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 by France, and Mexico, Florida, and California by Spain. Although the continent had been occupied by Native Americans for 20,000 years, the whole of it was claimed by “discovery” by Europeans beginning around 1500 A. D. 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, after their extirpation from Missouri was completed.
On May 8, 1541, de Soto, moving westward, crossed the Mississippi River at or downstream from the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, now Memphis, TN. 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(Insert Clark Map), 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.
De Soto’s travels in the region that became extreme southeastern Missouri followed his travels through the Cherokee homeland beginning May 25, 1540. His chroniclers noted that on that day the de Soto expedition had crossed into the domain of another native people, the Chalaque. De Soto did not find their gold, but his expedition’s diaries recorded for the first time the existence of the Cherokee Tribe. Those diaries are used today in the study of the ethnology of the Cherokees.
Referring to the same map image, locate the Kaskaskia River and Fort Kaskaskia across the Mississippi River from St. Genevieve. And yes, that river was named for the Native Tribe de Soto had partnered with in 1541, albeit on the opposite river bank. Jean Baptiste de Girardot, a French officer at Kaskaskia in the Illinois Country of New France, founded a trading post at a rocky promontory on the west bank overlooking the Mississippi River in 1733. The rocky prominence rose above the river’s flood level, thus protecting 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. Although the area had a significant Native American presence, Girardot’s post was the first settlement by a European onto that reach of the Mississippi River’s western banks.
In contrasting and comparing white settlement into Missouri with Cherokee removal and white settlement into the Cherokee homeland, the 1884 Royce Map of the Cherokee Nation of Indians will be helpful and is presented here: (Insert Royce Map)
(More complete explanation of S C infancy here)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, Area 1 on the Royce Map,(Insert Royce Map) for the rapidly growing colony. In the same decade, the Cherokee subjected themselves to His Majesty King George in the Treaty of 1730.
About 1700 the French presence emanating easterly following the Tennessee River’s southern tributaries put the French in contact with the Cherokees. The British had been linked in 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, creating competition in the business of trading Native American raw materials for finished products, while at the same time being a buffer between the European foes. 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, 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. Though no land was ceded with this treaty, 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 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. Before the Cherokees would agree to serve, they required British protection from French invasion from their west. An agreement was reached with the Cherokee to build 2 English-manned forts for that protection. In exchange the Cherokees agreed to cede 40 million acres to the west of South Carolina between the Wateree and Santee Rivers. That area is represented as Area 2 on the Royce Map. (Area 2 inset here)
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 withdrawing and giving 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. (Insert map of post-war continent)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.”
That trade paradigm between the Indians and the French, which, unlike the English, did not include the wholesale taking of land for farming, had been considered mutually beneficial, facilitating general peace across the region for the previous 5 decades before 1763. Over the next 3 decades, frequent irritation created by an incipient but persistent British presence in the Great Lakes region spreading down the Mississippi River Valley and settlement pressures from Americans created increasing conflict. Spain’s interest was limited to the maintenance of a buffer zone between the British and Spain’s own perceived rich mineral wealth in the Southwest desert, and in achieving that at a minimal cost. England’s efforts were focused on limiting the American colonies to the Atlantic coast which controlled the flow of raw products toward British manufacturers and limited England’s expenses, knowing that Indian Country was too large to govern from across an ocean. Keeping American settlement out of Indian Territory kept alive a persistent hope by the English that they could resurrect a new British colony through the middle of North America centered on the Mississippi River, also.
St. Louis was established in 1763 by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Choteau, having travelled upstream on the Mississippi River from their homes in New Orleans. St. Louis, strategically located on the west bank of the Mississippi River at the mouth of the Missouri River, further opened trading opportunities for the French in the valley, many having been there in significant numbers since the 1720’s settlement of Ste. Genevieve. St. Louis quickly became the epicenter of the trans-Mississippi fur trade. Expensive, highly-sought-after peltries were shipped north in the winter to preserve their value. Lesser valued furs were shipped south to markets in New Orleans. Fairly quickly the Colony of Virginia began to think about its western border as the Mississippi River at St. Louis. (Do we have an early image of St Louis distant and alone on the same latitude as Virginia?)
