The Cherokee Struggle for Lovely's Purchase

Abstract

As a young man William Lovely was a participant in the two most important battles of the American Revolution: Saratoga and Yorktown. The passage of years carried Lovely far from his country's mainstream and deposited him in 1813 on the raw Arkansas frontier as a subagent to a Western branch of the Cherokees. Nearing the end of his life, virtually destitute, and perhaps dulled by the excessive use of alcohol, Lovely was confronted with the almost impossible task of ending the bloody conflict between the Cherokees and Osages.1 In the summer of 1816, the subagent arranged a meeting between the two tribes at the mouth of the Verdigris River, near present-day Muskogee, Oklahoma. There he suggested that tension between the tribes might be eased if the Osages allowed the Cherokees unchallenged access to the Western hunting grounds. Promising that the government would reimburse the Cherokees and whites who had claims against the Osages, on July 9 Lovely persuaded the Osages to cede a seven millionacre tract to the Cherokees as a hunting outlet. This cession, lying north of the Arkansas River, extended from the Western Cherokee settlements to the Verdigris River.2 While the sale was neither authorized nor ratified by the government in Washington, the tract became known as Lovely's Purchase. Lovely's effort to bring peace to the frontier failed, and death soon relieved the old man of further obligation to resolve the conflict. If the subagent had not given the Arkansas frontier peace, he did leave it a legacy that would insure that his name would be remembered long after he was forgotten. The land Lovely purchased from the Osages became the center of a controversy that would not be resolved for another decade. In the course of the struggle the land-seeking pioneers would accuse the government of ruining them and their territory, and the Cherokees would accuse it of betrayal. Here is a classic example of the confrontation of the Native American striving to preserve his identity and the White man seeking to acquire his land. The outcome