern Indians from their heritage homelands.  That bill passed both houses of Congress on May 23, 1830; then being signed by President Jackson on May 30, it became the law of the land.

As it was illegal for the Cherokee Nation to hold meetings in Georgia, they moved their governing headquarters to Red Clay, Tennessee.  Over the next 5 years, factions within the Cherokee Nation, some for removal but most opposed, debated, resisted, associated, conspired, and denied a willingness to remove.  Great enduring animosities were created within the tribe and well beyond, to include the tribe’s sympathetic American supporters, as the Jackson administration rolled over the wishes of the vast majority of Cherokees. Jackson supporters in the U.S. Senate passed by one vote the removal treaty, the Treaty of New Echota.

The treaty was signed on Dec. 29, 1835 and ratified by the U.S. Senate on May 23, 1836; it ceded the remaining seven million acres of Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River to the United States in exchange for land in Indian Territory and 5 million dollars.  That Cherokee land is shown as Area 36 on the Royce Map below.

Insert image of Area 36 being removed from Royce Map leaving no Cherokee homeland 

The treaty called for the final removal of all Cherokees from their homeland by 2 years from the date of ratification – May 23, 1838.  No amount of public outrage changed the federal government’s actions toward removal.  No pleading by the Cherokee Nation had an effect.  The removal was put in the hands of the U.S. Army, as the Secretary of War was in charge of Indian issues.  Member of the House of Representatives John Q. Adams stated the acceptance by the senate “brings with it eternal disgrace upon the country.” 

The Secretary of War, Lewis Cass, was advised by the federal enrolling agent that the Treaty of New Echota “is no treaty at all, because it was not sanctioned by the great body of the Cherokees and was made without their participation or assent….The business of making the treaty was transacted with a committee appointed by the Indians present from a delegation taken to Washington which had no more authority to make a treaty than any other dozen Cherokee accidentally picked out for the purpose.”  

By January 1, 1837, about 600 Cherokees of affluence elected to voluntarily leave their homes and travel an overland trail to Indian Territory.  This moneyed group traveled with fine horses and wagons, their Negro slaves, and fat oxen arriving in Indian Territory in time to plant crops for fall harvest.  A second volunteer group of 466 Cherokees, led by the U.S. military, did not fare as well.  Departing from Ross’s Landing (Chattanooga) on March 3, 1837, on a fleet of eleven flatboats and three steamboats, the water voyage on the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers successfully delivered the group to Memphis. 

The Arkansas River was a most treacherous and unforgiving waterway with snags, sawyers, and sand bars requiring a pilot trained and accustomed to the river to navigate the treacherous river.  This party of Cherokees suffered greatly with ailments of every cause. 

A national council was called in August of 1837 to convince the Cherokees to be accepting of the removal with more promises mixed with intimidation with threat of military force.  The government of the United States was going to enforce the removal whether the Cherokee were willing to leave or not.

At that council an English geologist and geographer, George Featherstonhaugh, was present to watch as prayers were said and gospels sung invoking God’s rescue of the tormented Nation.  Featherstonhaugh later wrote of his impressions of the event and of his disdain for the very idea that these Indians who had come so far in their pursuit of acculturalization that President Jefferson had urged:  “This spectacle…led me into reflection upon the opinion which is so generally entertained of its being impossible to civilize the Indian….Here is a remarkable instance which seems to furnish a conclusive answer…A whole Indian nation abandons the pagan practices of their ancestors, adopts the Christian religion, uses books printed in their own language, submits to the government of their elders, builds houses and temples of worship, relies upon agriculture for their support, and produces men of great ability to rule over them…Are not these the great principles of civilization?  They were driven from their religious and social state then, not because they cannot be civilized, but because a pseudo set of civilized beings, who are too strong for them want their possessions.”

On October 14, 1837, a third party of Cherokees who had supported the removal treaty, the Lt. B.B. Cannon Detachment, left the Cherokee Agency at Ft. Cass heading overland to Indian Territory.  This group and the previous two needed to get out of the Nation to avoid death for their support of the treaty.  This detachment of 365 Cherokees established the land route generally followed by the remaining 12,000 Cherokees in the forced removal.  From the Cherokee Agency near Calhoun, the detachment crossed the Tennessee River at Blythe’s Ferry, marching, it was a military detachment, onto Nashville several days later. 

At Nashville two of the Cherokee leaders in the detachment visited Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage prior to crossing the Cumberland River.  After crossing the Cumberland River on the toll bridge, the detachment marched northwesterly, crossing the Ohio River at Golconda.    Specifically, Cannon led his detachment onto the Mississippi River, crossing at Wilard’s Landing, marching through the city of Jackson, Missouri, traveling through Southeastern Missouri to Farmington, continuing westward through the Meramec River Hills, and eventually summiting the prairie of western Missouri at the intersection to the Springfield-to-St. Louis Road, leading them to Indian Territory.  The Missouri Story of the Trail of Tears recounts that leg of the trek.