In response to orders from King George III, the white leaders of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia met with representatives and diplomats of the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Catawba tribes at Augusta, Georgia, on November 5, 1763. Present at the conference were twenty-five American Indian sovereigns, and 700 Native soldiers, three colonial governors, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, and John Stuart, the superintendent of American Indian affairs in the Southern District. After six days of oratory, eating, drinking, and distributing presents from the king, the group signed a "Treaty of Perfect and Perpetual Peace and Friendship." The document provided for the mutual forgiveness of all past offenses and injuries; the establishment of satisfactory trade relations; the punishment, by each party, of offenders of its own race for crimes against members of the other race; and the fixing of boundaries of a reservation of about fifteen square miles for the Catawba tribe.
Copyright Notice: This article is from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina edited by William S. Powell. Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
Reference:
William S. Powell, North Carolina through Four Centuries (1989).
Additional Resources:
Cashin, Edward J. The Story of Augusta. Richmond County Board of Education, 1980.
Hatley, M. Thomas. The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of the Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Merrell, James H. The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal. University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Minutes of the Southern Congress at Augusta, Georgia; North Carolina; Cherokee Indian Nation; Catawba Indian Nation; Et Al. October 01, 1763 - November 21, 1763, Volume 11, Pages 156-207, DocSouth, UNC: https://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.html/document/csr11-0084 (accessed January 21, 2025).
Morris, Michael P. "Treaty of Augusta." South Carolina Encyclopedia. August 26, 2022. https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/treaty-of-augusta/ (accessed January 21, 2025).
Citation
Williams, Wiley J. "Augusta Conference, 1763." NCpedia. Encyclopedia of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press. Accessed on February 11th, 2025. https://www.ncpedia.org/augusta-conference.