FROM the seventeenth century great Britain was interested in the development of the Indian trade in the southern colonies of North America, and throughout the first half of the eighteenth there are numerous illustrations of the attractiveness of this branch of commerce, its extent, value, and political importance.¹ Even before the establishment of the colony of Georgia, Carolina and Virginia traders had engrossed a large amount of the trade with the Cherokee and were rapidly extending their activities to the neighbouring nations on the south and west. Adair, in his History of the American Indians, published in London in 1776, vividly portrayed some aspects of this trade, in which he himself had taken part for forty years. Hence, when in 1763 British sovereignty was acknowledged over the region in which French and Spanish influence had hitherto in varying degrees predominated this interest was already planted in certain sections of the Indian country. In some quarters there was strong Indian opposition to the British, based upon a fear of territorial aggrandizement, a fear which was fomented in some instances by the French. Nevertheless the British had already laid the basis for a working arrangement with the Indians through their trading interests. But their relations still required definite adjustment. The attractiveness of the lands tempted English settlers, and the latter’s aggressions had to be checked in order to preserve peace with the nations and to render their trade secure. It is with this problem of adjustment that the present inquiry is concerned. Before the news of the conspiracy of Pontiac was known in London, the earl of Egremont, secretary of state for the southern department, sent a communication to the governors of the four provinces constituting the southern Indian district in North America, and to John Stuart, superintendent of Indian affairs in the same department, directing them to summon the Indian nations of that region for a general congress.² The purpose of

this congress was to apprise the Indians of the reasons for the transfer of the land from the French and Spanish to the English, which had been effected by the treaty of Paris in 1763; and to establish peace and confidence between those nations and their new ruler by the assurance that ‘the English feel a particular Satisfaction in the Opportunity which their Successes afford them, of giving the Indians the most incontestable & substantial Proofs of their good Intentions & cordial Desire to maintain a sincere & friendly Correspondence with them’.³ Immediately after the receipt of this instruction the Indians of the south were invited to the congress. It was due to the action thus fortunately suggested by the British government and so promptly executed by Stuart and his colleagues that the ramifications of Pontiac’s conspiracy did not extend into the south.⁴

     After considerable delay in fixing upon a meeting-place, the congress assembled at Augusta, Georgia, on 3 November 1763.⁵ Here Stuart addressed an assembly including the governors of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, with whom he was co-operating, and representatives from the southern nations—Creeks, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw—numbering in all about seven hundred. During the following days the Indians presented their grievances;⁶ they complained of the excessive number of traders in their country and the encroachments of the British on their lands. The definitive acts of the congress⁷ consisted

in the granting of a reservation to the Catawbas and in determining a boundary between the settlements in Georgia and the Indian hunting lands. In addition, assurances were given on the one side that the Indians should be given opportunities for trade, and on the other that the traders would be secured against attack.⁸ This congress, the only one ever held at which all the nations of the south were assembled, set the example for several similar meetings during the next five years.

     The subjects of discussion at the congress of Augusta illustrate the problems of Indian management which became especially perplexing in the period following 1763. When sovereignty over the land east of the Mississippi River was transferred to the English crown in that year, not only a vast territory but thousands of natives as well came under its dominion. Now the problem of disposing of the lands would have been simple had not the Indians been loath to accept the political and commercial security offered by a power which was already crowding them on their eastern borders. Under the rule of France they had retained undisturbed possession of their lands. French settlers were rare indeed, and the traders asked for no permanent land grants. They had, moreover, no boundary line. Their plan of administration consisted in leaving the forests open to the Indians for hunting and in establishing posts where merchant and Indian could meet for the purpose of trading. Under this arrangement the country was divided into districts recognized by the Indians, within which the trader was licensed to carry on his trade, but beyond whose confines he was forbidden, under severe penalties, to sell his goods.⁹ The trade was carried on ‘by means of numerous well chosen posts and forts, sufficient as well to overawe as to supply all the Indians’.¹⁰ The character of the French trader generally ingratiated him with the natives; for, besides possessing a suave, tactful manner, which pleased them, he was able to adapt himself easily to their life and manners. His influence was strengthened by the consideration and respect he showed towards them and by the large gifts he distributed among them.¹¹ By their ‘dextrous culture of the Indians, under the great disadvantage of inability to supply their wants’, the French ‘were possessed of their affections in a much greater degree than the English. The System they adopted for governing them was suggested by

