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previous: Chapter 6 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 8

 p139  VII
Debts, Bribes and Cessions
1803‑1811

Among the Southern Indians prior to 1803, only the Creeks and Cherokees had experienced the loss of territory, the one to the covetousness of Georgia and the other to Tennessee. From neither could the Indians expect any future surcease of pressure, since Georgia now had the Compact as a lever for its demands, and in Tennessee the insatiable speculators were still intent on engrossing the land, possession of which, technically gained under the North Carolina confiscation of 1783, had been denied, or at least postponed, by the Hopewell treaty. Moreover, in 1802 the Choctaws and Chickasaws became for the first time subject to pressure when news of the retrocession of Louisiana caused Jefferson to believe that the left bank of the Mississippi must be cleared of Indian title preparatory to its defensive settlement against the strong and inconstant French beyond.⁠1 In addition to these unpleasing prospects, the Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws were beginning to be importuned by Panton, Leslie and Company for tribal land cessions in payment for the individual trading debts eluding collection. Subjected to pressure from all these directions, the harassed tribes found it impossible long to preserve their domains undiminished.

It was apparently Jefferson's belief that, although sheer obstinacy might cause the Indians to refuse land cessions to a benevolent government, their primitive honesty would incline them to  p140 pay their debts. He would encourage the Indians first to accumulate these useful debts at the government stores and then to liquidate them by land cessions.⁠2 This plan promised quicker results than could be obtained under the Federalist program which deferred the denuding of the Indian until he became civilized. Already on April 30, 1802, Congress, after scrutinizing the records of the existing factories, had given them a year's lease of life, presumably in recognition of their diplomatic importance since they were apparently without any mercantile functions.⁠3 But for the two new factories which Jefferson decided to establish for the Choctaws and Chickasaws, trade would be merely a by-product of the debt promotion. The inevitable site for the Chickasaw post was Chickasaw Bluffs; the location of the Choctaw factory at St. Stephens was dictated neither by nearness to the Choctaws nor by accessibility from United States trading centers, but by the hope that so placed it might block the trade of Panton, Leslie and Company from Mobile.⁠4

 p141  But, as a matter of fact, it was Panton, Leslie and Company which enabled Jefferson to secure his cession without recourse either to the slow process of civilization or to the more rapid method of debt. For Panton, Leslie and Company already had the debts; all that was necessary was for the Indians to make their cessions to the United States and pay their debts with the money received.⁠5 This felicitous arrangement seems to have first suggested itself to Secretary Dearborn when in May, 1802, he was informed by John McKee, the able and departing agent for the Choctaws, that Panton, Leslie and Company were seeking from the Choctaws a land cession, to which the United States had given approval through him (McKee) in 1797.⁠6 After mastering his horror over this evidence of unpatriotic collusion between his Federalist predecessor and an alien merchant, Dearborn suggested that, although the improved moral standards incident to a Republican regime forbade the countenancing of an Indian cession to the firm, the sound principle of debt collecting might be preserved by its payment with funds secured by a cession to the United States. As a measure of accommodation to the Choctaws, he was willing to accept a cession between the Tombigbee and the Alabama; when he heard of the retrocession of Louisiana, he desired, instead, a cession on the Mississippi littoral. General Wilkinson, then among the Choctaws on the business of running the lines between them and the United States, was instructed to work with Dinsmoor, the new agent, in securing Choctaw approval; James Robertson was sent to the Chickasaws in December, 1802, as a sorely needed reinforcement for Agent Mitchell. Both tribes were  p142 under pressure from Forbes, who saw in the new arrangement the only practicable method of bringing about a reassociation with funds lost for many years.⁠7

Meanwhile, Hawkins, still trying for the Ocmulgee lands, requested Forbes to come and exert over the reluctant Creeks such influence as a creditor might naturally be supposed to have over a debtor. Forbes arrived among the Creeks when they were at Acheaubofau holding a conference with the four nations to consider a common policy on land cessions. To this conference boldly came William Augustus Bowles, apparently aware that Hawkins and Forbes were planning to seize him, but trusting in the devotion of his Miccosukee, the support of the Cherokees, whom he had summoned by special invitation, the aid of his Creek partisans, and probably the Creek custom that no act of violence be done in a peace town. All these things failed him. Forbes alienated the Seminoles by stipulating the elimination of Bowles as a prerequisite to accepting a land cession which, in the hope of getting trade restored, they were offering in payment of their debts and reparation for their robberies; the Cherokees (with whom Bowles lodged) apparently became convinced that he was an impostor when he was unable to show English credentials; his Creek supporters had boycotted the meeting as they did all meetings which discussed land sales; and Opoie Micco was so goaded by Hawkins that he finally ordered the seizure in a town dedicated to peace. The chiefs, embarrassed by the possession of their captive taken without premeditation, received and accepted from their thrifty agent the cynical advice to turn him over to Spain for the offered reward.⁠8

 p143  Having thus consigned their would-be director general to a living death, the council proceeded to adopt a resolution that land sales in the future would be valid only if made by the entire nation. Forbes advised the Creeks to pay their Panton, Leslie and Company debts by selling the Ocmulgee land to the United States rather than by ceding Florida land to himself, but finally agreed (with the Seminoles) to take a cession on the Ochlocknee. The Chickasaws complained of the improper conduct of their agent, Samuel Mitchell and the Choctaws complained that their boundaries were being incorrectly run and marked.⁠9 The Cherokees complained that Meigs was threatening to take by force the road from Tellico to Athens (Georgia), which they had refused, and interpreted Hawkins' reassurances as advice not to grant.

The demand of the United States for the "Georgia Road" was based on the unwarranted assumption that it, by providing a shorter haulage for supplies to the government factory, would breathe new life into the moribund institution. Uninfluenced by such a prospect, the Cherokee council on April 20, 1803, had delivered a refusal so unanimous as to discourage any man less persistent than Meigs, who merely reported to Dearborn that their action reflected not hostility but apprehension. As a measure presumably of instilling in the tribe a more trusting spirit, Dearborn instructed Meigs to bribe Vann and other influential chiefs. Meigs apparently gave his attention to this diplomatic detail while the other chiefs were absent at Acheaubofau, only to find all his clandestine missionary work rendered vain by the report of the returning Cherokees that Hawkins had approved their refusal. When, in answer to his protest, Hawkins sent a written disavowal of any such approval, the Cherokees, rendered helpless by bribery and fearful of too greatly offending, gave way, and in October ceded the right of way. The Cherokees came to this decision on the occasion of receiving their annuities, which they observed were falling  p144 largely into the hands of Vann and his friends. After the concession, Meigs recommended the worthy Vann as a proper person to be employed in opening the road.⁠10

