The primary reason for the optimism was that Washington and Knox had apparently discovered a strategy that would avoid both Indian removal and Indian wars. In the Treaty of New York (1790), the Creeks were promised sovereign control over a vast tract that included what is now western Georgia, northern Florida, southern Tennessee, and most of Alabama. The federal government was legally and morally pledged to prevent white settlers from invading this new version of Creek country. And this homelands model could be applied elsewhere, creating a series of Indian enclaves east of the Mississippi.
