102 MYTHS OV THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19 



come. Jealousies bad arisen in consequence, and the delegates repre- 

 senting the progressive element now proposed to the government that 

 a line be run through the nation to separate the two parties, allowing 

 those on the north to divide their lands in severalty and become citi- 

 zens of the United States, while those on the south might continue to 

 be hunters as long as the game should last. Taking advantage of this 

 condition of attairs, the government authorities instructed the agent to 

 submit to the conservatives a proposition for a cession of their share of 

 the tribal territory in return for a tract west of the Mississippi of suf- 

 ficient area to enable them to continue the hunting life. The plan was 

 approved by President Jefferson, and a sum was appropriated to pay 

 the expenses of a delegation to visit and inspect the lands on Arkansas 

 and White rivers, with a view to removal. The visit was made in the 

 summer of 1809, and the delegates brought back such favorable report 

 that a large number of Cherokee signified their intention to remove at 

 once. As no funds were then available for their removal, the matter 

 was held in abeyance for several years, during which period families 

 and individuals removed to the western country at their own expense 

 until, before the year 1817, they numbered in all two or three 

 thousand souls.' They became known as the Arkansas, or Western, 

 Cherokee. 



The emigrants soon became involved in difficulties with the native 

 tribes, the Osage claiming all the lands north of Arkansas river, while 

 the Quapaw claimed those on the south. Upon coiuplaining to the 

 government the emigrant Cherokee were told that they had originally 

 been permitted to remove only on condition of a cession of a portion 

 of their eastern territory, and that nothing could be done to protect 

 them in their new western home until such cession had been carried 

 out. The body of the Cherokee Nation, however, was strongly opposed 

 to any such sale and proposed that the emigrants should be compelled 

 to return. After protracted negotiation a treaty was concluded at 

 the Cherokee agency (now Calhoun, Tennessee) on July 8, 1817, by 

 which the Cherokee Nation ceded two considerable tracts — the first in 

 Georgia, lying east of the Chattahoochee, and the other in Tennessee, 

 between Waldens ridge and the Little Sequatchee — as an equivalent 

 for a tract to be assigned to those who had already' removed, or 

 intended to remove, to Arkansas. Two smaller tracts on the north 

 bank of the Tennessee, in the neighborhood of the Muscle shoals, 

 were also ceded. In return for these cessions the emigrant Cherokee 

 were to receive a tract within the present limits of the state of Arkan- 



' Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 202-204. 1888; see also Indian 

 Treaties, pp. 209-215, 1837. The preamble to the treaty of 1817 says that the delegation of 1808 had 

 desired a division of the tribal territory in order that the people of the Upper (northern) towns might 

 "begin the establishment of fixed laws and a regular government," while those of the Lower 

 (southern) towns desired to remove to the We.st. Nothing is said of severalty allotments or 

 citizenship. 