While Forbes was among the Creeks urging the sale of their Ocmulgee lands, assisting in the undoing of Bowles, and tentatively agreeing with the Seminoles on a land cession in Florida, his agent, William Simpson, had conferred with Dinsmoor, Wilkinson, and the Choctaws in the Choctaw country. In September, Forbes came to take part in the discussions. A tribal cession was made difficult by disunity; none of the three divisions showed enthusiasm over relieving the others by a sale of its own territory. The willingness of the southeastern district to pay its debts by a cession of land between the Tombigbee and Alabama was perhaps induced by the knowledge that this territory was claimed by the Creeks.⁠11 The refusal of the United States to buy did not emanate from any reluctance to accept a clouded title, but from a desire for land on the Mississippi. As a preliminary to securing this, Wilkinson, with unwonted distrust of his own art of persuasion, in the fall of 1802 sent Homastubbee, the chief of the northern district, in which the desired lands lay, to Washington with a delegation of his chiefs to see the President.⁠12

Pressure upon the Choctaws lightened with the Louisiana Purchase, but Cherokees and Creeks found no rest from the demands of a land-hungry country. In the spring of 1804, Meigs and Daniel Smith, as United States commissioners, invited the Cherokees to confer with them on the subject of ceding the Wafford tract in Georgia and their Kentucky and Tennessee lands north of line from the Duck to the Hiwassee. As a measure for promoting this additional subtraction from the Cherokees' dwindling domain, the commissioners were authorized to bribe Vann again: two or three hundred dollars was the amount estimated necessary to secure from him a second betrayal of his countrymen.⁠13 Suspecting, and  p145 perhaps knowing, that their chiefs were being bribed, the Cherokees countered by delegating all tribal business to Cheistoya, Broom, and Taluntuskee.⁠14 Whether the authority of Little Turkey had been terminated by his death or resignation it is impossible to say; the triumvirate was apparently a device for bridging the interval till his successor might be chosen. As an apparent result of the Cherokee defense measure, the commissioners in the treaty of Tellico, October 13 and 14, were able to secure only the small Wafford tract in Georgia; the Cherokees not only refused the larger cession, but on the day following the treaty entered a protest against the contemplated sale by the Chickasaws of land claimed by the Cherokees.⁠15

We may legitimately suspect that the enterprise of getting the Ocmulgee lands from the Creeks had languished not only because of Wilkinson's preoccupation with the Choctaws, but also because of the virulence of Creek opposition and Hawkins' disapproval of Forbes' Seminole grant.⁠16 Opposition to land cessions was but one item in a chronic anti-Americanism which condemned the entire progressive movement and demanded a return to the primitive life of communism and isolation. The heart and soul of the movement was the aged and unrepentant Tame King, whose avowed purpose was to deliver the Creeks from evil by chasing Hawkins back to his ancestral home. From Opoie Micco, nominal chief of a nation hopelessly divided, Hawkins and Meriwether, who had been sent by Dearborn to assist him, had secured a promise to lead a Creek delegation to Washington; but the trip continued to be postponed, ostensibly because of deaths and sickness  p146 in the delegation, actually, perhaps, because of internal dissensions. Finally, in November, 1804, Hawkins met Opoie Micco and some of the opposing chiefs at his agency on the Flint and, overruling the chief's desire for a further postponement because of the small Creek representation, pressed for a decision. The bedeviled speaker braved the turbulence of the opposition so far as to offer a cession of the land for enough to pay their debts and give each town an annuity of $500; the Forbes purchase, he hinted, had already materially decreased the debt, and, since the United States was selling land for two dollars an acre, it could afford to pay the price asked. At the introduction of this mercenary note into the proceedings, Hawkins apparently became so agitated as to forget his instructions and offered the Creeks $200,000 in United States stock at 6 per cent interest for the land desired. This Opoie Micco continued to refuse until the conference began to experience the throes of dissolution, when, with an unexplained change of heart, he accepted, subject to formal ratification at Tuckabatchee.⁠17

The agitation for a Choctaw cession, which Dearborn had apparently permitted to languish after the Louisiana Purchase, had been continued by creditor Forbes with so much vigor that in August, 1804, the United States received a petition secured by Forbes from the northern district of the tribe asking the United States to buy the land between the Big Black and the Yazoo so that the district could pay its debts. Unable to neglect any opportunity of securing land, even if unneeded and undesired, Dearborn appointed James Robertson and Dinsmoor commissioners to treat with both Choctaws and Chickasaws. They were to secure, if possible, all the Choctaw Mississippi front, and all the Chickasaw front north of a line from the Duck to the Mississippi, as well as their land northeast of the Tennessee. The past friendliness of the two tribes would be rewarded by allowing them a price of two cents an acre for their lands on the Mississippi, which was double the price usually paid for Indian land. For the other Chickasaw lands such a high price was unjustified even by sentiment, since the lands in question were claimed by the Cherokees. Ethics IMAGE 1 IMAGE 2: move it to Chapter 8!  p147 forbade the United States to buy from any one the property of another except at a reasonable price.

For the Choctaw conference to be held at St. Stephens in June, Dinsmoor went to New Orleans and brought in a stock of provisions such as no Indian and few commissioners had ever seen before.⁠18 Whether by his extraordinary outlay Dinsmoor hoped to strengthen the diplomatic power of the commissioners or to soften the hearts of the Indians, his labor was done in vain, for to the chagrin of the well-fed commissioners, the chiefs of the northern district refused to make any cession at any price. Either the chiefs had experienced a change of heart for which there is no explanation in the scanty remaining records, or else the petition of the proceeding year had been fraudulently obtained. It is not to be supposed that the commissioners relied exclusively upon entertainment to alter the determination of the strangely resolute chiefs, but made liberal use of those allied arts of bribery and intimidation, which had become basic ingredients of American Indian diplomacy. Finally, perhaps when the larder began to show signs of complete exhaustion, they adjourned the futile conference till November and set out for the Chickasaws.

