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previous: Chapter 9 This webpage reproduces a chapter of The Southern Indians by R. S. Cotterill University of Oklahoma Press Norman, Oklahoma, 1954 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 11

 p191  X
Boundaries and Removal
1815‑1820

The territory ceded at Fort Jackson, after "an unprovoked, inhuman and sanguinary war waged by the hostile Creeks against the United States hath been repelled, prosecuted and determined success­fully on the part of the said states in conformity with the principles of national justice and honorable warfare," extended north and west to Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw boundaries which no man knew. The determination of these limits, a necessary prerequisite to the complete enjoyment by the United States of the domain thus characteristically acquired, was complicated by a boundary dispute between Cherokees and Chickasaws, each of whom claimed much of the land on the northern border of the Creek cession.

Since the cession, once made, was United States property, the Creeks deftly removed themselves from the boundary controversies as something no longer concerning them.⁠1 Meigs, always ready to demand justice for his charges from everyone except the United States, presented the Cherokee case. The Cherokees claimed considerable land south of the Tennessee, since by three successive wars they had driven the Creeks more than a degree of latitude south of Turkey Town on the Coosa, had expelled the Chickasaws from their Old Fields, and had been in actual occupation of the country since.⁠2 These, the Cherokees acknowledged,  p192 were traditional things, but the Cherokee claims south of the Tennessee had been recognized by the United States in the Hopewell treaty of 1785 and the Dearborn convention of January, 1806. Against these arguments were opposed the Creek statement that after the Sevier raid of 1782 the homeless Cherokees had applied to the Upper Creeks and had been lent the Creek territory only in the angle of the Coosa, Will's Creek, and Coosada Island in the Tennessee,⁠3 and the Chickasaw possession of Washington's written guarantee of Chickasaw claims south of the Tennessee.

Compared to the wild tangle of conflicting claims on the north, the dispute over the western boundary of the cession was so mild as almost to constitute an agreement. The Creeks had claimed land west to the Tombigbee and Black Warrior, the Choctaws east to the Tombigbee-Cahaba divide. By one of the little ironies of history, the United States in exacting the Choctaw cession of 1805 over Creek protests had effectually estopped itself from contesting the Choctaw claims and so, because of its avidity in seeking a cheap cession from the Choctaws then, had now to resign a free one from the Creeks. The Choctaw claims extended north only to the Oktibbeha, which by an agreement in 1807 had been recognized by both Choctaws and Chickasaws as the boundary between them.⁠4

The United States had long realized the danger for the Indians and, possibly, the embarrassment for itself inherent in conflicting tribal boundaries. In the administration of John Adams, Hawkins and Dinsmoor, on instructions from Secretary of War McHenry, had endeavored to promote a Cherokee-Creek agreement, but had been thwarted by the opposition of the Creeks, who at that time apparently regarded, with some justification, the Cherokees as merely auxiliaries of the Creek confederacy.⁠5 In  p193 May, 1811, the agents had been instructed to appoint commissioners in each tribe to resolve the boundary dispute, but the plan would have become impracticable, because of the Creek uprising, even had it not been forgotten in the excitement of the British war.⁠6 In an effort to secure a definite northern limit for his prospective Creek cession, Jackson in 1814 had invited Meigs to bring a delegation of Cherokee chiefs to Fort Jackson to confer with the Creeks. The conference, after the air had been cleared by an interchange of vituperation, resulted in an agreement on a line to run from the Coosa, at the crossing of the military road, to Flat Rock on what the Cherokees called Long-Leafed Pine Creek. Jackson, knowing intuitively that the Tennessee was the proper boundary, refused to incorporate in the treaty a line which left in Cherokee possession so much land that he considered he had conquered from the Creeks.⁠7

The eastern line of the cession presented no difficulties, since it was defined in the treaty and involved nothing more serious than a Creek amputation. For the performance of this surgical operation the commissioners appointed by President Madison (in accordance with a Congressional act of March 3) met in June, 1815, on the Upper Coosa, where Meigs had been instructed to join them and show them the Cherokee-Creek corner.⁠8 The non-attendance of Commissioner John Sevier and of the promised Creeks forced a postponement of the survey, whereupon Commissioner Kershaw returned at once to South Carolina and resigned. The Creeks' respite endured until the last of September, when the appointment of Hawkins, by filling the commission, permitted the survey to proceed. The commissioners, beginning at Fort Strother, moved down the Coosa accompanied by Meigs, Big Warrior, McIntosh, Alexander Cornell (wearing his wife's Iroquois coat), and others. The commissioners' progress was interrupted  p194 by the death of the aged Sevier in October⁠a and the subsequent illness or ill will which forced first Hawkins and then Barnett, one of the original commissioners, to leave the line. E. P. Gaines, appointed to succeed Sevier, finished the survey in late December, 1815.

