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Show MOONEYJ TREATIES OF WASHINGTON- 1816 97 delegation of 1816 the six signers are mentioned as Colonel [ John] Lowrey, Major [ John] Walker, Major Ridge, Captain [ Richard] Taylor, Adjutant [ John] Ross, and Kunnesee ( Tsi'yu- gilnsi'ni, Cheucunsene) and are described as men of cultivation, nearly all of whom had served as officers of the Cherokee forces with Jackson and distinguished themselves as well by their bravery as by their attachment to the United States. 1 Among the East Cherokee in Carolina the only name still remembered is that of their old chief, Junaluska ( Tsunu'lahun'ski), who said afterward: " If I had known that Jackson would drive us from our homes I would have killed him that day at the Horseshoe." The Cherokee returned to their homes to find them despoiled and ravaged in their absence by disorderly white troops. Two years afterward, by treaty at Washington, the Government agreed to reimburse them for the damage. Interested parties denied that they had suffered any damage or rendered any services, to which their agent indignantly replied: " It may be answered that thousands witnessed both; that in nearly all the battles with the Creeks the Cherokees rendered the most efficient service, and at the expense of the lives of many fine men, whose wives and children and brothers and sisters are mourning their fall." 8 In the spring of 1816 a delegation of seven principal men, accompanied by Agent Meigs, visited Washington, and the result was the negotiation of two treaties at that place on the same date, March 22, 1816. By the first of these the Cherokee ceded for five thousand dollars their last remaining territory in South Carolina, a small strip in the extreme northwestern corner, adjoining Chattooga river. By the second treaty a boundaiy was established between the lands claimed by the Cherokee and Creeks in northern Alabama. This action was made necessary in order to determine the boundaries of the great tract which the Creeks had been compelled to surrender in punishment for their late uprising. The line was run from a point on Little Bear creek in northwestern Alabama direct to the Ten islands of the Coosa at old Fort Strother, southeast of the present Asheville. General Jackson protested strongly against this line, on the ground that all the territory south of Tennessee river and west of the Coosa belonged to the Creeks and was a part of their cession. The Chickasaw also protested against considering this tract as Cherokee territory. The treaty also granted free and unrestricted road privileges throughout the Cherokee country, this concession being the result of years of persistent effort on the part of the Government; and an appropriation of twenty- five thousand five hundred dollars was made - » Drake, Indians, p. 401,1880. 9 Indian Treaties, p. 187,1887; Meigs' letter to Secretary ol War, August .19,1816, in American State Papers: Indian Affairs, n, pp. 118,114,1834. 19 ETH- 01 7 |