Having followed the fortunes of the main body of the Nation to their
final destination in the West, we now turn to review briefly the
history of the earlier emigrants, the Arkansas or Old Settler Cherokee.
The events leading to the first westward migration and the subsequent
negotiations which resulted in the assignment of a territory in
Arkansas to the western Cherokee, by the treaty of 1817, have been
already noted. The great majority of those thus voluntarily removing
belonged to the conservative hunter element, who desired to reestablish
in the western wilderness the old Indian life from which, through
the influence of schools and intelligent leadership, the body of
the Cherokee was rapidly drifting away. As the lands upon which the
emigrants had settled belonged to the Osage, whose claim had not yet
been extinguished by the United States, the latter objected to their
presence, and the Cherokee were compelled to fight to maintain their
own position, so that for the first twenty years or more the history of
the western band is a mere petty chronicle of Osage raids and Cherokee
retaliations, emphasized from time to time by a massacre on a larger
scale. By the treaty of 1817 the western Cherokee acquired title to a
definite territory and official standing under Government protection
and supervision, the lands assigned them having been acquired by
treaty from the Osage. The great body of the Cherokee in the East
were strongly opposed to any recognition of the western band, seeing
in such action only the beginning of an effort looking toward the
ultimate removal of the whole tribe. The Government lent support to
the scheme, however, and a steady emigration set in until, in 1819,
the emigrants were said to number several thousands. Unsuccessful
endeavors were made to increase the number by inducing the Shawano and
Delawares of Missouri and the Oneida of New York to join them. [336]
In 1818 Tollunteeskee (Ata'lûñti'ski), principal chief of the
Arkansas Cherokee, while on a visit to old friends in the East,
had become acquainted with one of the officers of the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and had asked for the
establishment of a mission among his people in the West. In response to
the invitation the Reverend Cephas Washburn and his assistant, Reverend
Alfred Finney, with their families, set out the next year from the old
Nation, and after a long and exhausting journey reached the Arkansas
country, where, in the spring of 1820, they established Dwight mission,
adjoining the agency at the mouth of Illinois creek, on the northern
bank of the Arkansas, in what is now Pope county, Arkansas. The name
was bestowed in remembrance of Timothy Dwight, a Yale president and
pioneer organizer of the American Board. Tollunteeskee having died in
the meantime was succeeded as principal chief by his brother, John
Jolly, [337] the friend and adopted father of Samuel Houston. Jolly
had removed from his old home at the mouth of Hiwassee, in Tennessee,
in 1818. [338]
In the spring of 1819 Thomas Nuttall, the naturalist, ascended the
Arkansas, and he gives an interesting account of the western Cherokee
as he found them at the time. In going up the stream, "both banks of
the river, as we proceeded, were lined with the houses and farms of
the Cherokee, and though their dress was a mixture of indigenous and
European taste, yet in their houses, which are decently furnished,
and in their farms, which were well fenced and stocked with cattle,
we perceive a happy approach toward civilization. Their numerous
families, also, well fed and clothed, argue a propitious progress in
their population. Their superior industry either as hunters or farmers
proves the value of property among them, and they are no longer
strangers to avarice and the distinctions created by wealth. Some
of them are possessed of property to the amount of many thousands
of dollars, have houses handsomely and conveniently furnished, and
their tables spread with our dainties and luxuries." He mentions an
engagement some time before between them and the Osage, in which the
Cherokee had killed nearly one hundred of the Osage, besides taking
a number of prisoners. He estimates them at about fifteen hundred,
being about half the number estimated by the eastern Nation as having
emigrated to the West, and only one-fourth of the official estimate. A
few Delawares were living with them. [339]
The Osage troubles continued in spite of a treaty of peace between
the two tribes made at a council held under the direction of Governor
Clark at St. Louis, in October, 1818. [340] Warriors from the eastern
Cherokee were accustomed to make the long journey to the Arkansas
to assist their western brethren, and returned with scalps and
captives. [341]
In the summer of 1820 a second effort for peace was made by Governor
Miller of Arkansas territory. In reply to his talk the Osage complained
that the Cherokee had failed to deliver their Osage captives as
stipulated in the previous agreement at St. Louis. This, it appears,
was due in part to the fact that some of these captives had been
carried to the eastern Cherokee, and a messenger was accordingly
dispatched to secure and bring them back. Another peace conference
was held soon afterward at Fort Smith, but to very little purpose,
as hostilities were soon resumed and continued until the United States
actively interposed in the fall of 1822. [342]
In this year also Sequoya visited the western Cherokee to introduce to
them the knowledge of his great invention, which was at once taken up
through the influence of Takatoka (Degatâ'ga), a prominent chief who
had hitherto opposed every effort of the missionaries to introduce
their own schools and religion. In consequence perhaps of this
encouragement Sequoya removed permanently to the West in the following
year and became henceforth a member of the western Nation. [343]
Like other Indians, the western Cherokee held a firm belief
in witchcraft, which led to frequent tragedies of punishment or
retaliation. In 1824 a step forward was marked by the enactment of a
law making it murder to kill any one for witchcraft, and an offense
punishable with whipping to accuse another of witchcraft. [344] This
law may have been the result of the silent working of missionary
influence, supported by such enlightened men as Sequoya.