An increasing crowd of Creeks followed the surveyors, sullen and protesting as they saw the great part of their country passing out of their possession, but offering no opposition until the line reached the Chattahoochee. The Creeks, both Upper and Lower, were on the verge of starvation, for the United States had not delivered the supplies promised at the treaty, had not paid for the property destroyed in the Lower towns by the Georgia troops, had not paid the wages of the Creek soldiers allied with Americans in the Creek war, and for three years had not paid the Creek annuities. At the Chattahoochee the Indians declared the line should go no farther, but their fragile resolution faded in the presence of the eight hundred Americans assembled at Fort Mitchell and finally dissipated in a threat to prevent the settlement of the land ceded in southern Georgia.⁠9 It may be that this shadowy insurgency of spirit was occasioned not merely by the assurances given the Creek by Colonel Edward Nicolls from Florida that England considered the enforced cession a violation of the Ghent treaty and would guarantee freedom and independence to the Creek Nation.⁠10

The commissioners, of course, had no instructions or authority for surveying the northern boundary of the cession, because the location of such a boundary had not yet been decided by the United States with the Cherokees and Chickasaws. What the United States had not authorized and the commissioners had not thought to attempt, General Coffee, in evident collusion with Gaines and Jackson, brazenly and illegally undertook. Coffee, who had failed to be selected in succession to Kershaw only because of the tardiness of Jackson's recommendation, secured his  p195 opportunity when Gaines, authorized by the Secretary of War William Crawford to appoint Coffee in case of Hawkins' death or resignation, appointed him at once without waiting for either of these anticipated events.⁠11

The pseudo commissioner went to Fort Strother the middle of January and, after waiting a week for the other commissioners who, he alleged with evident falsity, had promised to meet him there, proceeded to run the line where certain "Creek chiefs and Headmen," collected by himself, told him it should be. His line from the mouth of Will's Creek on the Coosa to Coosada Island in the Tennessee, down the Tennessee to Caney Creek, fifteen miles below the Shoals, thence by Gaines' Trace to Cotton Gin Port on the Tombigbee, enclosed in the ceded territory practically all the land claimed by the Cherokees and Chickasaws south of the Tennessee and was therefore highly pleasing to Jackson, who encouraged, as he no doubt instigated, the entire proceeding. Coffee attempted by "Dick Brown and his clan" to obviate the anticipated objection of the Cherokees to his illegal procedure and appealed to Jackson to prevent Chickasaw opposition. Jackson, in his capacity of major general commanding the southern district, responded loyally by sending a stern warning to Colbert not to interfere with Coffee, whose enclosure of alleged Chickasaw land could be remedied only by presenting, after the line was run, satisfactory proofs of owner­ship. With Colbert's reply that neither he nor any other Chickasaws had ever heard of Coffee's being a line commissioner, the matter rested until the Secretary of War had the grace to interpose his authority.⁠12

The Secretary of War had shown his antipathy to Jackson's spoliation schemes by permitting Meigs to determine the Cherokee-Creek corner on the Coosa and by instructing him in November, 1815, to collect testimony supporting Cherokee rights.⁠13  p196 These instructions Meigs had anticipated by going, on an invitation from Big Warrior, to Tuckabatchee in September to consult with the Creeks, but, finding them disposed to assert extreme claims, he appealed to Hawkins. Hawkins explained the Creek attitude as emanating from Big Warrior's ambition to be chief of all Southern Indians and advised him, in effect, to disregard the Creeks and deal only with the United States.⁠14 Meigs had an opportunity to heed this advice when in March, 1816, he arrived in Washington with a Cherokee delegation to confer with the Secretary concerning cession of their South Carolina lands.⁠15 In the two resulting treaties of March 22, 1816, the Cherokees with real or pretended reluctance, ceded for $500 their remote and practically uninhabited lands in South Carolina and received (undoubtedly in exchange) a recognition of their land claims south of the Tennessee.⁠16

The news of this treaty brought speedy and violent protests from the governor of Tennessee, from the people of Davidson County, and from Andrew Jackson. The memorial of the citizens of Davidson County and the protest of Jackson differing only in the superior vituperation of the latter, asserted that the land confirmed to the Cherokees had always belonged to the Creeks until conquered by Jackson, and intimated that Meigs had hoodwinked Congress into its surrender. Both protestants denounced the slur on the Tennessee militia implied in the provision of the treaty providing for a payment of $25,000 to the Cherokees for damages inflicted upon them by the Tennessee militia in 1814 and 1815.⁠17 The Secretary of War, disregarding  p197 the protests, applied salt to Jacksons's psychical wounds by requiring him to remove from the Cherokee land the numbers of squatters previously encouraged by Coffee and Jackson to settle there, and this requirement Jackson finally began to fulfill after vainly representing that the militia would refuse to support him. The Chickasaws, part of whose land guaranteed by Washington had been recognized by the treaty as belonging to the Cherokees, sent a delegation to Washington in June in double protest against the treaty and their agent. Agent Cocke was accused of letting his relatives settle on Indian lands, of taking Indian money to buy furniture for himself, of selling blacksmith iron and pocketing the money, and of running a tavern to the neglect of his agency.⁠18

Disregarding all protests with novel firmness, the Secretary of War instructed the commissioners (Barnett, Hawkins and Gaines) to proceed with the running of the Cherokee line as described in the treaty just concluded; after this line was run, they were to mark the Chickasaw and Choctaw lines as soon as these highly volatile objects could be located.⁠19 No trouble was anticipated from the Choctaws, to whom the United States meant to concede the boundaries it had recognized in the treaty of 1805 and then buy from them everything east of the Tombigbee; in May, 1816, commissioners were named and instructed to this end.⁠20 But the Chickasaw claims, repeatedly guaranteed and controvened, could neither be conceded nor denied. Since the only possible way out of the dilemma was to compromise or purchase  p198 the conflicting claims, the Secretary sponsored, or approved, a four-nation conference to attempt an adjustment, negotiated for the Chickasaw land with the Chickasaw delegation then at Washington, and instructed Meigs to buy the Cherokee land. All failed.