 p148  Although the commissioners disregarded their instructions to hold the Chickasaw conference in the "principal town" in favor of a meeting at the Bluffs, where the factory provided greater facilities of food and drink, it may be assumed that they did not neglect Dearborn's injunction to inform Colbert and other reluctant chiefs "early in the negotiations" that they could expect special consideration "for their friendly dispositions." The conference, which opened July 17, attracted, in addition to Colbert and other chiefs, former Agent John McKee, a representative of John Forbes, and a throng of traders bent on vending their liquid wares. No amount of "consideration," however, could induce the chiefs to cede any land except that northeast of the Tennessee. Of the $20,000 that they were to receive for this disputed territory, the Chickasaws were to pay Forbes $12,000 in liquidation of their debts. On the necessity of paying these private debts through a tribal land cession, Colbert and Simpson, by an interchange of letters (read at the conference on Colbert's insistence), had agreed, but the Chickasaws questioned unavailingly their obligation to assume the debts of the white traders among them and protested success­fully the payment of interest, the justification for which was beyond their understanding. With a caution inherited perhaps from his Scotch father, Colbert insisted that the $20,000 should be paid in specie in the Chickasaw country. He would not give Simpson an order on the United States for the amount due, but did give him a written promise to pay as soon as the money arrived. Future debts, Colbert grimly commented, would have to be paid by the individuals contracting them. The treaty, signed July 23, 1805, stipulated that, in addition to the $20,000 for the land, the United States should pay chiefs Colbert and Ockoy $1,000 each for services (unspecified) and give King Tinebe an annuity of $100 as a "testimony to his personal worth and friendly disposition."⁠19

 p149  After the failure of the Choctaw conference in June, Dearborn had upbraided the northern chiefs for their "unmanly and dishonest behavior," declaring his intention to charge them with the entire cost of the conference, including, presumably, the extensive bill of fare for the commissioners themselves. On their return to the Choctaws in November, the commissioners were instructed to negotiate with the southeastern chiefs for a cession of the Tombigbee lands, which the United States had formerly refused to buy. But no such cession was made, whether because the commissioners broke their instructions and refused to buy or because the Choctaws, perhaps as a result of Creek protests, refused to sell. Only the strenuous efforts of Forbes, seeing the payment of his Choctaw debts a second time eluding him, finally induced the Choctaws to grant and the commissioners to accept a cession of land along the Florida border between the Mississippi and the Tombigbee. Of the $50,500 to be given for this territory, $48,500 was to go directly to Forbes for the debt. The tribe received an annuity of $3,000, and three of the chiefs were to receive $500 each, plus an annuity of $150. Samuel Mitchell, their former agent, was one of the witnesses to this treaty, into which the Choctaws, in humor or humanity, had a provision inserted for the support of his two illegitimate Choctaw children.⁠20

While Robertson and Dinsmoor were regaling themselves and practicing among the Choctaws and Chickasaws those arts of diplomacy deemed most suitable for Indian comprehension, Hawkins and Meriwether, their former treaty rejected by the Senate, continued to beset the distracted Creeks for a cession of the Ocmulgee lands. A council called by Opoie Micco at Tuckabatchee on June 26 to hear them on "the subject of their mission" seems to have attracted a full attendance except from the Creeks themselves. In addition to Hawkins and Meriwether, there were  p150 present certain commissioners from Georgia, urging, to the dismay of the Creeks and the exasperation of Hawkins, the fulfillment of the twice-outlawed "treaties" of Galphinton and Shoulderbone. Thirty-seven Cherokee chiefs attended for the double purpose of consulting Opoie Micco on the then prospective sale by the Chickasaws of land allegedly Cherokee, and of enjoying a vacation from the demands of Meigs and Smith for another land cession. A delegation was there from the "western nations" seeking to enlist the Creeks in an allied war against the Osages, who at that time seem to have been disporting themselves with even more than their customary unneighborliness, Delegations from the Chickasaws and Choctaws were expected, although it is not evident that they ever arrived. On the other hand, the meeting was boycotted by the Fat King and his adherents fanatically opposed to the civilizing program, of which land cessions seemed to be a fundamental feature.

The meeting listened, doubtless with sympathy, to the representatives of the "western nations," who claimed with a probable lack of precision that their talk had already been taken by fourteen nations, including the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Delawares, and Shawnees. Although war against the Osages was always popular and generally in progress among the Southern Indians, the Tuckabatchee meeting seems to have taken no official action, owing doubtless to the efforts of Hawkins, who, with the other agents, had been instructed to prevent an attack on a tribe now, since the Louisiana Purchase, under the protection of the United States. The Cherokee delineation of Chickasaw iniquity caused the Creeks to become greatly agitated but apparently produced no additional activity. The chief worry of Opoie Micco was the defiant and disdain­ful absence of the opposition, without whose presence no legal cession could be made. Having in vain sent an express to the Fat King to ascertain his reasons for so conducting himself, Opoie Micco proposed, since the opposition would not come to the council, to take the council to the opposition and to hold a meeting at Ossitchee. Hawkins vetoed this proposal, remembering certain insults and indignities tendered the commissioners at that place the preceding year and likely to be  p151 repeated and multiplied at a second opportunity. His counsel that Opoie Micco take his warriors and compel the opposition to come to Tuckabatchee was rejected by Opoie Micco for the less logical and less impossible project of holding an exclusively Indian meeting with the opposition at Cusseta.

As a preliminary to this meeting, called for July 23, Hawkins repeated to the chiefs, at Opoie Micco's request, the talk he had made at the Tuckabatchee conference to the effect that they should act without regard to the opposition and should make the land cession in return for the help of the United States in promoting civilization among them. The Cusseta meeting, as was to be expected, settled nothing. The opposition attended (since Hawkins was not there), stormily opposed a cession of any kind, and at one time in a caucus among themselves drafted a letter to Hawkins threatening to run him out of the Creek Country or confine him among the Upper Creeks. Opoie Micco had enough restraining influence to prevent this composition from being sent. He called another Creek meeting for Tuckabatchee in ten days, at which time the attending chiefs authorized the sending of a delegation to Washington to confer with President Jefferson.⁠21

The Cherokees went home from Tuckabatchee perhaps exulting that they were too late for the conference which they had promised to hold with Meigs and Smith at Watkin's Ferry on the Hiwassee on July 2. They did not, however, escape the subject, for the commissioners continued to batter at them throughout the summer and into the fall of 1805. The triumvirate appointed the preceding year had resigned their powers to the national council, which chose Black Fox (Inali) as chief of the nation succeeding Little Turkey. This measure apparently made no contribution to healing the schisms or composing the factions rending the nation. Taluntuskee and Doublehead were so at odds with the national council that they fell an easy prey to Meigs' by no means subtle exercises in bribery. Vann was a chronic traitor, whose services Meigs could command any time he needed subterranean assistance.  p152 With the help of these worthies, Meigs and Smith finally gathered the elusive Cherokees together and inveigled them into two treaties at Tellico on October 25 and 27. By these treaties the hapless Cherokees ceded all their remaining land north of the Duck and a line thence to the Hiwassee and, in addition, the right of way for two roads, one from Stone's River to the Georgia Road and the other from Tellico through Muscle Shoals to the Tombigbee. Provisions in the treaty for certain reservations designed for Doublehead and Taluntuskee reveal the ethical machinery of the negotiations; other chiefs doubtless received their rewards in ways less susceptible to investigation by their betrayed countrymen. For their concessions at these times the Cherokees received (in addition to the bribes) a payment of $15,600 and an annuity of $1,000. They also had the comfort of knowing that some of the money was for land claimed by the Chickasaws and already sold by them.⁠22

