To James Madison from Josiah Meigs, 5 July 1815
From Josiah Meigs
General Land Office 5th. July 1815
Sir
I have the honor to enclose an extract from a confidential letter received this day from the Register of the Land Office at Canton, (Mr Reasin Beall)1 perhaps the substance of the letter may be usefull to the Commissioners appointed to treat with the Indians at Detroit. Most respectfully I am Sir your obedt. Servt
Josiah Meigs
RC and enclosure (DNA: RG 107, LRRS, M-298:8). Cover sheet bears a note in an unidentified hand: “Copy sent to the Commissioners, appointed to hold a Treaty at Fort Wayne, with the Indians.” RC docketed as received in the War Department in July 1815. For enclosure, see n. 1.
1. Beall, who had been one of the commissioners to locate the road from Ohio to Michigan Territory, as agreed upon in the 25 Nov. 1808 Treaty of Brownstown, explained in the enclosed extract of his 16 June 1815 letter to Meigs (10 pp.; printed in Territorial Papers, Michigan, 10:558–62) that in 1812 he and his colleagues had selected the route they believed best calculated to facilitate travel to Michigan from Washington, D.C., and various points in the northwestern states. The Indians were initially satisfied with the choice, he wrote, but had been induced to protest by white men who had financial and political interests in a different route. The commissioners disregarded these objections, as well as those made directly to them by settlers and speculators. Beall suggested that the recent Indian complaints about the road’s location (see Meigs to JM, 20 June 1815, and n. 1) sprang from a similar source, and recommended hiring Dayton, Ohio, surveyor Benjamin Van Cleve, who was “incapable of being alarmed at a Shadow,” and “able to ascertain and report the true cause of the change, which (if any) has taken place with the Indians in the premisses.”