The all-Indian council, composed of the head men and warriors of the four tribes and attended by Barnett, met on May 29 and agreed on everything except essentials. The Creeks and Choctaws agreed that the Black Warrior-Cahaba divide was the Choctaw eastern boundary; the Creeks and Cherokees agreed to pool their land for occupation by both tribes; the Cherokees and Chickasaws could reach no agreement at all.⁠21 The Cherokees refused to sell either south of the Tennessee or north of it, as Meigs had with overoptimism asked,⁠22 and the Chickasaw delegation refused to negotiate.

Influenced by these untoward developments, the persistent Secretary called for a conference on September 1 at the Chickasaw council house to be attended by delegates from the four tribes, by the Choctaw commissioners, and by Jackson, David Meriwether, and Jesse Franklin as United States commissioners in charge of the proceedings. At the conference, represented to the Indians as one for adjustment of boundaries only, the commanders were instructed to secure all the land in dispute between the Cherokees and Chickasaws south of the Tennessee, all the Cherokee land north of the Tennessee, and all Chickasaw land in Tennessee and Kentucky.⁠23 Instructions to suspend the removal of intruders pending the outcome of the conference convinced Jackson that the recent Cherokee treaty had, as he had hoped, no "reality" and could be virtually, if not formally, abrogated.

For securing this abrogation, now to him a question of personal honor, Jackson wrote (with no results) scathing letters to Meigs and attempted to undermine Cherokee resolution by bribing (through Coffee) their chiefs — Brown, Lowry, Pathkiller, Ridge,  p199 and Ratcliffe — by threatening prosecution for allegedly false damage claims, and by collecting Creek affidavits affirming proper Creek owner­ship of all land south of the Tennessee.⁠24 He supplemented these diplomatic efforts by writing to James Colbert, demanding a Chickasaw cession of their land claims south of the Tennessee. The wary Chickasaws refused not only the cession but even a conference unless it were held in the center of their nation.⁠25 The Cherokees showed themselves as obdurate as the Chickasaws by rejecting the demands of Governor McMinn when he visited them the latter part of July to urge a cession.⁠26

The Chickasaw conference began at the Chickasaw council house (the home of George Colbert) on September 8, having been delayed for a week by the tardiness of the Cherokee delegates. Franklin, to Jackson's relief, was unable to be present until late in the proceedings,⁠27 but Jackson, Meriwether, Governor McMinn, Colonel Lawrence, the Choctaw commissioners, delegates from the Cherokees, Choctaws, and, of course, the Chickasaws were at hand for the opening. Instead of a Creek delegation there was a message from Big Warrior expressing regrets and, in evident expectation that the Chickasaw conference would fail, inviting all four tribes to meet at Turkey Town on October 1. Judging that Big Warrior had sent this message in collusion with the Cherokees in order to defeat the Chickasaw conference, Jackson sent out runners to bring in the Creeks. The Cherokee delegation headed by Tuckasee had been chosen at Willstown, August 20, and given positive instructions to cede no land. Jackson seems to have made no effort to exceed his instructions, although he undoubtedly sympathized with McMinn's logical argument that no Indians, however friendly, were justified in owning 8,000,000 acres of Tennessee land. Declaring that the south-of-the-Tennessee lands in dispute between the Chickasaws and the Cherokees  p200 were shown by the affidavits of the Creeks themselves to have belonged to neither Cherokees nor Chickasaws but to the Creeks, Jackson on September 12 offered to buy the claims of the two now contending parties. After two days' deliberation the Cherokee delegation, in violation of its instructions, accepted. The reasons inducing the Cherokees to this decision are plainly stated by Jackson in his report: "In concluding the treaty with the Cherokees, it was found both well and polite to make a few presents to the chiefs and interpreters." Jackson's assent to the Cherokee contention that the treaty must be subject to ratification by the Cherokee council sprang perhaps from his confidence that the council would be as amenable to reason as the delegation had been.

