Chapter 12: Keep Moving Westward? (45.12)

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Keep Moving Westward?

Months after the Louisiana Purchase, federal officials noted “a scarcity of game on the eastern side of the Mississippi River has late induced a number of Cherokees…to frequent the neighborhood of Arkansas, where game is still in abundance.” In 1809 Cherokee hunting challenges in Tennessee were used by Cherokee leaders to convince government leaders to support their removal to Arkansas.

Source: https://www.stateoftheunionhistory.com/2016/06/1808-thomas-jefferson-cherokee-solicit.html

“Husbandry and household manufacture are advancing among them more rapidly with the Southern than Northern tribes, from circumstances of soil and climate, and one of the two great divisions of the Cherokee Nation have now under consideration to solicit the citizenship of the United States, and to be identified with us in laws and government in such progressive manner as we shall think best.” – Thomas Jefferson 1808 State of the Union

A Convenient Rationale

Thomas Jefferson noted he was told by the Cherokee leaders that they were “desirous to move across the Mississippi River” to “retain their attachments to the hunter’s life, having little game in their present lands.” He invited them to “reconnoiter the country on the waters of the Arkansas and White Rivers.” As a result, hundreds of Cherokee families moved to the St. Francois River bottomlands, eventually hunting parties travelling inland to the mountains and valleys to the west.

The New Madrid Earthquakes

After the New Madrid earthquakes in 1811-12, many of these Cherokee families moved westward, primarily settling on the narrow bottoms of the Arkansas and White Rivers and their tributaries on the foothills of the Ozark Mountains to the north. Cherokees had learned the practice of identifying and clearing forested areas on rich bottomland along the rivers for better farming production.

They had learned to mix that land-use practice with hunting in the mountains and even pursuing bison on the short grass prairies to the west to meet their needs for subsistence. They had learned the benefits of diverse geographies and topographies to meet their food needs. Cherokees success in hunting and the fur trade led the United States to build a successful factory store that mutually benefitted both the Cherokees and the U.S. government.

A Buffer Between Tribes

The U. S. wanted the friendly Cherokee presence as a buffer to the wild western Indians access to white settlement eastward of the Cherokee Arkansas lands. Also, the success of the Cherokees in Arkansas would potentially interest more of their eastern brothers in emigrating to Arkansas.

The 1817 and 1819 Treaties secured the broad Arkansas region’s Arkansas River valley as Cherokee lands, displacing white squatters out and renegade Osage westward. Cherokee hunting parties pursuing bison to the west, crossing Osage land to conduct hunting opportunities precipitated violence with the Osage. Fort Smith was built to keep the parties apart and avoid warfare.

In the 1817 treaty document, Cherokee negotiators embedded the hunter identity by including that they “made known their desire to continue the hunter life across the Mississippi River.” The treaty included acre-for-acre exchange in the homeland for equal Arkansas land for hunting. For the U. S. friendly Cherokee hunters may have represented potential proxy fighters if needed to quell “savage warriors” in the plain’s tribes.

Adopting an Agricultural Life

By 1818 the Cherokee were committing to more of an agricultural life. President Monroe wrote to the Cherokee chiefs that the U. S. would allow the Cherokee to have “good mill seats, plenty of game, and not to be surrounded by white people.” Clearly, a mixed agricultural model had developed in the Cherokee mind.

The varied geography in the region had offered fertile opportunities to pursue not just hunting but also farming – in segregation from the white man. And the Cherokees began to cast themselves as civilizing pioneers, in contrast to the Osage being a “band of savages.”

The barren mountains to the north quickly became the limiting margin to the agricultural achievements for the Cherokee. By 1819 the Cherokee Chiefs began openly complaining to the U. S. that they found themselves confined to a “barren country fit for nothing.”

Civilizing Effects

The Cherokee Council and Chiefs began efforts to convince the U. S. that the circumscribed mountainous region they occupied was limiting the tribe’s potential to better themselves; that the westering paradigm of the whites had led to conquering frontiers with settlements, which the Cherokee were capable of then. The civilizing effects of westering Cherokees into “savage lands” would benefit the U. S.

The Cherokees had become familiar with Lovely’s Purchase, a 3-million-acre square at the northwest corner of the Arkansas Territory. They had to travel through it for bison hunting. They well understood the well-watered fertile soils and new rich hunting potential and better access for buffalo hunting that existed there.

Surrounded?

Moving west would free them from being encircled by aggressive white settlers, as white settlement continued rapidly moving westward. The Cherokee chiefs began speaking in a unified voice, condemning the mountainous region of their current Arkansas home as unfit for agricultural pursuits.

The three million acres the Cherokee were granted in the central Arkansas region provided only 70 miles of river bottomland frontage. If more Cherokees chose to emigrate as more Cherokee land in the East were ceded to the U.S., their current lands in Arkansas would be insufficient. Cherokee complaints related to unsatisfied treaty guarantees led to an 1825 resurvey, yielding another one million acres for the tribe.

That brought their total land reserve to over 4 million acres in their central Arkansas home. That survey correction put the Lovely Purchase near their western boundary. The Cherokee settlements already stretched into that land.

Source: https://teva.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15138coll23/id/419/

Cherokee map makers had drawn maps extending the Cherokee Arkansas range well into and beyond the falls of the Verdigris River, 80 miles west of the established western Cherokee boundary. That would put the Cherokees out of reach of encroaching whites. The Cherokee Council’s interest was in maintaining their central Arkansas mountainous homes while extending Cherokee rights westward into the fertile region of Lovely’s Purchase.

Next: Chapter 13: “[T]he most solemn guarantee of the United States” (45.13)

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