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Prior to the survey and marking of the boundary line near Currahee Mountain in Georgia, provided for by the Cherokee treaty of 1785 and the Creek treaty of 1790, which survey did not occur until 1798, one Colonel Wafford, in company with sundry other persons, had formed a settlement in that vicinity, which proved to be within the limits of the Indian country.

Inasmuch as it was supposed these parties had ignorantly placed themselves within the Indian line and had made considerable and valuable improvements, the Government was indisposed to use harsh or forcible means for their ejection, but rather approved of the urgent appeals from Colonel Wafford and his neighbors to make an effort to secure the relinquishment from the Indians of a tract sufficient to embrace their settlement.

The Government had been laboring under the impression that these lands belonged to the Creeks, but the delegation of the Cherokees, headed by "The Glass," who visited Washington in the summer of 1801, claimed them as Cherokee territory, and asked for the removal of the settlers. Commissioners Wilkinson, Hawkins, and Pickens had been instructed133 to negotiate with the Creeks for the purchase of this tract, but they having reported, upon examination, that the title was undoubtedly in the Cherokees, were directed134 to report upon the expediency of applying to the Cherokees for a cession of the same.

Such an application having at this time been unfavorably received by the Cherokees, nothing further was done in the matter until the winter of 1803,135 when the Secretary of War directed a conference to be held with them for the double purpose of securing a cession or a lease for seven years of the "Wafford Settlement" tract and the Indian consent to a right of way for a road through their country from Southwest Point or Tellico Factory to Athens, Ga., with the establishment of the necessary houses of entertainment for travelers along such route. For this latter concession he was authorized to offer them the sum of $500. The Cherokees having refused both these propositions, Agent Meigs was directed136 to secure the granting of the road privilege, if possible, by offering Vann137 and other men of influence among them a proper inducement to enlist their active co-operation in the matter. This latter method seems to have been effective, for later in the season138 the Secretary of War transmitted to the governors of Georgia and Tennessee an extract from an agreement entered into with the Cherokees providing for an opening of the desired road, stating that, as the United States had no funds applicable to the laying out and construction of such a road, it would be proper for the legislatures of those States to make the necessary provision therefor.

The clamor for more land by the constant tide of immigration that was flowing into Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia from the North and East became more and more importunate. The desire to settle on Indian land was as potent and insatiable with the average border settler then as it is now.