observation of their disposition and customs’.¹² One of the most striking phases of French control was the fact that the governors of Canada and Louisiana, which included all the French possessions in North America, were each superintendent in his department, and as there were no other governors, there was no competition or clashing of jurisdiction and authority.¹³

     In contrast to the French policy of centralization of government was the decentralized policy of the British, according to which each colony managed its own trade, and each strove for the largest share. Commercial relations with the Indian country were carried on by traders from the different colonial jurisdictions, who bartered such necessaries as the Indians required for half-dressed deer-skins, beaver and other furs. The traders from the different provinces were under very different regulations. This is well illustrated in the exploitation of the trade with the Cherokee nation, which was contiguous alike to Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. All who desired might go into the nation with goods from Virginia and North Carolina without being licensed, laid under any regulations, or giving any security for their good behaviour.¹⁴ In South Carolina Indian trade was carried on under very different conditions. In 1762 a law was passed under the title of ‘An Act to regulate the Trade with the Cherokee Indians, by taking the same into the Hands of the Publick of this Province’, the declared object of which was to prevent disorderly and worthless people going among the Indians as traders and pack-horse men—a course which had led to great confusion and mischief—and to supply the necessities of the Indians upon equitable and moderate terms.¹⁵ Neither of these objects, however, was achieved, because the law did not operate beyond the limits of the province and consequently did not affect people trading from any of the other three provinces. In Georgia likewise trade was regulated by a provincial law. But all such laws were virtually nullified by the lack of co-operation between the provinces. A trader from one province did not consider himself subject to the regulations made in any of the other three, and was responsible for his actions to that government only from which he had received his licence or from which he traded. Hence competition between the provinces often arose. Under this system great numbers of traders, unscrupulous in their methods, entered the Indian territory. They won trade by underselling their stores, a policy which in the end proved ruinous. Parties were frequently formed by the different traders among the Indians which resulted in confusion and disorder. Another

injurious practice was the sale, in the region further west, of English goods to the French, who were thus doubly benefited by the peltry trade. The Indians, moreover, had a serious grievance in the extensive traffic in rum, under the influence of which they were cheated in business, defrauded of their lands, and physically and morally corrupted.¹⁶

     This general condition obtained until the opening of the French and Indian war. Perceiving the need of supervision of Indian affairs, the Board of Trade, in 1755, appointed Sir William Johnson as superintendent in the district north of Virginia,¹⁷ and Edmund Atkin in the southern district, including the provinces of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Atkin died, however, in 1762, and was succeeded by Captain John Stuart.¹⁸ In 1761 the purchase of Indian lands was taken out of the hands of the colonies and placed under the authority of the home government. It had been the policy of the British government, whenever it claimed and maintained sovereignty over a territory, to extinguish the Indian title through treaty and purchase in order that there might be no barrier to the complete exploitation of the land.¹⁹ In the older colonies the frontier was in this manner extended further to the west as the number of colonists increased. The Indians supported this policy only in so far as it formally recognized their claims to the lands.²⁰ They might sell these possessions voluntarily; or, as happened quite as often, the pressure of a neighbouring settlement and the offer of a few desirable trinkets, which captivated their fancy, might induce them to relinquish their title. In the latter case, the material considerations very soon wore out or were forgotten. And again, close upon their hunting grounds, were the British settlements. The French policy was more generally favoured, then, because it left the Indians in apparently undisputed dominion over their hunting grounds.

