On this day in Alabama history: Second Treaty of Washington ratified

April 22, 1826

The Treaty of Washington was a compromise between the Creek nation and the United States, replacing a fraudulent treaty signed a year earlier that ceded huge swaths of Indian territory to Alabama. Under the new agreement, the Creeks retained about 3 million acres in the Coosa and Tallapoosa River watersheds that had been promised to the state in the previous Treaty of Indian Springs.

An investigation ordered by President John Quincy Adams concluded that the Treaty of Indian Springs was illegitimate. But the victory for the Creeks was short-lived. Many Alabamians believed the new treaty cheated them. Over time, they illegally extended Alabama law into Creek territory, with the support of Andrew Jackson, who became president in 1828. Four years later, the Creeks ceded all territory east of the Mississippi in the Treaty of Cusseta. Under that treaty, and the previously approved Indian Removal Act of 1830, the path was now clear for the forced relocation west by the U.S. military of the Creeks and other Native Americans in Alabama, in what later became known as the Trail of Tears.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

William McIntosh, or Tustunnuggee Hutkee (ca. 1775-1825), was a Creek headman and speaker of the Lower Creek Council. McIntosh fought alongside the Americans as a general during the Creek War of 1813-14 and the First Seminole War. On April 30, 1825, McIntosh was executed by order of the Creek National Council for approving illegal land cessions. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, print by McKenney and Hall, from the Birmingham Public Library Tutwiler Collection of Southern History and Literature)

Map of Alabama, published 1826. (Fielding Lucas Jr., Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.