ROYCE. ] TREATY OF SEPTEMBER 14, 1816. 211 
accede to the desired cessions, Agent Meigs was to urge that the Chero- 
kee delegation appointed to meet the boundary commissioners at the 
Chickasaw Council House on the 1st of September following should be 
invested with full authority for the conclusion of such adjustment of 
boundaries as might be determined on at that place. This authority 
was conditionally granted by the council,' and when the delegation 
came to meet the United States commissioners at the Chickasaw Coun- 
cil House, in the month of September, an agreement was made as to 
boundaries as set forth in the second article of the treaty of September 
14,1816. By this agreement the Cherokees ceded all claim west of a 
line from Camp Coffee to the Coosa River and south of a line from the 
latter point to Flat Rock, on Bear Creek.? The treaty was ratified by 
the nation in general council, at Turkeytown, on the 4th of October 
following.’ 
Alabama alleges error in survey.—W hen the due-south iine from Camp 
Coffee provided for in the treaty was surveyed, the surveyor, through 
an error in running it, deflected somewhat to the west. When the adja- 
cent country came to be surveyed and opened up to settlement much 
complaint was made, and the legislature of Alabama‘ passed a joint reso- 
lution reciting the fact that through this erroneous survey much valua- 
ble land had been left within the Cherokee limits which had properly 
been ceded to the United States and instructing Alabama’s delegation 
in Congress to take measures for having the line correctly run. The 
matter having been by Congress referred to the Secretary of War for 
investigation and report, the Commissioner of the General Land Office, 
at his request, reported® that when the public surveys were made in that 
section it was found that neither the line due south from Camp Coffee nor 
from the head of Caney Creek had been surveyed on a true meridian. 
Inasmuch, however, as they had been run and marked by commissioners 
appointed by the United States, the surveyors necessarily made the 
public surveys in conformity to them. By this deviation from the true 
meridian the United States and the State of Alabama had gained more 
land from the manner in which the Caney Creek or Chickasaw boundary 
line had been run than had been lost by the deviation in the Cherokee 
or Camp Coffee line, and the quantity in either case did not perhaps 
exceed six or eight thousand acres. 

‘Letter of Return J. Meigs to the Secretary of War, dated August 19, 1816. Ameri- 
can State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. II, p. 113. 
? Report of Commissioners Jackson, Merriwether, and Franklin to Secretary of War, 
dated Chickasaw Council House, September 20,1816. American State Papers, Indian 
Affairs, Vol. II, p. 104. 
3 Report of Commissioners Jackson and Merriwether to Secretary of War, October 4, 
1816. 
4 January 7, 1828. 
® February 25, 1828. 