The Creek delegation which journeyed to Washington in the fall of 1805 had been carefully screened to include only chiefs thoroughly committed to "co‑operation" with the United States. William McIntosh, just beginning his parasitic career, headed the delegation and was its spokesman in interviews with the President on November 2 and 3. Jefferson requested not only a re‑cession of the Ocmulgee lands (at a lower price) but also the road through Creek territory from the Ocmulgee to Fort Stoddart, which Hawkins had assured the Creeks they could defer. McIntosh in reply asserted that the United States, with the Tennessee River navigation and the Natchez Trace, did not need the road it was asking, which, if it were granted, would only cause trouble between Creeks and travelers. He did not refuse a re‑cession of the Ocmulgee land but insisted on the original price, saying that the Creeks had previously sold their land too cheaply but had learned from half-bloods and white men what it was really worth. The result of this verbal fencing was that on November 15 the Creeks signed a treaty granting the road and re‑ceding their land east of  p153 the Ocmulgee in return for an annuity of $12,000 for eight years, to be followed by one of $11,000 for the next ten.⁠23

Although the Cherokees had advanced considerably in civilization since the United States had begun its instruction in 1792, they were still too primitive to appreciate the technique of bribery and corruption as practiced by Meigs and Smith. Popular opinion was forming to ostracize the offenders, and the national council was deliberating their death. Under such uncongenial conditions, the United States, still unsated, thought it best to conduct its further negotiations in Washington, where the chiefs would be unhampered by vulgar disapproval of their conduct. Doublehead, Vann, and Taluntuskee led the delegation which accompanied the faithful Meigs to the seat of government, and there on January 7, 1806, ceded to the United States their land between the Duck and the Tennessee.⁠24 The ease with which this cession was obtained is not to be learned wholly by the reservations made for certain chiefs nor by the $100 annuity given to Black Fox. The land ceded had all been claimed by the Chickasaws and sold by them in part to the United States the preceding year. It was territory that the Cherokees had perhaps never owned, had probably never occupied, and would, since the Chickasaw cession, certainly never possess. The Cherokees were, therefore, perhaps justified in considering the $10,000 they received as in the nature of a gratuity.

The epidemic of land cessions which for several years had been devastating the Southern Indians ended with the Cherokee pact of 1806, and seven years passed before a Southern tribe suffered a recurrence of the plague. Indian respite during this period was the result not of Indian resistance, but of the forbearance of the United States, distracted by a vain struggle for neutrality, an assertion of doubtful claims to a portion of West Florida, and the  p156 prosecution of an alleged conspiracy on the part of Aaron Burr.

The passing of the plague left behind it many dissatisfactions and discontents. After the cession of 1805, Hawkins returned to his task of promoting civilization and discord among the Creeks, but his illness in 1806 gave his charges the pleasure of a postponement in the opening of the road they had so reluctantly granted in their last treaty.⁠25 It was probably with equal satisfaction that in May, 1806, they refused a demand by Forbes that they pay, out of the proceeds of their Ocmulgee lands sale, the remainder of their debt to him; from their treaty of cession they had, with Hawkins' approval and probably at his suggestion, omitted any stipulation for such a payment, and they now contended that the debt had been cancelled by the Seminole cession.⁠26

Among the Choctaws, Dinsmoor was absent from his agency the greater part of 1806, presumably recuperating from his diplomatic and gastronomical efforts of the preceding year. Without unmerited disparagement of the agent, it might be said that Choctaw affairs ran as smoothly without as with him, but exaggerated rumors of Spanish overtures caused the War Department in September, 1806, to order him back to his agency.

There was considerable discontent among the Choctaws with the treaty of 1805, but apparently it found its only active expression in a refusal (in all probability temporary) by certain disgruntled chiefs to accept presents proffered by the United States.⁠27 There is no evidence that the Choctaws experienced any distress because the treaty failed to be ratified and Forbes' debt was consequently left unpaid.

 p157  The Chickasaws in May, 1806, received a new agent in the person of Thomas Wright, Silas Mitchell having departed after his discharge without leaving behind him any of those pledges of affection such as had signalized his residence among the Choctaws.⁠28 The Chickasaws were feeling outraged by the Cherokee presumption in ceding territory already ceded by the Chickasaws and apprehensive over their cession of land the Chickasaws still retained. With Dearborn's assurance that purchase of the Cherokee claim did not constitute a denial of Chickasaw owner­ship, Colbert seemed temporarily appeased.⁠29

Among the Cherokees the most evident aftermath of the January treaty was an increasing condemnation of the chiefs who had negotiated it. In the summer of 1807 came the killing of Doublehead, who had formerly faithfully defended and lately faithlessly betrayed the interests of his countrymen. Since the offender had recently supplemented treason with murder, it is uncertain whether his death resulted from private vengeance or public decree.⁠30 The death of Doublehead was an embarrassment to Meigs, whom he had promised (doubtless for a consideration) to aid in running the east line of the recent cession in such a way as to enclose considerably more land than had been ceded. Deprived of Doublehead's services, Meigs was compelled to have recourse to the more open and less promising method of applying to the national council, which evasively withheld its consent. Undismayed by this lack of co‑operation, Meigs collected a coterie of chiefs open to inducements — Black Fox, Glass, Turtle at Home, Richard Brown, and Sowolotah — with whose connivance and aid he and James Robertson on September 7 ran the more ample line. The open "convention" which recorded this performance awarded the Cherokee tribe $2,000 for the land taken; a secret provision gave $1,000 and two rifles to the chiefs "transacting the business." Meigs, as success­ful in prophecy as in diplomacy, commented  p158  that the co‑operating chiefs would have their hands full explaining to the Cherokees and, consequently well deserved this "silent" consideration.⁠31 In contrast to this transaction, the treaty of December 2, ceding to the United States a small tract on Chickamauga Creek for iron works, appears a reputable affair, and the opposition of Vann indicates that it was in the tribal interest.⁠32

