Early Republic · 1794

Treaty with the Cherokees, June 26, 1794

ID T-0013

Date 1794-06-26

Articles 3

Instrument Note

Parties

United States and the Cherokee Nation

Context

Executed June 26, 1794 at Philadelphia. Another supplemental instrument to the Holston treaty, required because the Holston terms had 'not been fully carried into execution by reason of some misunderstandings which have arisen.' The misunderstandings were continued settler encroachment and Cherokee resistance.

Significance

Three brief articles confirming prior obligations and providing additional annuity consideration. The instrument acknowledges — in treaty text — that the United States had not fulfilled its Holston obligations. That acknowledgment had no enforcement mechanism. The supplemental payments were inducements to continue the peace while the underlying boundary dispute remained unresolved.

Legal Observation

A treaty that acknowledges prior U.S. non-performance without providing any remedy for that non-performance is a legal instrument in the form of an agreement without the substance of one. The pattern appears repeatedly: the United States defaults on its treaty obligations, acknowledges the default in a new instrument, pays additional consideration, and the new instrument restarts the clock without extinguishing the original breach.

TREATY WITH THE CHEROKEE INDIANS. June 26, 1794. Proclamation, Jan. 21, 1795. Wuerwas the treaty made and concluded on Holston river, on the Ante, p. 39. second day of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-one, be- tween the United States of America and the Cherokee nation of Indians, has not been fully carried into execution by reason of some misunder- standings which have arisen:

ARTICLE I

And whereas the undersigned Henry Knox, Secretary for the depart- Treaty of Hol- ment of War, being authorised thereto by the President of the United ston binding. States, in behalf of the said United States, and the undersigned Chiefs and Warriors, in their own names, and in behalf of the whole Cherokee nation, are desirous of re-establishing peace and friendship between the said parties in a permanent manner, Do hereby declare, that the said treaty of Holston is, to all intents and purposes, in full force and bind- ing upon the said parties, as well in respect to the boundaries therein mentioned as in all other respects whatever.

ARTICLE II

It is hereby stipulated that the boundaries mentioned in the fourth Boundaries to article of the said treaty, shall be actually ascertained and marked in be marked. the manner prescribed by the said article, whenever the Cherokee na- tion shall have ninety days notice of the time and place at which the commissioners of the United States intend to commence their opera- tion.

ARTICLE III

The United States, to evince their justice by amply compensating the Annual allow- said Cherooke nation of Indians for all relinquishments of land made ance of goods. either by the treaty of Hopewell upon the Keowee river, concluded on the twenty-eighth of November, one thousand seven hundred and eighty- five, or the aforesaid treaty made upon Holston river, on the second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-one, do hereby stipulate, in lieu of all former sums to be paid annually to furnish the Cherokee Indians with goods suitable for their use, to the amount of five thousand dollars yearly. ducted from the

Source: U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. VII. Edited by Richard Peters, Esq. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1846. Reprinted by Dennis & Co., Inc., Buffalo, N.Y., 1962. Source lines 4680–4735.