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From George Washington to the U.S. Senate, 19 January 1797

To the United States Senate

United States
January 19th 1797.

Gentlemen of the Senate

I nominate Benjamin Hawkins, Andrew Pickens and James Winchester, to be Commissioners for ascertaining and marking the Boundary lines, agreeably to Treaties, between the United States and the Indian Nations.1

Go: Washington

LS, DNA: RG 46, entry 52; LB, DLC:GW.

This message was delivered to the Senate on this date by GW’s secretary George Washington Craik. The nominations were approved on 31 Jan. (Senate Executive Journal description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America: From the commencement of the First, to the termination of the Nineteenth Congress. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C., 1828. description ends , 221, 224).

1Secretary of War James McHenry sent Hawkins, Pickens, and Winchester their commissions with a set of detailed instructions in a letter from Philadelphia of 2 Feb., which reads: “The President with the advice and consent of the Senate having appointed you Commissioners to ascertain” the boundary lines with Indian nations, “you are hereby vested with all authority appertaining to the said appointment and directed to proceed to ascertain and mark the boundary lines between the United States and the Creek, Cherokee and Chickasaw Nations.” McHenry directed the commissioners to mark the Creek line in accordance with Article IV of the 7 Aug. 1790 U.S. treaty with the Creek Indians and with Article II of the Treaty of Colerain of 29 June 1796. The commissioners were to run the Cherokee boundary as defined in Article IV of the 1785 treaty with that tribe, and the Chickasaw boundary according to Article III of the 1786 Treaty of Hopewell. McHenry instructed the commissioners to adhere to “these enumerated Articles and such others in their respective Treaties as have relation to the object of your appointment,” and “to remove any difficulty that may occur with the Indians as to the true meaning of their stipulations and to reconcile them to the result by every conciliatory means in your power.” Seeking the presence of Creek chiefs at the survey, McHenry also ordered Hawkins, Pickens, and Winchester to send “a certified plat” of the boundary lines “to the Governors of the State of Georgia and Tennessee,” and to deliver “to the Indians … a plat of their respective Boundaries.” McHenry continued: “It is expected that all of you will be present at the running of the Cherokee lines; but should circumstances render it … unnecessary for more than one or two of you to attend at the running of the Creek and Chickasaw lines two or one of you are hereby vested with full and ample power to establish and mark the same. … The Creeks have been promised that the running of their line would be commenced in March and the Cherokees in April.” Though the Treaty of Colerain was “yet before the Senate,” McHenry suggested that the commissioners proceed with the survey since the “Treaty of New York” of 7 Aug. 1790 was “sufficiently expressive of the true line of division between the United States and the Creeks” (MHi: Adams Papers). For the boundaries of the Indian living and hunting grounds that were to be surveyed and that had been specified in U.S. treaties with the Creek, Cherokee, and Chickasaw Indians, see Kappler, Indian Treaties description begins Charles J. Kappler, ed. Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. 5 vols. Washington, D.C., 1903–41. description ends , 2:8–11, 14–16, 25–34, and 46–50. For the Senate consideration of the Treaty of Colerain, see GW to the U.S. Senate, 4 Jan., and n.1.

The need for a survey of the Creek line already had been raised in summer 1796, following the signing of the Treaty of Colerain. Hawkins made plans for the survey by the fall of that year (see McHenry to GW, 29 Aug.). Furthermore, chiefs of the Chickasaw and Cherokee tribes met with GW and McHenry in Philadelphia in November and December 1796 to seek resolution to their boundary disputes (see McHenry to GW, 28 Nov., source note). In a letter of 22 Nov. 1796, written at Hopewell, S.C., Hawkins, appointed in 1796 as superintendent of southern Indians, had written McHenry that he had “fixed on the 10th of March [1797] to meet at the Currahee Mountain to run the boundary line between the Creeks and the United States agreeably to Treaty [of Colerain]. The line must be run from Tugalo River over the Currahee Mountain to the source of the main south branch of the Oconee.” Hawkins selected 1 April 1797 as the date to survey the Cherokee boundary line (Foster, Works of Benjamin Hawkins description begins Thomas Foster, ed. The Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796–1810. Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2003. description ends , 13–14).

After receiving his commission of 2 Feb. 1797, Hawkins prioritized the Cherokee survey since that tribe had been dissatisfied with the boundary line determined by a 1792 commission and had been facing settler incursions upon its lands. In a letter dated 7 March 1797, written at Fort Fidius, Ga., Hawkins wrote Pickens: “I arrived here on the 25 ultimo, and on the last of that month received dispatches from the war office of 2nd, informing me that you are appointed with James Winchester, Commissioners to ascertain and mark the boundary lines agreeably to treaties between the Indian nations and the United States. … no time should be lost in estabishing the Cherokee line, as every day adds to the number of intruders upon their land; I have … determined to postpone the intention … of running the Creek boundary in this month” (Foster, Works of Benjamin Hawkins description begins Thomas Foster, ed. The Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796–1810. Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2003. description ends , 94). Winchester did not participate in the survey of the boundary with the Creek nation. On 31 March, Winchester wrote Silas Dinsmoor, U.S. agent to the Cherokees, from Cragfont, Tenn.: “General Pickins and Colonel Hawkins, expecting to meet me at Tellico Blockhouse [on the Tennessee River] the first of April, must be for the purpose of proceeding to the runing of the Creek line now, as our appointment authorizes and empowers any one or two of the Commissioners to run that line. It is my intention not to be present, especially as I have no acquaintance with the Creek nation … but shall hold myself in readiness to attend the runing … of the Cherokee and Chickasaw lines” (Foster, Works of Benjamin Hawkins description begins Thomas Foster, ed. The Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796–1810. Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2003. description ends , 146). For more on the commission and the atrocities committed upon Indians by angry white settlers dissatisfied with the marked boundaries, see Pound, Benjamin Hawkins description begins Merritt B. Pound. Benjamin Hawkins—Indian Agent. Athens, Ga., 1951. description ends , 118–37.

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