President Thomas Jefferson and Indian Removal (46)

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Dr. Bill Ambrose

President Thomas Jefferson and Indian Removal

Jefferson was familiar with the Cherokee Nation of Indians from childhood.  The following is from a letter written by Jefferson to John Adams in 1813:

“So much in answer to your enquiries concerning Indians, a people with whom, in the very early part of my life, I was very familiar, and acquired impressions of attachment & commiseration for them which have never been obliterated.  Before the revolution they were in the habit of coming often, & in great numbers to the seat of our government (Williamsburg), where I was very much with them.  I knew much the great Outassete, the warrior and orator of the Cherokees.  He was always the guest of my father, on his journies to & from Williamsburg.  I was in his camp when he made his great farewell oration to his people, the evening before his departure for England.  The moon was in full spendor, and to her he seemed to address himself in his prayers for his own safety on the voyage, and that of his people during his absence.  His sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated action, and the solemn silence of his people at their several fires, filled me with awe & veneration, altho’ I did not understand a word he uttered.  That nation, consisting now of about 2000 warriors, & the Creeks of about 3000 are far advanced in civilization.  They have good cabins, inclosed fields, large herds of cattle & hogs, spin & weave their own clothes of cotton, have smiths & other of the most necessary tradesmen, write & read, are on the increase in numbers, & a branch of the Cherokees is now instituting a regular representative government.  Some other tribes were advancing in the same lines.  On those  who have made any progress, English seductions will have no effect.  But the backward will yield, & be thrown further back.  These will relapse into barbarism & misery, lose numbers by war & want, and we shall be obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the forest into the Stony mountains.  They will be conquered however in Canada.  The possession of that country secures our women & children for ever from the tomahawk & scalping knife, by removing those who excite them: and for this possession, orders I presume are issued by this time taking for granted that the doors of Congress will re-open with a Declaration of war.  That this may end in indemnity for the past, security for the future, & complete emancipation from ….all the manias of demoralized Europe, and that you may live in health & happiness to see all this, is my sincere prayer.

The last few lines are Jefferson’s thoughts on the Native American’s potential participation in the War of 1812, which had just begun at the writing of this letter.  Jefferson had confidence in America’s ability to not just defeat England, but to drive England and its Indian friends into Canada forever.  The initiation of this letter clearly shows a fondness by Jefferson for the Cherokees.  But that fondness for Native Americans is tempered with necessity for those who stand in the way of safety and progress by white men.  Those Indians will be driven to the Stony mountains – across the Mississippi River.  You see, he is conflicted by his enlightenment that, as he writes in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Native Americans are “in body and mind equal to the whiteman.”   However, his most firm view of America’s future was secured in the yeoman farmer’s independence, which was hedged on an ever-abundant access to more and more land.  Those farmers, according to Jefferson, are “the chosen people of God if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”

Jefferson thought that treating the Native Americans with respect, brotherhood, and fair trade would gradually lead to them adopting European-style agriculture.  They would quickly “progress” from “savagery” to “civilization.” 

Jefferson’s very first promotions of Indian Removal occurred between 1776 and 1779.  He had lived near the Shawnee and the Cherokees for 30 years.  He recommended forcing the Cherokees and Shawnees be driven out of their ancestral lands to west of the Mississippi River.  Jefferson said that Indian removal was the only way to ensure the survival of the Native American peoples.  With time and experience he developed and promoted a four-step plan of action to accomplish that: entice the Indians with manufactured goods into debt secured by their land, bribe the chiefs with money and private reservations, demonstrate the power of the U.S. by bringing the influential Indians to Washington to negotiate with the president, threaten the tribes with a trade embargo or war with the U.S.

It was essential in Jefferson’s mind, to keep the Native Americans tied economically to the U. S. for America to be the sole entity ready to exert the Doctrine of Discovery, along with the first right of refusal, on Indian lands as it was sold or treated away.  There were other nations on lands adjacent to Native American lands that likely wanted that opportunity – England in Canada, Spain in Florida, and France on the western front.  Jefferson’s trade factories filled that function.

There is another dramatic epic in America happening at the same time the Native Americans are being removed from their homelands.  That is the gigantic efforts extended by the U. S. Government for the settlement of new lands being added to America by Indian removal – in the Northwest Territory as a result of the victory in the Revolutionary War, then the Louisiana Territory from the purchase from France.  The urgency of the government to prepare for and organize the sale of these new lands was only exceeded by the zeal by land speculators for those lands, followed by yeoman farmers seeking fertile soils. 

How could it be after the wording of the Declaration of Independence that Indian Removal from their ancestral homelands would stride apace with fee-simple property settlement for whitemen on America’s western frontier – all previously owned by the Native American Nations.    

The Missouri Story will detail that oxymoron!

On June 1, 1781, in the final days of his first term as governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson received a guest, Chief John Baptist de Coige, the chief of the Kaskaskias in the Illinois Country.  George Rogers Clark was building Fort Jefferson at the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi River in May of 1780 when word came that St. Louis and Cahokia were going to be attacked by the British and their northern Indian allies.  Clark with his allied Native American friends arrived at Cahokia, an American town, in time to save it.  Spanish St. Louis was also saved by preparations installed by the commandant.  Lives were lost at both battles, but not the towns; loss of the towns would have had huge significance after the Revolutionary War.  Britain would have likely ended up with control of the Mississippi River and perhaps Louisiana.

Britain’s allied Indians, Chippewa, Menominee, Winnebago, and Sac and Fox, were attached to England as trading partners, England providing armaments and ammunition along with the regular list of finished manufactured goods the Indians had become dependent upon.  In exchange Britain accepted the Indian- produced high-quality furs.  The supply line was secure as England had command of the seas and obedient Canada.  England’s Native American proxies had waged war on the colonists during the last four years in the Revolutionary War; they continued that action over the following 30 years in the Northwest Territory leading to the War of 1812.

George Rogers Clark had led the American forces across that remote but strategic region during the Revolutionary War.  His victories are legendary, out witting the British generals in Detroit and the northern front during the war.  Supplying Clark with requisite arms was simplified with the reopening of the Mississippi River by the Spanish at New Orleans for trade and commerce.  Jefferson alludes to the importance of that river route and appropriates the French and Spanish as our friends in his speech.  He artfully explains the significance of that river supply route to Chief Coige, detailing how his American trade goods are the result of all the goods being divided between the war effort and those for the Indians.  The American war effort was dependent on Native American warriors as proxies in battles.       

The war continued during the Chief’s visit and for two more years, finally ending in 1783.  Jefferson wanted to secure the firm attachment of these friendly Indians during the war effort with his commitment of a continual supply of trade goods.  Jefferson had a special medal cast for the Chief, which he presented at the ceremony with the speech, available at this link.

