188 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
lines of the ceded tract, which was found to be 23 miles and 64 chains 
in length and 4 miles in. width.! 
Singular disappearance of treaty.—No action having been taken look- 
ing toward the ratification of this treaty for several years ensuing, Re- 
turn J. Meigs, in the winter of 1811,’ addressed a letter to the Secre- 
tary of War calling attention to it, setting forth the fact that its con- 
sideration had theretofore been postponed on account of a misunder- 
standing in relation to the limits of the ceded tract, but that the Cher- 
okees had now of their own motion, and at their own expense, had a 
survey made of 10 miles and 12 chains in length in addition to the orig- 
inal survey, which would make the tract ceded 33 miles and 76 chains 
in length, and which would include the plantation of every settler who 
could make the shadow of a claim to settlement prior to the survey of 
the general boundary line run in 1797° by Colonel Hawkins. He there- 
fore concluded that there could be no reason for farther postponing the 
ratification of the treaty, and urged that it be done without delay. 
Notwithstanding this letter of Agent Meigs no further notice seems 
to have been taken of the treaty, and it had been entirely lost sight of 
until attention was again called to it by a Cherokee delegation visiting 
Washington early in 1824, nearly twenty years after its conclusion.‘ 
After diligent search among the records of the War Department, 
Secretary Calhoun reported® that no such treaty could be found and 
no evidence that any such treaty had ever been concluded. Whereupon 
the Cherokee delegation produced their duplicate copy of the treaty to- 
gether with other papers relating to it. The Secretary of War, after 
receiving a reply® to a letter addressed by him to Colonel McKee, of the 
House of Representatives (who was one of the subscribing witnesses to 
the treaty), became satisfied of its authenticity, and the President 
thereupon’? transmitted the Cherokee duplicate to the Senate, which 
body advised and consented to its ratification. It was duly proclaimed 
by the President on the 17th of May, 1824.° 

‘Commissioner Smith in his letter of October 31, 1804, te the Secretary of War, 
states that two persons on the part of the United States, to be accompanied by two 
Cherokee chiefs, had been designated to run the boundaries of this cession. The 
propriety was then urged on the Cherokees by the commissioners of making ‘a cession 
of the lands lying between East and West Tennessee. Several days were consumed 
in urging this proposal, and a majority of the chiefs were probably in fayor of it, but 
Commissioner Smith remarks that a majority, unless it amounts almost to unanimity, 
is not considered with them sufficient to determine in matters of great interest, par- 
ticularly in making cessions of lands. 
2 December 20, 1811. 
’Tt is stated in a resolution of the Georgia legislature, passed June 16, 1802, that 
this line was surveyed by Colonel Hawkins in 1798. 
‘The letter of the Cherokee delegation calling attention to this matter is dated 
January 19, 1824. 
° February 6, 1824. 
®April 15, 1824. 
7 April 30, 1824. 
* United States Statutes at Large, Vol. VII, p. 228. 
