Chapter 7: Are the Cherokee a Sovereign Nation? (45.07)

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Are the Cherokee a Sovereign Nation?

In 1829 Jeremiah Evarts, writing under the pen name of “William Penn,” wrote a series of article about the injustice of the Indian Removal Act that were published in the socially liberal National Intelligencer newspaper. He was hoping to save the United States from the curse of an outraged God if that government went ahead with the Cherokee Removal.

Source: https://picryl.com/media/weatherford-in-jacksons-tent-creek-wars-6e7015

Editorial Advocacy

Evarts was convinced that if the American public was knowledgeable about the removal, that they would rise up and stop it. He wrote and the Intelligencer published the following article about this treaty, pointing out the important aspects of how this treaty was accomplished satisfactorily for both sides. Here’s a portion of his article:

“How did the State of Tennessee understand this subject? Let the first article of the preceding treaty answer. The legislature of Tennessee desirous of obtaining a site for the erection of buildings to accommodate their State government, sent a committee to view the point at the junction of two beautiful rivers, the Tennessee and the Clinch.”
The boundary, as it then stood, ran very near this point; and the State solicited a square mile for the public object above described. The Cherokees, out of a spirit of conciliation, and for $1600 in money, ceded the section of land, with these remarkable reservations, viz: that they were to retain the ferries at the seat of government of Tennessee; and that the grant was made for public objects only.
Of course, the land would revert to the Cherokees, if the seat of government should be removed. As the Legislature afterwards fixed the seat of Government farther West, no public buildings were erected at this place. Narrower boundaries were subsequently established between the United States and the Cherokees; but the ferries were held for a long time, if they are not now held, by assignees of the Cherokees. The treaty was ratified by President Jefferson and the Senate.
“This whole transaction strongly illustrates several important positions, which have been taken, or implied, in the preceding discussion, such as the inviolability of the Cherokee Territory; the right of the Cherokees to make or withhold cessions of land, according to their pleasure; their right to impose such restrictions upon their grants as they pleased; and the treaty-making power of the United States being the only medium by which a state can get a proper title to Indian Territory.”

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

Unfortunately for the Cherokee, forced removal became the enforced law of the land by 1835.

Sac and Fox Removal from Missouri

General William Henry Harrison was the first Governor of the Indiana Territory, appointed by President John Adams in 1800. His main job was to oversee Native American relations and to facilitate land acquisition by American settlers. When the northern part of the Louisiana Purchaser was added to the Indiana Territory, Harrison had authority over the largest territorial jurisdiction of any U. S. governor at that time.

President Jefferson directed Gov. Harrison to make a treaty with the Fox and Sac Indians to obtain land along both sides of the Illinois River in Indiana Territory. The Treaty of St. Louis was signed Nov. 3, 1804. The treaty gave fifty million acres to the United States in present-day states of Illinois, Wisconsen, and Missouri for an annual payment to those tribes of $1000 per year, along with protection and trade benefits. The U. S. agreed to establish a trading factory, Jefferson’s policy to get the Indians in debt, in the Indian nation, and to regulate traders by requiring them to have government licenses. The U.S. Government also promised to protect their remaining lands from intruders – white American settlers.

Harrison had connections with influential Frenchmen in St. Louis with large Spanish land grants north of St. Louis and the Missouri River. The Sac and Fox had already agreed to honor those land grants, but the influential land grantees wanted to reduce their risk of loss and to better secure those land claims. They convinced Harrison to include the land where their claims were located in the treaty language “that nothing in this treaty contained shall affect the claim of any individual or individuals who may have obtained grants of land from the Spanish government, and included within the general boundary line laid down in this treaty, provided that such grants have at any time been made known to the Indian tribes and recognized by them,” which of course the grants were recognized by the Indians. It was one more way to better secure the confirmation of the grants to themselves.

The treaty line began on the north bank of the Missouri River opposite the mouth of the Gasconade River, well west of the land grants desired to be protected for Harrison’s friends in St. Louis. The treaty line went north from that point one hundred miles, then eastward across the Mississippi River. The lands taken from the Sac and Fox by the U. S. with this treaty can be seen on the 2-dimensional image of the treaty at this link. Indeed, the treaty did include the land grants of those influential friends even though President Jefferson had not included land in the trans-Mississippi West region in his orders. The effect of the inclusion of those land grants in the north-eastern region of present-day Missouri is that that was the first land cession by Native Americans of land that was eventually included in the State of Missouri when it was established in 1820. And Harrison’s friends became very wealthy and powerful in early Missouri. Missourians got wealthy taking Indian land even before statehood!

The treaty was deeply resented by many Sac and Fox Indians, as they felt they were deprived of much of their valuable resources and land by the treaty. Perhaps more importantly, they felt that they were not appropriately represented, as their representatives lacked tribal authority and had been coerced into signing the documents. The treaty contributed to many tribal members led by Black Hawk favoring the British before and during the War of 1812. Apparently, the Black Hawk band thought the war would weaken the United States, leading to a return of their land. Across Missouri, especially in less settled areas, the Sac and Fox committed outrages during the War of 1812. Settlements as far west in Missouri as Cote Sans Dessein and Franklin, just north of the Missouri River, and Moniteau Creek settlements south of the river suffered deaths. Those settlements were mostly abandoned eventually, as the settlers moved back into more populated and protected regions until peace returned after the war.