After the war the fertile eastern side of the Middle Mississippi valley was eagerly sought after for settlement by American farmers and land speculators, reaching as far as they possibly could to the western limits of the colonies.  Kaskaskia village site had been an international cultural mixing location for decades with French and British influences, combined with Northern and Middle Mississippi Valley Indians, all vying for trading influence and opportunities. The image below shows the strategic location of the village of Kaskaskia. The American influence during and after the war won out with sheer numbers.  The town of Kaskaskia became the first capital of the Illinois Territory in 1809.  It became the first capital of the state of Illinois in in 1818.  Aggressive white settlement under the land laws of the 1780’s, including surveying, fee simple land ownership, and formal civil government and laws, trumped the eclectic, culturally rich Kaskaskian society, precipitating the removal of the Kaskaskia, Peoria, Michigamea, Cahokia, and Tamaroa and associated Illinois tribes by treaties with the U.S. Government.  Thomas Jefferson’s land ordinances redefined the basic operations of life, trade, and land there from a dynamic liquid mosaic that flowed with the opportunities to laws and civil structure, the lived allegory of the straight lines and hard angles of the imposed survey system.  Before their removal by treaty, European diseases had reduced their numbers greatly.  Kaskaskia Indians and the other Illiniwek Nations were removed to Kansas in 1832.  In 1867 the Kaskaskia were included in the confederated Peoria tribe which moved to Indian Country.  The Kaskaskias are not a federally recognized tribe today; some sources state that there are no Kaskaskia Indians today.  The tribe is extinct.  Descended from a tribe of Native Americans who partnered with de Soto in 1540, successful as an Indian Tribe for over two centuries, persisted across multiple powerful Euro-American influences, recognized with the name of the river and village where they settled – then and now, but unable to sustain in the face of the United States Indian policies.       

Insert image of Kaskaskia Village on the Mississippi River.

Is this Kaskaskia epic demonstrative of Indian removal from all of the Northwest Territory of   a coveted friend of the United States, becoming an extirpated annoyance from the Northwest Territory?  Could Thomas Jefferson have planned and helped put in place the land ordinances of the 1780’s to achieve Indian removal for the territory?  Then the Louisiana Territory?

England claimed the Northwest Territory, the area west and north of the Ohio River to Canada, as a spoils of war from their victory over France in the French and Indian War.  England tried to cast an additional element of ownership when in 1774 Parliament passed the Quebec Act, stretching the Canadian border to the Ohio River.  After the war colonies with western extension claims in the Northwest Territory eventually gave them up so that the Articles of Confederation could go into effect on March 1, 1781.  The Revolutionary War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, Sept. 3, 1783.  The political elite in the Confederation felt no urgency in formalizing the settlement of the “savage lands”, as they pictured the region.  Jefferson thought otherwise, as the consideration of the vast territory had been on his mind since before the war.  Was it to become more states on equal footing with the original 13 colonies?  Since 1778 that had been the decision – more republican states and governments, more yeoman farmers on more fertile soil.  But the land was occupied by Native American tribes which would be expensive to remove.  Not to worry – the Land Ordinance of 1784, submitted by Jefferson, was approved by the Confederation Congress on April 23, 1784 – less than a year after the close of the war!

How were these new lands perceived?  Who owned them?  Who had the right to claim them or buy them?  What mechanism would be devised to move those new lands of the United States into private hands to advance settlement, economic activity, commerce, and civil geography?  Starting with the basic tenet of who owns or has the first right of ownership, the following quote from the United States Senate does a good job of stating the government position on those subjects.  “The public lands appear to have been acquired in three ways; by conquest, by purchase, and by cession.  The happy termination of the revolutionary war gave to the United States a fair title, by conquest, to those lands of which, under the provincial Government, the Crown of Great Britain had always exercised the right of disposing.  But some difficulties seem to have existed, as to the title of the United States to those lands, soon after the close of the revolutionary war.  Several of the states made claims to large portions of those lands which were embraced by their nominal boundaries.  The claims of these States do not appear to your committee ever to have rested upon a good foundation.  They do not, however, conceive it necessary now to inquire into the justice of these claims, as the States which made them have long since abandoned them, and surrendered all right and title to the same by cession to the United States.  Whatever, therefore, may be thought concerning our titles to the public lands by conquest, there can no doubt exist as to our title by cession.

“By the treaty of peace in seventeen hundred and eighty-three, Great Britain relinquished to the United States all claims to the Government, property, and territorial rights of the same, and every part thereof.

“And within a few years after the peace, the respective States, actuated by a generous spirit of conciliation and patriotism, yielded up to the United States what they conceived to be their claims to their unsettled land.  Thus did the United States acquire a fair and undisputed title to all the public lands east of the Mississippi, except those held by the Indians, and the southern parts of the State of Mississippi and Alabama; a title to these was acquired by purchase, and the money paid out of the common fund.  By the same title do we hold the territory west of the Mississippi; this being purchased from France in the year eighteen hundred and three, and also paid for out of the common fund…..The public lands are surveyed and sold according to the directions of Congress.”  The land ordinances of the 1780’s established the framework for surveying, selling, and governing the newly acquired Northwest Territory.

The Ordinance of 1784 created a framework for the establishment of territorial governments in the established self-governing districts in the Northwest Territory.  Statehood could be applied for once the district reached the population of one of the original colonies.  Slavery was outlawed in the territory after the year 1800.  Native American presence and ownership of the land was not addressed.  However, the ordinance did establish the concept of “public domain” under which land was a resource to be managed and distributed by and for the benefit and common good of the nation.  Congress would establish laws for the sale to individuals, thereby setting a national policy for land ownership and settlement. 

Within less than one year of ownership, the United States Government was preparing for the sale of land in the Northwest Territory to American land speculators and settlers!   At the same time the United States continued to take additional Cherokee land by treaty.

 The Congressional Act of May 20, 1785 was titled, “An Ordinance for Ascertaining the Mode of Disposing the Lands in the Western Territory.”  “Be it ordained by the United States in Congress assembled, that the territory ceded by the individual states to the United States which had been purchased of the Indian inhabitants, shall be disposed of in the following manner.” The written act detailed the physical requirements for the surveys.  This introduction is striking in that, since it only describes one source of land under this ordinance – Indian land – then all the land in the territory was admittedly owned by the Indians.

The Land Ordinance of 1784 had not considered the orderly distribution of land.  The Land Ordinance of 1785 did that with an established system of survey and land sales.  Although Jefferson was in France in 1785, James Monroe modeled, using Jefferson’s perception of straight lines and rectangles, survey requirements in the ordinance.  It called for an arbitrary rectilinear pattern of six-mile square townships bounded by lines running due north and south and an east-west pair.  Each thirty-six square mile townships contained thirty-six 640-acre sections.  Surveys were required prior to land sales, which initially were set at a minimum size of 640 acres at one dollar per acre.  Surveys began on the north bank of the Ohio River, where Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia met, in 1786.  Land was sold in 1787 to the Ohio Company and in 1788 to John Symmes, less than 5 years after the Treaty of Paris! 

