Treaty of Hopewell

Three agreements, each known as a Treaty of Hopewell, were signed between representatives of the Congress of the United States and the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw peoples.

Anthropologist James Mooney records that "It was situated on the northern edge of the present Anderson county, on the east side of Keowee River, opposite and a short distance below the entrance of Little River, and about three miles from the present Pendleton.

In the sight of it, on the opposite side of Keowee, was the old Cherokee town of Seneca, destroyed by the Americans in 1776.

Despite affixing their signatures to the treaties, none of the Native American tribes recognized the sovereignty of the United States over their ancestral lands.

On November 28, 1785, the first Treaty of Hopewell was signed between the U.S. representative Benjamin Hawkins and the Cherokee Indians.

In addition to circumscribing a large part of the northern and eastern boundary of the Cherokee Nation not already defined by previous treaties and land cessions, the treaty ceded a wedge of land south of the Cumberland river in north central Tennessee around Nashville.

The Cherokee complained at the treaty that some 3,000 white settlers of the de facto State of Franklin were already squatting on the Cherokee side of the agreed line, between the Holston and French Broad Rivers, and they continued to dispute that region until a new border was defined by the 1791 Treaty of Holston.

The ceded area amounted to 69,120 acres, and the compensation to the Choctaw took the form of protection by the United States.

[9] On January 10, 1786, the Treaty of Hopewell was signed between U.S. representatives Benjamin Hawkins, Andrew Pickens, and Joseph Martin and the Chickasaw leaders Taski Etoka, Piomingo, and Lotapaia.