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University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 A Xerox Education Company 72-23,102 MARKMAN, Robert Paul, 1938- THE ARKANSAS CHEROKEES: 1817-1828. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1972 History, general I University Microfilms, AXEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan § © 1972 RCffiERT PAUL MARKMAN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFIDiED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE THE ARKANSAS CHEROKEES: 1817-1828 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY ROBERT PAUL MARKMAN Norman, Oklahoma 1972 TÎIE ARKANSAS CHEROKEES ; 1817-1828 APPROVED BY DISSERTATION COMMITTEE PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...................... iv MAP .......... yl INTRODUCTION ....................... 1 Chapter I. PERIOD OF TRANSITION ..... If II. THE ARKANSAS BRANCH.......... 24 III. NEGOTIATING A H O M E .......... 59 IV. THE ARKANSAS SETTLEMENT...... 10? V. BORDER W A R .................. 131 VI. DEFENDING PARADISE........... 146 VII. PARADISE LOST ............... 182 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................... 196 ill ACKNOVJLEDGMENTS Researching the Arkansas Cherokees provided the opportunity to work in several regional collections. The following people greatly facilitated my investigation: Jack Dan Haley, Western History Collection, Bizzell Library, University of Oklahoma; Mrs. Alice Timmons, Phillips Collection, Bizzell Library, University of Oklahoma; Mrs. Relia Looney, Oklahoma State Historical Society, Oklahoma City; Mrs. Marie Keene, Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Russell P. Baker, Assistant Director, Arkansas Historical Commission, Old State House, Little Rock, Arkansas ; and Mrs. E. A. Stadler, Archives, Missouri Historical Society, Jefferson Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri. I am especially indebted to my chairman. Dr. A. M. Gibson, who supplied time, direction and encouragement when they were most needed. Sincere gratitude is extended to the members of my committee. Dr. Sidney Brown, Dr. Russell Buhite, Dr. Norman L. Crocker, and Dr. Rufus G. Hall, Jr., for helping me finish this project, I deeply appreciate the unstinting work of Mrs. Karen Schafer, who typed and helped proofread this paper. iv V My wife, Joyce, deserves special recognition for mixing understanding and hours of hard work with gentle threats of bodily violence to assure a completed work. TERRITORY ORIGINAUY ASSIGNED TO THE CHEROKEE TMATIGN OF" INDIANS h INTRODUCTION Recently historians have been striking at the cliches concerning Indian removals from the East. The old image of the ‘Trail of Tears’ portrayed the cruel United States army driving the unfrotunate Cherokees from Georgia. Indeed, such events occurred in the I830’s, when the Eastern Nation was forcibly relocated in Oklahoma. New studies, however, have tempered that picture. Fragments from the East voluntarily crossed the Mississippi prior to the 1830 's, in contrast to those idio preferred to occupy ancestral lands rather than cultivate a wilderness tract. Thomas Jefferson instituted land exchanges and removals in I803 . Federal authorities then used bribes, cajolery, and intratribal rivalries to encourage removal to the West. Among those accepting the offers as a realis­ tic means to protect their traditions, certain Cherokees in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama colonized the Arkansas valley. Others followed to strengthen their hold on the undeveloped frontier. In I817, the James Monroe administra­ tion negotiated a treaty which formally ceded land to the Arkansas Cherokees and, as a result, more emigrants crossed the Mississippi. Unfortunately, their claim on the land was 1 2 tenuous. Within a decade the Arkansas Cherokees were the unwilling participants in another removal to Oklahoma. The Arkansas Cherokee colony developed an erratic pattern. Although early migration was voluntary, fears that the hunting and religious traditions would >>e lost through assimilation sparked conservative elements to remove. An early refugee, Tolontuskee, envisioned his people living on an Indian reserve free from the pressures of Anglo-American settlement. Federal officials encouraged him believing other Cherokees would join his people. Although Tolontuskee’s dream had become a reality when the negotiations were completed, the Cherokees West found the federal government unwilling to fulfill treaty provisions. Nevertheless, in 1818, Monroe promised Tolontuskee a permanent outlet to the West as a bridge to hunting grounds on the plains. John Jolly, Tolontuskee•s successor, tried vainly to implement the President’s words. The growth of the white community in Arkansas menaced Cherokee designs on the rich lands of eastern Okla­ homa. Their ability to influence Congress expanded, and they challenged the Cherokee rights to land in western Arkansas as far as the Verdigris River. Finally, in 1828, the government, under fire from both Indian and white inter­ ests, determined to force another removal which would relo­ cate the Western Cherokees outside the limits of Arkansas. A compromise settlement secured eastern Oklahoma for the 3 Cherokees, hut cost the tribe its original grant in Arkansas. For those who believe that earlier removals did not produce the violence of the ’Trail of Tears,’ the experi­ ence of the Arkansas Cherokees provides counter-evidence of a different type of hardship. Federal authorities acted irresponsibly. They failed to fulfill treaty commitments, evaded payment of annuities and allowed warfare on the Indian frontier which prevented the Western Cherokees from achieving their goal, establishment of a new Indian Nation in the western wilderness. Eventually federal officials bowed to the will of the white settlers and forced the Western Cherokees to move from Arkansas farther west onto the prairies which became Indian Territory. THE ARKANSAS CHEROKEES: 1817-1828 CHAPTER I A PERIOD OF TRANSITION For years the Cherokees living in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama had been attracted by the trans- Mississippi West. Following the American Revolution they hunted on land occupied first by Spain, then by France, and after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, by the United States. Starting with a trickle in the 1780's, more and more Chero­ kees migrated to present-day Arkansas. Some reacted negatively to a series of treaties dating from the Revolu­ tion, agreements which periodically deprived the tribe of its holdings through cessions to the United States. Others left because hunting in the West was better. Whatever the reason, by 1820, nearly one-third of the total Cherokee i population of 13,000 had settled in the new territory. ^For material on the early cessions see Thurman Wilkins, Cherokee Traeedv: The Story of the Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People (New York: Macmillan Co., 1970), p. 11; also Charles Royce, The Cherokee Nation of Indians. in John Wesley Powell, Fifth Annual Report of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 188T-84 ^Washington. D.C.: G.P.O.. 1887). t>. 1 5 0 . Hereafter cited as Royce, Cherokee Nation of Indians. 5 The most adamant opponents to early treaties ceding land, the Chickamaugas, lived in northwestern Georgia and the adjacent regions of Alabama and Tennessee in the Lower Towns. More warlike than their brethren to the north, they led in migrating to the West. In the meantime the Spanish, anxious to block United States' expansion, encouraged Cherokee involvement with their intrigues in the Old South- 2 west prior to Pinckney's Treaty.