The treaty which assigned the Arkansas lands to the western Cherokee
had stipulated that a census should be made of the eastern and western
divisions of the Nation, separately, and an apportionment of the
national annuity forthwith made on that basis. The western line of
the Arkansas tract had also been left open, until according to another
stipulation of the same treaty, the whole amount of land ceded through
it to the United States by the Cherokee Nation in the East could be
ascertained in order that an equal quantity might be included within
the boundaries of the western tract. [345] These promises had not
yet been fulfilled, partly because of the efforts of the Government
to bring about a larger emigration or a further cession, partly on
account of delay in the state surveys, and partly also because the
Osage objected to the running of a line which should make the Cherokee
their next door neighbors. [346] With their boundaries unadjusted
and their annuities withheld, distress and dissatisfaction overcame
the western Cherokee, many of whom, feeling themselves absolved from
territorial restrictions, spread over the country on the southern side
of Arkansas river, [347] while others, under the lead of a chief named
The Bowl (Diwa'`li), crossed Red river into Texas--then a portion of
Mexico--in a vain attempt to escape American jurisdiction. [348]
A provisional western boundary having been run, which proved
unsatisfactory both to the western Cherokee and to the people of
Arkansas, an effort was made to settle the difficulty by arranging an
exchange of the Arkansas tract for a new country west of the Arkansas
line. So strongly opposed, however, were the western Cherokee to this
project that their council, in 1825, passed a law, as the eastern
Cherokee and the Creeks had already done, fixing the death penalty
for anyone of the tribe who should undertake to cede or exchange land
belonging to the Nation. [349]
After a long series of negotiations such pressure was brought to bear
upon a delegation which visited Washington in 1828 that consent was
at last obtained to an exchange of the Arkansas tract for another
piece of seven million acres lying farther west, together with "a
perpetual outlet west" of the tract thus assigned, as far west as the
sovereignty of the United States might extend. [350] The boundaries
given for this seven-million-acre tract and the adjoining western
outlet were modified by treaty at Fort Gibson five years later so as
to be practically equivalent to the present territory of the Cherokee
Nation in Indian Territory, with the Cherokee strip recently ceded.
The preamble of the Washington treaty of May 6, 1828, recites that
"Whereas, it being the anxious desire of the Government of the
United States to secure to the Cherokee nation of Indians, as well
those now living within the limits of the territory of Arkansas as
those of their friends and brothers who reside in states east of the
Mississippi, and who may wish to join their brothers of the West,
a permanent home, and which shall, under the most solemn guarantee
of the United States, be and remain theirs forever--a home that shall
never, in all future time, be embarrassed by having extended around it
the lines or placed over it the jurisdiction of a territory or state,
nor be pressed upon by the extension in any way of any of the limits
of any existing territory or state; and whereas the present location
of the Cherokees in Arkansas being unfavorable to their present repose,
and tending, as the past demonstrates, to their future degradation and
misery, and the Cherokees being anxious to avoid such consequences,"
etc.--therefore, they cede everything confirmed to them in 1817.
