MOONEY] TREATY OF IIOTKWELL 1785 61 



tiiuiiiio- the contest alone, hogun to .suo for poai'O. By sovcii years of 

 t'onstaiit warfare thcj' had been reduced totlie lowest depth of misery, 

 almost indeed to the verge of extinction. Over and over again their 

 towns had i)een laid in ashes and thcii' fields wasted. Their best war- 

 riors liad been killed and their women and children had sickened and 

 starved in the mountains. Their great war chief, Oconostota, who 

 had led them to victory in 1780, was now a broken old man, and in 

 this year, at Echota, formally resigned his oflice in favor of his son, 

 The Terrapin. To complete their brinmiing cup of misery the small- 

 pox again l)rokc out among them in 17s3.' Deprived of the assistance^ 

 of their former white allies they wee left to their own cruel fate, 

 the last feeble resistance of the mountain warriors to the advancing 

 tide of settlement came to an end with the burning of C'owee town." and 

 the way was left open to an arrangement. In the same year the North 

 Carolina legislature appointed an agent for the Cherokee and made 

 regulations foi- the government of tradei's among them.' 



Relatujxs with the United States 

 from the first treaty to the removal — 1785-1s38 



Passing over several unsatisfactory and generally abortive negotia- 

 tions conducted bj- the various state governments in iTSS-B-i. includ- 

 ing the treaty of Augusta already noted,* we come to the turinng 

 point in the history of the Cherokee, their first treaty with the new 

 government of the United States for peace and boundaiy delimitation, 

 concluded at Hopewell {■2o) in South Carolina on November 28. 1785. 

 Nearly one thousand Cherokee attended, the commissioners for the 

 United States being Colonel Benjamin Hawkins (2t3). of North Caro- 

 lina; (reneral Andrew Pickens, of South Carolina; Cherokee Agent 

 Joseph Martin, of Tennessee, and Colonel Lachlan Mcintosh, of 

 Georgia. The instrument was signed by thirty-seven chiefs and prin- 

 cipal men, representing nearly as many different towns. The negotia- 

 tions occupied ten days, being complicated by a protest on the part of 

 North Carolina and (xeorgia against the action of the govermuent com- 

 missioners in continuing to the Indians some lands which had already 

 been appropriated as l)ounty lands for state troops without the con.sent 

 of the Cherokee. On the other hand the Cherokee complained that 

 ;3.0()() white settlers were at that momiMit in occupancy of unceded land 

 between the Holston and the French Broad. In spite of their prot(>st 

 these intruders were allowed to remain, although the tcri'itory wa< 

 not acquired })y treaty until some years later. As Hnally arranged 

 the treaty left the Middle and Upper towns, and those in the vicinity 



•See rtocuments in Virginia State Papers, in, pp.234,398, .527, 1SS.3. 



= Riimsey. Tennesice. p. 2*0, IS.^:!. ^ n^i,]. _ p. 27'i. 



<See Koyce, Clierokec Nation, op.cit., pp. 151,1.32: Ranjsey, op. cit., p. 299 I'l passim. 



