had continued to
hold in spite of the treaty made at the close of the Revolution. By
the treaty made at Madrid in October, L795, Spain gave up all claim
on the east side of the Mississippi north of the thirty-first parallel, but
on various pretexts the formal transfer of posts was delayed and a
Spanish garrison continued to occupy San Fernando de Barrancas, at
the present Memphis. Tennessee, until the fall of 1797, while that at
Natchez, in Mississippi, was not surrendered until March. 1798. The
Creeks, seeing the trend of affairs, had made peace at Colerain.
Georgia, in June, 179t>. With the hostile European influence thus
eliminated, at least for the time, the warlike tribes on the north and
on the south crushed and dispirited and the Chickamauga towns wiped
out of existence, the Cherokee realized that theymust accept the
situation and, after nearly twenty years of continuous warfare, laid \^
aside the tomahawk to cultivate the arts of peace and civilization.
The close of the century found them still a compact people (the
westward movement having hardly yet begun) numbering probably
about 20,000 souls. After repeated cessions of large tracts of land, to
some of which they had but doubtful claim, they remained in recog-
nized possession of nearly 4:3,000 square miles of territory, a country
about equal in extent to Ohio. Virginia, or Tennessee. Of this 'terri-
tory about one half was within the limits of Tennessee, the remainder
being almost equally divided between Georgia and Alabama, with a
small area in the extreme southwestern corner of North Carolina. 2
The old Lower towns on Savannah river had been broken up for
twenty years, and the