treaties of 1828 and 1833, and, in addition, a guaranty is made to the Cherokees for a perpetual outlet west; and letters patent were to be issued by the United States for the land granted.

Third: The United States agreed that in consideration of $500,000.00 they would patent to the Cherokees in fee simple another tract of land described in the treaty estimated to contain eight hundred thousand acres.

Fourth: The lands sold to the Cherokees were to be patented to them by the United States under the provisions of the Act of May 28, 1830.

Fifth: The United States agreed that the land sold and guaranteed to the Cherokees should never, without their consent, be included within the limits or jurisdiction of any State or territory, and the Cherokees were to have the right to pass any law they might deem necessary, provided it was not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that perpetual peace should exist between the United States and the Cherokees, and that the United States would protect them from domestic strife, foreign enemies, and war with other tribes, as well as from trespasses by citizens of the United States.

Sixth: The Cherokees were to be entitled to a delegate in the United States House of Representatives whenever Congress should make provision for the same.

Seventh: The United States were to remove the Cherokees to the territory west of the Mississippi, and to provide them with one year's subsistence.

Eighth: The United States was to make an appraisement of all Cherokee improvements and ferries on the land they were selling to the United States, and the just debts of the Indians were to be paid out of moneys due them for improvements.

Ninth: The President of the United States was to invest for the benefit of the Cherokees $200,000.00 for a general national fund; $50,000.00 for an orphans' fund; $150,000.00 for a permanent national school fund.

Tenth: The Cherokee warriors wounded in the service of the United States during the war with Great Britian and the southern tribes of Indians, were to be allowed to receive such pensions as Congress might provide.

Eleventh: The Cherokees were to remove west within two years from the ratification of the treaty, during which time the

United States was to protect them in the possession of their property.

There were a number of details set out in the treaty which need not be here repeated.

On December 31st, 1835, James Rogers and John Smith, delegates from the Western Cherokees, signed an agreement to this treaty on behalf of the western Cherokees.

On December 29, 1835, a supplement to the treaty was adopted with three provisions: (1) All pre-emption rights and reservations provided for in articles 12 and 13 of the original treaty were to be null and void; (2) The Senate was to vote additional money to the Cherokees if that body understood that the $5,000,000.00 given for the land was to include moving expenses, which moving expenses were to be estimated at the sum of $600,000.00, which was to be in lieu of the sum of $100,000.00 and of exemptions provided for in article one of the treaty, for spoliations.

This treaty stirred the public feeling so deeply that in the interests of a compromise, President Martin Van Buren in May, 1838, proposed that the Cherokees should be allowed two years additional time in which to move, subject to the approval of Congress and the executives of the States interested. proposition of the President, Governor Gilmer of Georgia made this response:

* I can give it no sanction whatever. The proposal could not be carried into effect but in violation of the rights of this State. * * It is necessary that I should know whether the President intends by the instructions to General Scott that the Indians shall be maintained in their occupancy by main force, in opposition to the rights of the owners of the soil; if such be the intention a direct collision between the authorities of the State and the General Government must ensue. My duty will require that I shall prevent any interference whatever by the troops with the rights of the State and its citizens, and I shall not fail to perform it.

The reader will be interested to peruse the description by George Bancroft in his History of the United States of the country which the United States bought by this treaty from the Cherokees, and which that tribe had occupied as supreme master for so many long years. This is the description Bancroft gives:

"The mountaineers of aboriginal America were the Cherokees, who occupied the valley of the Tennessee River as far west as the Muscle Shoals and the highlands of Carolina, Georgia and Ala

bama, the most picturesque and salubrious region east of the Mississippi. Their homes are encircled by blue hills rising beyond blue hills, of which the lofty peaks would kindle with the early light and the overshadowing night envelop the valleys like a mass of clouds. There the rocky cliffs rising in naked grandeur defy the lightning and mock the loudest peals of the thunderstorm; there the gentle slopes are covered with magnolias and flowering forest trees, decorated with roving climbers, and ring with the perpetual note of the whip-poor-will; there the wholesome water gushes profusely from the earth in transparent springs; snowwhite cascades glitter on the hillsides; and the rivers, shallow, but pleasant to the eye, rush through the narrow vales which the abundant strawberry crimsons and the coppices of rhododendron and flaming azalea adorn. The fertile soil teems with luxuriant herbiage on which the roebuck fattens; the vivifying breeze is laden with fragrance; and daybreak is ever welcomed by the shrill cries of the social night-hawk and the liquid carols of the mocking-bird."

* * *

THE GREAT REMOVAL.

In the contest between our pioneer ancestors and the red man our sympathies, of course, go with the men of white faces, but that does not prevent us from also feeling sympathy for the Cherokees when in 1838-1839 they took up their last march from their ancestral homes to the western country across the Mississippi river. They had relinquished their claim to the United States government, and the time of their removal had come. Under the orders of General Winfield Scott, United States troops were placed at various points in the Cherokee country, and stockade forts were erected for holding the Indians after they were collected, and preparatory to their last journey toward the setting Soldiers were sent into cabins and coves of the mountains everywhere an Indian might be concealed, and they were brought to the stockades. In North Carolina there were stockades in Swain County, Macon County, Graham County, Clay County, Cherokee County, and Murphy County. In Georgia in Lumpkin County, Gilmer County, Murray County, Pickens County, and Cherokee County. In Tennessee at the present town of Calhoun, located on the Hiwassee River, and the Southern Railway, in McMinn County.

sun.

Nearly seventeen thousand Cherokees were gathered into these various stockades, and in June and the summer of 1838, about six thousand of them were brought to Calhoun, Tennessee, to Ross' Landing, now Chattanooga, Tennessee, and to Gunter's Landing, now Guntersville, Alabama, where they were put upon

steamboats and sent down the Tennessee River to the Ohio, and thence to the west side of the Mississippi, when the journey was continued by land into the Indian Territory. This removal was in the hot part of the year, and great sickness and mortality ensued among the Indians; so much so, that their chief submitted to General Scott a proposition that the balance of the Cherokees be allowed to move themselves in the fall when weather conditions were more favorable. General Scott agreed to this proposition, provided all of the Cherokee should have started on their journey to the west by October 20, 1838, except the sick and the old people who could not move so rapidly. The Cherokees proceeded to organize for their self-removal, and were cut up into divisions of one thousand each, and there were two leaders in charge of each division, with wagons and horses for their use. This removal aggregated about thirteen thousand people, including negro slaves. They started on their last march in October, 1838. They had assembled in what is now Charleston, Tennessee, on the Southern Railway, across the river from Calhoun, and a few of them went by the river route from Charleston, but nearly all of the thirteen thousand went by land. They had six hundred and forty-five wagons. The sick, old people, small children, their clothing, blankets and cooking utensils, were in the wagons, the rest were on foot or horseback. The Tennessee River was crossed at the mouth of Hiwassee, and the route then lay south of Pikeville, through McMinnville, and on to Nashville on the Cumberland River; thence to Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The Ohio River was crossed near the mouth of the Cumberland; and thence on through Southern Illinois until the Mississippi was reached. The weather was bitterly cold when they reached the Mississippi, and many of them died. The river was crossed at Cape Girardeau and at Green's Ferry, and thence the march was through Missouri and into the Indian Territory. They marched in two detachments. They left Tennessee in October, 1838, and reached their destination in March, 1839, covering a period of nearly six months in the worst weather of the year. The number who died on this removal was given in the official figures as sixteen hundred; the percent. of the five thousand who went under military escort was larger, we are justified in believing, from the fact that the Cherokees themselves made the proposition that they would conduct their own removal rather than be conducted by the United States officers, and they lived