Summary of the Western/Arkansas Cherokee (Old Settlers)
The following is a summary of the
text written by James Mooney,
a U.S. Bureau of Ethnology
Anthropologist, and published
in the Nineteenth Annual Report
of the Bureau of American
Ethnology, 1897-98 (Washington
D.C. Government Printing Office)
The first official migration
westward by the Cherokee and
the subsequent negotiations
resulted in the assignment of
a territory in Arkansas to the
Western Cherokee in the form
of a Treaty with the United
States in 1817. The voluntary
Old Settlers were considered
as 'conservative,' who desired
to move west and reestablish
their traditional life, of which
the major body of the Cherokee
were quickly moving away
from. By the Treaty of 1817, the
Western Cherokee acquired title
to a definite territory and official
standing under Government
protection. The Cherokees in
the East were strongly against
any recognition of the Western
Cherokee.
The Treaty which assigned
the lands to the Western
Cherokees stipulated that a
census should be made of the
eastern and western divisions of
the Cherokee separately, and an
apportionment of the national
annuity forthwith made on that
basis.
Thomas Nuttall, the
famed naturalist, visited the
Arkansas Cherokee in 1819
and gave the following account
of his findings: "both banks
of the river, as we procceeded,
were lined with the houses and
farms of the Cherokee, and
though their dress was a mixture
of indigenous and European
taste, yet in their houses, which
are decently furnished, and in
their farms, which were well
fenced and stocked with cattle,
we perceive a happy approach
toward civilization. Their
numerous families, also, well fed
and clothed, argue a propitious
progress in their population.
Their superior industry either
as hunters or farmers proves the
value of property among them,
and they are no longer strangers
to avarice and the distinctions
created by wealth. Some of them
are possessed of property to the
amount of many thousands of
dollars, have houses handsomely
and conveniently furnished,
and their tables spread with our
dainties and luxuries."
The Treaty of 1828 between
the Western Cherokees and the
United States, stipulated for
an assignment of land further
West in Indian Territory, with
a 'perpetual outlet west." The
territory assigned to them called
for a 'permanent home, and
which shall, under the most
solemn guarantee of the United
States, be and remain theirs
forever - a home that shall never,
in all future time, be embarrassed
by having extended around it
the lines or
placed over it
the jurisdiction
of a territory
or state, nor be
pressed upon by the extension in
any way of any of the limits of
any existing territory or state; "
Article 2 defined the
boundaries of the new tract and
the western outlet to be awarded.
And were further modified and
clarified in 1833 at a meeting at
Fort Gibson, Indian Territory,
between the U.S. Government,
the Western Cherokee and the
Creek Nation, which resulted
in another official Treaty.
Fort Gibson was a military
establishment called for in
Article 9 of the Treaty. It was
necessary to include the Creeks,
as some of their voluntary
settlers had settled along the
northern bank of the Arkansas
on the Verdigris river, on lands
found to be within the limits
of the territory assigned to the
Western Cherokee by the Treaty
of 1828.
This Treaty of 1833 with the
Western Cherokees set the seven
million acre tract boundaries, as
well as a strip two miles wide
along the northern border which
was later annexed to the state of
Kansas by the Treaty of 1866.
By tacit agreement, some
of the Creeks who had settled
within the Cherokee bounds were
permitted to remain, and among
these were several families of
Uchee Indians, who had fixed
their residence at the spot where
the town of Tahlequah was
established after the arrival of the
thousands of immigrant Eastern
Cherokees, forcibly removed
from the eastern homelands in
1838-39.
George Wickliffe
Chief