Tensions from the Treaty of St. Louis and the War of 1812 continued to simmer within the Sac and Fox Tribes, culminating in the Black Hawk War in 1832. The decisive win by the United States in the Black Hawk War ended Indian resistance in Missouri, and fostered more aggressive removal of Native American tribes to the west.

The Treaty of August 4, 1824 ceded all the remaining Sac and Fox land north of the Missouri River and west of the Mississippi River. Remember that at that time the western boundary of Missouri was a meridian line drawn north from the mouth of the Kansas River, leaving that northwest triangle outside of the state of Missouri. You can see the image of the land ceded by the Treaty of August 4, 1824 at this link. The treaty provided for a blacksmith and agricultural teachers and farming equipment and cattle to aid their success in farming. A $1000 yearly annuity was also guaranteed.

The Platte Purchase

Just twelve years later the United States Government acquired the 3,149 square miles in that now northeast triangle of land bordered on its west by the Missouri River and northerly by the State of Iowa. Its fertile soil was highly desired by early Missouri farmers. The Sac and Fox Tribes were removed to a 29-square-mile reservation on the Kansas-Nebraska border and paid $7500 dollars in exchange for their. The Platte Purchase ended the Sac and Fox Tribes’ hundred-year-old occupation of the northern half of what became the State of Missouri. Their hegemony of the region was continuously confrontational with the Osage Indians control over the southern half of Missouri. Ioway Indians were also removed from the area. Andrew, Atchison, Buchanan, Holt, Nodaway, and Platte Counties now occupy the region. The Kansas City International Airport is home to that area.

Famous explorer William Clark negotiated the treaty. It was the last of his 37 treaties as Superintendent of Indian Affairs of the trans-Mississippi West, for which he served from 1822 until his death in 1838. The Platte Purchase treaty was signed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas on September 17, 1836. See the image of the Platte Purchase lands at this link. Within a year or two, the Missouri General Assembly enacted a law that made it illegal for an Indian to be in the State of Missouri. Sound like the Cherokee experience in Georgia that led to the Trail of Tears?

Giving Up the Great Island of the Holston

On January 7, 1806, the Cherokees gave up their beloved Great Island of the Holston. The island, also known as the “Long Island of the Holston,” was the Cherokees old treaty grounds. This treaty, along with the two previous treaties, was arranged by President Thomas Jefferson’s favorite method for taking ground from the Cherokees – put them in hopeless debt with the factory system.

Area 20

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, 16, 17, 18, 19, & 20.

Return J. Meigs, the Federal Government’s Cherokee Agent, pushed the Cherokees to modernize into farmers and storekeepers. They were having to buy their store items and farming implements from the government factory stores. The debt was called by the U. S. Government and was paid for with more land ceded by the Cherokees. The Federal Government also used bribery of the Cherokee Chiefs, including money and set-aside prime located lands, to get the Chiefs’ support for the land cessions. This image shows the location of the Great Island of the Holston.

A Capital Offense

By signing this treaty, Chief Doublehead violated the Cherokee law, punishable by death, which outlawed any more land cessions by the Cherokees. The “Ridge” murdered Doublehead on August 9, 1807, exacting the punishment for violating the rule prohibiting any more land cessions. The “Ridge” was killed for the same offense on June 22, 1839, for signing the Cherokee removal treaty.

This treaty requires extensive discussion because of the tremendous consequences that resulted. The Cherokee Nation had since the 1775 signing of the Treaty at Sycamore Shoals become divided between the Upper Cherokees living north of the Hiwassee Mountains and the Chickamaugans to the south, into Alabama.

The Division of the Cherokee

This treaty had been negotiated between the Chickamaugans and the Federal Government under President Thomas Jefferson. The benefits of the treaty, cash bribes, special land cessions to the chiefs, and other goods had been paid to the Chickamaugans, not the Cherokee Nation represented by the legitimate Cherokee National Council. When the Council found out about the treaty and payments made to the Chickamaugans, the Upper Cherokees demanded the U. S. Government divide the Cherokee Nation into separate entities and allowed the Upper Cherokees to become citizens of the United States. Jefferson then suggested that the Chickamaugans remove to lands west of the Mississippi River.

The controversy continued over the next year ending with Doubleheaded’s brother, Tahlonteskee, fearing assassination, and his band of 1,130 Chickamaugans removed to Dardanelle Rock on the Arkansas River. Tahlonteskee band became known as the “Old Settlers” or “Cherokees West.” Life was not easy for them in Central Arkansas as the Osage claimed that land was theirs. The Osage were removed in 1808 by treaty, but the Osage-Cherokee conflicts continued for 20 years. As we will see, the Old Settlers were involved in ongoing conflicts with the Cherokee Nation through and after the forced removal in 1838-1839.

Next: Chapter 8: The War of 1812 (45.08)

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