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previous: Chapter 10 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 12

 p211  XI
The Shadow of Georgia
1820‑1825

During the years 1820‑25 the Chickasaws and Choctaws, having been thoroughly plucked in the previous decade, lived quietly, if not contentedly, on their diminished domains. They quarreled, as a matter of routine, with their agents — Nicholas, who had aroused the wrath of the Chickasaw Colberts, and Ward, whom the Choctaws accused of such eccentricities as appropriating their annuities and exchanging whiskey for Choctaw property on terms highly advantageous to himself.⁠1 It is not likely that the Choctaws displayed any jubilation over the removal of their agency to the Noxubee River in 1822 or indulged in any grief when their factory was closed in the general abolition of the factory system the same year. After its removal to Fort Confederation in 1816, the factory had prospered briefly, serving both Chickasaws and Choctaws until the huge cessions of 1818 and 1820 had forced both tribes, unwillingly, into agriculture, the fruits of which were unacceptable at the government store. When it closed in 1822, it possessed merchandise valued at $16,451, peltry valued at $12,400, and debts due it of $12,402, valued correctly at nothing at all.⁠2 In 1819 the Chickasaw  p212 Bluffs factory had been removed, amid Chickasaw rejoicing, to Arkansas.

In contrast to the humdrum existence of Choctaws and Chickasaws, the current of events among Cherokees and Creeks was running swift and dangerous. By the treaty of 1819 the Cherokees had bought, at a heavy price and at almost the moment of extreme unction, a respite from the oncoming doom. The narrowness of their escape and the remembrance of their bitter humiliations in 1818 seemed to shock them into a realization of their social faults and weaknesses. After the return of the delegation from Washington, the hundred chiefs of the nation, taking counsel of their fears, had the grace to end the dissensions which had been paralyzing them and sought to reorganize their government in such a manner as to carry out better, and better reflect, the tribal will.⁠3 Retaining the principal chief as the titular head of the tribe, they created an elective bicameral legislature by making their national committee co-ordinate with the national council. Intent less on legislation than on justice, they divided the nation into eight judicial districts, in each of which a judge, a marshal, and a local council, meeting in spring and fall, were to apply the laws. For every two districts there was a circuit judge who was accompanied on his rounds by a company of light-horsemen to execute his decision, and, perhaps, to protect his life. The marshal collected, on commission, the taxes, the principal of which was a poll tax of fifty cents levied on each head of a family and on each single man under sixty.⁠4 To support the dignity of their government, they built a new capital at the junction of the Conasauga and  p213 Oostanaula rivers; to this capital they gave the name New Echota, but commonly referred to it as Newtown.⁠5 Finally, on December 11, 1821, they closed their only open boundary by agreeing with the Creeks on a dividing line from Buzzard Roost on the Chattahoochee to the mouth of Will's Creek on the Coosa, and thence down the Coosa to Fort Strother.⁠6

At the time the treaty was made, it appeared that this line would soon be a division not between Cherokees and Creeks but between Cherokees and Georgia. Georgia in 1820 was loudly clamoring for the execution of the Compact, and on August 8 of that year the President, yielding without apparent reluctance to the state's insistence, had appointed commissioners to treat with the Creeks for a land cession.⁠7 The commissioners had been instructed, on the suggestion of Georgia, to secure a cession separating Creeks and Cherokees; failing to do so, they were to accept one farther south. When they met the Creeks at Indian Springs early in January, 1821, both they and the Creeks were appalled by a Georgia presentation of claims for $450,000 allegedly due under the ancient treaties of Augusta, Galphinton, and Shoulderbone. The Creeks rightly and vainly protested that these claims had been outlawed at the treaties of New York and Colerain; the only concession they could gain was a reference of the matter to the President for determination.⁠8 The chiefs in attendance at the treaty were few in number and representing only Lower Creek towns. They preferred to make, and the commissioners were willing to accept, a cession, not of the lands along the Cherokee border, but of the territory between the Ocmulgee and the Flint. For this they were to receive $200,000 and the payment of their alleged  p214 obligations to Georgia.⁠9 It will be noticed that in the negotiation of this treaty the commissioners had no help and asked none from Agent Mitchell. Mitchell, as the result of one of the amenities of Georgia politics, had been accused by the governor of running slaves from Africa and was now busy trying to refute the charges. In February, 1821, the Secretary of War, sensitive about misconduct of Indian agents outside their own field, dismissed him from the service.⁠10

While the United States and Georgia were combining for the further undoing of the Creeks, the United States was locking horns with the rejuvenated Cherokee government about the removal of the agency, the payment of the Cherokee light-horse, and the taxing of licensed traders.