The experiment in corruption performed by Meigs had involved, mainly or at least most success­fully, the chiefs of the Lower Cherokees, who at one time had shown the most unrelenting hostility to the United States. These, however, owed their selection for this honor neither to their present habitation nor former belligerency, but to their control of the tribal government. Their position not only exposed them to the seductions of bribery but also permitted them to distribute among themselves and their friends the annuities sent to the tribe as a whole. The resentment of the Upper Cherokees against this monopoly of annuities (and perhaps against the monopoly of bribes) reached such a height early in 1808 that they sent a delegation to Washington to explain their grievances. To Jefferson, the delegation, after recounting the manifold derelictions of the Lower Cherokees (tactfully omitting the subject of bribery), proposed that the two districts dissolve the political bonds which had hitherto connected them and that the Upper Cherokees become citizens of the United States. Jefferson's approval was burdened with the impossible condition that the two districts agree on a dividing line; the opposition to a division, he suggested, might, if a minority, express its disapproval by removing west of the Mississippi, where it would receive new territory in exchange for that abandoned.⁠33

For Jefferson, the idea of a Cherokee division had little interest and that of United States citizen­ship for the Cherokees no interest at all, since neither afforded any prospects of land cession,  p159 and the former, as Meigs warned him, effectually denied it. What he desired was Cherokee removal, since thereby the coveted Indian territory could be secured more readily and completely than by the tried methods of civilization, coercion, and corruption, although these might, and in fact did, continue to be useful as accessories.⁠34 Following the Washington conference, while the Upper Cherokees, in accordance with Jefferson's advice, attempted to reach an agreement with the Lower Cherokees on a tribal division, Meigs, in accordance with his instructions, investigated and promoted the sentiment for tribal removal. Black Fox, Taluntuskee, Glass, John Jolly, and other chiefs who had shown themselves amenable to persuasion on former occasions, now, doubtless for the same reasons, became advocates of removal. At an illegal and clandestine council, held in concert with Meigs in Tennessee, Black Fox named a delegation to visit Washington and sign an agreement for removal. But the resolute resistance of Major Ridge, the killer (or executioner) of Doublehead, not only thwarted the plan but brought about the deposition of Black Fox and the appointment of a delegation representative of both districts.⁠35

To the Upper Cherokee delegates asking for a division of the tribe on the line of the Hiwassee Mountains, Jefferson replied that the United States would recognize such an arrangement only if the Lower Cherokees agreed. The Lower Cherokees he advised to send exploring parties to the country of the White and Arkansas rivers.⁠36 Apparently the first of the Lower Cherokees to follow this advice was Taluntuskee, whose readiness to emigrate was perhaps not wholly uninfluenced by the fate of his brother-in‑law, Doublehead. In the spring of 1809 he led an exploring party to Arkansas, as a result of which he reported to Meigs in July that he had 1,130 Cherokees ready to remove.⁠37 Some of the  p160 sycophant chiefs doubtless considered it advisable to emigrate first and explore later.

At the time that there seemed to be no escape from the dilemma of division or removal, both equally repugnant to the rank and file of the Cherokees, the bickering chiefs, perhaps compelled by popular opinion, composed their differences and restored a measure of unity to the disintegrating tribe. In September the national council appointed a committee of thirteen, to which it entrusted the management of the nation; no chief who had taken a prominent part in the recent orgy of land cessions, in the advocacy of division, or in the agitation for removal attained member­ship on this committee.⁠38 The renewed unity of the tribe revealed itself in rejecting overtures for a cession of its Kentucky land,⁠39 in the adoption of an act of amnesty accompanied by a prohibition of clan vengeance,⁠40 in a formal dissociation of the tribe from the policy of removal,⁠41 and in the refusal of a request from the United States for a right of way from east Tennessee to the Coosa.

At the same time that the Cherokees were being asked to grant a right of way from eastern Tennessee to Turkeytown on the Coosa, the Creeks were solicited to grant its continuance through their territory to Fort Stoddart. The desire of the United States for such a road arose from dissatisfaction with affairs in West Florida, where the Spaniards continued to deny the territorial claims of the United States and to hamper with tolls the sending of supplies past Mobile to the factory at St. Stephens. The road from Georgia to Fort Stoddart, granted by the Creeks in 1805, began to be used in the spring of 1807, but the jealous Creeks restricted its use to the mails as had been stipulated in the treaty. In 1808, Hawkins had been instructed to get Creek consent for  p161 horse mails down the Coosa route; and in 1810, Meigs asked the same of the Cherokees as far as their territory extended. Both tribes refused.⁠42 The refusal was owing not only to a justified suspicion of ulterior motives on the part of the United States but also to conflicting claims to the Upper Coosa country, which was beginning to trouble Creek-Cherokee relations.

In April, 1809, James McIntosh had taken a boat load of merchandise down the Conasauga and Coosa destined for the white settlements on the Tombigbee. At Turkeytown, a Cherokee town on Creek territory, he had been stopped by the Creek chief, Tustenuggee, who notified Hawkins. Investigation revealed certain irregularities such as a forged passport from Hawkins and a forged letter from the President to the Cherokee chiefs. Tustenuggee's confiscation of the cargo inspired a protest from McIntosh to Meigs, and from Meigs to Hawkins, but Hawkins refused to release the cargo.⁠43 Not anticipating, or perhaps disregarding, the attitude of the two tribes the Secretary of War William Eustis in June, 1810, instructed the commanding officer at Fort Stoddart to send Captain Gaines to explore the country along the Black Warrior–Coosa divide to the Hiwassee and back by way of the Hightower (Etowah) and Coosa while Captain Wilkinson went up the Federal Road and the Coosa to join him on the Hiwassee.⁠44 In the fall of 1810, after these explorations were made, the Creeks protested to Washington, and in January, 1811, they had the dubious satisfaction of an assurance from Madison that the surveyors were only locating a possible roadway and had no designs on their land.⁠45 When the Creek council again refused consent, Hawkins was instructed by the irritated Secretary of War to inform them that the United States was determined to have the road with or without Creek consent.⁠46 In December,  p162 1812, Hawkins reported that the road through his agency was completed.⁠47

In this post-cession period the Chickasaws also had their storms of discontent, all of which seemed to center around George Colbert. After receiving Dearborn's assurance in 1806 on the matter of the Cherokee cession, he had attempted without success to secure a Cherokee recognition of the boundaries claimed by the Chickasaws. As a result, he forwarded to Washington a remonstrance against the purchase of Chickasaw land from Cherokees. The remonstrance, signed by twenty-nine chiefs, undoubtedly reflected the continuing indignation and apprehension of the nation. The Chickasaws named Meigs as the architect of these troubles, suspecting him of engineering the land purchase and of stimulating the Cherokee against a boundary agreement.⁠48 Meigs' denial of the accusation was belied by his advice to the Cherokees in November, 1809, to assert their claim to the land between the Shoals and the Tombigbee "while you can remember that you once ceded a road through it."⁠49 The alacrity with which the Cherokees accepted this advice did not improve Chickasaw relations with the Cherokees nor increase their confidence in the Cherokee agent.⁠50

