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Whereas existing treaties between the United States and the Cherokee Nation are deemed to be insufficient, the contracting parties agree as follows, viz:

1. The pretended treaty of October 7, 1861, with the so-called Confederate States, repudiated by the Cherokee National Council February 18, 1863, is declared to be void.

2. Amnesty is declared for all offenses committed by one Cherokee against the person or property of another or against a citizen of the United States prior to July 4, 1866. No right of action arising out of acts committed for or against the rebellion shall be maintained in either the United States or the Cherokee courts, and the Cherokee Nation agree to deliver to the United States all public property in their control which belonged to the United States or the so-called Confederate States.

3. The confiscation laws of the Cherokee Nation shall be repealed, and all sales of farms and improvements are declared void. The former owners shall have the right to repossess themselves of the property so sold. The purchaser under the confiscation laws shall receive from the treasurer of the nation the money paid and the value of the permanent improvements made by him. The value of these improvements shall be fixed by a commission, composed of one person appointed by the United States and one appointed by the Cherokee Nation, who in case of disagreement may appoint a third. The value of these improvements so fixed shall be returned to the Cherokee treasurer by returning Cherokees within three years.

4. All Cherokees and freed persons who were formerly slaves to any Cherokee, and all free negroes, not having been such slaves, who resided in the Cherokee Nation prior to June 1, 1861, who may within two years elect not to reside northeast of the Arkansas River and southeast of Grand River, shall have the right to settle in and occupy the Canadian district southwest of the Arkansas River; and also the country northwest of Grand River, and bounded southeast by Grand River and west by the Creek country, to the northeast corner thereof; from thence west on north line of Creek country to 96° west longitude; thence north with said 96° so far that a line due east to Grand River will include a quantity of land equal to 160 acres for each person who may so elect to reside therein, provided that the part of said district north of Arkansas River shall not be set apart until the Canadian district shall be found insufficient to allow 160 acres to each person desiring to settle under the terms of this article.

5. The inhabitants electing to reside in the district described in the preceding article shall have the right to elect all their local officers and judges, also their proportionate share of delegates in any general council that may be established under the twelfth article of this treaty; to control all their local affairs in a manner not inconsistent with the constitution of the Cherokee Nation or the laws of the United States, provided the Cherokees residing in said district shall enjoy all the rights and privileges of other Cherokees who may elect to settle in said district as herein before provided, and shall hold the same rights and privileges and be subject to the same liabilities as those who elect to settle in said district under the provisions of this treaty; provided, also, that if any rules be adopted which, in the opinion of the President, bear oppressively on any citizen of the nation he may suspend the same. And all rules or regulations discriminating against the citizens of other districts are prohibited and shall be void.

6. The inhabitants of the aforesaid district shall be entitled to representation in the national council in proportion to their numbers. All laws shall be uniform throughout the nation. The President of the United States is empowered to correct any evil arising from the unjust or unequal operation of any Cherokee law and to secure an equitable expenditure of the national funds.

7. A United States court shall be created in the Indian Territory; until created, the United States district court nearest the Cherokee Nation shall have exclusive original jurisdiction of all causes, civil and criminal, between the inhabitants of the aforesaid district and other citizens of the Cherokee Nation. All process issued in said district against a Cherokee outside of said district shall be void unless indorsed by the judge of the district in which the process is to be served. A like rule shall govern the service of process issued by Cherokee officers against persons residing in the aforesaid district. Persons so arrested shall be held in custody until delivered to the United States marshal or until they shall consent to be tried by the Cherokee court. All provisions of this treaty creating distinctions between citizens of any district and the remainder of the Cherokee Nation shall be abrogated by the President whenever a majority of the voters of such district shall so declare at an election duly ordered by him. No future law or regulation enacted in the Cherokee Nation shall take effect until ninety days after promulgation in the newspapers or by written posted notices in both the English and Cherokee languages.

8. No license to trade in the Cherokee Nation shall be granted by the United States unless approved by the Cherokee national council, except in the districts mentioned in article 4.

9. The Cherokee Nation covenant and agree that slavery shall never hereafter exist in the nation. All freedmen, as well as all free colored persons resident in the nation at the outbreak of the rebellion and now resident therein or who shall return within six months and their descendants, shall have all the rights of native Cherokees. Owners of emancipated slaves shall never receive any compensation therefor.

10. All Cherokees shall have the right to sell their farm produce, live stock, merchandise, or manufactures, and to ship and drive the same to market without restraint, subject to any tax now or hereafter levied by the United States on the quantity sold outside of the Indian Territory.