Since the War Department, on the questionable assumption that agents could exert more influence over Indians by living among them, had always insisted on keeping its agencies on Indian ground, frequent removals became necessary to prevent the agent from losing contact with his receding clients. Meigs had moved his agency up the Hiwassee early in 1817, but at the request of the Cherokees had returned to his former location. In the spring of 1820 the Secretary of War decided that the agency must be moved to ground (as yet) unceded, and after consulting all interested parties except the Cherokees themselves fixed on a location up the Hiwassee near Calhoun. The Cherokee council, with the understandable desire of keeping the agency as far away as possible, at once protested this move and when Meigs persisted, refused to grant lands for the necessary buildings on the Cherokee (south) side of the river. They finally agreed, in 1823, that, although they would not make a cession, they would not obstruct the agency if established on unceded land.⁠11

To the organization of the Cherokee light-horse the Secretary  p215  had given a grudging approval accompanied by the stipulation that it should not be used against intruders except with Meigs' permission. The Cherokees' demand that the United States pay for such services rested on the logical premise that the prevention of encroachment was an obligation imposed on the United States by treaty. However, in November, 1820, the Secretary of War, vulnerable only to his own logic, refused to pay, and there the matter rested for the time being.⁠12 The Cherokee law of October 28, 1819, pla­cing a tax of $80 on licensed traders was less a revenue measure than a tariff for the protection of local industry. Irrespective of its nature, the traders refused to pay, and Meigs suspended the law while he referred the matter to the Secretary. Eventually the issue went to the attorney general, who, on the theory (at that time believed in) that the power to tax was the power to destroy, decided against the Cherokees.⁠13

The Cherokee sallies into political science were viewed with undisguised hostility by the Georgians, who wished to see the Cherokees not improve but depart. It did not escape their watchful and suspicious notice that this departure, promised in the Compact of 1802, had remained almost wholly unaccelerated from Georgia, while Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama had, entirely or in large part, been relieved of the Cherokee incubus. Their rising indignation over this fact was intensified by those clauses in the treaty of 1810 which apparently foreshadowed Cherokee citizen­ship and permanent residence. In 1820 the governor and legislature of Georgia presented to Congress a memorial protesting against these treaty provisions and won the approval of a sympathetic House committee. In June, 1822, President Monroe, impressed by this flank attack, appointed commissioners to treat with the Cherokees for a cession of their Georgia land.⁠14

 p216  By the time the commission, delayed by deaths and resignation, which wholly changed its personnel, arranged a meeting with the Cherokees, the tribe had a new agent. Meigs died January 28, 1823, after twenty-three years of service as Cherokee agent. A Cherokee petition to the President asking for Silas Dinsmoor as Meigs' successor was promptly answered by the appointment of McMinn, apparently on the theory that the more obnoxious an agent was to his charges the more effective he would be.⁠15 In August, 1822, the Cherokees had refused Meigs' invitation to a conference, but the legislature at its fall session in October, 1822, voted to meet the commissioners, provided the conference be held at New Echota, and at the same time informed the Secretary that the tribe would never again make a land cession. When in February, 1823, McMinn (then acting agent) charged them with disrespect to the President by presuming to name the place for the conference, the Cherokees disclaimed all lack of respect, but remained resolute to negotiate only in their capital, saying that this was the custom of all nations. To this application of international law the astonished McMinn was forced to consent and in July, 1823, advised the commissioners to go to New Echota.⁠16