     In view of these conditions, conflict between the British and French influences in the wilderness was inevitable. Even after France formally transferred the territory to Great Britain in 1763, the French trader continued his activity in spite of the fact that British traders now possessed the sole right to sell goods west of the Appalachian Mountains. Immediately the dire predictions of the coureurs de bois, concerning encroachments by the British and the confusion to trade resulting from an overwhelming number of traders, began to be realized. This unfortunate

situation led to the great Indian conspiracy which emanated from the shrewd mind of Pontiac and was aimed at the crushing of British power in North America.²¹ The possibilities threatened by the outbreak of this widespread rising made immediate action necessary. A general policy was, therefore, hastily conceived and announced in a royal proclamation on October 7, 1763. It provided, among other things, for the erection of three new provinces on the continent, Quebec, East Florida, and West Florida.²² According to its terms, the Indians were not to be molested or disturbed in their possession of such lands as ‘not having been ceded to or purchased by us are reserved to them, as their Hunting Grounds’; land grants beyond the bounds of the new colonies were forbidden without royal consent; and a temporary provision was made, ‘until our further Pleasure be known’, that in the other colonies no settlements were to be formed beyond the heads of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean. Definite grants must henceforth be made by treaty or purchase between the last frontiers and the crest of the mountains; for the present the vast region west of the mountains and beyond the limits of the new colonies was to remain undisturbed Indian territory. In this way the Indians’ fears of extensive encroachments were calmed. Provision was made, moreover, that trade within this Indian preserve should be free and open to all English subjects. It required

every Person who may incline to Trade with the said Indians to take out a License for carrying on such Trade, from the Governor or the Commander in Chief of any of our Colonies respectively where such Person shall reside; and also give Security to observe such Regulations as We shall at any Time think fit, by ourselves or by our Commissaries to be appointed for this purpose, to direct and appoint for the Benefit of the said Trade.²³

It further obliged the governors

to grant such Licenses without Fee or Reward, taking especial Care to insert therein a Condition, that such License shall be void, and the Security forfeited in case the Person to whom the same is granted shall refuse or neglect to observe such Regulations as We shall think proper to prescribe as aforesaid.

     Before the trade provisions thus summarized were known to all American officials, especially in the interior of the country, a policy somewhat similar in purpose had been announced by the military authorities. In March 1764 Colonel James Robertson,

whom General Gage had placed in charge of the southern military district, issued orders forbidding the exaction of duties at the ports of Pensacola and Mobile, and announcing that the trade with the Indians should be free and open to all. Information of this order was at the same time transmitted to Stuart.²⁴

     The home government intended that a general plan for the political and commercial control of the Indians should soon be devised. In the following year, accordingly, the ministry, after consulting a number of persons familiar with American conditions—particularly Sir William Johnson, and his deputy George Croghan, and Captain John Stuart—framed a scheme for the management of Indian affairs. This plan²⁵ proposed to continue the two departments into which the Indian territory had been divided, each under the control of a superintendent who was to possess full authority in all Indian affairs independent of the civil authorities.²⁶ The trade was to be open to all British subjects, so long as they obtained licences. It was provided that

all persons intending to trade with the Indians shall take out licenses for that purpose, under the hand or seal of the Governor or Commander in Chief of the Colony from which they intend to carry on such Trade, for every which License, no more shall be demanded than two Shillings. . . . All persons taking out Licenses shall be under bond . . . for the due observance of the regulations prescribed for Indian Trade.

According to the scheme, no private person, society, corporation, or colony might purchase or obtain by treaty any lands from the Indians except within the limits of the colony: as for the area between the lands open for settlement and Indian territory, measures were to ‘be taken with the consent and concurrence of the Indians to ascertain and define the precise and exact boundary and the limits of the lands’; and the purchase of the

land from the crown or proprietor beyond that already belonging to the colony was only to be made at general meetings in the presence of the representatives of the tribes to whom the lands belonged. After the grant had been made it must be accurately surveyed by English surveyors and by a representative of the tribe concerned.²⁷

