Note 145 — Chapter VII

It is not now believed that the Cherokee ever occupied the Carolina coast. It is more probable that they came from the north, a century or two before De Soto visited them. Their traditions and the researches of archæologists indicate that their original home was northwest of Lake Superior, whence they migrated southeast, coming up the Ohio and the Kanawha valleys, and finally descending the Great Valley of the Appalachians to their historic seat. They are thought to have built, en passant, the mounds of the Ohio region.

The removal policy was a gradual development. Even before the close of the eighteenth century—soon, in fact, after the treaty of Hopewell (1785)—bands began to cross the Mississippi; and as the pressure of white population increased the migration was facilitated by treaties. In 1803, President Jefferson suggested the desirability of removing the tribe beyond the river, and the Act of 1804, dividing the Louisiana Purchase, appropriated $15,000 for this purpose. In 1809, Jefferson encouraged a part of the tribe which was discontented with existing conditions to send a delegation to inspect lands on the Arkansas, with a view to exchanging their old range for a new one in that region. The exchange was not consummated until 1817, by which time the migration of families and small parties had swelled the number in Arkansas to two or three thousand. The treaty of July 8, 1817, gave the Arkansas Cherokee a tract lying between the White and Arkansas rivers, bounded on the east by a line running northeast from Point Remove on the Arkansas to Shield’s Ferry on White River, and on the west by a parallel line starting from Table Rock, just above Fort Smith. This reserve was surrendered in 1825 for seven million acres in Indian Territory. The main body of the eastern Cherokee were removed to the Territory under a treaty made in 1835.—Ed.