The Chickasaws, irritated by the Cherokee treaty, distracted by the death of a principal chief (the Factor), and aware of their strong position behind Washington's explicit guarantee, were more obdurate than the Cherokees. The Jacksonian formula for gaining a position he was forbidden to storm is revealed in his report: "It was soon found that a favorable result to the negotiation was not to be anticipated unless we addressed ourselves feelingly to the predominant and governing passions of all Indian tribes, i.e., their avarice or fear. Our instructions pointed to the former and forbade the latter: we therefore were compelled, not from choice, but from instructions, to apply the sole remedy in our power. It was applied and presents offered to the influential chiefs, amounting to $4,500, to be paid on the success of the negotiations. This measure seemed to produce some sensible effect." Jackson added that these expenditures could not be mentioned in the treaty since such publicity would destroy the influence of chiefs whom the United States might need again. The treaties, thus secured, gave to the Cherokee Nation $5,000 and a ten-year annuity of $6,000, to the Chickasaw Nation $4,500 and a ten-year annuity of $12,000.⁠28 The Cherokee treaty was signed  p201 by the twelve members of the delegation; the Chickasaw by twenty-three chiefs, including James, Levi, William, and George Colbert.

The trail of perfidy led from the Chickasaws to Turkey Town, where on September 28, 1816, the Cherokees held a meeting with the commissioners to consider ratification of the treaty into which they had been betrayed by their suborned delegation at the Chickasaw council house. The strong opposition to the treaty was reflected in the delay of ratification for a week while Jackson plied the diplomatic arts he had rehearsed among the Chickasaws. On October 4 the treaty was declared ratified with the signatures of eight chiefs. The Cherokees later charged that the "ratification" was done in meeting late at night and that only four of the chiefs voted in favor of it.⁠29

The Choctaw negotiations, suspended while the Choctaw commissioners and chiefs, for reasons not clearly evident, attended the Chickasaw conference, were resumed in the fall of 1816. The only difficulty was not about the righteousness of Choctaw claims, which the Creeks had affirmed, but about the disgruntlement of the Choctaw chiefs. Although they had secured the removal of the factory in 1816 to old Fort Confederation, it profited them little because of the depletion of their game. They wanted the agency removed to the eastern part of the nation, they were none too well pleased with the military road that was being cut through their nation to Lake Pontchartrain, and they had not yet been paid either for their services against the Creeks and the British or for the supplies they had furnished to the Kentucky and Tennessee militia going to New Orleans in 1814.⁠30  p202 These dissatisfactions having been dispelled by a judicious distribution of presents and promises, the Choctaws on October 4 signed a treaty ceding all their remaining land east of the Tombigbee, receiving therefor $10,000 and an annuity of $16,000 for twenty years.⁠31

The four cessions of 1816 exhausted the possibilities open to the United States of despoiling, on the pretext of boundary rectification, its recent comrades in arms. There remained, however, the pretext of removal. It was, indeed, his expectation of obtaining on the removal issue the Cherokee and Chickasaw Tennessee lands that had prevented Jackson from demanding them at the Chickasaw conference.⁠32 McMinn, who was Jackson's alter ego, urged the plan on the War Department in October; in November, Meigs contributed the same advice; in December, North Carolina requested removal at least from that state; and in that month the Secretary of War, apparently oppressed by these multiple importunities, instructed Meigs to acquire another cession from the Cherokees.⁠33 When the Cherokees, although still dazed from the October ratification proceeding, refused, the War Department, now under the direction of Calhoun, named Jackson, Meriwether, and McMinn to negotiate an exchange of western land for eastern.⁠34 With such unscrupulous Indian-baiters as these, the Cherokees were utterly unable to cope. They were still divided on the subject of removal, with Tuckasee and Richard Brown favoring it, while the great majority of the tribe was opposed. Their government, by their own testimony, was corrupt, and many of the chiefs were willing to take, and even to solicit, bribes. They were vulnerable on the question of removal because  p203 a portion of the tribe was living in Arkansas on lands for which they had given no compensation.

When Jackson and Meriwether opened the treaty convention on June 20, 1817, at the new agency, called Calhoun, up the Hiwassee River, there were present only fifteen chiefs, and these composed an Arkansas delegation which had stopped off on its way to Washington. Evidently the Cherokees were seeking by a boycott to avoid the cession which experience taught them invariably followed a conference. Their stratagem won nothing but a week of grace, for by June 18 all members of the council had been gathered at Calhoun, where, in unwilling audience, they were forced to hear Jackson's demands. These demands were, first, a cession compensating the United States for the western land already occupied by emigrating Cherokees, whose number Jackson, perhaps sincerely, estimated at 3,700; second, a removal to Arkansas of the entire tribe to land to be given them in exchange for their territory thus vacated. When the stunned council refused even to place these inordinate demands before the chiefs, Jackson himself called the chiefs together and addressed them. Thereupon the council presented a remonstrance, signed by sixty-seven chiefs, against the whole policy of emigration as originating in fraud and continuing contrary to tribal will.

Outraged by receiving a remonstrance where he had asked only for acquiescence, Jackson called on the signers of the document to repudiate it and when only two, Tuckasee and Glass, did so, announced that he would make a treaty with the Arkansas delegation alone. Had the Cherokee remained firm, it is possible that Jackson would not have dared carry out his threat, and even had he done so, he could only have treated for lands in compensation. But the council, having exhausted by the remonstrance its last reserve of temerity, yielded and on July 8 joined the Arkansas delegation in a treaty ceding two tracts of land in Georgia and Tennessee. For neither of these did the tribe receive any compensation, since it was assumed that compensation had already been given in the Arkansas lands.⁠35

 p204  It is clear that Jackson in securing this treaty supplemented open intimidation with wholesale hidden bribery, for secret articles provided for the payment of $4,225 to certain eastern chiefs, and even Chisholm, of the western delegation, received $1,000 to "stop his mouth and attain his consent." It was so evident, from the report of the commissioners themselves, that the treaty had been fraudulently obtained from an illegal minority that Graham, the acting secretary of war, expressed doubts of its acceptance.⁠36 He had, however, underestimated the capacity of the Senate for condoning profitable fraud.

