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ОглавлениеControversy Concerning Boundaries
Shortly after the conclusion of the treaties of October 25 and 27, 1805, a delegation of Cherokee chiefs and headmen visited Washington. Messrs. Return J. Meigs and Daniel Smith, the commissioners who had negotiated those treaties, accompanied them.
The Secretary of War, Hon. Henry Dearborn, was specially deputized by the President to conduct negotiations with them for the purchase of such portions of their country as they might feel willing to sell, but more especially to extinguish their claim to the region of territory lying to the north and east of Tennessee River and west of the head waters of Duck River.
The negotiations were concluded and the treaty was signed on the 7th of January, 1806,161 and the President transmitted the same to the Senate on the 24th of the same month; but that body did not consent to its ratification for more than a year afterwards.162
At the time of the conclusion of this treaty, it was supposed by all the parties thereto that the eastern limit of the cession therein defined would include all of the waters of Elk River, the impression being that the headwaters of Duck River had their source farther to the east than those of the Elk.163
The region of country in question had for many years been claimed by both the Cherokees and the Chickasaws, and the Government of the United States, not desiring to incur the animosity of either of these Indian nations, had preferred rather to extinguish by purchase the claim of each. With this end in view, a treaty had already been concluded with the Chickasaws, under date of July 23, 1805,164 resulting in their relinquishment of all claim to the land north of Duck River lying east of the Tennessee and to a tract lying between Duck and Tennessee Rivers, on the north and south, and east of the Columbian Highway, so as to include all the waters of Elk River. It had been the intention that the eastern boundary of the cession made by both these nations should be coincident from the head of Chickasaw Island northward, but when the country came to be examined with a view to running the line, it was found that a strict adherence to the test of the Cherokee cession would leave about two hundred families of settlers on the headwaters of Elk River still within the Indian country.165 In the mean time the Chickasaws, having learned that the United States had purchased of the Cherokees their supposed claim to the territory as far west as the Tennessee River, including a large region of country to the westward of the limits of the cession of 1805 by the former, construed that fact as a recognition of the sole and absolute title of the Cherokees thereto, and became in consequence very much excited and angered. They were only pacified by an official letter of assurance from the Secretary of War, addressed to Maj. George Colbert, their principal chief,166 wherein he stated that in purchasing the Cherokee right to the tract in question the United States did not intend to destroy or impair the right of the Chickasaw Nation to the same; but that, being persuaded no actual boundary had ever been agreed on between the Chickasaws and Cherokees and that the Cherokees had some claim to a portion of the lands, it was thought advisable to purchase that claim, so that whenever the Chickasaws should be disposed to convey their title there should be no dispute with the Cherokees about it.
The Cherokees by this treaty also relinquished all claim they might have to the Long Island or Great Island, as it was sometimes called, of Holston River. This island was in reality outside the limits of the country assigned the Cherokees by the first treaty between them and the United States, at Hopewell, in 1785, but they had always since maintained that no cession had ever been made of it by them, and it was deemed wise to insert a specific clause in the treaty under consideration to that effect.167
Boundaries to be surveyed.—Early in 1807168 the Secretary of War notified Agent Meigs that Mr. Thomas Freeman had been appointed to survey and mark the boundary line conformably to both the treaty of 1805 with the Chickasaws and of 1806 with the Cherokees, as well as to survey the land ceded between the south line of Tennessee and the Tennessee River, lying west of the line from about the Chickasaw Old Fields to the most eastern source of Duck River. He was also advised that General Robertson and himself had been designated to attend and superintend the running of such boundary lines. Furthermore, that it was desirable that the eastern line of both cessions should be one and the same, for although by the Chickasaw treaty the whole waters of Elk River were included, it was evident their claim to any lands east of the line agreed upon by the Cherokees was more than doubtful; that, therefore, the United States ought not to insist on such a line as would go to the eastward of the one defined in the Cherokee treaty, unless the latter could be prevailed upon to extend the same, in which event they were authorized to offer the Cherokees a moderate compensation therefor.