     This general scheme, which required the sanction of parliament because it involved raising a tax to bring it into operation, never became law. It was sent, however, to the superintendents of the northern and southern districts with the suggestion that it should be acted upon so far as was practicable.²⁸ Sir William Johnson delayed to make use of it until 1766, but John Stuart, of the southern department, began immediately to take steps for carrying out the principle contained in it.²⁹ The task was beset with many serious difficulties. At this time the trade, which was normally confined to the towns of the nation,³⁰ was in an even more disorganized state than before the announcement of the proclamation of 1763 which had made trade free and open to the public at large. Each of the six provinces continued to presume to regulate its own tariff. Although the traders were bound to observe any general regulations which might be drawn up by the representatives of the crown, in no other respect were they limited.³¹ The licences issued in accordance with the proclamation of 1763 had ‘filled all the nations with people that could not or would not choose to reside in any Society subjected to Laws’ and who, by their licences, ‘are not subjected to pay any obedience to the superintendent or his officers’, and who

‘are entirely removed from every Jurisdiction or Authority by which they may be kept in order & their Enormities punished’.³² Moreover, there grew up the abuse of the employment of a large number of ‘under-traders’ by licensed traders. These men crowded the Indian country. In the whole Choctaw nation there were only three regularly licensed traders, and in the small nation of the Chickasaw of three hundred and fifty gunmen there were seventy-two traders of the lower class.³³ This condition of things undoubtedly augmented the bad impression of the English which the French had left on the minds of the Indians.

     Thus the prevailing tendency was discouraging and fraught with grave danger to British interests. It was, therefore, extremely opportune that Superintendent Stuart called a general congress at Pensacola in May and June 1765, with representatives of the Creeks, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and the small nations on the Mississippi, in fulfilment of the promise given at Augusta to summon the Creeks and Choctaw to a congress as soon as the governors of East and West Florida should arrive.³⁴ It was attended also by the royal officials from the province of West Florida and by representatives of the traders. The Indians were restive on account of the laxity in trade regulations, and were increasingly jealous lest they should be deprived of their vested rights by territorial encroachments on the part of English settlers. Stuart’s task, therefore, a delicate and dangerous one, was that of guaranteeing to the Indians peace and security, and justice in their commercial relations, and at the same time extending the boundary so as to give the English more room for development. His work was rendered extremely difficult and tedious by many concurring circumstances such as the season of the year, the scarcity of provisions, party differences among the Indians, their suspicions of English motives, and the divisions and competition for trade and lack of government among the traders and pack-horse men represented at the congress.³⁵ Nevertheless he was relatively successful in surmounting these various obstacles. One of the two most important achievements was the cession of land by the Creeks and Choctaw to satisfy the needs of the English. The Creeks promised to increase this cession at the close of four years should the British show the sincerity of their professions. At the same time the Choctaw ceded a strip of land as far west ‘as they had a right to grant’. A second important step in the process of adjustment was the promulgation of a definite body of rules designed to eradicate some of the more obvious evils in

Indian commerce, and to set up some sort of police among the Indians and government among traders and pack-horse men. According to Stuart’s interpretation of the Indian problem the extension of British trade was not the sole end to be sought. It was rather ‘the preservation of peace with and introducing good order among the Indians’ that was the chief desideratum.³⁶ To accomplish this he proposed a set of regulations³⁷ designed to limit the number of traders and to fix the prices of Indian goods by a tariff, and also to lessen the number of whites among the nations by laying down strict rules relative to the pack-horse men employed by the licensed traders and by forbidding traders to harbour persons wandering among the Indians. A uniform tariff was prescribed, and trade was to be carried on solely within the Indian towns. There were provisions also regulating the sale of rum and forbidding the sale of guns or shot. In addition traders were expected to report all disturbances to the commissaries or deputies who were to be stationed within the respective towns. In general these regulations had the object of further centralizing the control of the Indian trade under the superintendent. They were drawn up in accordance with the spirit of the proclamation of 1763 and of the plan of 1764, and tended, along with those measures, to draw a line between the powers of the different governors and those of the superintendent. This, in Stuart’s opinion, was absolutely essential to success in dealing with the Indian problem. The regulations were accepted by the assembled nations,³⁸ although the Creeks were not wholly satisfied with them and still complained of the high tariff of goods in comparison with that of the Cherokee. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, however, returned to their homes well pleased.³⁹ Governor Johnstone and the council in West Florida, and the representatives of the merchants, likewise accepted the arrangement and promised to co-operate in enforcing it.⁴⁰

