OCR Text |
Show MOONEY] CHEROKEE GOVERNMENT MISSIONS 107 to send four representatives to the Cherokee national legislature, which met at Newtown, or New Echota, the capital, at the junction of Conasauga and Coosawatee rivers, a few miles above the present Calhoun, Georgia. The legislature consisted of an upper and a lower bouse, designated, respectively ( in the Cherokee language), the national committee and national council, the members being elected for limited terms by the voters of each district. The principal officer was stj'led president of the national council; the distinguished John Ross was the first to hold this office. There was also a clerk of the committee and two principal members to express the will of the council or lower house. For each district there were appointed a council house for meetings twice a year, a judge, and a marshal. Companies of " light horse" were organized to assist in the execution of the laws, with a " ranger " for each district to look after stray stock. Each head of a family and each single man under the age of sixty was subject to a poll tax. Laws were passed for the collection of taxes and debts, for repairs on roads, for licenses to white persons engaged in farming or other business in the nation, for the support of schools, for the regulation of the liquor traffic and the conduct of negro slaves, to punish horse stealing and theft, to compel all marriages between white men and Indian women to be according to regular legal or church form, and to discourage polygamy. By special decree the right of blood revenge or capital punishment was taken from the seven clans and vested in the constituted authorities of the nation. It was made treason, punishable with death, for any individual to negotiate the sale of lands to the whites without the consent of the national council ( 39). White men were not allowed to vote or to hold office in the nation. 1 The system compared favorably with that of the Federal government or of any state government then existing. At this time there were five principal missions, besides one or two small branch establishments in the nation, viz: Spring Place, the oldest, founded by the Moravians at Spring place, Georgia, in 1801; Oothcaloga, Georgia, founded by the same denomination in 1821 on the creek of that name, near the present Calhoun; Brainerd, Tennessee, founded by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1817; " Valley- towns," North Carolina, founded by the Baptists in 1820, on the site of the old Natchez town on the north side of Hiwassee river, just above Peach tree creek; Coosawatee, Georgia (" Tensawattee," by error in the State Papers), founded also by the Baptists in 1821, near the mouth of the river of that name. All were in flourishing condition, the Brainerd establishment especially, with nearly one hundred pupils, being obliged to turn away applicants for 1 Laws of the Cherokee Nation ( several documents), 1820, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, n, pp. 279- 283,1834; letter quoted by McKenney, 1825, ibifl., pp. 651,652; Drake, Indians, pp. 437,438, ed. 1880. |