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, enacted by Congress on July 13, 1787, further defined the political progressions required for districts within the territory to become territories and then states “on an equal footing with the original states in all respects.”  The calculus was based in population; 60,000 free inhabitants was the threshold for transition from territory to statehood.  Importantly, the ordinance contained the Articles of Compact, the blueprint for the future Bill of Rights attached to the Constitution.  It included “security of property” as one tenet. 

In the third Compact Article of the Ordinance, settlement of Native Americans’ land was considered.  The policy stated that “utmost good faith” should be shown toward the Indians, and that laws should be passed to prevent wrongs being done to them, and to preserve the peace.  Unfortunately for the Indians in the Northwest Territory, frontier justice did not prove protective for them, regardless of the “security of property” in the Articles of Compact in the Land Laws! 

The new Constitution of the United States was ratified on June 21, 1788.  The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791.  The Constitution and Bill of Rights created the legal framework for political order in America; the Land Ordinances of the 1780’s stated the methods of expansion for the United States. 

The Compact of 1802 was an agreement, secretly negotiated, between the United States and the State of Georgia stated in a set of Articles of Agreement and Cession, dated April 24, 1802.  By this Compact, Georgia’s western lands were given over and sold to the United States.  These “Yazoo lands,” included now the states of Alabama and Mississippi.  The United States had to resolve land ownership issues created by the corrupt Georgia politicians before the lands in the area could be surveyed and sold for the benefit of the common good.  It took the federal government 15 years to settle the land claims, paying out the last claim against the land claims fund in 1817.  Article 4 of the Compact states, “That the United States shall, at their own expense, extinguish….the Indian title to all the other lands within the State of Georgia” …..”peaceably and on reasonable terms.”  Further, that those lands vacated by the Indians would immediately become the possession of the state of Georgia.  That was a direct violation of treaties with the United States and the Constitution’s supremacy clause.  President Jefferson supported the Compact but said the Cherokee had the right to refuse to sell their land and that he lacked the power to remove them forcibly. 

Years later, as the issue of removal became more heated, the Cherokees responded to the Georgia Congressional delegation in a letter, “We are not ignorant of the Convention of 1802 (even though the Cherokees had no part in it). We know every one of its promises… If, however, these are to be violated and the …war whoop…be raised against us to dispossess us of our lands we will gratify the delegation of Georgia in their present earnestness to see us removed or destroyed by adding additional fertility to our lands by a deposit of our bodies and our bones – For we are resolved never to leave them but by a parting from them and our lives together.  How the Christians of America and the world will (justify) their attempts upon our rights…it is not for us Indians to say – but our cause is with God and good men, and there we are willing to leave it.”

30 years later and with a different president, the Compact was enforced. 

The Land Act of February 1805 was the most far-reaching of all the Land Acts for many reasons.  First it stated that the original surveys done under the previous Land Acts were to be considered to be “without error as to distances and courses” regardless of their accuracy, referring to survey issues in the Northwest Territory.  It was generally an act “for ascertaining and adjusting the titles and claims to land, within the territory of Orleans, and the district of Louisiana.”  The Louisiana Purchase was ratified by Congress on October 20, 1803.  The Territory of Orleans was created by an act of Congress on March 26, 1804, out of the portion of the Louisiana Purchase below the 33rd North latitude.  That land became the State of Louisiana on April 30, 1812.  The 33rd parallel is the Arkansas – Louisiana state line.  On June 4, 1812, after the Louisiana statehood, the Territory of Louisiana was renamed the Territory of Missouri.

The United States likely new well before the Louisiana Purchase, with the recent land settlement issues in the Northwest Territory, that getting land ready for settlement was going to be difficult.  French, and especially Spanish, authorities had been granting land for years in the region now included in the State of Missouri.  One important tenet of the Louisiana Purchase document was that those grants had to be honored.  The largest portion of the 1805 Act was codifying the process for “ascertaining and adjusting the titles and claims to land.”  A board of land commissioners was created consisting of the U. S. Recorder of Land Titles and two other commissioners appointed by the president.  The act stated the requirements to be met for land to be recorded in an individual’s name: The individual had to have been a resident within the territory ceded by France on Oct. 1, 1800,  had a duly registered warrant or order of survey for that property,  actually inhabited and cultivated their claimed land, was the head of the family or twenty-one years of age, or for other lands settled on with permission of a Spanish officer prior to December 20, 1803, deliver to the registrar of the land office before March 1, 1806 a notice in writing of the nature and extent of the claim with a plat and survey with other written evidence of the claim.  There existed thousands of land grants to individuals issued by French and Spanish authorities given over the 30-plus years of their control of the region.  There were no lists or written governmental records of these grants, as it was never required of French or Spanish administrators to keep those records.

The anxiety of the Spanish regime over immigration in Louisiana was best demonstrated by their indecision and changing rules.  Initially, the Spanish were opposed to Anglo-American immigration into the land across the Mississippi River.  By the late 1780’s, their perspective was that the Americans would bolster the Spanish’s weak defenses, as they were equally opposed to the British, Spain’s arch enemy at that time.  Col. Morgan’s grand plan for the settlement in Spanish Louisiana set in motion an immigration tsunami by American farmers and settlers.

Morgan’s plan was based on conversations with the Spanish Ambassador, Don Diego Gardoqui.  The plan called for a land grant or concession bordered by 300 miles of the Mississippi River extending from the mouth of the Ste. Francois River northward to Cape St. Cosme.  The grant extended inland 20 to 30 miles to include 12 to 15 million acres.  With his initial 70 settlers, he travelled to the region, arriving in February, 1789.  In his correspondence to supporters back East, he reported the lands were not occupied by anyone, that the land was “superior to any part of North America,” that the land possessed many advantageous “which even the fine lands in Kentucky are deprived,” that the lands have “the beauties and advantages of the higher grounds which are more or less distant from the current of the river,” and that “There is not a single nation or tribe of Indians who claim or pretend to claim a foot of the land.”  Unfortunately, Spanish Louisiana Governor Miro cancelled the concession and sent Spanish officers and troops to take control of the New Madrid region, which had been the focus of Col. Morgan’s grand plan.  Interestingly, in 1791 220 new settlers had taken the required Spanish oaths. 

The Spanish interest was for yeoman farmers and settlers to create a bulwark against an uncontrolled rush of immigrants, also to oppose the perceived British interests, and to help control raids and outrages by the Native Americans, primarily the Osage, living nearby.  The Spanish did not want miners or traders, as they were not considered to be the stabilizing influence the Spanish sought.  Col. Morgan’s plan laid the foundation of a peaceful conquest by Americans upper Louisiana.  Morgan’s publicity campaign back East had been a public notice of free land.  The Ordinance of 1787 also greatly increased immigration into Spanish Louisiana as slave owners believed their slaves would be freed in the Northwest Territory. 