When the conference opened on October 6, the Cherokees, remembering certain misrepresentations in the past, success­fully insisted that the negotiations should be carried on in writing. The commissioners asked for a cession on the ground that the Cherokee holdings were out of proportion to their numbers and that the Great Father of the Universe had never intended the earth to be so unequally divided. To this the Cherokees gravely replied that they did not know the intention of the Supreme Father in this particular, but that evidently the principle had never been observed or respected by nations or individuals. The commissioners  p217 then argued that the Hopewell treaty made the Cherokees mere tenants at will, holding their land only by forbearance of the United States. Apparently doubting the efficacy of these religious and legal arguments, the commissioners had recourse to bribery, having doubtless been informed by McMinn how susceptible in the past the Cherokees had shown themselves to persuasions of this sort. In this effort they employed the Creek chief William McIntosh, who, after betraying his own tribe at Indian Springs, had now come to New Echota to perform a similar service for the Cherokees. On October 21, 1823, he wrote to John Ross, president of the national central committee:

Two days later the Cherokees definitely refused to make a cession and adhered to their decision in the face of menaces and threats until October 27, when they declared the conference closed.⁠18

Notwithstanding their firmness in parrying the clumsy thrusts of the commissioners, the Cherokees were worried by the American discovery of the Compact and anxious to have their cause  p218 presented more accurately than they had any reason to believe would be done by the commissioners or by McMinn. Accordingly, in January, 1823, they sent Ross, Ridge, Hicks, and George Lowry to Washington to see the President. They were met with a recital of the Compact and a reiteration of the demand that they cede their land and remove to Arkansas. In the course of their refusal the Cherokees said:

They asked the President to abrogate the Compact, suggesting that Georgia be given Florida as compensation for the Indian lands which the United States had promised but would never be able to deliver. They requested the removal of McMinn because of misrepresentation and misconduct of various kinds, asked that the light-horse be paid, that the agency be located according to their wishes, and that their tax on traders be upheld. Their request that the United States begin paying the $1,000 annuity promised in the treaty of 1804 brought from the startled Secretary of War a denial that there had ever been any such treaty. But the Cherokees produced their duplicates, which Jefferson and John McKee had guaranteed, and a little later a thorough hunt through the Indian records revealed the original.⁠20

After the conference had arrived at its inevitable stalemate, the Secretary of War advised Governor Troup of Georgia of  p219 the inability of the United States to secure the desired Cherokee cession. This drew from the militant Governor a denunciation of Cherokee "effrontery" and a renewed demand that the Compact be carried out. The Georgia Congressional delegation loyally and intemperately supported their Government in a protest to Monroe against the bad faith of the United States. Apparently stung by this charge of bad faith, the normally serene President sent a special message to Congress recounting the amount of Georgia territory cleared of Indian title since 1802 and contending, quite accurately, that the Compact did not commit the United States to the use of force.⁠21

Since both the President and the Secretary of War were in favor of Indian removal, it is unnecessary to consider their further efforts to secure Indian cessions as political strategy in a presidential election year. Whatever their motive or justification, they seem to have owed their opportunity and their success to the invaluable William McIntosh, who at the New Echota conference had hinted to the disconsolate commissioners that they might secure a cession from the Creeks in compensation for that refused by the Cherokees.⁠22 In accord with, if not as a result of, this hint, the President in July, 1824, appointed Campbell and Meriwether commissioners to treat with the Creeks for a minimum cession of their remaining land in Georgia; a cession of the Alabama land also would be acceptable.

If the commissioners at the time of their appointment did not know, they quickly learned that certain developments among the Creeks since the New Echota meeting threatened the defeat of their intended negotiations. On its return from its extended stay in Washington, the Cherokee delegation revealed to the Creeks the collaboration of McIntosh with the Americans and proposed that the two tribes take concerted action to protect themselves against his treachery. As a result, a Creek council at Tuckabatchee in May, 1824, followed the Cherokee example by  p220 adopting a resolution never again to cede land and to punish with death any chief or chiefs negotiating such a cession. Since the council had apparently been composed mostly of Upper Creeks, the resolution was sent to the Lower Creek chiefs, who assembled at Broken Arrow and, with only McIntosh dissenting, approved. The most active champion of the Creek resolution was Big Warrior, whose attitude reflected not only his patriotism but also his enmity toward McIntosh, who, by his influence among the Lower Creeks, was a rival for leader­ship. Uninfluenced by the Creek resolution, except to promise McIntosh protection in his expected collaboration, the commissioners proceeded with their arrangements, and in due season summoned the Creeks to a conference at Broken Arrow in December, 1824.

