Documentary History of the State of New York, Vol. II
I had the honor to write your Lordship (No 4) from Fort Stanwix Just before the opening the Treaty, wherein I represented the many difficulties in the way to the settlement of the Line, which however I have at length Surmounted and Settled in a manner which will I hope be agreeable to his Majesty for the particulars of which I beg Leave to referr your Lordship to a Copy of my Transactions which I have now the honor to inclose together with a Deed of Cession to his Majesty for the Lands Yielded up to the Crown.
Your Lordship will find that the Six Nations, insisting on their right to the Lands as far South as the Cherokee River have Ceded the Same to his Majesty, and Notwithstanding that the Report of the board of Trade Spoke of Great Kanhawa River as their Southern bounds I found from what passed at sev' private Meetings, that I could not deny them the Liberty of asserting their pretensions to the Southward without highly disobliging them, and preventing the Settlement of the rest. From many former enquirys &. disputes on these Subjects I never could find that the Cherokees . claimed to the Westward of the Great Mountains or North of the River of their Name but that the Six Nations always did Claim thereto, I therefore Judged it for the interest of his Majesty to Acquiesce for these reasons That by their Cession of the Country below the Kanhawa to his Majesty Theirpretensions must in future