Chapter 1: Europeans Arrive In the New World (45.01)

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By: Dr. Bill Ambrose

Europeans Arrive In the New World

Dismantling the Cherokee Nation took almost 300 years to accomplish. 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 was claimed by France, and Mexico, Florida, and California by Spain. Although occupied by Native Americans for 20,000 years, the whole continent was claimed by “discovery” by Europeans beginning around 1500 A. D.

Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_World_Scene.jpg

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. This was after their extirpation from Missouri was completed.

Conquistador Hernado de Soto

On May 8, 1541, Spanish Conquistador Hernado de Soto, moving westward, crossed the Mississippi River at or downstream from the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, now Memphis, Tennessee. 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. This was 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, Missouri.

Above is a detailed view of the unaltered Clarke map. Click on the image for a more detailed view. The map is massive and very detailed.

De Soto in Missouri

De Soto’s expedition explored the region that became the Missouri panhandle. This followed his travels through the Cherokee homeland. Starting May 25, 1540, his chroniclers noted that de Soto’s expedition had crossed into the domain of Chalaque people. De Soto did not find their gold as desired. However, his expedition’s diaries recorded for the first time the existence of the Cherokee Tribe. De Soto’s diaries are used today in the study of the ethnology of the Cherokees.

Above is a detailed view of a GIS georectified version of the Clarke map focused on present day Missouri. Click on the image and when the map is open zoom in to look for Native American villages.

Fort Kaskaskia

Referring to the same map image, locate the Kaskaskia River and Fort Kaskaskia across the Mississippi River from St. Genevieve. The river is named for the native tribe de Soto partnered with in 1541. However, that partnership occurred on the opposite riverbank. Jean Baptiste de Girardot, a French officer stationed at Kaskaskia in the Illinois Country of New France. He founded a trading post at a rocky promontory on the west bank of the Mississippi River in 1733.

The rocky prominence rose above the river’s flood level. Thus, it protected 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. The area had a significant Native American presence. And Girardot’s post was the first settlement by a European on that reach of the Mississippi River’s western banks.

The 1884 Royce Map

When examining white settlement in Missouri the 1884 Royce Map of the Cherokee Nation of Indians will be helpful. The Royce Map illustrates the exact sequence used for dismantling the Cherokee Nation. In the following Chapters of this narrative we have created many links to each Treaty Area on the Royce Map. Exploring those pages should help you understand the vast size of the lands the Cherokee inhabited. This was before precolonial and colonial expansion pressures began to force the Cherokee westwardly. By using a modern GIS we obtained much more accurate numbers describing the size of land actually lost by the Cherokee.

Above is the 1884 Royce, C. C. Map of the former territorial limits of the Cherokee “Nation of” Indians; Map showing the territory originally assigned Cherokee “Nation of” Indians. Link: https://www.loc.gov/item/99446145/. If you give the map some time after you open the link you will be surprised at the the high level of detail that unfolds.

Treaty of 1721

Dismantling the Cherokee Nation begins in 1719. 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, here shown as Area 1 on the Royce Map, for the rapidly growing colony.

Source: MoTrailofTears.com Geographic Information System (GIS)

Source: MoTrailofTears.com Geographic Information System (GIS)

Source: MoTrailofTears.com Geographic Information System (GIS) Missing Area 1

Treaty of 1730

In the same decade, the Cherokee subjected themselves to His Majesty King George in the Treaty of 1730.

The Cherokee Arrive in the Court of St. James

Source: https://historiamag.com/cherokee-chieftains-at-the-british-court/

Bureau of American Ethnology

“The Bureau of American Ethnology…was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Department of the Interior to the Smithsonian Institution. But from the start, the bureau’s visionary founding director, John Wesley Powell, promoted a broader mission: “to organize anthropologic research in America.”” – Wikipedia

Link to Bureau of American Ethnology Publications Online

European Trade with the Cherokee Begins

About 1700 the French presence emanating easterly following the Tennessee River’s southern tributaries put the French in contact with the Cherokees. The British established 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. This created competition in the business of trading Native American raw materials for finished products. While at the same time this trade created a buffer between European competitors.

The Cherokee: Bound with the British Empire

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. It 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. The Treaty of 1730 ceded no land. However, 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

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. The Cherokees demanded British protection from French invasion. That was the price of their service.

Accordingly, the Cherokee built two forts for the protection and occupation by the English. In exchange, the Cherokees agreed to cede 40 million acres to the west of South Carolina between the Wateree and Santee Rivers. See Area 2 on the Royce Map.

Source: MoTrailofTears.com Geographic Information System (GIS)

Source: MoTrailofTears.com Geographic Information System (GIS)

Source: MoTrailofTears.com Geographic Information System (GIS) Missing Areas 1 & 2

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 withdrew and gave 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.

Above is a map showing the extent of the United States immediately after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783. Click on the map for a new window showing the Library of Congress full-sized image. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_territorial_growth_1775.jpg

The Remining French Population

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.”

Next: Chapter 2: English Interests Prevail (45.02)

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