Chapter 4: Treaties with a New Nation (45.04)

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A Neighboring New Nation

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.

Source: https://picryl.com/media/george-washington-surveyor-by-henry-hintermeister-9f6814

Look closely at the Royce Map below to find the boundary line described in Article IV of the Treaty of Hopewell.

Royce 1884 Map

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.

The Treaty Line of 1785

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.

No Protestant Americans Allowed

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!

See the Clark Map

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. Genevieve 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.

Above is a 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

Above is a zoomed in view of the unaltered Clarke map showing Shawnee and Delaware villages north of present-day Cape Girardeau.

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.

Open for Settlement

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.

To avoid loss of control of their buffer zone, the Spanish agreed to allow 500 American families under Col. 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.

New Madrid

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 a few years after the Dec. 16, 1811, New Madrid earthquake destroyed the region: “Shaka, when the walls fell”

The Treaty of Holston

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.

A broad host of issues were discussed to improve 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.” The reader can find the 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

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, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10A, 10B & 11.

Fifty 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.

Pickawillany’s Map

It had been ceded 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 six 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.

The Cape Girardeau District

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….” The reader can identify all these landmarks on this image from the Clark Map. This Shawnee band became known as the Cape Girardeau Shawnee.

Shawnee and Delaware Tribes in Missouri Territory Insert.

Above is a zoomed in view of the unaltered Clarke map showing Shawnee and Delaware villages north of present-day Cape Girardeau near the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers..

“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

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.

Lorimer’s Fiefdom

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, Pottowatomies 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. Coume 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 documents were part of a formal application process to the Board of Land Commissioners to get their approval and confirmation of the Spanish land grant for the Shawnee and Delaware Tribes in the Apple Creek region. Even Meriwether Lewis wrote to the Commissioners urging approval with following note:

“To the Recorder of Land Titles for the Territory of Louisiana. Take notice that as Superintendent of Indian Affairs and guardian of the rights of the Indians within the Territory of Louisiana, I claim a tract of country lying between the River St. Come and cape Girardeau and bounded on the East by the Mississippi and westwardly white water – By virtue of the grant of the Baron de Carondelet to the Dellawares and Shwanoes which said grant is in general terms, and indefinite between the Missouri and the Arkansas, but located, bounded and rendered certain by the orders of Don Zenon Trudeau, Lt. Governor of the territory while a Spanish province. I deposit with you for record, the original grant of the Baron and missives of the Lt. Governor.” Meriwether Lewis. Those were the documents written above.

Missouri was Jefferson’s Solution

President Jefferson had originally considered Louisiana Territory as the best place for the eastern Native Americans to be removed to as they were being pushed out of their homelands by American settlers. The regions of Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas were his recommendations. He had likely seen how well the Delaware and Shawnee Tribes had done with their partial removal to Missouri. But by 1806 much of the eastern side of Missouri near the Mississippi River had been settled by Spanish land grants or squatter-settlers. By 1809 President Jefferson was formally recommending Arkansas as the best place for Cherokee homes in the trans-Mississippi West.

On January 11, 1812, the Board of Land Commissioners rejected the confirmation request based on the fourth section of the Act of Congress, 1807. That section reads for approval, “for a tract not exceeding the quantity of acres contained in a league square.” The size of the Spanish land grants for the Delawares and Shawnees has been in dispute, but was considered by many to have been 750 square miles – 20 leagues square. It was much too large to have been approved, particularly in 1812, as there had been by then large numbers of American immigrants onto the land in that region. Jefferson would have known by 1809 that a huge portion of that region was tied up in Spanish land grants, and was highly valued by American farmers. By 1814, after the War of 1812 and its associated Indian outrages in the Missouri Territory, the crush of American immigration into the region began to drive off the Delawares and Shawnees, sometimes with theft or with violence.

Treaty of St. Mary’s in 1818

The Treaty of St. Mary’s in 1818 put removal of the Delaware in motion across the eastern half of the continent. The treaty removed them from lands in Indiana westerly toward Indian Territory, but not all at once. The Missouri location became a stopping off point for the relocation that lasted several years. Missouri Territorial Governor William Clark assigned the Delawares, Shawnees and Kickapoo lands in extreme southwest Missouri Ozarks, as seen on this image.

Timothy Flint, a traveler and observer from Salem, Massachusetts, wrote long accounts of his travels across the United States, to some degree focusing on the Native Americans. One of his letters was about the Delaware and Shawnees in southeast Missouri. Please don’t let the chronology of the removals confuse you. He had obviously witnessed some movement of Cherokees prior to this writing, perhaps as a result of individual treaties taking away their homelands a little pit at a time, forcing Cherokee families to relocate within the nation.

Timothy Flint’s Observation

Observe this quote from Timothy Flint observing the Delawares and Shawnees.

“I saw at Jackson, in Missouri, another emigration, of the Shawannoes and Delawares to the country assigned them at the sources of White River. It was a scene like that of the moving Cherokees, except that they seemed a poorer and more degraded race, and their women more immodest and abandoned. I had passed through the villages of these people, when they inhabited them. And no place is more full of life and motion than an Indian village. At the upper end of the villages, under the shade of the peach-trees, sat the aged chiefs on their benches, dozing, their half closed, with their ruminating and thoughtful sullenness depicted on their countenances. The middle and lower end of the villages were all bustle and life; the young warriors fixing their rifles, the women carrying water, and the children playing ball. I passed through the same villages, when every house was deserted. The mellow song of the bird, and the desolate contrast of what I had seen but a few months before, formed a scene calculated to awaken in my mind melancholy emotions.”

The Treaty of St. Louis in 1825 finalized the land cession by the Shawnees in Missouri, and they gradually moved westward through Kansas to Indian Territory. Missouri removed Native Americans also!

Next: Chapter 5: A Bold Expansion Plan (45.05)

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