“Governor General Carondelet had particularly urged the commandants at Ste. Genevieve and New Bourbon to do all they could to attract foreigners by gratuitous concessions of land, and to encourage agriculture, establishments of dairying and grazing, making of salt, raising of minerals and erecting mills, by granting lands and privileges, calculated to insure success,” as recorded in the American State Papers, Public Lands, VI.  Between 1789 and 1799, over 600 persons were administered the Spanish oath.  Undoubtedly, many did not take the oath.  By 1800 there were thousands of new Americans in Upper Louisiana eager to settle on free, productive land. 

As the government of the United States was taking apart, not just the Cherokee homeland piece by piece, but all the social, cultural, religious, familial, economic,  and physical infrastructure built up over hundreds of years on the civil geography the Cherokee called home, even the Spanish recognized the importance of fostering social, civil, and commercial activity in these new American settlers in Upper Louisiana on the civil geography they are going to call home.  There was no extension of that concern for the Cherokee going to Indian Country!

Similarly, Shawnee tribes living on the Ohio River at the Great Miami River in Ohio and Indiana became increasingly concerned with the encroachment of Americans.  After the Revolution many stayed to remain loyal to Great Britain and continue their raids into Kentucky for spoils of war.  But many were eager to move west to avoid confrontations with white people.  The American defeat of the Western Confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 instilled an urgency to remove, and a welcoming by the Spanish governor in Upper Louisiana sealed the move.  The Shawnees were supposed to be a presence to oppose the Osage raiding parties in the largely unsettled land between Ste. Genevieve and New Madrid, both having small Spanish militias.  The Shawnees settled on a land grant given by the Spanish Governor General of Louisiana, said to be one league square, or about 25 square miles.  This number varies a lot by researchers, some saying it was 20 square leagues, which would be 750 square miles.  Other researchers suggest a concession of 3 to 5 square leagues, or about 60 to one hundred square miles.  Six hundred Delaware Indians also from Ohio settled on the concession a year later.     

Louis Lorimier had found his way to the Ste. Genevieve district of Spanish Louisiana by 1787, being involved in Indian trade.  He needed to be living in a place that was not under United States control, as his part in the post-Revolutionary War fighting in the Northwest Territory was well known – he was a wanted man.  He located on the Saline Creek at Big Shawnee Spring by 1790.  Saline Creek is seen just south of Ste. Genevieve on the 1780 map.  (Insert image of 1780 map centered on Saline Creek south of Ste Genevieve) By 1793, Lorimier had established a trading post at Cape Girardeau and was made the Spanish Agent for the Indians from the Missouri River to the Arkansas River.  His appointment as commandant at the Cape Girardeau post made him the single individual with the greatest authority over an area described as being 300 miles along the Mississippi River and inland 25 miles.  At heart he was an Indian trader.  Exactly what the Spanish did not want in Upper Louisiana.  But the Spanish saw in Lorimier the ability to mollify and manage the Indians to achieve a peaceful and productive relationship.  Perhaps most importantly, to continue the lucrative fur trade.  Something the Spanish authorities had been unable to do.  Along with the military authority came a great deal of civil authority, that being focused on land concessions to deserving American settler immigrants.  As we have seen, Col. Morgan’s New Madrid plan, though cancelled, eventually involved thousands of American immigrants spread across millions of acres of the rich, fertile upland ridges paralleling the Mississippi River and reaching inland to and beyond the Ste. Francois River.  With full authority Louis Lorimier arrives at the Cape, seeing his job as he best understood it, to keep the Indians happy and to settle the lands with yeoman farmers.  The land was not for sale;  you could not buy it.  The best these new occupants could do was to locate their choice of unclaimed or unoccupied land and begin the process to receive a concession for it.  More on that later.  Here is Lorimier’s Spanish concession at Cape Girardeau from the highest-ranking Spanish officer in Louisiana, Baron de Carondelet:

“Baron de Carondelet, Knight of the Religious Order of St. John, Colonel of the Royal Armies, Governor, Intendant General, Vice Regent of the Province of Louisiana and western Florida, Inspector of the Army, etc.

“Know all men by these presents, that in consideration of the true and faithful services which Louis Lorimier has rendered to the state since he became a subject of his Royal Majesty, we permit him to establish himself with the Delawares and Shawnees, who are under his care, in such places as he may think proper in the province of Louisiana on the west bank of the Mississippi, from the Missouri to the river Arkansas, which may be unoccupied, with the right to hunt, and cultivate for the maintenance of their families, nor shall any commandant, officer, or other subject of the King hinder them, nor occupy of the land for him and the said Indians, sown, planted or laid out, so much as is judged necessary for their maintenance; and be it further understood that in case they should remove elsewhere, the said lands shall become vacant, and as for the house, which the said Sir Louis Lorimier has built at Girardeau, it will remain in his possession, nor can he be removed for any causes, except those of illicit trade, or correspondence with the enemies of the State.

“In testimony of which we have given these presents, signed with our hand and the countersign of the secretary of the Government, and caused to be affixed our official seal at New Orleans, the 4th of January, 1793…..The Baron de Carondelet. By order of the Governor: Andres Lopez Armesto.”

Zenon Trudeau went further to define Lorimier’s authority in a letter dated May 1, 1798: “I am keeping your permit until an occasion arises to which I can entrust it; it states that you will not be disturbed from the Missouri to the Arkansas in your trade, as in the establishments of encampments that you could form there with the Shawnee and Wolf Indians, etc., and that the one made at Cape Girardeau be preserved for you.”

According to Houck’s History of Missouri, Shawnees and Delawares from the Ohio region had been migrating to Louisiana beginning in 1788.  To bolster defenses in the event of an invasion by an organized French-American force and to have a local resistance force to oppose Osage raids in this sparsely settled wilderness between St. Louis and New Madrid, Lorimier was sent back to the Ohio to entice more Shawnees and Delawares to immigrate.  Estimates as high as 3000 Indians lived in the region for 20 years, alongside many small settlements of Anglo-Americans. 

Again, Lorimier was solely in charge of Indian trade.  That occurred at Lorimier’s trading post at Cape Girardeau initially.  It was recorded in a Lexington, Kentucky, 1796 pamphlet that the Shawnees and Delawares were all friendly with the Spanish authorities and “not only contributed to the success of the fur trade, but also to the subsistence of the inhabitants for three fourths of the year, by furnishing meat, tallow, & oil in abundance to the garrisons and villages.”

