From James Madison to the Senate, 18 November 1814
To the Senate
November 18th, 1814
I lay before the Senate, for their consideration, whether they will advise and consent to the ratification thereof, a Treaty concluded on the twenty-second day of July last, with the Tribes of Indians, called the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanoese, Senecas, and Miamies.1
I lay before the Senate, also, for the like purpose, an Instrument, entitled Articles of agreement and capitulation, made and concluded on the ninth day of August last, between Major General Jackson and the Chiefs, Deputies, and warriors of the Creek nation of Indians.2
These communications are accompanied by Documents having relation to them.3
James Madison.
RC and enclosures (DNA: RG 46, Executive Proceedings, Indian Relations, 13B–C1). RC in Edward Coles’s hand, signed by JM. Filed with the RC are drafts of two resolutions approving ratification of the treaties. For enclosures (printed in , Indian Affairs, 1:826–61), see nn.
1. The enclosed treaty (1 p.) was signed at Greenville, Ohio, by William Henry Harrison, Lewis Cass, and representatives of the specified Indian tribes (DNA: RG 11, Treaties with Indian Tribes and Related Papers); for its text, see JM’s Presidential Proclamation, 21 Dec. 1814. The Senate ratified the treaty on 13 Dec. 1814 ( 2:593–94).
2. The prominent feature of the second enclosed treaty (6 pp.) was the cession to the United States, as compensation for war costs, of all Creek territory west of the Coosa River in what is now central Alabama, and south of an irregular line from the falls of that river to the Chattahoochee River below Eufaula (DNA: RG 11, Treaties with Indian Tribes and Related Papers). The ceded land included about twenty-three million acres, more than half of the entire Creek territory (Quimby, U.S. Army in the War of 1812, 2:476). For the text of the treaty, see JM’s Presidential Proclamation, 16 Feb. 1815. The Senate ratified it that day, immediately before ratifying the Treaty of Ghent ( 2:619–20).
3. The enclosed documents relating to the Treaty of Greenville included John Armstrong’s instructions to commissioners William Henry Harrison, Lewis Cass, and Isaac Shelby (4 pp.; see 7:560 n. 2, 569, 570 n. 4), a journal of the proceedings beginning on 1 July 1814 (76 pp.), and an extract of Harrison and Cass to Armstrong, 23 July 1814 (1 p.), enclosing the treaty. JM also submitted 127 pages of documents regarding the Creek War, consisting primarily of U.S. agent to the Creek Nation Benjamin Hawkins’s correspondence with Armstrong detailing the origins of the war, Hawkins’s efforts to prevent it, and its subsequent course.