Article 2 defines the boundaries of the new tract and the western
outlet to be given in exchange, lying immediately west of the present
Arkansas line, while the next article provides for the removal of
all whites and others residing within the said boundaries, "so that
no obstacles arising out of the presence of a white population, or
any population of any other sort, shall exist to annoy the Cherokees,
and also to keep all such from the west of said line in future."
Other articles provide for payment for improvements left behind;
for a cash sum of $50,000 to pay for trouble and expense of removal
and to compensate for the inferior quality of the lands in the new
tract; for $6,000 to pay for recovering stock which may stray away
"in quest of the pastures from which they may be driven;" $8,760
for spoliations committed by Osage and whites; $500 to George Guess
(Sequoya)--who was himself one of the signers--in consideration of the
beneficial results to his tribe from the alphabet invented by him;
$20,000 in ten annual payments for education; $1,000 for a printing
press and type to aid in the enlightenment of the people "in their
own and our language"; a personal indemnity for false imprisonment;
and for the removal and reestablishment of the Dwight mission.
In article 6 "it is moreover agreed by the United States, whenever
the Cherokee may desire it, to give them a set of plain laws, suited
to their condition; also, when they wish to lay off their lands and
own them individually, a surveyor shall be sent to make the surveys
at the cost of the United States." This article was annulled in 1833
by request of the Cherokee.
Article 9 provides for the Fort Gibson military reservation within
the new tract, while article 7 binds the Cherokee to surrender and
remove from all their lands in Arkansas within fourteen months.
Article 8 shows that all this was intended to be only preliminary
to the removal of the whole Cherokee Nation from the east of the
Mississippi, a consummation toward which the Jackson administration
and the state of Georgia immediately began to bend every effort. It
is as follows:
Article 8. The Cherokee nation, west of the Mississippi, having
by this agreement freed themselves from the harassing and ruinous
effects consequent upon a location amidst a white population,
and secured to themselves and their posterity, under the solemn
sanction of the guarantee of the United States as contained in
this agreement, a large extent of unembarrassed country; and that
their brothers yet remaining in the states may be induced to join
them and enjoy the repose and blessings of such a state in the
future, it is further agreed on the part of the United States
that to each head of a Cherokee family now residing within the
chartered limits of Georgia, or of either of the states east of
the Mississippi, who may desire to remove west, shall be given,
on enrolling himself for emigration, a good rifle, a blanket,
a kettle, and five pounds of tobacco; (and to each member of his
family one blanket), also a just compensation for the property
he may abandon, to be assessed by persons to be appointed by the
President of the United States. The cost of the emigration of
all such shall also be borne by the United States, and good and
suitable ways opened and procured for their comfort, accommodation,
and support by the way, and provisions for twelve months after
their arrival at the agency; and to each person, or head of a
family, if he take along with him four persons, shall be paid
immediately on his arriving at the agency and reporting himself
and his family or followers as emigrants or permanent settlers, in
addition to the above, provided he and they shall have emigrated
from within the chartered limits of the State of Georgia, the
sum of fifty dollars, and this sum in proportion to any greater
or less number that may accompany him from within the aforesaid
chartered limits of the State of Georgia.
A Senate amendment, defining the limits of the western outlet,
was afterward found to be impracticable in its restrictions and was
canceled by the treaty made at Fort Gibson in 1833. [351]
The Washington treaty was signed by several delegates, including
Sequoya, four of them signing in Cherokee characters. As the laws
of the western Cherokee made it a capital offense to negotiate any
sale or exchange of land excepting by authority of council, and the
delegates had acted without such authority, they were so doubtful
as to what might happen on their return that the Secretary of War
sent with them a letter of explanation assuring the Cherokee that
their representatives had acted with integrity and earnest zeal for
their people and had done the best that could be done with regard
to the treaty. Notwithstanding this, they found the whole tribe so
strongly opposed to the treaty that their own lives and property
were unsafe. The national council pronounced them guilty of fraud
and deception and declared the treaty null and void, as having been
made without authority, and asked permission to send on a delegation
authorized to arrange all differences. [352] In the meantime, however,
the treaty had been ratified within three weeks of its conclusion,
and thus, hardly ten years after they had cleared their fields on the
Arkansas, the western Cherokee were forced to abandon their cabins
and plantations and move once more into the wilderness.