     Although Stuart was thus successful in his initial efforts in West Florida, he met with failure elsewhere. Governor Grant of East Florida, indeed, agreed to assist in the introduction of the regulations into that province.⁴¹ But the governor and council of Georgia were unwilling so to restrict their traders to the Creek nation, which, previously to 1763, had been under several good regulations, so far as colonial laws could operate; and the same had been true of South Carolina.⁴² Both provinces, after 1763, lowered the prices of goods so much that many merchants were driven into bankruptcy. Virginia, without consulting the superintendent, sent messengers into the Cherokee country to negotiate ‘some matters relative to trade to be carried on in that Nation by a Company erected by a Provincial Law with a Fund of £30,000 true money’:⁴³ it proposed to sell goods at cost price. That this policy could be pursued for a time by both Virginia and South Carolina with the Indians immediately adjoining them was admitted by Stuart, but he asserted that the Creeks, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and the smaller nations on the Mississippi remote from both Virginia and South Carolina, would be dissatisfied if they had not trade upon the same terms, which would be impossible unless some parliamentary enactment were passed.⁴⁴

     Not only was the situation impossible because these colonies would not co-operate with the Indian department, but the problem was further complicated by the conflicting interests of the trade. Two groups were now interested in Indian commerce the large merchants who had held a monopoly before the trade was thrown open to the public, and the small traders, whose licences, signed by the governor, permitted them to trade where they pleased without oversight by any authority sufficiently powerful to regulate their actions. The former of these were apparently anxious for the British government to abandon the system of free trade. In 1767 the merchants of Augusta, in Georgia, drew up a memorial to Stuart⁴⁵ in which they complained of the great number of traders in the Creek nation in comparison with the number engaged in the traffic before the declaration of the trade policy in 1763. In the earlier period the provincial law of

Georgia had carefully regulated the Creek trade. It appears that, to some extent at least, the Creeks were not over-supplied with goods and the prices were fairly stable. But, the merchants asserted, since the trade had been thrown open to all persons the ‘new’ traders had entered into keen competition with the old, and this pointed inevitably to the ruin of all the trade and to the dissatisfaction of the Indians. The practice, common to the new traders, of selling goods greatly under their value had resulted in changing a hitherto favourable balance of trade into an unfavourable one. Unless this was rectified, it was urged, unless a tariff was imposed which would give the Indian a just value for his purchases and the merchants a moderate profit, the latter would have to withdraw altogether. As, however, he possessed no ultimate authority to compel the execution of his instructions, Stuart now perceived the futility of attempting to bring order into the department unless he was granted such authority, and unless the governors were required to support him.

     In the autumn of 1766, owing to the frequency of the reports as to the confusion of the trade in the southern district, especially from Stuart and the Indian commissaries, Lord Shelburne, secretary of state for the southern department, gave the superintendent full power to introduce any measures consistent with the proclamation of 1763, for the purpose of further restraining the traders and remedying the abuses which had resulted from the system of general licensing by the provincial governors.⁴⁶ He also informed Stuart that a plan for the regulation of Indian affairs was under consideration.⁴⁷ At this same time Shelburne⁴⁸ urgently advised the governors of the provinces to adhere closely to the proclamation of 1763 in matters of trade and boundaries.⁴⁹ As a result of the authority thus given him, Stuart urged the governors⁵⁰ to subject the traders

to the observation of such Regulations as shall be proposed by me through the Commissarys residing in such Nations, and order such as already Trade

under License from you strictly to observe them agreeable to His Majesty’s Proclamation referred to in the said Letter. I purpose summoning the Traders to meet me in Augusta in March next, in order to Regulate the Trade which I hope your Excellency will by all means in your power facilitate. In the meantime I have directed the commissaries to require the compliance of the Traders with the Regulations agreed upon in West Florida with certain Alterations.⁵¹