11. The Cherokee Nation grant a right of way 200 feet in width through their country to any company authorized by Congress to construct a railroad from north to south and from east to west through the Cherokee Nation. The officers, employés, and laborers of such company shall be protected in the discharge of their duties while building or operating said road through the nation and at all times shall be subject to the Indian intercourse laws.

12. The Cherokees agree to the organization of a general council, to be composed of delegates elected to represent all the tribes in the Indian Territory, and to be organized as follows:

I. A census shall be taken of each tribe in the Indian Territory.

II. The first general council shall consist of one member for each tribe, and an additional member for each one thousand population or fraction thereof over five hundred. Any tribe failing to elect such members of council shall be represented by its chief or chiefs and headmen in the above proportion. The council shall meet at such time and place as the Superintendent of Indian Affairs shall approve. No session shall exceed thirty days in any one year. The sessions shall be annual; special sessions may be called by the Secretary of the Interior in his discretion.

III. The council shall have power to legislate upon matters pertaining to intercourse and relations of the tribes and freedmen resident in Indian Territory; the arrest and extradition of criminals and offenders escaping from one tribe or community to another; the administration of justice between members of different tribes and persons other than Indians and members of said tribes or nations; and the common defense and safety. All laws enacted by the council shall take effect as therein provided, unless suspended by the President of the United States. No law shall be enacted inconsistent with the Constitution or laws of the United States or with existing treaty stipulations. The council shall not legislate upon matters other than above indicated, unless jurisdiction shall be enlarged by consent of the national council of each nation or tribe, with the assent of the President of the United States.

IV. Said council shall be presided over by such person as may be designated by the Secretary of the Interior.

V. The council shall elect a secretary, who shall receive from the United States an annual salary of $500. He shall transmit a certified copy of the council proceedings to the Secretary of the Interior and to each tribe or nation in the council.

VI. Members of the council shall be paid by the United States $4 a day during actual attendance on its meetings and $4 for every 20 miles of necessary travel in going to and returning therefrom.

13. The United States may establish a court or courts in the Indian Territory, with such organization and jurisdiction as may be established by law, provided that the judicial tribunals of the Cherokee Nation shall retain exclusive jurisdiction in all civil and criminal cases arising within their country in which members of the nation shall be the only parties, or where the cause of action shall arise in the Cherokee Nation, except as otherwise provided in this treaty.

14. Every society or denomination erecting or desiring to erect buildings for missionary or educational purposes shall be entitled to select and occupy for those purposes 160 acres of vacant land in one body.

15. The United States may settle any civilized Indians, friendly with the Cherokees, within the latter's country on unoccupied lands east of 96°, on terms agreed upon between such Indians and the Cherokees, subject to the approval of the President of the United States. If any tribe so settling shall abandon its tribal organization and pay into the Cherokee national fund a sum bearing the same proportion to such fund as said tribe shall in numbers bear to the population of the Cherokee Nation such tribe shall be incorporated into and ever after remain a part of that nation on equal terms with native citizens thereof.

If any tribe so settling shall decide to preserve its tribal organization, laws, customs, and usages not inconsistent with the constitution and laws of the Cherokee Nation, it shall have set apart in compact form for use and occupancy a tract equal to 160 acres for each member of the tribe. Such tribe shall pay for this land a price agreed upon with the Cherokees, subject to the approval of the President of the United States, and in case of disagreement the price to be fixed by the President.

Such tribe shall also pay into the national fund a sum to be agreed upon by the respective parties, not greater in proportion to the whole existing national fund and the probable proceeds of the lands herein ceded or authorized to be ceded or sold than their numbers bear to the whole number of Cherokees, and thereafter they shall enjoy all the rights of native Cherokees.

No Indians without tribal organization, or who having one shall have determined to abandon the same, shall be permitted to settle in the Cherokee country east of 96° without the permission of the proper Cherokee authorities. And no Indians determining to preserve their tribal organization shall so settle without such consent, unless the President, after a full hearing of the Cherokee objections thereto, shall deem them insufficient and authorize such settlement.

16. The United States may settle friendly Indians on any Cherokee lands west of 96°; such lands to be selected in compact form and to equal in quantity 160 acres for each member of the tribe so settled. Such tribe shall pay therefor a price to be agreed upon with the Cherokees, or, in the event of failure to agree, the price to be fixed by the President. The tract purchased shall be conveyed in fee simple to the tribe so purchasing, to be held in common or allotted in severalty as the United States may decide.

The right of possession and jurisdiction over the Cherokee country west of 96° to abide with the Cherokees until thus sold and occupied.

