With a view to an amicable adjustment of their respective rights a council was held between the chiefs and headmen of the two nations at the residence of General William McIntosh, in the Creek country, at which a treaty was concluded between themselves on the 11th of December, 1820. In the first article of this treaty the boundary line between the two nations was fixed as running from the Buzzard's Roost, on the Chattahoochee, in a direct line to the Coosa River, at a point opposite the mouth of Wills Town Creek, and thence down the Coosa River to a point opposite Fort Strother. This boundary was reaffirmed by them in a subsequent treaty concluded October 30, 1822.[377]
The Cherokee treaty of 1817 had assumed to cede a tract of country "Beginning at the high shoals of the Appalachy River and running thence along the boundary line between the Creek and Cherokee Nations westwardly to the Chatahouchy River," etc.
The Creek treaty of 1818[378] in turn ceded a tract the northern boundary of which extended from Suwanee Old Town, on the Chattahoochee, to the head of Appalachee River, and which overlapped a considerable portion of the Cherokee cession of 1817.
The Creek treaty of 1821[379] ceded a tract running as far north as the Shallow Ford of the Chattahoochee, which also included a portion of the territory within the limits of the Cherokee domain, as claimed by the latter.
By the treaty of 1825[380] with the Creeks they ceded all their remaining territory in Georgia. Complaint being made that this treaty had been entered into by only a small non-representative faction of that nation, an investigation was entered upon by the United States authorities, and as the result it was determined to declare the treaty void and to negotiate a new treaty with them, which was done on the 24th of January, 1826.[381]
By this last treaty as amended the Creeks ceded all their land east of the Chattahoochee River, as well as a tract north and west of that river. In the cession of this latter tract it was assumed that a point on Chattahoochee River known as the Buzzard's Roost was the northern limit of the Creek supremacy.
The authorities of Georgia strongly insisted that not only had the treaty of 1825 been legitimately concluded, whereby they were entitled to come into possession of all the Creek domain within her limits, but also that the true line of the Creek limits toward the north had been much higher up than would seem to have been the understanding of the parties to the treaty of 1826.