A Tale of Three Treaties

Treaties between colonial governments and Natives often led to more problems then they solved.  There were several reasons for this, including the fact that these vast tracts of land were almost impossible to survey with precision, there was always self-dealing behind the scenes, and tribes with rights to specific hunting ranges were often overlooked.  The Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued by George III's ministers in London with the intent to placate Native tribes after the Seven Years War (1755-1763), caused total chaos on the ground.

The Royal Proclamation forbade settlement beyond an imaginary line drawn along the Appalachian Mountain chain.  The rule of thumb to differentiate open land from land off limits sounded simple enough.  Settlement was permitted along those rivers which flowed into Atlantic.  It was forbidden along Rivers which flowed into the Mississippi.  This put the Ohio River Valley and Tennessee off limits to White settlement.  The King's government reckoned without the rampant land speculation which took place during and after the war.  Wealthy landowners such as Sir William Johnson and George Washington had already staked claims to lands in the Ohio Valley.  Veterans of the War in most of the states had been promised land grants of seized French land as inducement to fight.  The Royal Proclamation threw a sprig in all these schemes and something had to be done. 

That something was the Treaty of Hard Labor signed between the Cherokee and John Stuart, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the British Indian Department in the South.  Why this Treaty received its colorful name is not known today, except that it took all of Stuart's trust with the Cherokee and personal diplomacy to get it agreed to.   The Cherokee agreed to give up claims to property west of the Allegheny Mountains and east of the Ohio River, namely all of present-day West Virginia.  The line drawn ran from the junction of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers, to the headwaters of the Kanawha, then south to the boundary of Spanish Florida, well beyond the Proclamation line.  Johnson signed the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in November, 1768 with the Iroquois, moving the Proclamation boundary west 300 miles.  

There were immediate problems.  For one, neither Stuart nor Johnson had reckoned with the Shawnee, Creek, or other Native tribes who also felt they had range rights in this land.  Further, the boundary lines did not jive.  Stuart called a parley with Cherokee leaders at Lochaber Plantation near Ninety-Six, South Carolina to redraw the lines again.  The treaty line in the south was moved to six miles east of Long Island of the Holston River.  The south fork of the Holston was agreed as the boundary.  However, the generic designation of north or south of the Holston River caused immediate confusion as Settlers poured into the Holston, Nolichucky and Watauga River valleys of Tennessee, quickly lapping over into Cherokee territory.  A survey confirmed that the boundaries lines of the Treaty of Lochaber were still not correct and settlers beyond the redrawn boundary were ordered to leave. 

At this point, the Settlers decided to circumvent the crown, the Cherokee who were actually living on the contested ground, and land speculators in the east.  They formed the Watauga Association and leased, later purchased the land from Cherokee leaders.  In doing so, they reckoned without the Chickamauga Cherokee, who were not willing to cede any of their land.  The Settlers also had another reason for grievance with the British crown, which refused to approve their purchase or defend them against Native attacks.  On the frontier, the Revolution wasn't about taxation without representation.  It was about land rights, pure and simple.