268 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
named. Another Cherokee version was to the effect that at a joint 
council of the two nations, held prior to the Revolutionary War, the 
boundary question was a subject of discussion, when it was agreed to 
allow the oldest man in the Creek Nation to determine the point. This 
man was James McQueen, a soldier who had deserted from Oglethorpe’s 
command soon after the settlement of Savannah. MeQueen decided 
that the boundary should be a line drawn across the headwaters of 
Hatchet and Elk Creeks, the former being a branch of the Coosa and 
the latter a tributary of the Tallapoosa. This decision was predicated 
upon the fact that the Cherokees had driven the Creeks below this line, 
and it had been mutually agreed that it should constitute the boundary. 
In contradiction of this it was asserted by the Creeks that in the year 
1818 it had been admitted at a public meeting of the Creeks by ‘‘Sour 
Mush,” a Cherokee chief, that the Creeks owned all the land up to the 
head of Coosa River, including all of its waters; that the Tennessee was 
the Cherokee River, and the territories of the two nations joined on the 
dividing ridge between those rivers. In former times, on the Chatta- 
hoochee, the Cherokees had claimed the country as low down as a 
branch of that river called Choky (Soquee) River. Subsequently they 
were told by the Coweta king, that they might live as low down as the 
Currahee Mountain, but that their young men had now extended their 
claim to Hog Mountain, without however any shadow of right or 
authority.! 
With a view to an amicable adjustment of their respective rights a 
council was held between the chiefs and headmen of the two nations at 
the residence of General William McIntosh, in the Creek country, at 
which a treaty was concluded between themselves on the 11th of De- 
cember, 1820. In the first article of this treaty the boundary line be- 
tween the two nations was fixed as running from the Buzzard’s Roost, 
on the Chattahoochee, in a direct line to the Coosa River, at a point 
opposite the mouth of Wills Town Creek, and thence down the Coosa 
River to a point opposite Fort Strother. This boundary was reaffirmed 
by them in a subsequent treaty concluded October 30, 1822.? 
The Cherokee treaty of 1817 had assumed to cede a tract of country 
‘Beginning at the high shoals of the Appalachy River and running 
thence along the boundary line between the Creek and Cherokee Na- 
tions westwardly to the Chatahouchy River,” ete. 
The Creek treaty of 1818* in turn ceded a tract the northern bound- 
ary of which extended from Suwanee Old Town, on the Chattahoochee, 
to the head of Appalachee River, and which overlapped a considerable 
portion of the Cherokee cession of 1817. 
The Creek treaty of 18214 ceded a tract running as far north as the 
Shallow Ford of the Chattahoochee, which also included a portion of 
1 Letter of D. B. Mitchell, Creek agent, to Secretary of War. 
2See Indian Office files for these two treaties. 
’ United States Statutes at Large, Vol. VII, p. 171. 
AT Seas elo. 