Spanish Lieutenant Governor Zenon Trudeau wrote to Lorimier from St.Louis on May 1, 1793:

“The within is a permit which the Governor General gives you to make your trade with the Delawares and Shawnees, so extended that there may be nothing more to desire, without fear that you will be troubled by any officer of the king as long as you do as you have heretofore done.  He recommends you to maintain order among the savages, and to concentrate them, so that he may be sure that they will take position more on the frontier of our settlements in order to lend us help in case of war with the whites, and they will thus also be opposite the Osages, against whom I shall declare war forthwith, a thing I have not yet done, because I have to take precautions before that shall reach them.  Inform the Delawares, Shawnees, Peorias, Pottawatomie and the other nations which presented a memorial last September, that it is on account of the bad treatment that they have suffered, that the Governor General has determined upon war, in order to procure quiet for our land.  The Osages are at present deprived of aid, and harassed by us and by them, they will surely be open to reason; that consequently all the red nations must agree to lend a hand; it is their good which the government seeks; and it is of that you must convince them, so that the offended nations will take some steps toward the others to secure their aid, and particularly that the Iowas, Sacs and Foxes shall not consent to let the Osages come so far as to trade on the river Des Moines, and that still less shall they allow the English to introduce themselves by the river, which is a possibility.  Protected by the Government, you owe it your services in closely watching over all that tends to it prosperity, and averting everything which is to its detriment.  At this moment we fear nothing from Congress, but from the ill-disposed which depend upon it.  Posted in an advantageous place to give advice of the least assemblage, I am confident that as soon as you are cognizant of it you will make it known to the Commandants with whom you are connected, as much for our safety as for your defense.”   May God take you in His holy keeping. Zenon Trudeau  

Trudeau sent another note to Lorimier on June 19, 1797, as follows: “…being able to tell you right now, despite the haste, that it seems to me very fair to preserve for the Shawnees a reasonable district for their village from the river to the Somme, you will see for yourself what is appropriate to ensure that no Americans or others are placed there, etc.”

These previous four Spanish documents clearly grant land to the Shawnees and Delawares in a general area now best understood to have been bounded between Cape St. Comes and Flora Creek on the Mississippi River and inland to and beyond the Ste. Francois River.  These documents were presented to the first Board of Land Commissioners, printed in French in Volume III of the American State Papers under the heading, “Delawares and Shawnees, claiming a tract of country between the river St. Coure and Cape Girardeau, and bounded on the east by the Mississippi, and west by White Water, District of Cape Girardeau; produce to the board as follows, to wit:”   (see insert of 1805 Clark map)   The “encampment sites” were to be selected and preserved for the Shawnees and Delawares under Lorimier’s direction.  And he was to see that no Americans would be settled in that region.

These Shawnee and Delaware settlements took place near water courses.  The Big Shawnee Village was on the north side of Apple Creek about 5 miles from the Mississippi River.  The Little Shawnee Village was south of Apple Creek within a mile of the Mississippi River.  The Delaware Village was located between the 2 Shawnee villages, just south of Apple Creek.  The villages were described by visitors as being solidly-constructed with log houses, fenced fields, and well-stocked farms with an abundance of hogs, poultry, and good horses.

President Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801.  He had been committed to an Indian policy of acculturalization achieved with agricultural training, thinking it would be the most humane way to potentially include the Native Americans into the citizenry of the United States.  He had been instrumental in the creation of the land ordinances, which provided the legal basis for the admission of new lands as states to join the other states on an equal footing, knowing all that land was Indian land.  Jefferson said about the Louisiana Territory that the “best use we can make of it will be to give establishment in it to the Indians on the East side of the Mississippi, in exchange for their present country.”  And had espoused his changing Indian policy of removal west of the Mississippi River of the Indians as their land was purchased.  He thought segregation west of the river would give the Native Americans a generation or two to acclimate and modernize to the American lifeways might be better than acculturalization.  He initially suggested, perhaps as a result of the successful placement of the Shawnees and Delawares into upper Illinois during the 1790’s, that that region, including our contemporary states of Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, would be reserved for them.

In 1803, Jefferson designed the first official American governmental policy of relocating Indians, one that encouraged them to become farmers and to integrate into the United States as citizens.  In 1803, Jefferson became the first President given the power and authority by Congress to treat Native Americans as he saw fit.  The president was given authority to appoint Indian Agents to act in his behalf; William Clark was appointed by Jefferson in 1806, becoming the most prolific and powerful Indian Agent in the trans-Mississippi West for the next thirty years.

Captain Amos Stoddard represented both France and the United States at the transfer of Louisiana first from Spain to France, then from France to the United States on March 9-10, 1804.  Stoddard was the first Civil Commandant of Upper Louisiana under the United States.  As such, he thought it important to explain the political and civil realities to the citizenry of the region.  He drafted a multipage circular that was widely distributed across the district.  Several quotes from his circular follow:

“Place equal confidence in all constituted authorities of the Union; they will protect your tights and, indeed your feelings, and all the tender felicities and sympathies so dear to rational and intelligent nature.”

“You now form an integral part of a great community, the powers of whose government are circumscribed and defined by charter.”

“Thus you will perceive that you are divested of the character of subjects and clothed with that of citizenship.”

Contrast these flowery words with the Cherokee reality, they having lived within the same broad borders for hundreds of years.   

The Louisiana Purchase brought into focus the huge problems of land settlement that the United States government was facing in the  ”Missouri” region of the purchase, secondary to the land grants already held.  The Act of 1805 had been enacted largely to codify the processes to get the land into private owner’s hands.  By 1808 Jefferson was encouraging the Cherokee to move to Arkansas, not the Missouri region, where plenty of good land was available for them away from white settlers. The Missouri region, especially near to the Mississippi River, was largely already claimed with Spanish land grants.

It is important to note here that it was President Thomas Jefferson that raised the specter of Indian removal as a solution to the Indian problem.  President Andrew Jackson turned that ominous idea into a national policy ending in the Trail of Tears.

Lorimier’s Cape Girardeau had attracted attention of Col. Morgan as he travelled through the nearly unoccupied but extremely fertile and desirable region.  The lands northward from the Cape rises and falls, remnants of a once continuous upland plain. This alluvial district contains numerous low ridges of excellent fertility.  The uplands to the north of the Cape were covered in huge oaks and tulip poplars of immense proportions.  Smaller trees and shrubs covered the ground below the forest top.  Blue grass was the perfect natural growth to cover the extremely fertile soil.  Creek bottoms were richly covered in highly nutritious cane growing directly adjacent to the clear and cold year-round creeks flowing over gravel beds and limestone rocks.  The American immigrants onto this rich basin understood by the tree species the high quality of the virgin soil.

Cape Girardeau was the focus of commerce in the region, administered expertly by Louis Lorimier.  He was the commander of the post at Cape Girardeau when the first American settlers from the United States crossed the Mississippi to settle in the region of Cape Girardeau.  He built water mills at Cape LaCruz and later, on Hubble Creek.  He was not an educated man, being unable to read, and writing limited to his signature.  He was known for his keen intellect and superior executive ability.  His abilities and honesty promoted the general welfare and growth; his administration of the district from 1793 until 1803 saw Cape Girardeau District become the richest and most prosperous community in upper Louisiana.  Maj. Amos Stoddard, military commander of the U.S. military in the Upper Louisiana Territory said, “Certain it is, that the richest and most industrious farmers in this part of the world are proprietors of the lands in this district, not more than four French men living in it, and the rest being English-Americans.” and The Spanish rewarded his efforts with land grants totaling over 8,000 acres.  DeLassus wrote in a letter that he “must further recommend him (Lorimier) as a man of the highest utility for any military service, especially in what concerns the Indians.”  Lorimier’s land grants were not readily approved by the Land Commissioners; many of the grants were never approved, as the process persisted into the 1830’s, well after Lorimier’s death.  In stark contrast to the social, cultural, and economic destruction that the government of the United States was exacting on the Cherokee people during this time, even the Spanish administration of the earliest American settlement in Spanish Louisiana was fostering and encouraging social, cultural, and economic growth for the region and its residents.  Remember that the Native American immigrants were an integral part of the economic engine at Cape Girardeau.

