Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 339
in log huts erected at intervals along the river. Desultory warfare is
always most vexatious. Without decisive results, it makes existence a
nightmare of uncertainty and- prevents any settled conditions or habits
of life. When a new central government was formed with Washington
at its head, the promise of a speedy cessation of hostilities, was offered,
since authority in the realm of Indian affairs was then transferred to the
Federal Government, with full power to act. But there was no immediate
solution for this vexed problem. Washington was inclined to approve
Georgia's contention, but his characteristic caution, re-enforced by a de
sire to be absolutely just, caused him to send a confidential agent to Mc-
Gillivray, with a message inviting him to a conference in New York.
This invitation was accepted; and on August 7,1790, a compact known
as the Treaty of New York was signed. Under this instrument the Creeks
agreed for a monetary consideration to confirm the treaty at Shoulder-
bone, ceding all lands to the east of the Oconee, but refused to recognize
the treaty of Galphinton and insisted upon inserting in the new compact
an article reserving the Tallassee country to the Creek nation. More
over, the Indians were guaranteed possession of all remaining lands.*
Here we find something entirely new. Nor was Georgia prepared
quietly to acqruesce in any such perpetual guarantee of titles to savage
tribes upon her soil. Says Mr. Phillips: t "The Georgians at once at
tacked this article as an unwarranted stretch of the Federal power.
James Jackson declared in Congress that the treaty was spreading alarm
among the people of Georgia, and complained that it ceded away a great
region which was guaranteed to the State by the Federal Constitution.
The State Legislature adopted a remonstrance, in which the fear was
expressed that the giving of such a guarantee by the central government
would lead to the conclusion that sovereignty over such lands belonged to
the United States; whereas said sovereignty appertained solely to the
State of Georgia, not having been granted to the Union by any compact
whatsoever. The discord over the unoccupied lands was due to oppos
ing conceptions of the status of the Indian tribes. The theory of the co
lonial governments had been that these tribes were independent commu
nities with the rights and powers of sovereign nations. But public
opinion was beginning to revert to the original European conception that
the relations of the tribes to civilized nations were merely those of de
pendent communities without sovereignty and without any right to the
soil but that of tenants at will. The reorganization of the Government in
1789 brought no change of Indian policy so far as concerned the central
authorities. On the other hand, the State governments were growing
more positive in their own views. * * * The frontier sellers did not
stop with coldly disapproving the treaty. They hotly declared that they
would permit no line to be marked out as a permanent boundary between
Georgia and the Creek lands denied to her. Further trouble was made
by a party of the Creeks dominated by Spanish influence. Frontier dep
redations began again and continued spasmodically for several years.
The Georgians became highly incensed at the Indian outrages, the more
so because of the impossibility of deciding where retaliation should be
* '' Marbury and Crawf ord 's Digest, Treaty of New York,'' pp. 621-625.
t "Georgia and State Eights," TJ. B. Phillips, pp. 42-43.