These amended regulations⁵² went further than former ones in dealing with the kind of men who were to be employed by licensed traders, the sale of goods at prices other than those specified under the tariff, and the holding of meetings without the consent of the superintendent. All hunting on Indian grounds was forbidden. There was a new provision by which all traders had to show their licences to the commissaries before trading; and the rate at which goods were to be sold was attached to the licences.⁵³ A public notice, moreover, was printed in the Gazette (a North Carolina newspaper), that ‘after the 3rd of October next, no License shall be considered as valid by Stuart or his Deputies excepting such as shall be granted agreeable to said Proclamation’.⁵⁴

     Confident of creating good order through his regulations, now that he had the permission of the ministry to enforce and the promise on the part of the governors of South Carolina and Georgia⁵⁵ to co-operate in the execution of the plan through the cancelling of general licences and restricting traders to certain districts, Stuart held conferences with the traders to the Creeks⁵⁶ at Augusta and with those to the Cherokee at Hard Labor.⁵⁷ The traders to both nations signified their satisfaction upon hearing that the ministry was considering a definite plan for the management of trade, and assisted Stuart in rendering his measures effective. Although the prices among the Cherokee had been

so low as to admit of no abatement, it is worth notice that the traders to the Creeks lowered the prices on twenty-three important articles.⁵⁸ The Indians, particularly the Creeks, were extremely well pleased with the tariff agreed upon between them and the traders.⁵⁹ Stuart immediately communicated with Charles Stuart, his deputy to the Choctaw and Chickasaw, ordering him to bring the altered regulations into operation among the traders to those nations. He was also to summon them to a congress for the purpose of establishing a tariff upon the same footing as that of the Creeks.⁶⁰ Lieutenant-Governor Browne, of West Florida, assembled the traders at Pensacola, where he renewed their licences upon their giving proper security, and gave each of them printed copies of the regulations.⁶¹ Stuart desired Governor Fauquier of Virginia to unite with him in directing the traders not to sell goods to the Cherokee for less than the fixed prices and in requiring them, under bond, to conform to the superintendent’s regulations.⁶² Fauquier replied, however, that he could not subject the traders from his province to any regulations, as he knew nothing of any proclamation or instruction on that head.⁶³

     With the exception of Virginia, then, the governors, as well as the traders, of all the provinces were now attempting to secure better order among the Indians in the southern department. In the late spring of 1768, however, came an order from the Board of Trade entrusting the entire management of the Indian trade to the colonies themselves.⁶⁴ It was alleged, in support of this move, that no general policy could be applicable to all the different nations; that the confining of trade to fixed places seemed a doubtful policy; and that the expense connected with the extensive operation of the plan proved too great.⁶⁵ The news of the adoption of this policy was transmitted within a month to the governors and superintendents. Stuart immediately notified

all the commissaries and other officers employed by him in the management of the trade that their salaries would cease on 1 December 1768.⁶⁶ General confusion ensued. The powers of the six different governors and the unlimited right of all British subjects to trade everywhere, as authorized by the proclamation of 1763, rendered it impossible for any province to frame proper regulations with success. Such laws could operate only within the jurisdiction of the province enacting them. And as Stuart pointed out, the

best Laws will prove ineffectual without proper Persons to carry these into Execution; Commissaries by every and all the Provinces would create horrid Confusion and the Commissaries from any Province can only Govern the Traders from the said Province. These difficulties have hitherto prevented any Law being passed by any Assembly in the Southern Indian Departments.⁶⁷

The Indians, moreover, complained that their countries were again filled with vagabonds and traders who had returned to their former abuses and disturbances.⁶⁸

     Co-existent with the trade problem; and intimately associated with it, was the equally troublesome and delicate question of the adjustment of the Indian boundary. At every congress with the Indians these two principal causes of discontent obtruded themselves, the latter usually occupying as much of the attention of the delegates as the former. In order to illustrate the seriousness of the boundary problem and the manner in which it was solved, it will be necessary to pass in review, briefly, the various steps in the determination of the lines of demarcation. Stuart deemed it expedient to negotiate a boundary line behind each province in order to guarantee peace within the district.⁶⁹ Although he did not possess full power to negotiate and fix the boundary line, he succeeded, nevertheless, in effecting an amicable settlement between the southern colonies and the Indian tribes, and in many cases he had surveyed the line by 1768.

