554 TROUP COUNTY. 



ties with the General Government, it must be remembered 

 that Georgia had, in 1802, sold to the United States all her 

 lands west of the Chattahoochee, and of a line from that river 

 to Nickajack on the Tennessee. It was solemnly agreed in 

 the articles of cession, that the United States should ex- 

 tinguish, at their own expense, the Indian title to " all the 

 other lands within the State of Georgia, as early as the same 

 could be peaceably attained on reasonable terms." From 1802 

 down to 1823, although some acquisitions of land had been 

 made, the agreement remained unexecuted. The States of Mis- 

 sissippi and Alabama, which had been erected out of the ceded 

 territory, were filling up with population, (the Indian title 

 there and in Eastern Tennessee being in course of extinction,) 

 and there was cause of apprehension, from a growing senti- 

 ment at the North, believed to be in some considerable degree 

 encouraged by the authorities at Washington, that the Indians, 

 both Creeks and Cherokees, might be, for many years more, 

 fastened upon our domain, if, indeed, not permitted to try upon 

 it the experiment of independent self-government. To ex- 

 tinguish the Indian title to all lands in Georgia, was a matter 

 of compact and duty unfulfilled. Its extinction in other States 

 was matter of National policy. Georgia had, except in time 

 of war and public distress, urged upon the Government the 

 performance of this duty. She had never failed to do hers, in 

 any one particular, to her confederated sisters. A morbid 

 philanthropy, in high and low places, preferred the supposed 

 welfare of the savage, to the undoubted rights of our State, 

 as the same philanthropy, now a wicked fanaticism, has since 

 advocated another race before the happiness and peace of 

 Southern freemen. 



The Legislature of 1823 required the Governor elect " to 

 use his exertions to obtain from the United States the extin- 

 guishment of the Indian title to all our remaining territory." 

 He immediately opened a correspondence with the Secretary 

 of War, which resulted in a commission to Duncan G. Camp- 

 bell and James Meriwether, two distinguished Georgians, to 

 treat with the Creek Indians. A council was held in Decem- 

 ber, 1824, at Broken Arrow, on the Chattahoochee. Had the 

 authorities of the Creek Nation been left to their own discre- 



