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ОглавлениеZealous Measures for Removal of Eastern Cherokees
While the events connected with the negotiation and the execution of the treaty of 1828 with the Western Cherokees were occurring those Cherokees who yet remained in their old homes east of the Mississippi River were burdened with a continually increasing catalogue of distressing troubles. So soon as the treaty of 1828 was concluded it was made known to them that inducements were therein held out for a continuance of the emigration to the Arkansas country. Agent Montgomery was instructed347 to use every means in his power to facilitate this scheme of removal, and especially among those Cherokees who resided within the chartered limits of Georgia.
Secret agents were appointed and $2,000 were authorized by the Secretary of War to be expended in purchasing the influence of the chiefs in favor of the project.348 A. R. S. Hunter and J. S. Bridges were appointed349 commissioners to value the improvements of the Cherokees who should elect to remove.
After nearly a year of zealous work in the cause, Agent Montgomery was only able to report the emigration of four hundred and thirty-one Indians and seventy-nine slaves, comparatively few of whom were from Georgia.350 Nine months later three hundred and forty-six persons had emigrated from within the limits of that State.351 The hostility manifested by the larger proportion of the Cherokees toward those who gave favorable consideration to the plan of removal was so great as to require the establishment of a garrison of United States troops within the nation for their protection.350
President Jackson's advice to the Cherokees.—Early in 1829,352 a delegation from the nation proceeded to Washington to lay their grievances before President Jackson, but they found the Executive entertaining opinions about their rights very different from those which had been held by his predecessors. They were advised353 that the answer to their claim of being an independent nation was to be found in the fact that during the Revolutionary war the Cherokees were the allies of Great Britain, a power claiming entire sovereignty of the thirteen colonies, which sovereignty, by virtue of the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent treaty of 1783, became vested respectively in the thirteen original States, including North Carolina, and Georgia. If they had since been permitted to abide on their lands, it was by permission, a circumstance giving no right to deny the sovereignty of those States. Under the treaty of 1785 the United States "give peace to all the Cherokees and receive them into favor and protection." Subsequently they had made war on the United States, and peace was not concluded until 1791. No guarantee, however, was given by the United States adverse to the sovereignty of Georgia, and none could be given. Their course in establishing an independent government within the limits of Georgia, adverse to her will, had been the cause of inducing her to depart from the forbearance she had so long practiced, and to provoke the passage of the recent354 act of her legislature, extending her laws and jurisdiction over their country. The arms of the United States, the President remarked, would never be employed to stay any State of the Union from the exercise of the legitimate powers belonging to her in her sovereign capacity. No remedy for them, could be perceived except removal west of the Mississippi River, where alone peace and protection could be afforded them. To continue where they were could promise nothing but interruption and disquietude. Beyond the Mississippi the United States, possessing the sole sovereignty, could say to them that the land should be theirs while trees grow and water runs.
The delegation were much cast down by these expressions of the President, but they abated nothing of their demand for protection in what they considered to be the just rights of their people. They returned to their country more embittered than before against the Georgians, and lost no opportunity, by appeals to the patriotism as well as to the baser passions of their countrymen, to excite them to a determination to protect their country at all hazards against Georgian encroachment and occupation.355