Apparently recovering some measure of spirits after Jackson had left the nation, the Cherokee council in a meeting at Amoha (Amoyee) in September attempted to lock the doors against further thefts by forming a committee of thirteen that would manage their affairs subject to the unanimous consent of the council of chiefs. This committee formed, they sent, as an offset to the Arkansas delegation, a delegation of six to the "new President" to declare their opposition to removal and to protest the iniquities perpetrated against them at the Chickasaw council home, at Turkey Town, and at Calhoun. The delegation presented its memorial to President Monroe on November 22: on December 26 the new President proclaimed the Calhoun treaty in force.⁠37

Although during the course of negotiations at Calhoun the Cherokees had made evident the tribal opposition to emigration and had made no commitment in the treaty itself, they found in the ensuing months that the United States was apparently determined  p205 to bring emigration about. The nation looked on, sullen and helpless, while the War Department contracted for boats to transport the prospective emigrants to Chickasaw Bluffs, a ferryboat to take them across the Mississippi, and keelboats for the Arkansas, while it delivered to the agency rifles, lead, powder, kettles, blankets, and traps for their use; and, on Jackson's insistence, appointed Sam Houston as assistant to Meigs, specially assigned to promote their removal.⁠38 A significant number of them succumbed to the threats, persuasion, and bribery of Governor McMinn, who had been placed in charge of emigration, and were seduced into enrolling for the trans-Mississippi journey.

By McMinn's report 6,000, by Cherokee count 3,500, went west during 1818 and the latter half of 1817. To prevent the threatened disruption of their nation, the Cherokees, using the only weapon still remaining to them, resorted to the persecution of those who enrolled. The resulting disturbance was both a sectional and a class war, since the emigrants were generally from the poorer population of the hill districts relatively untouched by civilization, while the chiefs opposing removal were from the river towns and had, thanks to United States tutelage, accumulated property, which they were now asked by the United States to abandon.⁠39

Meanwhile, the Cherokee annuities remained unpaid, since McMinn, ostensibly because of the persecution, refused to take the census which was to determine its division between eastern and Arkansas Cherokees. In an effort to end the stalemate the Cherokee council early in 1819 appointed a delegation to confer with Secretary of War John C. Calhoun. Although the members of the delegation were promptly bribed by McMinn, they proceeded to Washington and convinced Calhoun (already penitent, perhaps, of following in the wake of Jackson's chariot) if not of the  p206 justice of their cause, at least of the reality of their woes and their wishes.⁠40 In the resulting treaty of February 27, 1819, Calhoun accepted a cession of their peripheral land as a compensation for past and future emigration and agreed on a division of annuities at the ratio of two to one.⁠41 Since there was no reason for further promoting an emigration for which payment had already been received, McMinn was instructed to discontinue the various forms of encouragement he had been extending emigration. At the price of three cessions the badgered Cherokees had finally purchased a decade of peace.

The program of removal could, of course, be applied to the other tribes as well as to the Cherokees, provided commissioners could be found with the capacity for the necessary chicanery and intimidation. Fortunately, Andrew Jackson again became available in 1818 after his return from his weird adventures in Florida. In May of that year, Calhoun, apparently judging that a man for whom he was recommending a court-martial for his invasion of Florida was a proper person to deal with the Indians, appointed Jackson to treat with the Chickasaws; as a fellow commissioner he was given former Governor Shelby, whose docility was taken for granted because of his age and the benefit to Kentucky from a Chickasaw cession. At the same time and for the same purpose McKee, Carroll, and Burnett were named to treat with the Choctaws.⁠42

The last of July, Jackson went to the Chickasaw country to arrange with James Colbert a time and place for the meeting. When Colbert, with an unexpected blindness to the attractions of emigration, seemed inclined to refuse even a meeting, Jackson bluntly informed him that the land in question rightfully belonged  p207 to the United States, the citizens of which were now determined to have it, and if the Chickasaws refused to cede, the United States would seize it by virtue of the Hopewell treaty.⁠43 The reference to the Hopewell treaty was apparently an improvisation made necessary by Monroe's deafness to his earlier contention (March, 1817) that Indians should be dealt with by legislation instead of treaties. It is unlikely that Colbert was converted to this novel interpretation of the Hopewell treaty; he consented to a conference, but only at the Chickasaw Old Town and not at Nashville, where Jackson, on the pretext of Shelby's health, wished it to be held.

