Chapter 5: A Bold Expansion Plan (45.05)

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By: Dr. Bill Ambrose

A Bold Expansion Plan

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

Source: https://picryl.com/media/ordinance2-of-1787-819709

The Treaty of Holston

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

Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse

See their locations in the Chickamaugan homelands, the region Dragging Canoe removed to after the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals. American commissioners met forty Cherokee chiefs at Tellico Blockhouse shown to sign the 1794 of Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse. With the Chickamaugans quieted, a period of recovery and renewal was begun across the Cherokee Nation supported by annuities and agricultural training and supplies from the U. S. government and educational and religious support from newly found white organizations and friends in New England.

Area 12

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, & 12.

Note: Several monographs on this website provide detail about other elements of support that developed for the greater Cherokee Nation. Direct Link

Treaty of Hopewell

On October 2, 1798, the Cherokees signed two treaties “acknowledging” the protection of the United States. The Treaty of Hopewell had called for the marking of the Cherokee Boundary, as shown on the Royce Map with various wording, usually “Boundary of Nov. 28, 1785.”

That was never accomplished, and settlers continued to come onto Cherokee lands. With this treaty and their “acknowledgment”, the U. S. promised the Cherokee Nation could keep its land “forever.” The Cherokee were told they had to cede new parcels as their “acknowledgment.” Area 13 and 14 were ceded to the U. S. in these treaties.

Areas 13 &14

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, 12, & 13.

American farmers, perhaps especially their succeeding generation – their children – had become accustomed to just moving West as their(father’s) land wore out. Virginian soils could only support tobacco cropping for so long, then other crops were tried with little success on those exhausted soils.

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, 12, 13, & 14.

Westwarding

Of course, the Proclamation of 1763 could not hold back the westward tide of American farmer-settlers. As we have seen history of westwarding by whites was played out on Cherokee lands and the Cherokee people. Western Virginia – “Kentucky” – and western North Carolina, the Cumberland region – “Tennessee” – experienced the early brunt of the settlement rush and war with the resident Native Americans.

But not by agrarian elite plantationists, as in Virginia. No, they went to the South with their slaves, transitioning to cotton production. It was an auspicious move onto those lands west of Georgia, especially with the invention of the cotton gin in1793. Still today agriculturalists landowners across the South refer to themselves as “planters” not “farmers.” And the closer one gets on the coastal plain to the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, the more they mean it!

The transition across the Appalachians forced those young farmer-settlers to adapt to cove forest topography. The great distant views of the tidewater changed to much narrower perspectives even in the Piedmont, across the valley of Appalachia, and on both sides of the Cumberland Mountains where crop fields were just a few acres circumscribed by forests.

The Three Sisters

Native Americans had successfully lived on that topography for hundreds of years. Their hunters, the men, brought in the protein, their “farmers,” the Indian women, grew the carbohydrates – the “Three Sisters” – corn, beans, and squash grew abundantly on the best soil in those narrow valleys.

The Revolutionary War ended on September 3, 1783, with the Treaty of Paris. Kentucky became the fifteenth state on June 1, 1792. Tennessee joined Kentucky as a state on June 1, 1796. Populations had grown quickly, especially across the arable soils regions. Those sons and daughters of Revolutionary War soldiers, many having a slave or two, aggressively sought out and settled on the best soils in the cove valleys across both states, rapidly taking up the useable regions.

Statehood certainly did not mean there was no more farming land available for new-arrival farmers and settlers, but the best was already taken. Looking to the north, across the Ohio River, land had to be purchased at $1.25 per acre and slavery was forbidden. Free land and farming with slave labor, as was the custom, attracted Americans to Spanish Illinois, as it was called then, across the Mississippi River.

Treaty of San Lorenzo del Escorial (Pinckney’s Treaty)

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

Area 15

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, 12, 13, 14, & 15

Mistakes Were Made

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~

Josiah Tattnall, Junr., Governor of Georgia”

Osage Indians Removal from Missouri

On Friday, June 22, 1804 William Clark recorded in his Journal they “passed …one island …opposite against which there is a handsom Prairie of high Bottoms and up Land, Capt Lewis went out in this Prairie & walked Several miles, Come to opposite the mouth of a large Creek …Called River of the Fire Prairie.” Later Clark commented that the location would make an excellent spot for a fort. After the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned to St. Louis, on September 26, 1806, Lewis was appointed Governor of Upper Louisiana Territory and Superintendent of Indian Affairs by President Jefferson. Clark was appointed Principal Agent of Indian Affairs for the Louisiana Territory in March of 1807.

