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121 Chapter Five a new wave of emigration On his journey through the southern states in 1817, writer James K. Paulding remarked, ‘‘I had heard much of the continued migration from the Atlantic coasts to the regions of the west. . . . I have now had some opportunity of witnessing the magnitude of this mighty wave which knows no retrograde motion, but rolls over the land, never to recoil again.’’∞ Indeed, the period following the close of the Creek War was one of massive and continued emigration into the Trans-Appalachian region. In this increasingly agrarian west, the primary enterprises were cultivating staple crops like cotton, corn, and sugar and raising hogs and cattle. Nearly all these products were transported on rivers and newly opened roads to and from the market hubs of the south and west, places like Natchez, New Orleans, and St. Louis.≤ Eastward migrants saw the availability of recently acquired Indian lands as an opportunity to stake their claim in the new economy, and they proceeded by the wagonload into even the most suspect of western cessions and ‘‘purchases.’’ They set forth in record numbers on the new and recently repurposed roads that cut through the heart of Creek country. Even before the Treaty of Fort Jackson boundaries were surveyed, the lands ostensibly ceded were ‘‘rapidly settling by the whites.’’≥ The state governments were largely powerless to stop this onslaught, and Creek leaders, particularly those who had allied with Americans during the war, were horri fied to find their lands and villages overrun by the most backward of backwoods settlers. The federal government planned to use the millions of acres gained in the war to promote public land sales and was also concerned with 122 a new wave of emigration the mass movement of unauthorized migrants pouring into the western lands along ‘‘the Indian Road.’’∂ As Secretary of War William H. Crawford put it, ‘‘The effect of these settlements is to place the very worst part of our citizens in possession of the very best part of the public lands upon preemption principles,’’ thus depriving the government of the purchase value. Emigrants traveling past the Creek Agency were warned that they would not be allowed to settle on the new lands unless they had purchased them, but that hardly staunched the flow.∑ Many white southerners felt they had already purchased these lands with blood spilled in the recent war.∏ Volunteers from North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia had spent much of their time marching through the forests and floodplains of Creek country with an eye for the best and most desirable lands. They performed this resource reconnaissance as they pursued the course of war, and more than a few had signed up for service with the specific belief that the hostilities would lead directly to their possession of some part of the Indians’ land. One Tennessean told his wife, ‘‘In the Creek Nation there is abundance of good land,’’π and a North Carolina volunteer reported that the land on the rivers of the Creek Nation was said to be of good quality.∫ And indeed, the spirit of emigration was high, not only among veterans but throughout the country. Alabama fever began to infect the eastern states, and great numbers of migrants headed out, or started, for the former Creek lands. Of this trend one correspondent wryly observed, ‘‘When people set out to go any where in this country, it is called starting. Thus they start to the westward —for the people of this country are the most active in the world and do everything by a start.’’Ω By mid-1817, prospective settlers from as far away as Kentucky were pestering the surveyors of the Creek cession for information on the boundary lines, indicating their eagerness to emigrate.∞≠ ‘‘Men of small capital’’ tended to head for the edges of the many waterways that crisscrossed the region, because they provided the most abundant cane range necessary for cattle grazing.∞∞ Livestock were a particularly suitable commodity for less wealthy settlers because they could be taken to market ‘‘under their own power,’’ unlike cotton or other products that had to be transported in wagons or sent on pole-boats.∞≤ Men of greater capital were better able to push along the Indian roads with wagons and carts full of their possessions, including slaves. The influx of settlers of both great and small means was one of the most influential events in the period following the Creek War. The death of Benjamin Hawkins...

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