The Treaty of Paris, Feb. 10, 1763, ended the French and Indian War. Interestingly, Fort Duquesne had fallen into English hands November 25, 1758, with the aid of the Cherokees. Quebec fell to the English on September 18, 1759; that ended any French dominion in America save a narrow strip in southern Mississippi. Solicited by their British friends, the Cherokee had been muscled into the northern war, distant from their homeland. Circumstances arose on the Cherokees return home that created adversarial conflicts on the western fronts of several of the British colonies; likely, the French-allied northern Native Americans’ tortures committed during the war had sensitized the battle-worn colonial militias to Indian outrages. Regardless, neither the Cherokees nor the frontier colonial settlers were willing to let insult pass unanswered. So began 3 years of war between the Cherokee Tribe and the colonial settlers. The Cherokee homeland in many locations was destroyed, towns burned down, crops and livestock carried off or killed. At the end of the chaos, the Cherokee Tribe was a mere shadow of its former strength and number; smallpox had added to the misery and death. During the 8 years of the war from 1755 to 1763, at least 4 new treaties were signed between the Cherokees and the British colonies. The lands taken from the tribe included extensive areas of its traditional hunting ground north and east of the Blue Ridge Mountains and east of the Savannah River. The taking of Cherokee land continued. King George III issued his most-famous 1763 Proclamation drawing a line tracing the ridges of the Appalachian chain, the lands upon which its waters flowed to the Atlantic were for colonial settlement. The lands laying west of the Proclamation Line were reserved for the Indians, a concession to the Native tribes for their assistance with the British during the war. The colony of Georgia was bisected by the line from north to south. And the seeds of future conflict were planted.
In response to the western limits defined in the Proclamation of 1763, because American settlers were already residing on lands west of the Allegheny Mountains and had invested in land claims to the Ohio River, the British negotiated the Treaty of Hard Labor with the Cherokee. That treaty, signed in 1768, relinquished Cherokee claims to nearly all of the lands of what became West Virginia. No exact calculation has been done to quantify the amount of land taken, but it was a substantial portion of the Cherokee homeland. Of course, it became available to American land speculation and settlement, albeit the settlers were British citizens at that time. The calculus was simple, take land from the Cherokees and open it to American settlers.
Area 3 on the Royce Map is supposed to represent the lands ceded by the Treaty of Hard Labor. Shown here is the removal of that region from the Cherokee homeland.(Show area 3 being removed) Current research illuminates a much more extensive transfer of land with this treaty. Specifically, the Cherokee Nation relinquished any claim to the lands east of the Appalachian Mountains and Great Britain gave up claim to the lands west of the Appalachians. This modern map shows the demarcation line established by the Treaty of Hard Labor.(Insert line drawing map of Treaty of Hard Labor from Google or page 123 in Blood and Treasure) It is a line starting at the mouth of the Kanawha River into the Ohio River tracing a straight line southward to Tryon Mountain, called by the Cherokee “Great Mountain.” The line continues southwesterly to the northern border of Spanish Florida. The actual wording of the treaty that describes the line is shown in Article 1 of the treaty here. (Article 1 of Treaty of Hard Labor is linked here). At the signing of the Treaty of Hard Labor, Cherokee Chief Oconostota declared, “We have now given the white men enough land to live on.” In response the British promised to enforce the new borderline and prevent future settlement of colonists west of the line.
The 1770 Treaty of Lochaber followed only 2 years later as the rush of settlers continued unabated by the Treaty of Hard Labor. Area 4 on Royce’s map defines the region of the treaty. (Insert Area 4 being removed). Of particular interests is the most southwestern extent of the area. As described in the treaty explanation, (TreatyLochaberWording2) the Cherokee chief, Little Carpenter, “pitied” the Watauga settlers already living there and allowed the southern boundary to be extended south to the Watauga River so that the “illegal” settlers would not have to removed.
