Previous to the visit of the Cherokee delegation to Washington and to the instructions given, as referred to above, to the boundary commissioners to suspend the running of the boundary line between the Creek cession and the Cherokees pending negotiations with the latter, General Coffee had been engaged in surveying the line from Coosa River to the Tennessee River.[209] As a result of the negotiations with the Cherokees, additional instructions were given the boundary commissioners[210] (accompanying which was a copy of the Cherokee treaty concluded on the 22d of March preceding) to run and mark the boundary line therein agreed upon from the lower end of the Ten Islands, on Coosa River, to the Flat Rock, on Bear Creek. They were advised that the surveys already made by General Coffee might be of advantage to them, though from an examination of his report it did not appear he had taken any notice of the point at which this line was to terminate, notwithstanding he seemed to have had in view the treaty made with the Cherokees in the year 1806, which proposed Caney Creek and a line from its source to the Flat Rock as the boundary between the Cherokees and Chickasaws. Coffee's line had already excited the jealousy and opposition of the Chickasaws, and on the same day final instructions were given the commissioners to run the line from Coosa River to Flat Rock, Major Cocke, the Chickasaw agent, was directed to advise the Chickasaws that in agreeing upon this line with the Cherokees the United States had in no degree interfered with the conflicting claims of the Chickasaws south of that line and east of Coffee's line; that from an examination of the treaties with the Chickasaws and Cherokees, and especially that of 1786 with the former tribe, it appeared that a point called the Flat Rock was considered a corner of the lands belonging to them, and had since been considered as the corner to the Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw hunting grounds. It is proper to state in this connection that for many years an uncertainty had existed in the minds of both the Indians and the United States authorities as to the exact location of this Flat Rock,[211] and whether it was on Bear Creek or on the headwaters of the Long Leaf Pine, a branch of the Black Warrior River. The line as finally run by the commissioners from Flat Rock, on Bear Creek, to Ten Islands, pursued a course bearing S. 67° 56' 27" E. 118 miles and 40 perches.[212] It may be interesting also to quote from a letter[213] from William Barnett, one of the United States boundary commissioners, to his co-commissioner, General Coffee, in which, he states that he has just returned from the council at Turkeytown, at which the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks were represented, and that the principal purpose of the council was to agree upon and adjust their several boundaries. He notes the fact that the Creeks and Cherokees had agreed to make a joint stock of their lands, with a privilege to each