ROYCE.) TREATY OF MARCH 22, 1816. 207 
All efforts were truitless in securing any further cession of lands, 
either north or south of the Tennessee.’ 
Previous to the visit of the Cherokee delegation to Washington and 
to the instructions given, as referred to above, to the boundary com- 
missioners to suspend the running of the boundary line between the 
Creek cession and the Cherokees pending negotiations with the latter, 
General Coffee had been engaged in surveying the line from Coosa River 
to the Tennessee River.2 As a result of the negotiations with the Chero- 
kees, additional instructions were given the boundary commissioners? 
(accompanying which was a copy of the Cherokee treaty concluded on 
the 22d of March preceding) to run and mark the boundary line therein 
agreed upon from the lower end of the Ten Islands, on Coosa River, to 
the Flat Rock, on Bear Creek. They were advised that the surveys 
already made by General Coffee might be of advantage to them, though 
from an examination of his report it did not appear he had taken any 
notice of the point at which this line was to terminate, notwithstanding 
he seemed to have had in view the treaty made with the Cherokees in 
the year 1806, which proposed Caney Creek and a line from its source 
to the Flat Rock as the boundary between the Cherokees and Chicka- 
Saws. Coffee's line had already excited the jealousy and opposition of 
the Chickasaws, and on the same day final instructions were given the 
commissioners to run the line from Coosa River to Flat Rock, Major 
Cocke, the Chickasaw agent, was directed to advise the Chickasaws that 
in agreeing upon this line with the Cherokees the United States had 
in no degree interfered with the conflicting claims ot the Chickasaws 
south of that line and east of Coffee’s line; that from an examination 
of the treaties with the Chickasaws and Cherokees, and especially that 
of 1786 with the former tribe, it appeared that a point called the Flat 
Rock was considered a corner of the lands belonging to them, and had 
since been considered as the corner to the Cherokee, Creek, and Chick- 
asaw hunting grounds. It is proper to state in this connection that for 
many years an uncertainty had existed in the minds of both the In- 
dians and the United States authorities as to the exact location of this 
Flat Rock,’ and whether it was on Bear Creek or on the headwaters of 
the Long Leaf Pine, a branch of the Black Warrior River. The line as 
finally run by the commissioners from Flat Rock, on Bear Creek, to Ten 
Islands, pursued a course bearing S. 67° 56/ 27 B..118 miles and 40 
perches.” It may be interesting also to quote from a letter® from Will- 

‘Letter from Secretary of War to United States Senators from Tennessee, April 4, 
1816. 
*See letter of Secretary of War to Barnett, Hawkins, and Gaines, April 16, 1816. 
* April 16, 1816. These boundary commissioners were William Barnett, Col. Benja- 
min Hawkins, and Maj. 1. P. Gaines. 
4 Letter of General Jackson to Secretary of War, June 10, 1816; also from Commis- 
sioner Barnett, June 7, 1816. 
° Old map on file in General Land Office. 
® June 7, 1816. 
