Lovely's Purchase

On this map, the: Indian Territory is in teal and Arkansas is in dark green. The western portion of Lovely's Purchase, assigned to Indian Territory in 1828, is in light green. Together with an almost equal amount of lands to the east of the 1828 demarcation line with Indian Territory, was the area that made up the short lived Lovely County, Arkansas Territory.

Lovely's Purchase, also called Lovely's Donation, was part of the Missouri Territory and the Arkansas Territory of the early nineteenth century. It was created in 1817, to give a haven to the Cherokee and other Native Americans who were being forced to leave the southeastern United States and moving west to Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) through territory then inhabited by sometimes hostile White settlers and several other Indigenous nations, especially citizens of the Osage Nation. Following years of political maneuvering and sometimes conflicting treaties, the purchase was finally split between the Cherokee and White American settlers, with the larger section going solely to the Cherokee Nation.