Presumably as a measure for strengthening their spirits for the coming ordeal, eighteen chiefs, including Big Warrior, Little Prince of Broken Arrow, and the Coweta Chief, met at the home of Sub-agent Walker (son-in‑law of Big Warrior) at Pole Cat Springs and re-enacted their resolution against land cessions.

The negotiations began at Broken Arrow December 1, with two hundred chiefs and ten thousand Americans (by commissioners' estimate) present. After the usual opening preliminaries, the commissioners declared to the Creeks that they had been conquered in the Revolution and had since held their lands as tenants at will and demanded a cession of the said lands in exchange for territory in the West. Referring to the Tuckabatchee and Pole Cat Springs resolutions, they observed that the Upper Creeks had once before, in 1813, defied the wishes of the United States and had thereby brought condign punishment on themselves. Following this address the Creeks held a council, as usual, and on December 14 returned a refusal to make any cession at all. For four days they remained firm, returning quick negatives to the repeated demands of the commissioners until on December 18 the commissioners adjourned the meeting so that Campbell might go to Washington to consult the President. To Campbell's request for authority to negotiate with the Lower Creeks alone for a cession of the Creek lands in Georgia, the President gave a prompt refusal but, either unsuspecting or indifferent to the opportunities for  p221 fraud, gave him permission to accept such a cession if approved by the entire nation. The President also agreed that Agent Crowell should be reprimanded for not aiding the commissioners and that Sub-agent Walker should be dismissed for complicity in the opposition to them.

Armed with these new weapons, Campbell returned to Georgia and summoned a Creek meeting at Indian Springs for February 7, 1825. Either because the Upper Creeks were not notified or because they boycotted the meeting, only the Lower Creek chiefs appeared at Indian Springs; of the fifty-six Creek towns then existing, only eight were represented at the conference, which the commissioners spoke of as a general assembly of the nation. Four of these towns in January had sent a petition to the President for the removal of Big Warrior and had authorized McIntosh and seven others to go to Washington for the purpose of ceding the lands desired. From an assembly so composed Campbell had no difficulty securing all he asked. In the treaty of February 12, 1825, the partial representation of the Lower Creeks ceded to the United States not only the Georgia lands but practically all of the Alabama territory inhabited by the Upper Creeks; in return, the United States promised an equal acreage between the Arkansas and Canadian rivers. McIntosh received for his collaboration his expected required in the form of a payment of $25,000 for his small reservation.⁠23

When the Senate ratified and the President John Quincy Adams promulgated this measure of iniquity over the protests of the Creeks and their agents, the outraged nation finally took the law into its own hands. On May 1 a company of warriors, sent down from Tuckabatchee, surrounded the house of McIntosh, set fire to it, and killed both McIntosh and another of the treaty makers as they fled from the burning building. They also killed one son-in‑law of McIntosh and tried to kill another. These executions were ordered by a council meeting at Tuckabatchee, but whether this was a national council or (as is likely) one of the Upper Creeks alone, it is impossible to say. In all probability, even had there been no council action, McIntosh would have  p222 been killed. For Big Warrior had died just as the treaty was being signed, and his death had inflamed the indignation aroused by the treaty. The Creek council declared that while it would not oppose the United States in war, it would neither carry out the treaty nor emigrate.

McIntosh's son hurried to Washington, where he demanded vengeance and the Creek annuities. His outcries attracted the attention and aroused the suspicion of the Puritan President who after investigation refused to execute a treaty so fraudulently obtained. In the fall of 1825 an authorized Creek delegation, stabilized by two Cherokee secretaries, went to Washington, where in January, 1826, it secured an abrogation of the treaty of 1825 ceding in return all the Creek lands (so the delegation thought) in Georgia. For this cession the Creeks received $247,600 in cash, and a perpetual annuity of $20,000.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book E, 231‑32, 285‑86, Secretary of War to Nicholas, March 18, 1822, and June 20, 1822; ibid., 177‑78, 207‑208, idem to Ward, October 25, and December 21, 1821. Nicholas had succeeded Sherburne, who had resigned in 1820. Nicholas resigned in 1822 and was succeeded by B. F. Smith. Ward was the successor of John McKee, who had resigned in 1821 to enter Alabama politics.

