202 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
the Indians, should be borne by the State of Tennessee, and that the only 
lands the commission were authorized to treat for was that portion of 
the territory described in the act of April 18, 1806, as being ceded to 
Tennessee which should be found to lie east of the line established by 
Robertson and Meigs, running from the upper part of Chickasaw Old 
Fields northwardly so as to include all the waters of Elk River. The 
jealousy with which the Cherokees regarded a proposition for the sale 
of more land, and their especial aversion toward the people and gov- 
ernment of Tennessee, prevented success from attending these negotia- 
tions in any degree. f 
REMOVAL OF CHEROKEES TO THE WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI PROPOSED. 
It had been the policy of the Federal Government, from the beginning 
of its official relations with the Indian tribes, to encourage and assist 
the individuals of those tribes in grasping and accepting the pursuits 
and habits of civilized life, with a view to their preparation for the 
condition in which the rapidly encroaching white settlements would 
in a few years inevitably place them. 
With the disappearance of game the hunter must become a tiller of 
the soil or a herdsman, with the alternative of starvation. This hu- 
mane policy, begun systematically in the first administration of Wash- 
ington,! took the form of a considerable annual expenditure in the pur- 
chase for the Indians of hoes, plows, rakes, and other agricultural im- 
plements, as well as looms, cards, and spinning wheels. Among the 
northwestern tribes these efforts at industrial civilization were product- 
ive of trifling results. The southern tribes, however, and more especially 
the Creeks and Cherokees, had, in considerable numbers, manifested a 
partial though gradually increasing tendency toward self-support. Many 
of them, in addition to raising the necessaries of life, were producers in 
a limited degree of cotton, from which their women had learned to make 
a coarse article of cloth; others owned considerable herds of cattle and 
hogs, and altogether these tribes had made a degree of progress which 
was alike commendable to themselves and encouraging to the Govern- 
ment. 
However, the persistent and unremitting demands of the border set- 
tlers for more land, backed by the thorough sympathy and influence 
of the State governments of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, as 
well as by their Senators and Representatives in Congress, acted as a 
powerful lever for moving the Congress and Executive of the United 
States to seek the complete possession of the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, 
and Chickasaw lands. 
As early as 1803” President Jefferson had suggested the desirability 


‘See report of General Knox, Secretary of War, to President Washington, July 7, 
1789; Creek treaty of 1790; Cherokee treaty of 1791, ete. 
? Confidential message of President Jefferson to Congress, January 18, 1803. 