A considerable number, refusing to submit to the treaty or to trust
longer to guarantees and promises, crossed Red river into Texas and
joined the Cherokee colony already located there by The Bowl, under
Mexican jurisdiction. Among those thus removing was the noted chief
Tahchee (Tatsi) or "Dutch," who had been one of the earliest emigrants
to the Arkansas country. After several years in Texas, during which
he led war parties against the wilder tribes, he recrossed Red river
and soon made himself so conspicuous in raids upon the Osage that a
reward of five hundred dollars was offered by General Arbuckle for
his capture. To show his defiance of the proclamation, he deliberately
journeyed to Fort Gibson, attacked a party of Osage at a trading post
near by, and scalped one of them within hearing of the drums of the
fort. With rifle in one hand and the bleeding scalp in the other,
he leaped a precipice and made his escape, although a bullet grazed
his cheek. On promise of amnesty and the withdrawal of the reward, he
afterward returned and settled, with his followers, on the Canadian,
southwest of Fort Gibson, establishing a reputation among army officers
as a valuable scout and guide. [353]
By treaties made in 1826 and 1827 the Creeks had ceded all
their remaining lands in Georgia and agreed to remove to Indian
Territory. Some of these emigrants had settled along the northern bank
of the Arkansas and on Verdigris river, on lands later found to be
within the limits of the territory assigned to the western Cherokee by
the treaty of 1828. This led to jealousies and collisions between the
two tribes, and in order to settle the difficulty the United States
convened a joint council of Creeks and Cherokee at Fort Gibson, with
the result that separate treaties were concluded with each on February
14, 1833, defining their respective bounds to the satisfaction of all
concerned. By this arrangement the upper Verdigris was confirmed to
the Cherokee, and the Creeks who had settled along that portion of
the stream agreed to remove to Creek territory immediately adjoining
on the south. [354]
By the treaty made on this occasion with the Cherokee the boundaries
of the tract of seven million acres granted by the treaty of 1828
are defined so as to correspond with the present boundaries of the
Cherokee country in Indian territory, together with a strip two miles
wide along the northern border, which was afterward annexed to the
state of Kansas by the treaty of 1866. A tract in the northeastern
corner, between Neosho or Grand river and the Missouri line, was
set apart for the use of the Seneca and several other remnants of
tribes removed from their original territories. The western outlet
established by the treaty of 1828 was reestablished as a western
extension from the seven-million-acre tract thus bounded, being what
was afterward known as the Cherokee strip or outlet plus the two-mile
strip extending westward along the south line of Kansas.
After describing the boundaries of the main residence tract, the
first article continues:
In addition to the seven millions of acres of land thus provided
for and bounded the United States further guarantee to the Cherokee
nation a perpetual outlet west and a free and unmolested use of
all the country lying west of the western boundary of said seven
millions of acres, as far west as the sovereignty of the United
States and their right of soil extend--provided, however, that
if the saline or salt plain on the great western prairie shall
fall within said limits prescribed for said outlet the right
is reserved to the United States to permit other tribes of red
men to get salt on said plain in common with the Cherokees--and
letters patent shall be issued by the United States as soon as
practicable for the lands hereby guaranteed.
The third article cancels, at the particular request of the Cherokee,
that article of the treaty of 1828 by which the government was to
give to the Cherokee a set of laws and a surveyor to survey lands
for individuals, when so desired by the Cherokee. [355]
Their differences with the Creeks having been thus adjusted, the
Arkansas Cherokee proceeded to occupy the territory guaranteed to
them, where they were joined a few years later by their expatriated
kinsmen from the east. By tacit agreement some of the Creeks who had
settled within the Cherokee bounds were permitted to remain. Among
these were several families of Uchee--an incorporated tribe of the
Creek confederacy--who had fixed their residence at the spot where
the town of Tahlequah was afterward established. They remained here
until swept off by smallpox some sixty years ago. [356]