Native Americans: 22 Books on History, Mythology, Culture & Linguistic Studies. James Mooney

a proposition for adjustment in another form. Remarking upon their feeble numbers, and surrounded as they were by a nation so powerful as the United States, they could not but clearly see, they said, that their existence and permanent welfare as a people must depend upon that relation which should eventually lead to an amalgamation with the people of the United States. As the prospects of securing this object collectively, in their present location in the character of a territorial or State government, seemed to be seriously opposed and threatened by the States interested in their own aggrandizement, and as the Cherokees had refused, and would never voluntarily consent, to remove west of the Mississippi, the question was propounded whether the Government would enter into an arrangement on the basis of the Cherokees becoming prospectively citizens of the United States, provided the former would cede to the United States a portion of their territory for the use of Georgia; and whether the United States would agree to have the laws and treaties executed and enforced for the effectual protection of the Cherokees on the remainder of their territory for a definite period, with the understanding that upon the expiration of that period the Cherokees were to be subjected to the laws of the States within whose limits they might be, and to take an individual standing as citizens thereof, the same as other free citizens of the United States, with liberty to dispose of their surplus lands in such manner as might be agreed upon.

Cherokee proposals declined.—The reply397 to this proposition was that the President did not see the slightest hope of a termination to the embarrassments under which the Cherokees labored except in their removal to the country west of the Mississippi.

Proposal of Andrew Ross.—In the mean time398 Andrew Ross, who was a member of the Cherokee delegation, suggested to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that if he were authorized so to do he would proceed to the Cherokee country and bring a few chiefs or respectable individuals of the nation to Washington, with whom a treaty could be effected for the cession of the whole or part of the Cherokee territory. His plan was approved, with the understanding that if a treaty should be concluded the expenses of the delegation would be paid by the United States. Ross succeeded in assembling some fifteen or twenty Cherokees at the Cherokee agency, all of whom were favorable to the scheme of emigration. Under the self-styled appellation of a committee, they proceeded to appoint a chief and assistant chief in the persons of William Hicks and John McIntosh, and selected eight of their own number as the remainder of the delegation to visit Washington.399

Protest of John Ross and thirteen thousand Cherokees.—Upon their arrival Hon. J. H. Eaton was designated400 to conduct the negotiations with them. During the pendency of the negotiations Mr. Baton advised John Ross of the purpose in view and solicited his co-operation in the scheme. Mr. Ross refused401 this proposal with much warmth, and took occasion to add in behalf of the Cherokee Nation that "in the face of Heaven and earth, before God and man, I most solemnly protest against any treaty whatever being entered into with those of whom you say one is in progress so as to affect the rights and interests of the Cherokee Nation east of the Mississippi River."

      Chief Ross also presented a protest, alleged to have been signed by more than thirteen thousand Cherokees, against the negotiation of such a treaty.

      Preliminary treaty concluded with Andrew Ross et al.—Disregarding the protest of Chief Ross and distrusting the verity of that purporting to have been so numerously signed in the nation, the negotiations proceeded, and a treaty or agreement was concluded on the 19th day of June, 1834. The treaty provided for the opening of emigrant enrolling books, with a memorandum heading declaring the assent of the subscriber to a treaty yet to be concluded with the United States based upon the terms previously offered by the President, covering a cession and removal, and with the proviso that if no such subsequent treaty should be concluded within the next few months then the subscribers would cede to the United States all their right and interest in the Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi. In consideration of this they were to be removed and subsisted for one year at the expense of the United States, to receive the ascertained value of their improvements, and to be entitled to all such stipulations as should thereafter be made in favor of those who should not then remove.

The treaty, however, failed of ratification, though the enrolling books were opened402 and a few of the Cherokees entered their names for emigration.

      Cherokees Memorialize Congress

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While the negotiations leading up to the conclusion of this treaty were in progress John Ross and his delegation, finding no disposition on the part of the executive authority to enter into a discussion of Cherokee affairs predicated upon any other basis than an abandonment by them of their homes and country east of the Mississippi, presented403 a memorial to Congress complaining of the injuries done them and praying for redress. Without affecting to pass judgment on the merits of the controversy, the writer thinks this memorial well deserving of reproduction here as evidencing the devoted and pathetic attachment with which the Cherokees clung to the land of their fathers, and, remembering the wrongs and humiliations of the past, refused to be convinced that justice, prosperity, and happiness awaited them beyond the Mississippi.

      The memorial of the Cherokee Nation respectfully showeth, that they approach your honorable bodies as the representatives of the people of the United States, intrusted by them under the Constitution with the exercise of their sovereign power, to ask for protection of the rights of your memorialists and redress of their grievances.

      They respectfully represent that their rights, being stipulated by numerous solemn treaties, which guaranteed to them protection, and guarded as they supposed by laws enacted by Congress, they had hoped that the approach of danger would be prevented by the interposition of the power of the Executive charged with the execution of treaties and laws; and that when their rights should come in question they would be finally and authoritatively decided by the judiciary, whose decrees it would be the duty of the Executive to see carried into effect. For many years these their just hopes were not disappointed.

      The public faith of the United States, solemnly pledged to them, was duly kept in form and substance. Happy under the parental guardianship of the United States, they applied themselves assiduously and successfully to learn the lessons of civilization and peace, which, in the prosecution of a humane and Christian policy, the United States caused to be taught them. Of the advances they have made under the influence of this benevolent system, they might a few years ago have been tempted to speak with pride and satisfaction and with grateful hearts to those who have been their instructors. They could have pointed with pleasure to the houses they had built, the improvements they had made, the fields they were cultivating; they could have exhibited their domestic establishments, and shown how from wandering in the forests many of them had become the heads of families, with fixed habitations, each the center of a domestic circle like that which forms the happiness of civilized man. They could have shown, too, how the arts of industry, human knowledge, and letters had been introduced amongst them, and how the highest of all the knowledge had come to bless them, teaching them to know and to worship the Christian's God, bowing down to Him at the same seasons and in the same spirit with millions of His creatures who inhabit Christendom, and with them embracing the hopes and promises of the Gospel.

      But now each of these blessings has been made to them an instrument of the keenest torture. Cupidity has fastened its eye upon their lands and their homes, and is seeking by force and by every variety of oppression and wrong to expel them from their lands and their homes and to tear them from all that has become endeared to them. Of what they have already suffered it