Cherokee lands ceded from Area 5 represents the results of an “arrangement” made pursuant to the Treaty of Lochaber. Reading the second half of that treaty’s description, you will notice that the Cherokee had apparently agreed to run the eastern boundary line from the Long Island of the Holston River to the “headwaters of the Kentucky River.” From there, instead of the line continuing do north, the line traced westward, following the Kentucky River to its mouth into the Ohio River, then along the Ohio to its union with the Kanawha at Point Pleasant. (Show Area 5 being removed) This was never a bono fide treaty, but many square miles of land were lost to the Cherokee anyway. This treaty was never given a name other than the “Treaty with Virginia in early 1772.”
The Treaty of Augusta, signed in 1773, ceded two million acres of Cherokee and Creek lands to Georgia to resolve hopeless indebtedness by the two tribes to white traders. (Insert Area 6 being removed) The European finished goods – guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, blankets, etc. – had become necessities to the members of the tribe. As the deer became scarce from over hunting to trade for ever more of the finished European goods, the Cherokees created debt which was forced to be settled by giving up Cherokee land.
The 1775 “Treaty of Sycamore Shoals” ultimately resulted in the loss of most of Kentucky, the rich Cherokee hunting ground, to white takeover by the “long knives.” This treaty caused the withdrawal of important young chief Dragging Canoe and his warriors to Chickamauga Creek, and his prediction that Kentucky would be a “Dark and bloody land.” Indeed, it was until 1794, as thousands of American settlers were killed by Shawnee and Cherokee warriors. (Insert Area 7 removed)
Huge Area 7 depicts the Cherokee land lost in this “treaty.” However, by the Agreement of 1730, the Cherokee could not sell their land to anyone except the English. Secondarily, the “sale” was to Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company for 12,000 English Pounds, most of which were trading goods. The colony of Virginia quickly declared the sale illegal and null and void. But it had opened the gate to most of Kentucky and significant portion of Tennessee to settlers and land speculators. Superimposed on these actions, the Revolutionary War was beginning in the East between the colonists and England. English support of the Cherokees effectively made the war have a second front to the West.
The continued encroachment of white settlers onto Cherokee lands had caused the Cherokee to align with the British at the start of the American Revolution. Pre-emptory attacks by the Cherokee on American frontier settlements failed, but retaliatory attacks by Southern states’ militias and regulars destroyed untold Cherokee villages and humiliated the Tribe. The Treaty of Dewitt’s Corner transferred the bulk of Cherokee land in South Carolina to that state on May 20, 1777. Area 8 represents the Cherokee land lost in that treaty. (Insert Area 8 being lost.)
On July 20, 1777, Virginians negotiated a treaty at the Great Island of the Holston, resulted in the loss to the Cherokee of Area 9 on the Royce Map. Both the Treaty of Dewitt’s Corner and this Great Island treaty were enabled by a conservative leadership within the Cherokee Nation in recompense for aggressive attacks against frontier settlers by Dragging Canoe’s band of Chickamaugans. The destruction of a large portion of the Cherokee resources and villages by colonists-frontier settlers in response brought the Cherokees to their knees, prompting theses two treaties. A total of over 5 million acres were added to North and South Carolina and Tennessee from these treaties. (Show Area 9 being lost)
On May 30, 1783, the Treaty of Augusta, shown as Area 10 on the Royce Map, was signed between the Cherokee and the State of Georgia. Under the Articles of Confederation, Georgia assumed that right. Georgia wanted the land to settle Revolutionary War veterans on. Ceding land between the Savannah and Chattahoochee Rivers, the treaty also confirmed the northern boundary between Georgia and the Cherokee land. (Show Area 10 Being removed)