In March, 1809, Colbert complained of white intruders on Chickasaw land, intimating that if this complaint went unheeded, as his others had done, he would himself remove the trespassers. In return for the removal of the intruders, he promised that the Chickasaws would sell to the United States the Cherokee land east of the Elk, which the United States had already bought from both Cherokees and Chickasaws.⁠51 How well founded was Colbert's complaint was shown when Meigs, after receiving three  p163 orders, removed 284 trespassing families, requiring fifty-one days to complete the work.⁠52 Two weeks later the watchful Colbert reported that the intruders were all back again and charged that their return had been with Meigs' connivance and probably at his request; he demanded that someone other than Meigs be in charge of future removals. Meigs retorted that not only had the intruders not returned, but that their original trespass had been on land really belonging to the Cherokees; the Chickasaws, he said, did not even know where their Old Fields were till the Cherokees told them.⁠53 This interchange of amenities seems to have ended the debate, leaving, as is the habit of debates, the situation unremedied.

In January, 1810, James Neelly, the Chickasaw agent, having been "much teased" by the Chickasaw king and headmen and unable to extract from the Secretary of War any reply to his letters, appealed to Governor Holmes of Mississippi Territory, apparently recalling the almost forgotten fact that the governor of that territory was also superintendent of Southern Indians. The fact that there were now (by unstable Chickasaw counting) four or five thousand intruders, making the Indians a minority party in their own home, stirred the Governor to send Colonel Russell to order their removal.⁠54 Since the intruders remained impervious to such hints, the War Department in the late spring of 1810 established an army post at Muscle Shoals, from which the Chickasaws, now at the end of their patience, might draw assistance against the intruders overrunning them. The squatters were to be allowed to remain on their illegal holdings until they had harvested their crops and then were to be removed by military force.⁠55

The post at Muscle Shoals superseded that at Hiwassee, which  p164 had by 1810 become even more than totally useless. Both the military post and the Cherokee factory had been removed to Hiwassee in the summer of 1807, the former from Southwest Point, the latter from Tellico. General and individual tribulations combined to effect the decay of all the Southern factories except Chickasaw Bluffs in this period. The Napoleonic wars made the securing of factory goods difficult, dangerous, and expensive; the Embargo act made impossible the exportation of peltries, which were the chief reliance of the Southern trade and were little in demand in the United States. By the factory law, apparently designed to embarrass the factories, sales of Indian products were made through auctions held six times a year and only twice in any one state. The Indians, even when not actually hostile to the factories, preferred to deal with the licensed and unlicensed traders, who furnished better goods at lower prices and delivered them in the Indian towns.⁠56

The Cherokee factory prospered as little at Hiwassee as at Tellico and was abandoned in 1810, apparently on Meigs' advice. The Creek factory, removed to Fort Hawkins (Macon) in the fall of 1806, continued there the decline it had experienced at Fort Wilkinson; no further supplies were sent it after 1811. No southern factory was so beset by misfortunes as was the Choctaw factory at St. Stephens. Its location was low and unhealthful; Indians could reach it only after a long journey, of which the latter part led through the settlements of objecting white men; supplies could reach it only through Mobile, where the Spanish, dead to all American arguments concerning the natural privileges of government-owned merchandise and the ameliorating influence of the factory on Indian dispositions, continued to exact their high and customary tolls. The War Department was considering its removal and was trying to find a place accessible both to customers and supplies, without which it could not exert its full influence. In search of such a location Lieutenant E. P. Gaines,  p165 a brother of the factor, was ordered to explore the region between the Tennessee and the Tombigbee and to investigate the navigation potentialities of the latter stream. Gaines fulfilled this order in the summer of 1807, surveying and marking four routes between the two rivers and thereby incurring the wrath of Colbert, who saw in some of the proposed routes a menace to his lucrative ferry over the Tennessee on the Natchez Trace.⁠57

Whether from chronic indecision or out of respect for the feelings of the Chickasaws, already irritated by the Cherokee sale and the invasion of the squatters, the War Department for three years took no further action more positive than complaining, while the factory buildings and business decayed beyond any hope of repair. Finally in August, 1810, Mason, the superintendent of Indian trade, wrongly diagnosing the decay as resulting from Spanish tariffs and Choctaw remoteness, ordered George Gaines, the factor, to visit the Tombigbee, adopt (as a new route to the factory when removed) one of the roads surveyed by his brother three years before, secure from the Chickasaws permission to use such a road through their territory, and then test the feasibility of the route chosen by transporting over it a supply of powder awaiting him at Smithland, Kentucky.⁠58 In October, Gaines brought the powder to Cotton Gin Port on the Tombigbee over a route which utilized Colbert's Ferry for the crossing of the Tennessee.⁠59 It may be inferred that his selection of the ferry as the Tennessee terminal of his road influenced the Chickasaws to give their consent. His road, however, did not become permanent, nor did Cotton Gin Port become the site for the factory when it was finally removed after the War of 1812.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789‑1907, I, 352, Jefferson to Congress, January 18, 1803. North of the Ohio pressure was brought to bear on the Sac and Fox tribe for the same reason.

2 Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee, 63. Jefferson said that the way the government could obtain Chickasaw lands was "to establish among the Chickasaws a factory for furnishing them all the necessaries and comforts they may wish (spirituous liquors excepted) encouraging them and especially their leading men to run in debt for these beyond their individual means of paying, and whenever in that situation they will always cede land to rid themselves of debt." See also I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Riley to Meigs, November 29, 1806: "Mr. Hockker [Hooker] told . . . that when he was at the Norard that in conversation with Mr. Jefferson he asked him if he could get the Cherokee to run in debt to the amount of ten or twelve thousand dollars in the public store. Mr. Hockker told him for answer fifty thousand. Well, says he, that is the way I intend to git there countrey for to git them to run in debt to the publick store and they will have to give there lands for payment. Mr. Hockker's answer was if that is your Deturmeanation you must git sum other pursun to keep the store."

3 The act of 1796 authorizing the factories had expired, and the factories had been running for several years without legal authority.

4 On July 3, 1802, Jefferson appointed Joseph Chambers as factor for the Choctaws and, five days later, Thomas Peterkin for the Chickasaws (I. O. R., Letter Book A, 242, 246). James Wilkinson and Governor Claiborne were asked to recommend a site for the Choctaw factory, and they concurred in naming St. Stephens (Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 151, 153; Indian Affairs, I, 682‑83). Ten thousand dollars worth of goods were sent to the Choctaw factory even before its site was determined. The goods were brought up the Mississippi and stored at Fort Adams until Chambers was ready to receive them (I. O. R., Letter Book A, 547). The Chickasaw factory was opened in the fall of 1802, but that at St. Stephens was apparently delayed till early in 1803.

