208 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
iam Barnett, one of the United States boundary commissioners, to his 
co-commissioner, General Coffee, in which he states that he has just re- 
turned from the council at Turkeytown, at which the Cherokees, Choe- 
taws, Chickasaws, and Creeks were represented, and that the principal 
purpose of the council was to agree upon and adjust their several bound- 
aries. He notes the fact that the Creeks and Cherokees had agreed 
to make a joint stock of their lands, with a privilege to each nation to 
settle where they pleased. The Creeks and Choctaws had fixed on the 
ridge dividing the waters of the Black Warrior and the Cahawba as 
their former boundary. The Chickasaws and Cherokees could come to 
no understanding as to their divisional line, the former alleging that 
they had no knowledge of any lands held by the latter on the south 
side of the Tennessee River adjoining them; that they always consid. 
ered the lands so claimed by the Cherokees as belonging to the Creeks, 
and in support of this they had exhibited to him a number of affida- 
vits in proof that their line ran from the mouth of a small creek empty- 
ing into the Tennessee near Ditto’s Landing (opposite Chickasaw Isl- 
and), up the same to its source, thence to the head of the Sipsey Fork 
of the Black Warrior, and down the same to the Flat Rock, where the 
Black Warrior is 200 yards wide; that they had no knowledge of any 
place on Bear Creek known as Flat Rock, and that running the line to 
the last mentioned place would be taking from them a considerable tract 
of country, to which they could by no means consent.! 
ROADS THROUGH THE CHEROKEE COUNTRY. 
In order to secure a proper system of communication between the Ten- 
nessee and the Lower Alabama and Mississippi settlements, the United 
States had long desired the establishment of sufficient roads through the 
Indian country between those points. The Indians, however, were 
shrewd enough to perceive that the granting of such a permission 
would be but an entering wedge for splitting their country in twain, 
and afford excuse for the encroachments of white settlers. 

1 From a letter of Agent Meigs bearing date December 26, 1304, it seems that he was 
just in receipt of a communication from the Chickasaw chiefs relative to their claim 
to lands on the north side of Tennessee River. The chiefs assert that part of their peo- 
ple formerly lived at a place called Chickasaw Old Fields, on the Tennessee, about 20 
miles above the mouth of Elk River; that while living there they had a war with the 
Cherokees, when, finding themselves too much separated from their principal settle- 
ments, they removed back thereto. Afterwards, on making peace with the Cherokees, 
their boundaries were agreed on as they are defined in the instrument given them by 
President Washington in 1794. 
They further state that they had a war with the Shawnees and drove them from all 
the waters of the Tennessee and Duck Rivers, as well as conflictsswith the Cherokees, 
Choctaws, and Creeks, in which they defeated all attempts of their enemies to dis- 
possess them of their country. 
Agent Meigs remarks that he is convinced the claim of the Chickasaws is the best 
founded; that until recently the Cherokees had always alluded to the country in eon- 
troversy as the hunting ground of the four nations, and that their few settle- 
ments within this region were of recent date. 
