The emigrants soon became involved in difficulties with the native tribes, the Osage claiming all the lands north of Arkansas river, while the Quapaw claimed those on the south. Upon complaining to the government the emigrant Cherokee were told that they had originally been permitted to remove only on condition of a cession of a portion of their eastern territory, and that nothing could be done to protect them in their new western home until such cession had been carried out. The body of the Cherokee Nation, however, was strongly opposed to any such sale and proposed that the emigrants should be compelled to return. After protracted negotiation a treaty was concluded at the Cherokee agency (now Calhoun, Tennessee) on July 8, 1817, by which the Cherokee Nation ceded two considerable tracts--the first in Georgia, lying east of the Chattahoochee, and the other in Tennessee, between Waldens ridge and the Little Sequatchee--as an equivalent for a tract to be assigned to those who had already removed, or intended to remove, to Arkansas. Two smaller tracts on the north bank of the Tennessee, in the neighborhood of the Muscle shoals, were also ceded. In return for these cessions the emigrant Cherokee were to receive a tract within the present limits of the state of Arkansas, bounded on the north and south by White river and Arkansas river, respectively, on the east by a line running between those streams approximately from the present Batesville to Lewisburg, and on the west by a line to be determined later. As afterward established, this western line ran from the junction of the Little North Fork with White river to just beyond the point where the present western Arkansas boundary strikes Arkansas river. Provision was made for taking the census of the whole Cherokee nation east and west in order to apportion annuities and other payments properly in the future, and the two bands were still to be considered as forming one people. The United States agreed to pay for any substantial improvements abandoned by those removing from the ceded lands, and each emigrant warrior who left no such valuable property behind was to be given as full compensation for his abandoned field and cabin a rifle and ammunition, a blanket, and a kettle or a beaver trap. The government further agreed to furnish boats and provisions for the journey. Provision was also made that individuals residing upon the ceded lands might retain allotments and become citizens, if they so elected, the amount of the allotment to be deducted from the total cession. The commissioners for the treaty were General Andrew Jackson, General David Meriwether, and Governor Joseph McMinn of Tennessee. On behalf of the Cherokee it was signed by thirty-one principal men of the eastern Nation and fifteen of the western band, who signed by proxy. [252]