5 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, statement of William Simpson, August 20, 1803. According to this statement the Indian debt to Panton, Leslie and Company amounted to $172,139, of which $112,512 was Creek, $46,091 Choctaw, $11,178 Chickasaw, and $2,358 Cherokee.

6 Dunbar Rowland, ed., The Mississippi Territorial Archives, 1798‑1803, 484‑85, Dearborn to Claiborne, June 11, 1802. McKee, as a special agent of the War Department, had visited Panton at Mobile in 1797. His offer to Panton had been made probably to secure Panton's influence over the Indians for the peaceful running of the boundary line with Spain. Following the receipt of this assurance from McKee, Panton had solicited and received permission from Governor Gayoso to accept Indian cessions in the United States. The Creek troubles prevented any immediate progress, and Panton died at sea March 26, 1801. John Forbes succeeded him as head of the firm, which retained its old name until 1804, when it became John Forbes and Company.

7 Silas Dinsmoor had been appointed Choctaw agent on March 12, 1802, but did not reach his post until August, traveling over the Natchez Trace and delaying among the Chickasaws to help settle a dispute between that tribe and certain Delawares living with them. Dinsmoor established his agency in the valley of the Chickasawhay near the present Quitman, Mississippi. In 1807 it was removed to the Pearl River Valley a few miles above Jackson. His trip south is described in a letter to Meigs, July 31, 1802. (I. O. R., Retired Classified Files). Robertson wrote to Meigs, December 18, 1802, that Forbes had tried to persuade the Chickasaws to sell their Mississippi front, but that the Chickasaws would sell only east of the Tennessee and north of the Duck (ibid.).

8 Mrs. J. W. Greenslade, transcriber, "A Journal of John Forbes," Florida Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. IX, 279‑89; I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Bowles to Cherokee chiefs, March 18, 1803. The Cherokee chiefs gave Bowles' invitation to Meigs, who sent a copy of it to Hawkins.

9 Wilkinson, after the signing of the Creek treaty of 1802, had gone to the Choctaws, with whom on October 17 he had made a convention for the marking of their line between the Chickasawhay and the Tombigbee. The Choctaws appointed Mingo Pooscoos and Latala Homa to represent them on the survey, which was finished August 31, 1803.

10 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, minutes of the Cherokee council, April 20, 1803; Meigs to Dearborn, May 4, 1803; Dearborn to Meigs, May 30, 1803; Meigs to Hawkins, August 2, 1803; Hawkins to Meigs, September 30, 1803; Meigs to Dearborn, October 20 and October 25, 1803.

11 For the Creek protest against this Choctaw sale, see I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Wilkinson to Dearborn, October 1, 1803.

12 Carter, op. cit., V, 212.

13 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book B, Dearborn to Meigs, April 23, 1804.

14 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Cheistoya to Meigs, August 28, 1804.

15 Ibid., October 15, 1804. For the Wafford tract the Cherokees received $5,000 and an annuity of $1,000. This treaty remained unratified and apparently forgotten until 1824. At that date the War Department could find no copy of the treaty except the duplicate which the Cherokees possessed.

16 The grant to Forbes of the land between the Apalachicola and Wakulla rivers, made May 25, 1804, at Cheeskatalofa, was in compensation for the two seizures of Panton's store on the Wakulla by Bowles in 1792 and 1800. The deed was signed by twenty-two chiefs of the Seminoles and Lower Creeks. The grant cancelled $47,000 of the Creek debt, being damages of $27,000 at 6 per cent interest. The grant contained about 1,500,000 acres of land (American State Papers, Public Lands, IV, 81‑87; Indian Affairs, I, 750‑51, Forbes to Dearborn, September 5, 1806).

17 Indian Affairs, I, 691‑92. Hawkins to Dearborn, November 3, 1804.

18 No account of this abortive conference is given in Indian Affairs. The conduct of the commissioners called forth a reprimand from Dearborn: "Mr.  Chambers' bill for necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries for the commissioners very far exceeds what had been contemplated. . . . Among the extraordinary articles for an Indian treaty in the woods for two commissioners may be noticed the amount of $200 for raisins, anchovies, cinnamon, nutmegs, pickles, etc., and other articles in like proportion" (I. O. R., Letter Book B, 100‑101, Dearborn to Robertson, August 7, 1805).

"The document which has been presented to my view and which has occasioned more surprise than any other is Mr. Chambers' bill for articles furnished Commissioners, particularly such as appear to have been intended for their own use. Those articles, generally, so far exceed what I could have contemplated as to produce impressions not very favorable to the prudence or discretion of those who directed the arrangements. . . . The quantity and expense of articles of the highest luxury, such as could not have been intended for Indians, exceed all reasonable bounds. The amount of the most delicate spices, anchovies, raisins, almonds, hyson tea, coffee, mustard, preserves, English cheese, segars, brandy, wine, etc., etc., etc., could not have been either necessary or useful. Many of the articles ought never to have appeared on a bill of expenses for an Indian treaty, especially in the wilderness. . . . Such accounts of expense at an Indian treaty have, I presume, never before been exhibited to our Government, and it is to be wished we may never have a second exhibition of the kind" (Ibid., 101‑102, Dearborn to Dinsmoor, August 28, 1805).

19 The seventy-page journal of the Chickasaw commission is in I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, July 6‑25, 1805. Detailed as it is, it should be supplemented by Heloise H. Cruzat, transcriber, "Journal of an Indian Talk," Florida Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. VIII, 131‑42. The treaty is in Kappler, op. cit., II, 79‑80. For a map of the cession see Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plates CLXI and CLXIII.

20 Kappler, op. cit., II, 87‑89; Indian Affairs, I, 750‑51, Forbes to Dearborn September 5, 1806; James D. Robertson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789‑1817, I, 434‑35. Jefferson was so disappointed in the treaty that he did not submit it to the Senate until January 15, 1808, when American relations with Spain were of such a nature as to give value to a tract on the Florida line. For Forbes' further difficulties in collecting this debt, see R. S. Cotterill, "A Chapter of Panton, Leslie and Company," Journal of Southern History, Vol. X, 275‑92.

21 Letters of Benjamin Hawkins, 431‑446; I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Hawkins to Meigs, June 12, 1805.

22 Indian Affairs, I, 677; Royce, The Cherokee Nation, 190‑93; Kappler, op. cit., II, 82‑83; Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plate CLXI.