2 Indian Affairs, II, 5.

3 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Meigs to Secretary of War, November 22, 1822. Meigs said that the Cherokees had about one hundred chiefs and that these were controlled by some twenty "speculating individuals," some of whom were making fortunes by selling whiskey. Not all Cherokee dissensions disappeared at this time. In January, 1821, Lower Cherokee chiefs representing eighty families appealed to the United States for a reservation south of the Tennessee and in November, 1822, proposed to sell their share of Cherokee land and emigrate. Both proposals were rejected (Indian Affairs, I, 502‑506).

4 Ayers Collection No. 689, John Howard Payne Papers concerning the Cherokee Indians, II, 10; Indian Affairs, II, 279‑83, laws of the Cherokee nation; Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, 106‑107. In 1820, Pathkiller was the principal chief, John Ross, president of the national council, Alexander McCoy and Elijah Hicks, clerks of the committee and council. The Cherokee treasury was at Fortville (I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Hicks to McMinn, May 20, 1823).

5 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Meigs to Secretary of War, December 15, 1819.

6 Ibid., treaty made between Creeks and Cherokees at William McIntosh's, December 11, 1821.

7 The commissioners appointed were Andrew Pickens and Thomas Flournoy. Both resigned, their place being filled by D. M. Forney and David Meriwether. Before resigning (as a result of friction with the governor of Georgia), Flournoy made the arrangements for a treaty.

8 These claims were audited later by a commission, which allotted Georgia $25,000. In their report the commissioners expressed the opinion that the Georgia claims were excessive by $350,000.

9 Indian Affairs, II, 249‑55; Kappler, op. cit., II, 195‑96; Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plate CXXII.

10 The correspondence concerning Mitchell's slave-running activities is in I. O. R., War Department Letter Book D, 377‑88, 391, 401‑402, and in ibid., Retired Classified Files, December 4 and 25, 1817, and January 1, 1818.

11 The correspondence concerning the removal is in ibid., War Department Letter Book D, 405‑408, 449, and ibid., Retired Classified Files, under dates of May 18, 1820, August 14, 1820, and October 6, 1823.

12 Ibid., War Department Letter Book E, 30‑31, Secretary of War to Meigs, November 14, 1820; ibid., Retired Classified Files, Pathkiller to McMinn, October 11, 1823.

13 Ibid., Retired Classified Files, Cherokee delegation to Secretary of War, February 25, 1824; Decision of Attorney General Wirt, April 2, 1824.

14 The commissioners appointed were John Floyd, Freeman Walker, and J. A. Cuthbert; Walker and Cuthbert declined, and D. G. Campbell and David Meriwether were named to succeed them; David Meriwether died, and James Meriwether succeeded; finally Floyd resigned, and his place was not filled.

15 Meigs had been in very poor health for two years before his death. In 1821 the Secretary of War had asked McMinn to take charge of the agency in case of Meigs' death, and this McMinn did in February, 1823, before his formal appointment in March.

16 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, John Ross et al. to Secretary of War, August 23‑24, 1822; Meigs to idem, November 22, 1822; Cherokee chiefs to McMinn, April 25, 1823.

17 Ibid., McIntosh to Ross, October 21, 1823.

18 Indian Affairs, II, 465‑72, correspondence between the commissioners and the Cherokee council, October 4‑27, 1823; I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, commissioners to Cherokee council, October 25, 1823; Georgia had two agents at this conference, and they took an active part in the proceedings.

19 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Cherokee delegation to Secretary of War, February 11, 1824; Indian Affairs, II, 474.

20 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, idem to idem, February 25, 1824; Indian Affairs, II, 473‑74, idem to President, January 19, 1824. McMinn died November 17, 1824.

21 Richardson, Messages and Papers, II, 234‑37, Monroe to Congress, March 30, 1824; Indian Affairs, II, 475‑76, Troup to Secretary of War, February 28, 1824. The Cherokee delegation, still in Washington, replied to the Georgia protest on April 16.

22 Indian Affairs, II, 464, Campbell to Secretary of War, November 18, 1823.

23 Ibid., II, 568‑84.

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