Perhaps most importantly for the American immigrants were two additional people working under Lorimier’s direction.  One was Andrew Ramsay who settled 3 miles south of Lorimier’s Cape.  His plantation became known as the first place to visit for new American settlers onto the western bank of the Mississippi.  Ramsay, having been there since 1795 and considered to have been the first American settler at Cape Girardeau, had made it his business to know all the best and most desirable land for farming within several miles.  He would personally accompany new settlers to locations in the district that he had found to be good farming sites.  Ramsay’s family followed him to Spanish Louisiana from Harper’s Ferry.  His extended family settled mostly near his plantation south of the Cape.  One of the family members, William Dougherty, settled and established a plantation on Hubble Creek near the present city of Jackson.  Considered to be an influential citizen by his neighbors, he was named a delegate to a convention of the district and signed the resultant memorial to Congress expressing the citizens’ discontent with the district’s government in1804.  Ramsay had recognized the special soils on Hubble Creek.  Andrew Ramsay acted as a contemporaneous real estate agent showing Spanish Louisiana’s land and soil to the newcomer Americans.  The land was free but there were paperwork hurdles to jump over before it was yours.

Barthelemi Cousin was Lorimier’s secretary.  He was multilingual, including many Indian languages.  Immigrants into the district of Cape Girardeau nearly all sought his expertise for writing petitions for permission to settle and for their request for the Spanish concession for their chosen farmland.  Cousin was known for his willingness to help the new settlers; existing landholders came to value his services as land values increased with population.  The Spanish administration had requested that, as much as possible, compact settlement was desired for mutual protection from Osage raids and establishment of known property lines between adjacent landowners.  As you now understand, the district around Cape Girardeau had a lot of very positive attributes that led to rapid settlement generally.  Barthelemi Cousin was the contemporaneous real estate closing “officer”; as opposed to contemporary real estate closing agents, his services were basically free.  Settlers were subject to “fees of office” and surveyor charges.  Those fees totaled no more than $44.

Louis Lorimier’s first wife was Charlotte Pemanpieh Bougainville, a half-blood Shawnee.  That relationship gave him great influence with the Shawnee Tribe and their allies.   Charlotte and Louis migrated to Spanish Louisiana in about 1787, bringing their children, Louis, Jr., Maria, Louisa, Agatha, Vernuil, Augustus, Victor, William, and Lisette.  Augustus Bougainville was born Feb. 21, 1790.  He and his older brother Louis Jr., along with several other young men from leading families living on the eastern edge of the new territory, were appointed to the new military academy at West Point by President Jefferson in July of 1804.  That gesture was to show an acceptance and deference to the newly ceded huge territory.  Louis Jr. graduated in 1806 and became the first Native American to have been appointed and graduated from West Point.   He served as ensign in the First Regiment of Infantry on the western frontier.  Augustus did not graduate from West Point but did later serve as private in Captain Ramsay’s Co., Mounted Riflemen, in the Louisiana Militia in the War of 1812. 

After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the formal transfer to the United States, political subdivisions were established.  All “purchase lands” north of 33 degrees North latitude became the District of Louisiana attached to Indiana Territory.  Indiana Territorial Governor Wm. H. Harrison visited St. Louis on October 1,1804.  Harrison appointed Louis Lorimier to be an associate judge of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Session for Cape Girardeau District in March of 1805.  Civil and judicial organization within the newly annexed Louisiana District happened quickly, all while the United States continued to dissect away large chunks of the Cherokee homeland.  And Lorimier was a Canadian by birth, a British sympathizer after the Revolutionary War, a Spanish official as commandant of the post at Cape Girardeau, and the single person in charge of all Indian trade in all of Spanish Upper Louisiana south from Apple Creek and inland as far as settlement extended. 

On December 28th, 1799, Charles Dehault DeLassus, Lt. Governor of the Spanish Province of Upper Louisiana, wrote a concession for one thousand arpents of land to Augustus Bougainville Lorimier and ordered the land be surveyed.  (See his order for survey in Spanish)  Augustus was 13 years old.  The concession was surveyed on Nov. 25th, 1803, by B. Cousin, deputy surveyor, and certified by Antoine Soulard, Surveyor General of the province on Dec. 13th, 1803.  The first Board of Land Commissioners voted to not approve the grant on March 22, 1810.  The first Board of Land Commissioners operated from 1805 till 1812.  Frederick Bates was the United States Recorder of Land Titles, and as such had been a member of that three-man board.  Bates continued receiving applications from settlers after 1812, including the name of the Spanish official who ordered the survey, the survey date, the name of the settler-claimant, the land grant amount and location, and the confirmed quantity of land.  It became common practice to reapply for confirmation of land grant claims during the first 30 years of the 1800’s; many claims were eventually confirmed as laws and land commissioners changed.  Augustus claim was confirmed by being on Bates’ lists by the second section of the Act of Congress of the twenty-ninth of April, 1816. Link to Sec 2 of Act of Congress 29, April, 1816  See the act at this link.

Frederick Bates’ register for Augustus Lorimier’s concession, along with his father’s and brother’s concession, is seen here.  Augustus’ brother, Louis, Jr., got his concession of 1006 arpens, and his father, Louis Lorimier, got his concession 8000 arpens confirmed, but for only a square leaque – about 5000 arpens.

Insert Bate’s register of Augustus Concession, Survey,     

Augustus’ land lays strategically on 2 miles of Flora Creek bottom land.  It would have been extremely highly productive farm land.  Perhaps more importantly, it was on the southern end of the Shawnee-Delaware concession, nearly adjacent to Louis Lorimier’s trading house.  Clearly, Louis deliberately established Augustus to be involved in the busy Indian trade at which Louis was so successful.  Interestingly, Louis Jrs’  1006 arpen concession is seen nearly adjacent to the south of Augustus’ concession.  Both are strategically located to be close to their father and to the Indian trade.  All three concessions were made by DeLassus, the Lt. Governor of Upper Louisiana, the region’s highest Spanish authority.  Again, these concession evidence the Spanish administration’s interests in placing land in the hands of settlers that will advance settlement and commerce at the same time the United States continued to take apart the Cherokee homeland and tribe.   The GLO of T31-N, R14E shows Augustus and Louis Jr’s concessions after the GLO land surveys were completed in WHEN.  As you can see, the GLO shows the surveyed sections within the township drawn to true north as they abut the confirmed land grant concessions.  Public land sales could not begin until the bulk of the land grants had been adjudicated.  Once a land grant was confirmed, that land was in private ownership and could be developed or sold.  The first land in private hands and available for sale was land that had been originally a French or Spanish land grant.  After the concession was confirmed, the third section of the Act of Congress of the 29th of April, 1816 says that successful claimants were entitled to certificates for their confirmed tracts that would be honored at the land office for patents on their land.  At that point, the claimant basically owned the tract in fee simple; he could that asset as any landowner could.