     The congress of Augusta, in 1763, had brought about a mutual understanding as to the boundary. The Chickasaw, in the northwestern corner of the district, were not at all, and the Choctaw not specially, concerned with English encroachments from the south or east. The Creeks, on the other hand, were in great fear of an invasion of their country by the English from both

directions. In like manner the Cherokee complained of the rapid extension westward of the Virginia frontier. The Catawba, a small nation between the Creeks and Cherokee, demanded a reservation, which they received at Augusta. The Creeks made a formal cession to Georgia, and left the congress with the understanding that in South Carolina settlements would be made no further west than those already at Long Canes, and that the representatives of the Creek nation would negotiate a boundary behind the newly acquired territory,⁷⁰ later called East Florida and West Florida, as soon as the governors should arrive. In Virginia there was to be no settlement on Cherokee territory west of New River. According to Stuart’s explanation, however, there had never been any encroachments on Indian territory except on the part of a few adventurous persons acting without authority from the government.⁷¹ The boundary of West Florida was definitely settled⁷² at the congresses of Mobile and Pensacola in 1765. In pursuance of an agreement made at Pensacola, the Lower Creeks met the governor of East Florida at Picolata, about twenty miles from St. Augustine, on 15 November 1765, and three days later signed a treaty granting ‘a very extensive Territory to His Majesty, Which in all probability would be sufficient for the Settlements of this Province for many Years’.⁷³ The line, although definitely described, was not surveyed behind these two

provinces because of the conflict between the Choctaw and the Creeks.⁷⁴

     There remained now to be adjusted the boundary between the Creeks and Georgia. Although the line had been agreed upon at Augusta, it had never been surveyed; and at the congress of Picolata the Creeks modified the cession. This grant remained permanent.⁷⁵ In June 1767 the survey was extended as far as the Ogeechee River, where work was discontinued for more than a year.⁷⁶ At a congress summoned by the governors at Savannah, 3 September 1768, the grievances urged by the Indians were redressed and provisions were made for the continuance of the survey. Within a year, therefore, the boundary was completed to the satisfaction of the Indians and the British.⁷⁷

     The settlement of the boundary line with the Cherokee proved to be a more complex problem, and was accomplished only as the result of patient negotiations.⁷⁸ In the latter part of 1764 the Cherokee complained of a violation of the understanding⁷⁹ they had had when they had left the congress of Augusta. Lieutenant-Governor Bull, of South Carolina, proposed a line in

1765, which, however, the Indians only approved upon Stuart’s advice and after a series of negotiations which were begun on 19 October 1765.⁸⁰ The boundary was surveyed in April 1766, by Alexander Cameron, Stuart’s deputy, and was ratified to the satisfaction of the Indians on 10 May.⁸¹ They also requested the settlement of the boundary behind North Carolina and Virginia, concerning which Stuart wrote to the governors of those two provinces.⁸² Stuart received an immediate reply from Governor Tryon of North Carolina,⁸³ declaring that the boundary between the Cherokee and that colony was to have been completed in the spring of 1766, but that negotiations had been retarded.⁸⁴ Accordingly, in the latter part of April 1767, Stuart met the traders and the principal chiefs of the Cherokee nation at Hard Labor, on the frontier of South Carolina.⁸⁵ Arrangements were made for the settlement of trade, and at the conclusion of the congress a number of principal men set out with Cameron, on 21 May, for the frontier of North Carolina, where they were to meet the commissioners from that colony to ‘run out the Boundary Line behind North Carolina’, and afterwards that behind Virginia.⁸⁶ The line agreed upon at this time⁸⁷ was surveyed before the end of July.⁸⁸ By the governor’s proclamation, no English were to settle west of the line thus established, and those already residing beyond it were to remove immediately to the east.⁸⁹ In 1766, when the Cherokee desired a, settlement of the boundary behind Virginia, Governor Fauquier concurred in Stuart’s proposal for the undertaking.⁹⁰ He made no advances, however, and the Cherokee grew uneasy and repeated their demands for a definite agreement.⁹¹ Eventually, in a later communication, Fauquier