On September 29, 1818, the two commissioners, apparently prepared, as Jackson insisted, to take firm ground with the Chickasaws and overcome the Colberts by touching their interest and "avarace,"º arrived at the Old Town and, finding the Indians still uncollected, busied themselves in sending to Nashville for money to pay the annuities promised for the 1816 cession. The Secretary had suggested to Jackson in July that a payment at this time might have its advantages. when the money arrived, the negotiations began, on October 12, with a demand by the commissioners for the Tennessee and Kentucky land, for the reason that it had been "sold by North Carolina and Virginia about 35 years ago to pay the debt of the Revolutionary War." This somewhat precarious legal foundation for American rights the commissioners proceeded to strengthen by the economic argument that the land in question was barren of game and therefore useless for Indian purposes. If the Chickasaws would neither sell nor exchange this land, the United States felt itself unable any longer to restrain its settlers from taking possession of it.

Finding the Chickasaws impervious to this logic, the commissioners resorted to the customary bribery: $20,000 was given to the three Colbert and two other leaders under pretext of paying for the reservations secured to them by the treaty of 1816. The reservation deeds were made out to James Jackson. After this  p208 measure of high finance the commissioners on October 19 persuaded the nation to cede the Kentucky and Tennessee land outright for a sum ultimately fixed at $300,000, to be paid in twenty installments. In addition, the commissioners agreed to pay the debts of certain leading men. The journal of the commissioners was kept secret, since it would have been injudicious to reveal to the Chickasaws the corruption of their chiefs.⁠44

The Choctaw mission of 1818 failed because (so it was explained) McKee was unpopular and the other two were lacking in the qualifications necessary for obtaining an Indian cession.⁠45 The following March, Calhoun replaced Commissioner Carroll with Andrew Jackson, who had recently displayed such signal qualifications in negotiating with the Cherokees and Chickasaws. In June, 1819, McKee sent Pitchlynn to the Lower Towns and Six Towns, where, by arguments not preserved in the records, he induced the chiefs, including Mushulatubbe and Pushmataha, to agree to a conference. But at the Choctaw council in August both of these head chiefs expressed their opposition to an exchange of land, assigning the double reason that Mississippi was their old home and that the promised land in Arkansas was inferior.⁠46 So opposed to emigration was the tribe that in the fall of 1819 it sent a protesting delegation to Washington, displaying its earnestness by paying its expenses itself when McKee refused to furnish the money.

After this the negotiations languished until October, 1820, when the chiefs were finally induced to meet a reconstructed commission of Jackson and Thomas Hinds at Doak's Stand. Puckshenubbee, head chief of the western district was the leading opponent of the treaty, displaying his opposition in an extreme form  p209  by refusing to accept rations during the negotiations. His opposition was perhaps inevitable to a cession which would all but extinguish the district of which he was chief. The half-bloods throughout the nation were opposed to emigration, since, like the Cherokee half-bloods, they were the element that had prospered most from Americanization and had accumulated property which they were unwilling to leave.

Jackson demanded from the tribe a cession of land on the Mississippi in exchange for land between the Arkansas-Canadian and the Red. This cession the Mississippi Choctaws opposed since the Arkansas land would be useless to them unless they emigrated, while the Arkansas Choctaws favored it because it would give them land where now they legally had none. When the opposition continued, Jackson finally resorted to the threat he had used so effectively against the Cherokees: he would deal with the Arkansas band alone. His somewhat tenuous justification for this action was that the Arkansas Choctaws were living on United States land for which no payment had been made. At this threat of Jackson's the alarmed Choctaws appointed a committee of the head chiefs and some delegates from the three districts to arrange a treaty. This treaty, signed on October 18, made the exchange Jackson had demanded.⁠47

From this era apparently consecrated to Indian spoliation the Creeks emerged relatively unscathed. They were not vulnerable to victimization on the plea either of rectifying a boundary or of providing for their western emigrants, and the huge cession of 1814 seemed momentarily to satisfy Georgia that the Compact of 1802 was being respected. The slaughter of the Red Sticks and the Florida migration of the survivors removed from Creek society its hunting element, on which the existence of the factory depended, and consequently the removal of that institution to Fort Mitchell in 1816 failed to restore its vitality. Both factory and fort were abandoned in 1819. On January 22, 1818, D. B. Mitchell, who had succeeded Hawkins as agent the preceding year, obtained without difficulty from the complaisant Lower  p210 Creeks a cession of two small tracts: one south of the Altamaha-Ocmulgee, the other between the Upper Ocmulgee and the Cherokee boundary.⁠48 Upon the acquisition of Florida by the United States, the Creeks promptly put forth a claim to the Seminole lands. The United States as promptly refused to admit this claim and countered with a proposal that the Creeks receive the Seminoles into their own land in return for a compensation from the United States.⁠49

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The Author's Notes:

1 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Hawkins to Meigs, September 18, 1815.

2 Ibid., Meigs to Hawkins, September 19, 1815; Indian Affairs, II, 146, Richard Riley to President Monroe, November 22, 1817.

3 Bassett, op. cit., II, 226, settlement of Creek chiefs and Headmen, January 22, 1816; Indian Affairs, 153‑54, questions to Shoe Boots and answers, October 19, 1817.

4 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Cocke to Secretary of War Calhoun, 1817. By this agreement, made at the house of the Chickasaw king, the Choctaw-Chickasaw boundary was the Oktibbeha, and a line from its source to the mouth of the St. Francis on the Mississippi.