23 Kappler, op. cit., II, 85‑86; I. O. R., Letter Book B, 154‑60, conversation of McIntosh with the President. The treaty was signed by Oche Haujo, McIntosh, and four others. Hawkins and Timothy Barnard were among the witnesses.

24 Indian Affairs, I, 704; Kappler, op. cit., II, 90‑91; Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plate CLXI. The treaty was signed by Doublehead, Vann, Taluntuskee, Chulioa, Sour Mush, Turtle at Home, Broom, John Jolly, and six others. Benjamin Hawkins was one of the witnesses.

25 This road, commonly called the Federal Road, was a horse path and was to be used by the United States only for the mail service. Consequently it was the Post Office Department that was most interested in seeing it opened. In April, 1806, the postmaster general instructed Hawkins to open the road from Athens, Georgia, through Coweta and Tuckabatchee to Fort Stoddart on the Tombigbee. The road was to be from four to six feet wide and was to have trees felled across the streams. Hawkins, being ill, entrusted the opening of the Athens-Coweta section to Meriwether and stationed at Tuckabatchee a postrider who promised to make twenty-five miles a day through Creek territory. In February, 1807, the postmaster general appointed Dennison Darling as postmaster at Coweta and postrider from Athens to Fort Stoddart. The correspondence on this subject is given in Carter, op. cit., V, 395‑515.

26 Indian Affairs, I, 750‑51, Forbes to Dearborn, September 5, 1806.

27 Carter, op. cit., 434, Toulmin to Lattimore, December 6, 1805.

28 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book B, 224, Dearborn to Wright May 27, 1806.

29 Ibid., War Department Letter Book B, 171‑74, Dearborn to Colbert, and Colbert to Dearborn, February 21, 1806. Colbert was evidently in Washington at this time.

30 Brown, op. cit., 451‑53.

31 Indian Affairs, I, 754, Meigs to Dearborn, September 28, 1807.

32 Elias Earle of South Carolina early in 1807 proposed to the United States that he would erect and manage the iron works if the Cherokees would cede the land. Meigs paid, or promised, $5,000 for the land. Because of objections from Tennessee, the Senate postponed action on the treaty until 1810 and then rejected it (Royce, The Cherokee Nation, 199‑201; Indian Affairs, I, 722, 753).

33 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book B, 376, Jefferson to the Upper Cherokee delegation, May 4, 1808, and Dearborn to Meigs, May 5, 1808.

34 The classical treatment of the preliminaries to removal is Annie Heloise Abel's The History of Events Resulting in Indian Consolidation West of the Mississippi, The American Historical Association Annual Report (1906).

35 Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall, A History of the Indian Tribes of North America, II, 90‑91.

36 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book B, 414‑17, Jefferson to Cherokee Deputies, January 1, 1809.

37 Ibid., Retired Classified Files, Meigs to Cherokee council at Willstown, November 2, 1809.

38 Ibid., Retired Classified Files, Cherokee chiefs to Meigs, September 27, 1809. In this letter only eleven of the thirteen members of the committee are named: John McIntosh, The Ridge, Richard Brown, Turtle at Home, Charles Hicks, John Walker, George Waters, Thomas Pettite, Doghead, George Lowry, and Tur-cock.

39 Ibid., War Department Letter Book C, 2, Secretary of War to Meigs, July 15, 1809. In 1808 the tribe had rejected similar overtures for some of their remaining Tennessee land (Royce, The Cherokee Nation, 201‑202).

40 Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, 86‑87; Indian Affairs, II, 283.

41 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Cherokee Managers to Meigs, April 11, 1810.

42 Ibid., War Department Letter Book B, 408, Dearborn to Hawkins December 12, 1808; ibid., Retired Classified Files, Meigs to Cherokee council, April 2, 1810, and Meigs to Dearborn, July 20, 1810.

43 Ibid., Retired Classified Files, Meigs to Hawkins, February 25, 1810, and Hawkins to Secretary of War Eustis, December 31, 1810.

44 Carter, op. cit., VI, 76‑77, Secretary of War to Sparks, June 23, 1810.

45 Ibid., VI, 170, Secretary of War to Hawkins, January 15, 1811; I. O. R., War Department Letter Book C, 58, President to Creek chiefs, January 14, 1811.

46 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Creek Micco to President Madison, May 15, 1811; ibid., War Department Letter Book C, 85‑86, 91, Secretary of War to Hawkins, June 27, 1811, and July 20, 1811.

47 I. O. R., War Department Letter Book C, 105, Secretary of War to Hawkins December 14, 1811.

48 Ibid., Retired Classified Files, Meigs to Dearborn, March 1, 1809.

49 Ibid., Retired Classified Files, Meigs to Cherokee council, November 2, 1809.

50 Ibid., Retired Classified Files, Cherokee Managers to Meigs, April 11, 1810.

51 Carter, op. cit., V, 720‑22, Freeman to the Secretary of the Treasury, March 4, 1809.

52 Ibid., V, 739‑40, Meigs to Smith (acting secretary of war), June 12, 1809.

53 I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Smith to Meigs, July 2, 1809; Meigs to Smith, August 12, 1809.

54 Carter, op. cit., VI, 44‑47, Holmes to Secretary of War, February 7, 1810; ibid., VI, 48, Holmes to Wade Hampton, February 9, 1810. Neely was appointed Chickasaw agent July 8, 1809, succeeding Thomas Wright, who had died September 20, 1808. The Chickasaws had asked that Neely be appointed.

55 Ibid., VI, 70‑71, Secretary of War to Wade Hampton, June 15, 1810. The post was placed at Muscle Shoals on the recommendation of Meigs. It was completed about June 1, 1810.

56 The vicissitudes of the factory system are described in a report by John Mason, superintendent of Indian trade, to the House of Representatives, February 17, 1809 (Indian Affairs, I, 756). Mason had succeeded Shea as superintendent in 1807 and had removed the headquarters of the factory system from Philadelphia to Georgetown, D. C.

57 Carter, op. cit., V, 558, Dearborn to Gaines, July 31, 1807; ibid., V, 598‑602, Gaines to Dearborn, January 29, 1808. The four roads were from Cotton Gin Port on the Tombigbee to the head and foot of Muscle Shoals, to the head of navigation on Bear Creek, and to the mouth of Elk Creek.

George Gaines became factor in 1807, succeeding Chambers, who had been both factor and land agent for the district east of the Pearl. When land sales began in 1807, Chambers resigned as factor in favor of Gaines, who had been his assistant since 1805.

58 I. O. R., Indian Trade Letter Book B, 187‑93, Mason to Gaines, August 28, 1810. Smithland was on the Ohio at the mouth of the Cumberland.

59 G. S. Gaines, "Reminiscences of Early Times in Mississippi Territory" (MS).

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