Can you imagine paying only two cents per acre for land in Lawrence County? What about almost the ENTIRE county, plus most of the counties around it?

Most of Lawrence County was legally opened for white settlement by a treaty signed on this day in 1816, when the Chickasaw Tribe of Indians ceded around 9,300 square miles–6 million acres–of land to the United States.

The United States agreed to pay the tribe $120,000 over a period of ten years for this incredibly valuable tract of territory, making it almost a literal steal for the United States. That sum comes to about two cents per acre for land that encompassed not only all of modern Lawrence County, but also most of modern Maury and Wayne Counties, and the bulk of northwestern Alabama.

According to an article published by the Chickasaw TV Video Network, “General Jackson, riding a crest of popularity, led the U.S. negotiations at Chickasaw Leader George Colbert’s home. The Chickasaws might have expected better since they had fought with General Jackson against the Creeks and because the Chickasaws showed him a charter given to them by President Washington guaranteeing them their land in 1794. But Jackson coldly told them, ‘The hunt is over, the game is gone.’ “

This signature page of the original treaty shows the signatures and marks of not only Andrew Jackson and the other white negotiators, but also of many of the chiefs and elders of the Chickasaw Nation who agreed to the deal, including several members of the powerful Colbert family, who arranged for the treaty to include bonus sums and land reservations for themselves.

The white men who organized the land-grab were also motivated by the prospect of a quick fortune. The shallow place in the Tennessee River that would become Florence, Alabama was part of the territory ceded by the 1816 treaty. That land eventually made tidy profits for Jackson and his closest friends, who invested heavily in lots which they sold to settlers for high speculative prices. And at least one Jackson family friend speculated in huge tracts of land here in Lawrence County when it first became available for purchase.

The trickle of illegal pre-treaty white settlement became a flood of legal white settlement in the winter months after the land was ceded by the Chickasaw. Among the wanderers who came to the unorganized territory that would become Lawrence County that winter was David Crockett, who “became so well pleased with the country about there, that [he] resolved to settle in it.” Crockett’s role in helping to bring law and order to the fledgling county would catapult him into a political career that would culminate in his service as Congressman from West Tennessee.