5 See n. 1 above.

6 Royce, The Cherokee Nation, 205.

7 Bassett, op. cit., II, 214‑15, Jackson to Hawkins, August 14, 1815; ibid., II, 246‑49, Jackson to Secretary of War Crawford, June 13, 1816; I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Creek-Cherokee agreement, August 9, 1814.

8 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book C, 256, Secretary of War to Meigs, August 5, 1815. Letting Meigs determine the corner was, of course, equivalent to accepting the Cherokee contentions.

9 Heloise Abel, The History of Events Resulting in Indian Consolidation West of the Mississippi, 278; Bassett, op. cit., II, 210 n.; Woodward, op. cit., 10.

10 Bassett, op. cit., II, 211, n. 3.

11 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book C, 268, Secretary of War Crawford to Gaines, October 24, 1815; Bassett, op. cit., II, 222, Gaines to Jackson, December 12, 1815.

12 The activities and collaborations of Coffee and consonant are revealed in letters interchanged by them in January and February, 1816 (Bassett, op. cit., II, 225‑26, 228‑29, 230‑31, and 231‑33). The Jackson-Colbert interchange came on February 13 and March 1 (ibid., II, 233‑34).

13 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book C, 277‑78, November 22, 1815.

14 The correspondence between Meigs and Hawkins (both of whom were at Tuckabatchee) is in I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, under the dates September 17, 18, and 19, 1815; Meigs addressed Hawkins as "agent for Indian Affairs in the Southern Department." In the Retired Classified Files is a letter (unsigned and dated only 1815), addressed to Philemon Hawkins, elaborately setting forth the Cherokee boundary contentions.

15 Royce, The Cherokee Nation, 204‑205. South Carolina in December, 1810, had asked President Madison to extinguish Indian titles in the state and in March, 1811, had received assurances this would be done if possible. The War of 1812 intervened, but in December, 1814, Meigs had been named commissioner to negotiate for the lands. Failing, he was instructed in November to bring a Cherokee delegation to Washington.

16 Kappler, op. cit., II, 124‑26; Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plate CLXI.

17 Indian Affairs, II, 99, Memorial of Tennessee senators and representatives, April 17, 1816; ibid., II 89‑91, Davidson County memorial (no date); ibid., II, 110‑11, Jackson to Secretary of War, June 10, 1816. In a letter to Coffee, July 24, 1816 (Bassett, op. cit., II, 254‑55), Jackson denounced the treaty as a "wanton, hasty, useless thing" which it was the "hight" of his diplomatic ambition to undo. The Governor of Tennessee sent his protest with Jackson's.

18 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book C, 387, Secretary of War to Cocke, June 26, 1816.

19 Indian Affairs, II, 109‑10, Secretary of War to commissioners, April 16, 1816. Gaines resigned from the commission early in June, and the Department ruled that Coffee automatically succeeded him. Hawkins died June 6, 1816 (Merret B. Pound, "Colonel Benjamin Hawkins of North Carolina, Benefactor of the Southern Indians" The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. XIX, 1‑21, 168‑86).

20 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book C, 326‑27, Secretary of War to McKee, April 16, 1816; Indian Affairs, II, 118, Secretary of War to McKee, Coffee, and John Rhea, May 20, 1816.

21 Royce, The Cherokee Nation, 207‑208; Charles Hicks to Meigs, July 8, 1816. Barnett of the line commissioners attended the conference.

22 Indian Affairs, II, 112, 113‑14, Secretary of War to Meigs, June 24, 1816 and Meigs to Secretary of War August 9, 1816.

23 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book C, 395‑403, Secretary of War to Jackson, Meriwether, and Franklin, July 5, 1815; Indian Affairs, 102‑103.

24 Indian Affairs, II, 113‑14, Meigs to Secretary of War, August 9, 1816; Bassett, op. cit., II, 253‑56, Jackson to Coffee, July 19, 21, and 26, 1816; ibid., II, 255‑56, idem, to Secretary of War, July 24, 1816.

25 Indian Affairs, II, 102‑103, James Colbert to Jackson, July 17, 1816.

26 Ibid., II, 115, McMinn to Secretary of War, October 25, 1816.

27 Bassett, op. cit., II, 260‑61, Jackson to Coffee, September 19, 1816. Commenting on Franklin, Jackson wrote: "He is butting at everything, his horns are getting sore, and I believe he will be docile and butt no more."

28 Indian Affairs, II, 104‑105, Jackson, Meriwether, and Franklin to the Secretary of War, September 20, 1816; Kappler, op. cit., II, 133‑34, 135‑37. Meigs did not attend the conference and Cocke was present only as a spectator. Jackson, instructed to investigate the charges against Cocke, recommended his removal, and he was finally removed on December 6, 1817, after repeated demands by the Chickasaws. Cocke had defended himself against the Chickasaw charges by ascribing the enmity of Colbert and Tishomingo to his interference with their monopoly of annuities and trade. The treaty provision that there should be no more licenses given for trade among the Chickasaws tends to confirm his claims (Indian Affairs, II, 106‑107, Cocke to Secretary of War, September 22, 1816). Cocke was succeeded by Colonel Henry Sherburne.