The Osage Indians had been known for outrages and thefts since the region had been under Spanish control. Other Indian tribe components had been welcomed into the region to counter the Osages misbehavior. Even American settlers had been welcomed into Spanish Upper Louisiana after 1792 to stand against the Osage and punish them when necessary. The Osage were losing their 200-hundre-year hegemony in the Ozarks to not just white settlers moving in but also to many other Indian nations which had been crowded out of their hunting grounds and homes east of the Mississippi River. So many that the Osage were losing the ability to defend themselves and their hunting grounds.

A Detachment Moves West

William Clark, with a company of mounted dragoons commanded and guided by Nathan Boone, departed St. Charles travelling overland headed for Fire Prairie in August of 1808. Captain Eli Clemson led a company of the 1st United States Infantry from Cantonment Belle Fontaine aboard keel boats upstream on the Missouri River about the same time.

Within ten days of their arrival at the fort site, three block houses, 2 for trade goods and one as a blacksmiths shop, had been built and a fourth was started. Clark sent Nathan Boone out to invite the Osage Indians to come in for treaty negotiation. Within those ten days, Clark “extorted,” as some historian assess, a treaty that ceded thirty million acres from the Osage Tribe to the United States. The Osage Boundary Line drawn on many contemporaneous maps was the result of this Osage Treaty of 1808. See this link for a map image showing the boundary line. The line runs from Fort Clark on the Missouri River to Frog Bayou on the Arkansas River, a meridian line running about 25 miles East of the Missouri’s western state line. The Osage thought that the only significance to them was that they were required to move their villages west of the line. They had accepted the treaty hearing only that they would be protected by the U. S. in their hunting pursuits from the other Indians trying to destroy them.

From Clark’s communication, “Wednesday, 14 September, 1808. Met agreeably in treaty on the banks of the Missouri, about four or five miles above fire prairie. In the presence of the public and part of the military, the great Osage and little Osage chiefs and warriors and myself entered into a treaty in which the Osage ceded, conveyed, and relinquish all the land east of a line south drawn where we treated to the river Arkansas, and amounting to nearly 30 million acres of excellent country, including the settlements below the Missouri.” On Friday, September 16, 1808, Clark boarded one of the barges and floated downstream toward his home in St. Louis. This was the first of many treaties Wm. Clark negotiated with many Indian tribes.

General Clark returned to St. Louis on September 22. By the 22nd of September, Osage chiefs had arrived in St. St. Louis and were protesting the treaty, believing that it stipulated that no more than the privilege of hunting had been given, not the land. Meriwether Lewis, as Governor and Commander in chief of the territory of Louisiana and Superintendent of Indian Affairs negotiated the final chapter in the 1808 Osage Treaty, which included the Osage ceding lands north of the Missouri River also. See the map image at this link for all the lands ceded by the Osage in the Treaty of 1808. The final version of the treaty was signed on November 10, 1808. With the addition of the lands north of the Missouri River, the total land ceded by the Osage Tribe to the United States from this 1808 treaty was 52 million acres.

1808 Osage Treaty

1st Lieutenant Louis Lorimier, Jr. of the First Regiment of United States Infantry was a signer of the 1808 Osage Treaty, representing the United States. His father, Louis Lorimier, was alive and continuing to work with the Shawnees and Delawares from their villages on Apple Creek in Cape Girardeau District of the Louisiana Territory. In 1805 Louis Lorimier was named an associate judge on the court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions for the District of Cape Girardeau by Wm. H. Harrison, governor of the Territory of Indiana. Congress in 1804 named that portion of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 33rd north latitude the “District of Louisiana,” and attached it to the Territory of Indiana.

On June 2, 1825, the 1825 Osage Treaty was signed. The treaty ceded all remaining Osage lands in Missouri and the Arkansas Territory as well as a portion of their land in Kansas to the United States.

Article 1. of the 1825 Osage Treaty :

“The Great and Little Osage Tribes or Nations do, hereby, cede and relinquish to the United States, all their right, title, interest, and claim, to lands lying within the State of Missouri and Territory of Arkansas, and to all lands lying West of the said State of Missouri and Territory of Arkansas, North and West of Red River, South of the Kansas River, East of a line to be drawn from the head sources of the Kansas, Southwardly through the Rock Saline, with such reservations, for such considerations, and upon such terms as are hereinafter specified, expressed, and provided for.”

With the signing of this treaty, the Osage Nation and its people were removed from their hundreds of years home in what is today the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks. The treaty established a reservation on what is now southern Kansas for the Osage. The Tribe was later removed to Indian Territory.

Next: Chapter 6: A Barrier To Manifest Destiny (45.06)

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