Gentlemen:
As soon as the Troops under the Command of two of your Board, to-wit: General McDowell and Colonel Sevier, have formed a Junction in the Cherokee Country first having complied with my first Instructions respecting the Chicamaugas, as to the destruction of their Town and other hostile Towns of the Cherokees, &c., you will send out Flags with Runners or proper persons, and invite that nation to a Treaty, or such part thereof as you shall judge requisite to attend.
That you require of the Chickamaugas in Satisfaction for their late Disaffection and the Murders and Ravages they have Committed upon our peacable, inoffensive Citizens, that they relinquish their Claim to their Settlements and return to the Cherokee Nation from whence they were emigrants; that the Cherokees, or whatever Tribe of that Nation by whom the same may be claimed, cede to this State, including those settlements from such Boundaries as you shall agree upon, all the Western lands contained within the chartered bounds of North Carolina to the Ohio and Mississippi, should the Ohio be within the bounds of the same. That they surrender all our prisoners, & deliver up all Refugees, Tories and British who may be among them, together with all Negroes and other property taken or plundered from the Inhabitants of this or of the United States. You will agree on a Western Line by which that Nation and this State shall be sacredly bound. Which confining and contracting
their settlements the Cherokees will soon be circumscribed by white Inhabitants, and their power reduced to the harmless and inoffensive situation of the Catawbas.That you demand on this or eastern side of the Cherokee Nation, the French-Broad River and its Waters, in Satisfaction for the many great Injuries done to the Inhabitants of the nearer Towns.
That you act with such other Commissioners who may be appointed by any of the United States on general principles and plans of peace; but the Territorial Claims of this State you alone are specially intrusted with, to conduct and manage with that Address your prudence and wisdom will direct, and suffer no Cession to be made of any Land lying within the bounds of this State to any other State or person whatsoever, but what are before directed.
I recommend the Treaty be not held where the Troops are stationed but at some Remove where the Indians will not be under an immediate Fear and Duress, as Constraint and Fear would make the Contracts void; but the same be conducted in such manner that the Indians have full power to exercise their Liberty.
Upon the whole the aforesaid are the Outlines of the proposed Treaty, to which you are not absolutely confined, as many inconveniences may interpose in confining you to particular limits. You will exercise therefore your own discretion on the above preliminaries; when you have agreed upon the Western and Eastern Bounds for that Nation You are to assure them they shall be most inviolably and sacredly observed on the part of this State on Condition that the severest Punishment shall be inflicted on the Offender or Offenders. Your proceedings you will transmit me.
Your Most obedient humble Servant,