17. The Cherokee Nation cedes to the United States, in trust to be surveyed, appraised, and sold for the benefit of that nation, the tract of 800,000 acres sold to them by the United States by article 2, treaty of 1835, and the strip of land ceded to the nation by article 4, treaty of 1835, lying within the State of Kansas, and consents that said lands may be included in the limits and jurisdiction of said State. The appraisement shall not average less than $1.25 per acre, exclusive of improvements.

The Secretary of the Interior shall, after due advertisement for sealed bids, sell such lands to the highest bidders for cash in tracts of not exceeding 160 acres each at not less than the appraised value. Settlers having improvements to the value of $50 or more on any of the lands not mineral and occupied for agricultural purposes at the date of the signing of this treaty, shall, after due proof under rules to be prescribed by the Secretary of the Interior, be allowed to purchase at the appraised value the smallest quantity of land to include their improvements, not exceeding 160 acres each.

The expenses of survey and appraisement shall be paid out of the proceeds of the sale of the lands, and nothing herein shall prevent the Secretary of the Interior from selling to any responsible party for cash all of the unoccupied portion of these lands in a body, for not less than $800,000.

18. Any lands owned by the Cherokees in Arkansas or in States east of the Mississippi River may be sold by their national council, upon the approval of the Secretary of the Interior.

19. All Cherokees residing on the ceded lands desiring to remove to the Cherokee country proper shall be paid by the purchasers the appraised value of their improvements. Such Cherokees desiring to remain on the lands so occupied by them shall be entitled to a patent in fee simple for 320 acres each, to include their improvements, and shall thereupon cease to be members of the nation.

20. Whenever the Cherokee national council shall so request, the Secretary of the Interior shall cause the country reserved for the Cherokees to be surveyed and allotted among them at the expense of the United States.

21. The United States shall at its own expense cause to be run and marked the boundary line between the Cherokee Nation and the States of Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas as far west as the Arkansas River, by two commissioners, one of whom shall be designated by the Cherokee national council.

22. The Cherokee national council shall have the privilege of appointing an agent to examine the accounts of the nation with the United States, who shall have free access to all the accounts and books in the Executive Departments relating to the business of the Cherokees.

23. All funds due the nation or accruing from the sale of their lands shall be invested in United States registered stocks and the interest paid semi-annually on the order of the Cherokee Nation, and applied to the following purposes: 35 per cent. for the support of the common schools of the nation and educational purposes; 15 per cent. for the orphan fund, and 50 per cent. for general purposes, including salaries of district officers. The Secretary of the Interior, with the approval of the President, may pay out of the funds due the nation, on the order of the national council, an amount necessary to meet outstanding obligations of the Cherokee Nation, not exceeding $150,000.

24. Three thousand dollars shall be paid out of the Cherokee funds to the Rev. Evan Jones, now in poverty and crippled, as a reward for forty years' faithful missionary labors in the nation.

25. All bounty and pay of deceased Cherokee soldiers remaining unclaimed at the expiration of two years shall be paid as the national council may direct, to be applied to the foundation and support of an orphan asylum.

26. The United States guarantee to the Cherokees the quiet and peaceable possession of their country and protection against domestic feuds and insurrection as well as hostilities of other tribes. They shall also be protected from intrusion by all unauthorized citizens of the United States attempting to settle on their lands or reside in their territory. Damages resulting from hostilities among the Indian tribes shall be charged to the tribe beginning the same.

27. The United States shall have the right to establish one or more military posts in the Cherokee Nation. No sutler or other person, except the medical department proper, shall have the right to introduce spirituous, vinous, or malt liquors into the country, and then only for strictly medical purposes. All unauthorized persons are prohibited from coming into or remaining in the Cherokee Nation, and it is the duty of the United States agent to have such persons removed as required by the Indian intercourse laws of the United States.

28. The United States agree to pay for provisions and clothing furnished the army of Appotholehala in the winter of 1861 and 1862 a sum not exceeding $10,000.

29. The United States agree to pay out of the proceeds of sale of Cherokee lands $10,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary, to defray the expenses of the Cherokee delegates and representatives invited to Washington by the United States to conclude this treaty, and also to pay the reasonable costs and expenses of the delegates of the Southern Cherokees.

30. The United States agree to pay not exceeding $20,000 to cover losses sustained by missionaries or missionary societies, in being driven from the Cherokee country by United States agents and on account of property taken and destroyed by United States troops.

31. All provisions of former treaties not inconsistent with this treaty shall continue in force; and nothing herein shall be construed as an acknowledgment by the United States or as a relinquishment by the Cherokee Nation of any claims or demands under the guarantees of former treaties, except as herein expressly provided.