Insert the colored GLO showing Augustus and Louis Jr’s concession

Ithamar Hubbell settled on his 340 acre concession 9 miles nearly due west of Augustus.  His name is listed on the 1800 and 1803 Spanish census of the Cape Girardeau district.  Those lists can be seen at this link. (Link to 1800, 1803 Spanish census)  His land was near the southeastern corner of T31N-R12E, laying along an important stream called River Zenon.  There are several plats that confirm that name.  It was named in honor of the Spanish Lieutenant Governor of upper Louisiana at that time, Zenon Trudeau.  Private Hubbell fought with New York militia against the British in the Revolutionary War. Beginning in 1833 he received $56.66 annual allowance as a pension for his service. He was known as a “soldier of fortune,” and was accompanied to Louisiana by several sons.  A man of action, he constructed both a water-mill and a saw-mill on the creek that quickly became known as “Hubble Creek.”  See the GLO showing Ithamar Hubbell’s tract.  (Insert T31N-R12E highlighting Section 35)Access to this region was not secondary to French farming methods based in the deep soils of the wide bottoms of the Mississippi River, seen along much of the river north and south of this location.  The ease of cultivation, minimal needs of the French, and large crop yields led to complete neglect by them of the upland.  This reach of the river had a rocky bank along the river beginning at Cape St. Comb, as the river enters the Grand Tower narrows for four miles.  Fountain Bluff stands 400 feet tall on the Illinois side of the river, with the river bottoms laying east of the bluff.  Hubbell and his neighbors had identified high-quality farmland not understood by the French farmers.  This land was a gently rolling, minimally dissected plain of loess mantled limestone and dolomite soils.  Local relief was less than150 feet and mostly only 100 feet.  It was a gently rolling plain best described as an oak savanna based in tallgrass prairie with widely scattered timber.  The heavier timber could be found along the streams.   The agricultural resources of the broad eastern region of this portion of Upper Louisiana are not distributed equally.  Settlement in this broad region did not occur gradually and evenly across the land.  Settlement occurred from nuclei of population at the most desirable farmland locations.  Most emigration was from southern states as the land there had been subjected to wasteful farming, depleted soils, and plantation practices with slavery; that farming economy could not be competed against by non-slave farmers paying high prices for worn-out land.  In Kentucky and Tennessee undeveloped commerce with little or no manufacturing base left those unable to compete in farming little choice but to look elsewhere for opportunities.  In Upper Spanish Louisiana virgin land was free with a land grant, and highly productive!  Eight of these agriculturally excellent immigrant nuclei have become county seats in today’s Missouri.  Hubbell did not know it at the time, but he would quickly be joined by many hard-working American immigrants to form the first purely American settlement west of the Mississippi River at Jackson.  Ithamar Hubbell was appointed by Gov. Harrison to serve on the first grand jury in Cape Girardeau District in1805.  His call to serve did not end with his Revolutionary War service, and jury service was essential for settlement and community to advance in Cape Girardeau District.  The Cherokees had a legal system in place as the United States carved off large pieces of their nation’s homeland.

Another Revolutionary War veteran sought a future in the trans-Mississippi West.  3 miles north of Ithamar Hubbell in the same watershed of Hubbell Creek, Thomas Bull settled with his wife and 2 children, having built a cabin for his family and enclosed 5 or 6 acres for a corn field in 1796.  He secured a concession from Zenon Trudeau for 240 arpens of land on Hubble’s Creek on January 5, 1798, seen here written in Spanish.

(Insert Bulls concession from Zenon in Spanish here)

Bull’s concession was ordered to be surveyed by Zenon Trudeau, which was certified on January 10, 1799.  The survey plat for the concession, including its location information, is presented here in Spanish, followed by the English translation.  Note that several neighboring tract owners’ names are shown on the plat including Banrique (Henry) Sharadin on the north and Guillermo (William) Dougherty on the west.  You can confirm these neighbors by looking at the plat of T31N-R12E with this link (Link to T31-R12) This is the William Dougherty who was connected with Andrew Ramsay; Ramsay had become aware of the advantages of the soil on Hubble Creek; Ramsay helped place Dougherty there; William Dougherty was Andrew Ramsay’s son-in-law.  Dougherty later served as a representative in the Missouri General Assembly.  Ramsay, Dougherty, Sharadin, and Bull all appear on both the 1800 and 1803 Spanish Tax Lists; they were there building their farms, their community, and their local commercial economy under the Spanish authorities while the United States was continuing to dissect the Cherokee Nation’s homeland.  To see their individual economic contributions, see the 1800 and 1803 Spanish Territorial Tax Lists at this link (Link to tax lists)      

(Insert Bulls Spanish survey plat and description, followed by the English translation.)

The written concession, survey and location information, and testimony by a neighbor, Zenon Randall, were presented to the United States Board of Land Commissioners which issued Commissioners’ Certificate No. 179, shown below, on Feb. 11, 1809 to Thomas Bull as original claimant for his 240 arpens.  “Original claimant” means he was the person who had the original concession for the tract; certificates were often awarded to the claimant “under” the original landgrantee, if he had sold the grant to the claimant. Thomas Bull became the owner of his 240 acres of land in the Louisiana Territory of the United States of America!   The survey and his original ownership continue today to be embedded in the legal documentation of this property.  Many portions of the original property lines established by the property’s survey continue to be seen as property lines on several smaller tracts today.  Note that the Commissioners’ Certificate, No. 179 appears on Bull’s tract on the GLO of T31N-R12E. 

(Insert Thomas Bull Land certificate # 179)

Thomas Bull contributed to settlement and building his local community through the farm economy, but he also contributed to the social/cultural needs of his neighbors.  Thomas Bull sold “a certain piece or parcel” of land on the west side of his farm to Isaac Sheppard and Thomas English, deacons of the Bethel Baptist Church. Before the cession of Louisiana to the United States, practicing Protestantism was outlawed by the Spanish authorities. The membership had been meeting at Bull’s home, but in October, 1806, after the cession of Louisiana, the congregation voted to build a church and burial ground on the waters of Hubbell Creek.  It became the first Protestant church west of the Mississippi River.  Where the Spanish would not allow religious freedom – only Catholicism was allowed in Spanish Louisiana – religious freedom was guaranteed by the constitution in the United States and its territories.   Interestingly, the Cherokees had begun to “Christainize” by this time as part of their effort to “acculturalize” to contemporaneous American culture.  It was the American Protestant organizations that most effectively effected those efforts.  Efforts to take all the Cherokee homeland were not slowed by them “getting religion.”   The indenture for the sale of that land can be seen at this link (link to Bethel church Bull’s indenture)  The image below is of the Bethel Baptist Church.  As the United States continued to separate the Cherokees from their sacred places and burial sites, newly arrived Americans into Spanish Territory just years before, built a church and sacred burial ground to meet their religious needs within 8 years.  Ithamar Hubble was buried there in 1840; many of his neighbors from the waters of Hubbell Creek are there also.  From March of 1814, this “meeting house” was used for one year as the first court house for the newly created Cape Girardeau County.  Its more central location compared to Cape Girardeau perhaps pre-empted the selection, along with other factors, for the new county seat. Thomas Bull began receiving an $80 per year pension allowance in 1833 for his Revolutionary War service. 

