Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/104

 44 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI Missouri were, very probably, the members of a band of Creeks. De Lassus, in a let- ter to Major Stoddard at the time of the transfer of Upper Louisiana to the United States, says that these Creek Indians had been expelled from their tribes on account of crimes and that they had spent about ten years wandering up and down on both sides of the Mississippi river, covering the terri- tory from New Madrid to the Llaramec and constantly slaying, killing, and burning houses. De Lassus calls them the Mashcoux Indians. It was some of this band that killed David Trotter and burned his house. After the punishment of the Indians for the killing of Trotter, and some representa- tions made by De Lassus to their chief, the band seems to have given up the larger part of their depredations and no longer to have troubled the inhabitants. In 1808 the government made a treaty with the Osages, by which it was agreed that the boundary between them and the United States should begin at Port Osage on the Mississippi river, run due south to the Ar- kansas river and down the Arkansas to the Mississippi. All the land east of this line was to pass from the Indians to the govern- ment of the United States. They also ceded to the government their lands north of the Mississippi river and two square leagues west of this line, to contain Fort Osage. This treaty left to the Osages only the western part of the territory now embraced in Mis- souri. In 1825 the Osages made another treaty by which they gave up their rights to all the lands in Missouri. In 1793 Spain, by action of Baron Ca- rondelet, granted to the Shawnees and Dela- wares a tract of land situated between the Cinque Homme and Cape Girardeau. This tract extended as far -ft est as White river. This territorj' was claimed by the Osage In- dians and was relinquished by them in their treaty of 1808. The government of the United States, however, did not press this claim to this particular tract, for one of the clauses in the treaty by which Louisiana was ceded to the United States bound this coun- try to the fulfilment of all treaties and agree- ments between Spain or France and the In- dian tribes. In 1815 there began a move- ment of the Shawnees and Delawares to the west. The}' seemed to have been promised other lands in consideration of their removal. Some of them went' to Castor and St. Fran- cois rivers; some of them settled on White river not far from Springfield. In 1825 a treaty was made with the Shawnees by which they exchanged their Spanish grants in the Cape Girardeau district for a tract of fifty square miles west of Missouri. They removed to these lands in what is now the Indian ter- ritory. In 1829 the Delawares gave up their title to the Cape Girardeau lands and moved further west. In 1832 the allied Delawares and Shawnees made a treaty bj' which they relinquished the very last of their lands and improvements in Southeast Missouri. This act extinguished the last title held by the Indians to the territory of Missouri. While the Indians', lands were all trans- ferred by this date (1832), not all the In- dians themselves disappeared from this sec- tion of the state at that time. There are many persons now living who well remember when there were scattered bands of the In- dians in Southeast ]'Iissoiri. One of the last of these bands was that at the village of Chil- letecaux, near Kennett. They remained here until game practically disappeared and it became impo.ssible for them longer to live by hunting. Some of them died, and the sur-