declared himself unable to mark any boundary lines between Virginia and the Indians without the express orders of the government at home.⁹²

     In accordance with the proposed plan for Indian control, the superintendents in both departments had entered into negotiations in regard to the boundary line,⁹³ and in the southern department Stuart, although not formally authorized to do so, had the line actually marked out behind North and South Carolina. These negotiations were reported to Lord Shelburne by the end of 1767,⁹⁴ and he recommended that the treaties thus made with the Indians should be ratified in order to bring about peace and quiet, as had been done in North and South Carolina.⁹⁵ In 1768, in connexion with the new policy of trade, Lord Shelburne communicated to the superintendents the king’s desire that ‘the Boundary Line between the Indians and the Settlements of his Majesty’s Subjects (everywhere negotiated upon and in many parts settled and ascertained) shall be finally ratified and confirmed’.⁹⁶ Accordingly, on 14 October 1768, Stuart again met the Cherokee Indians at Hard Labor, ratified the treaties of North and South Carolina, as before described, and established the line behind Virginia.⁹⁷ On 12 November 1768 the Lower Creeks met the superintendent at St. Augustine to ratify the boundary between their nation and Georgia, East Florida, and West Florida.⁹⁸ The line of East and West Florida was clearly ascertained, and all that remained was the completion of the survey. The king had given his consent to this, but owing to the war between the Creeks and Choctaw it had been postponed to a more favourable time.⁹⁹ The boundary line at the end of the year 1768 was therefore continuous from the Ohio River behind

the eastern and southern colonies as far west as the small tribes of the Mississippi River.

     Thus the projection of the final solution of that perplexing problem of the colonial regime the adjustment of Indian relations—a problem which was more forcibly presented at this time by reason of the extension of British sovereignty over the tracts beyond the Allegahanies, was only partially successful. The problem itself, and the shape which its solution finally assumed, is not unlike that which prevailed in the earlier colonial period. The regulation of commercial relations, the first phase of the twofold problem which we have described, went back to colonial management, after much shifting and vacillating on the part of the ministry and much misunderstanding between home and provincial authorities. The government was most interested in the reorganization of the American possessions, and the subject of the regulation of Indian affairs was, unfortunately, inextricably bound up with the larger problem, so that it was not finally determined on its merits. The transfer of responsibility for the management and support of the trade back to the colonies was merely one device for relieving the British government of expense. The superintendent of Indian affairs, however, retained general political oversight, including the supervision of territorial adjustments with the Indians. In the southern department it was due to the efforts of Superintendent John Stuart, with the co-operation of the provincial governors, that the line of demarcation between the British and the Indians was fixed, as it was thought, once for all. The handling of this second phase of the Indian problem appears, then, to have been relatively successful. In view of the tremendous pressure which English settlers were exerting all along the line, it is exceedingly unlikely that the boundary of 1768-9, with the few subsequent modifications, would have retained any degree of permanency, even had the revolt of the colonies not intervened. At best it would probably soon have had to yield to various modifications in order to satisfy the hunger of land speculators and settlers. Nevertheless the fixing of the line at this time is a fact of great importance. Although the southern Indians had never assumed so threatening an attitude as those in the region towards the Ohio and the northern lakes, they were restless and suspicious of British designs. But they appear to have been generally satisfied with the promises of the British that there would be no encroachments beyond the line settled in the manner we have described.