Note (return) — X. NEGOTIATIONS WITH UNION INDIANS

in deadly earnest. A commencement was made with the Creeks in May, Agent Cutler calling the chiefs in council and laying before them the draft of a treaty that had been prepared, upon the advice of Coffin,666 in Washington and that had been entrusted for transmission to the unscrupulous ex-agent, Perry Fuller.667 The Creek chiefs consented to sell a tract of land for locating other Indians upon, but declared themselves opposed to any plan for "sectionizing" their country and asked that they might be consulted as to the Indians who were to share it with them. The month before they had prayed to be allowed to go back home. Well fed and clothed though they were, and quite satisfied with their agent, they were terribly homesick.668 Might they not go down and clean out their country for themselves? It seemed impossible for the army to do it.669