29 Indian Affairs, II, 117, Jackson to Secretary of War, November 12, 1816; ibid., II, 145, instructions to Cherokee deputation, September 19, 1817. The chiefs whose names appear on the treaty were Pathkiller, Glass, Sour Mash, Chulioa, Dick Justice, Richard Brown, Boat, and Chickasautchee. Meigs' name is attached as a witness.

30 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, McKee to Secretary of War, July 1 and November 18, 1816; conference between Coffee and the Choctaws, August 27, 1816.

31 Kappler, op. cit., II, 137. For the military road see W. A. Love, "General Jackson's Military Road," Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, vol. XI, 403‑17.

32 Indian Affairs, II, 115, McMinn to the Secretary of War, October 25, 1816. McMinn suggested that the non­emigrating Cherokees might be given lands in severalty and have the status of free Negroes.

33 Ibid., II, 116‑17, Meigs to Secretary of War, November 8, 1816; I. O. R., War Department Letter Book C, 447, Secretary of War to Meigs, December 9, 1816.

34 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book D, 30, Secretary of War Calhoun to Governor Miller (North Carolina), April 1, 1817; ibid., 36‑37, Secretary of War to Jackson, May 14, 1817.

35 Bassett, op. cit., II, 291, note 1; ibid., 298, Jackson to Coffee, June 21, 1817; ibid., 300‑305, Commissioners to Secretary of War, July 8 and 9, 1817; Indian Affairs, II, 142‑43, Cherokee chiefs to Commissioners, July 2, 1817; Kappler, op. cit., II, 140‑44; Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plates CXII and CLXI.

36 Indian Affairs, II, 143, Graham to Commissioners, August 1, 1817. To this, Jackson replied August 19 that the treaty had been freely signed by all the Cherokee chiefs except Pathkiller, who was sick (Bassett, op. cit., II, 232).

37 Indian Affairs, II, 145‑46, instructions to Cherokee deputation, September 19, 1817; Pathkiller and Hicks to Secretary of War, October 28, 1817; Cherokee deputation to the President, and Richard Riley to idem, November 22, 1817. The instructions to this deputation were signed by Pathkiller and Charles Hicks as principal chiefs and sixteen others, including Ridge, Sour Mash, and Richard Brown. The deputation at Washington did not ask the abrogation of the treaties, but only an increase of annuity (because of their "inability in negotiation") and an equitable division of annuities with the Arkansas Cherokees.

38 Ibid., II, 144, Secretary of War to Meigs, August 9, 1817; I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Secretary of War to Meigs, September 29, 1817, and Meigs to Secretary of War, September 9, 1817.

39 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Meigs to Secretary of War, December 30, 1817, Meigs characterized the Cherokee government as a mild aristocracy which because of the number of chiefs was really a democracy.

40 Ibid., McMinn to Calhoun, January 24, 1819. McMinn gave Walker and Taylor $500 each, Harlen $250, and Adair $150; agreed to enlarge the reservations of Starr, McNair, and Spear; bribed Morgan (with a sum not stated); and tried with only partial success to bribe Lowry and Brown. Lowry, Brown, Martin, Walker, and Morgan were on the delegation.

41 Indian Affairs, II, 187‑90, Secretary of War to Cherokee delegation, February 11, 1819; Kappler, op. cit., II, 177‑79; Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plate CLXI. After the treaty, 837 Cherokees withdrew their names from the enrolment for emigration.

42 Indian Affairs, II, 173‑74, Secretary of War to Shelby and Jackson, May 2, 1818; ibid., 151‑52, idem to McKee, Carroll, and Burnett.

43 Ibid., II, 178, Jackson to Secretary of War, July 13, 1818, and Sherburne to idem, July 29, 1818; Bassett, op. cit., II, 387‑88; Jackson to Shelby, August 11, 1818.

44 The journal of the commissioners and the text of the treaty are in Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee, appendices A and B. For the Indian side of the negotiations see Gideon Linecum, "Life of Apushimataha," Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Vol. IX, 415‑85.

45 Bassett, op. cit., 406‑407, James Pitchlynn to Jackson, December, 1818. James Pitchlynn was the leader of an Arkansas delegation, which, like the Arkansas Cherokees, worked hand in hand with Jackson.

46 Indian Affairs, II, 231, James Pitchlynn to Jackson, June 22, 1819; ibid., II, 230, Choctaw Council, August 12, 1819. McKee wrote Jackson the day after the council meeting that the Six Towns had been willing to emigrate but that a few half-bloods had misrepresented Arkansas land (ibid.).

47 Kappler, op. cit., II, 192‑94; Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plate CLXIII. The journal of the negotiations is in Indian Affairs, II, 239‑43.

48 Indian Affairs, II, 153, Mitchell to Secretary of War, January 28, 1818; Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plate CLXII.

49 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book D, 178‑80, talk to Creek delegation, March 28, 1819; ibid., D, 312‑13, Secretary of War to Mitchell, August 23, 1819.

---

Thayer's Note:

a John Sevier actually died on September 24 of that year.

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