As you can see on the GLO of T31N-R12E, Thomas Bull’s neighboring tract was owned by William Ashley under a concession to Henry Sharadin.  The name “Henry Sharadin” appears very seldom in records of Cape Girardeau County.  He served on the first Grand Jury of the District.  But this tract, for which he had a concession, is of particular interest for the town of Jackson.  Sharadin had selected this tract on the waters of Hubbell Creek, probably with the help of Andrew Ramsay, as it laid due east of William Dougherty.  Sharadin got Louis Lorimier to attest that the land was vacant and that its private ownership “does not harm the surrounding neighbors.”  That was one of the objectives given to Lorimier – to create compact settlement.  Sharadin then went to Zenon Trudeau, the Lt. Governor of Upper Louisiana, in St. Louis and requested a concession for this tract.  On January 5, 1798, Trudeau ordered Antoine Soulard, the official surveyor for Spanish Upper Louisiana, to survey the tract selected by Sharadin.  That original Soulard survey has not been found.  Trudeau did not have the authority to issue a concession, but did put in motion for Sharadin the process that became the standard ultimately required by the United States Land Commissioners for Sharadin and others to receive a land certificate, which led to a land patent – ownership!  It started with a document, the order for survey, along with Trudeau’s approval to request the concession from the Governor General of Spanish Louisiana.  It was recorded in Book “D,” page 443 of the Cape Girardeau County Record Book.  Likely, the original “order of a survey and approval for seeking a concession” was on a stand-alone paper document lost to history.  The document was issued in Spanish and signed by Lt. Gov. Zenon Trudeau, as seen here:

(Insert Sharadin Order for survey in Spanish)    

Translation to English required, as the Spanish text was written in archaic Spanish, it first had to be converted to modern Spanish, then to English.  The English text is presented here:

(Insert Sharadin Order for Survey in English)

The tract was surveyed October 22, 1799, by Antoine Soulard for four hundred and seventy-eight arpens and seventy perches.  For this process to have resulted in the claimant successfully receiving a land certificate, which you will see the claimant did, Sharadin had to then live on the property and cultivate a portion of it.

The next paragraph of the recording reads: “I do hereby assign over all my right title and claim of this then unto Ezekiel Able for value received, witness my hand this 20th day of April, 1805.    Signed by Henry Sharadin by his Seal, attested to by Forman and Boyd.

The amount of “value received” has not yet been discovered in the records.

The next paragraph reads: “I do hereby assign over all my right title and claim of this then unto Wm. H. Ashley for value received, witness my hand this 8th day of March, 1808.  Signed by Ezekiel Able by his Seal, attested to by Haden and Evans.

The indenture made between Ezekiel Able and others with an interest in the tract to William H. Ashley is presented here, as recorded in Books “A” and “B” of the Cape Girardeau County records, in hand script of the time.  (Insert hand written script of E. Able to Ashley Indenture here) 

In text, the indenture is produced below.

(Insert text version of Abel-Ashley indenture here)

Several interesting items are seen, and not seen, on this indenture.  Wm. Ashley’s wife was Mary Abel, Ezekiel’s daughter.  They were married in 1806 in Cape Girardeau.  Her name was not mentioned in the document, but Ezekiel’s wife, Sarah, was; in fact, she signed the indenture with her seal.  Comparing the tract description on the indenture to the GLO, one can confirm the adjoining property owners.  Of special note is that the land to the east of this tract was apparently still not claimed.  In fact it was still in the “King’s Dominion.”  Well, that’s not correct, as all of the Louisiana Territory was a possession of the United States, not a foreign potentate, after 1804!  And finally, Ashley paid the Abels “the sum of Two Thousand five hundred Dollars, lawful money, of the United States.”  All of the other land acquisitions in this study were by concession for agricultural production at an insignificant cost.  Ashley was a lot of things: minor, manufacturer, frontiersman, hunter, territorial militia general, politician, entrepreneur, land speculator.  But a farmer he was not.  Buying this from his wife’s family opens the possibility that the price may not reflect the real purchase price but may have been set in the indenture to inflate its value for later sale.  Or perhaps the tract had some inherent development potential.  We shall see!  But what Ashley instinctively knew was that under the United States Government, the holders of concessions and their assignees became immediately the landed capitalists of the new territory.  Value and wealth were appropriated to them as theirs was the only land that could be bought or sold after it was confirmed to them.  The Public Land Survey was years away, and the public lands in the district could not be sold until surveyed.

Ashley became a very popular and well-known figure in early Missouri history.  He signed the first petition to Congress for Missouri statehood in 1817.  He was elected Missouri’s first lieutenant governor in 1820, and to the U. S. Congress in 1836.  His interest in the betterment of Missouri’s citizenry was seen as he served as a trustee to and early academic academy in Potosi, Missouri.  The Cherokees had quality leaders who served in tribal leadership positions and sought the very best for the Cherokee people.   

Henry Sharadin sold his land grant concession to Ezekiel Abel, another known land trader, “for value received.”  Sharadin did not own that tract when he sold it to Abel; he just owned paperwork and presumably habitation and cultivation history of the tract.  Ezekiel Abel also did not own the land.  He bought Sharadin’s history of settlement and the survey.  Ashley bought Abel’s interest in the tract, and using that he applied to the First Board of Land Commissioners in November, 1810, for a Commissioners’ Certificate to confirm his ownership of the tract and allow him to get a patent to be recorded in the United States Recorder of Lands.  With that done, he could sell or develop any or all of the tract for his benefit.  The Commissioners’ Certificate, No. 527 is shown below.  With it Ashley became a land-owning capitalist and entrepreneur; proof of that follows shortly.  There was definitely a market for land, and markets create an opportunity for economic activity – commerce.  And commerce is the currency of an advancing settlement – desired by the Federal Government.  Except, of course, for the Cherokee Tribe, which the government was actively taking apart at that time, disrupting their commerce!  Several things are worth noting on the certificate.  Ashley’s claim was made under Henry Sharadin’s original concession and survey.  The certificate was issued “By virtue of a concession or order of survey from Zenon Trudeau, Lieutenant Governor.”  The tract of 478 arpens and 60 perches was on “River Zenon,” named for Zenon Trudeau, and by then known as Hubbell Creek.  Finally, the Certificate No. 527 follows the survey number onto the GLO. 

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