Enter a new sheriff; the Revolutionary War was finished and the Cherokee have to treat with the government of the United States. The treaty that marks this milestone is the Treaty of Hopewell, signed on Nov. 28, 1785. It is shown as area 10a on the Royce Map here.(Image of Royce map enlarged and focused on 10a). 36 Cherokee chiefs and 1000 Cherokee people were present and informed by commissioners of the U. S. that Great Britain was no longer sovereign. The Commissioners announced that the meeting’s purpose was to here grievances from the Cherokee about the previous treaties. As was previously discussed above, the sale of most of Kentucky and a large area of Tennessee in 1775 to Richard Henderson, and then not allowed but lost to the Cherokee by rapid American settlement, was never negotiated by treaty or payment. At that point the commissioners produced a deed for those large areas signed by the 2 Cherokee chiefs at Sycamore Shoals , Attakullaculla and Oconostota. Upon seeing the signed deeds, the chiefs in attendance agreed and further offered to extend the line “from the mouth of Duck River to the dividing ridge between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, should be continued up that ridge and from thence to the Cumberland in such a manner as to leave all the white settlers in the Cumberland country outside of the Indian limits.” This map shows the loss of that land from the Cherokee. (Insert 10a being removed)
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Several more treaties were signed through the pre-American Constitution period, ending in 1785 with the Treaty of Hopewell ceding lands south of the Cumberland River in north central Tennessee. The Cherokee were rapidly losing their homeland!
Spanish administration of the “Illinois” country, referring to the land on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the region centered around St. Louis in their “Louisiana,” after 1763 initially rejected Americans and non-Catholics. The Spanish authorities correctly perceived an ongoing British threat of re-taking control of the broad central portion of the America – a wide strip centered by the Mississippi River from Canada to the Gulf and extending east to the Appalacians and west to the Rocky Mountains. The British had placed the governance of the northwestern region of its newly-controlled Indian Reserve in French-speaking Quebec after they won the French and Indian War. British forts were built in support of their continuing commerce with the Native American tribes across the Great Lakes region. The lucrative fur trade continued, even improved, for England from this region after English control was established. Like the rest of the “Indian Reserve” west of the Proclamation Line, the King was demonstrating his guaranty, secondary to the Indians help during the French and Indian War, to his Native American subjects of his protection for them from Americans taking their land. However, this British foothold facilitated aggressive Indian action against American settlers across the region, including Kentucky, for nearly 40 years. From their distant northern location well north of the Ohio River, the British could efficiently maintain a presence, monitor American immigration, and wait for opportunities to expand their foothold toward Spanish Louisiana and a new mid-continent English colony. Originally Sauk and Fox Tribal lands, those tribes had been displaced west of the Mississippi River by Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo and other northeastern tribes forced westward by American settlement in New England and Pennsylvania.
50 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. It had been seated 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. Famously, George Rogers Clark and his frontier militia attacked and destroyed Lorimier’s trading station and stores of 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 6 years. He brought with him his friendly Delaware and Shawnee Indians for protection against savage tribes. He was eventually given official Spanish permission for his and the Indians’ occupation of the area because he had developed a reputation for honesty and influence among the Indians in the region. 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 above. The Shawnee and Delaware Tribes were also given Spanish land grants to the lands they occupied. (Insert Indian land grant info here)This Shawnee band became known as the Cape Girardeau Shawnee.
The Northwest Ordinances (1784,1785, 1787) established land policy and territorial government procedures, including the rectilinear survey requirements, that were mandated for the settlement of lands added to the United States. Lorimier’s land grants in the Illinois Country, now Missouri, did not comply with the survey requirements, as those lands were not in the United States until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
30 miles south of the Cape, in 1788, Col. George Morgan negotiated a Spanish land grant of two million acres, he thought! The build-up of the horde of Americans pouring over the Appalachian Mountains convinced the Spanish that they were soon to be over-run by land-hungry Americans. In an effort to avoid loss of control of their buffer zone, the Spanish agreed to allow 500 American families under 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 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 1780 map on the western side of the Mississippi River south of the mouth of the Ohio River. Each of the 500-plus immigrant families into the “New Madrid” region received Spanish Land Grants for their land.