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Show MOONEY] FIRST RAILROAD LITERARY REVIVAL 1870 151 and he died, as he had lived for nearly forty years, the officially recognized chief of the Nation. With repeated opportunities to enrich himself at the expense of his tribe, he died a poor man. His body was brought back and interred in the territory of the Nation. In remembrance of the great chief one of the nine districts of the Cherokee Nation has been called by his Indian name, Cooweeseoowee ( 4tf). Under the provisions of the late treaty the Delawares in Kansas, to the number of 985, removed to Indian territory in 1867 and became incorporated as citizens of the Cherokee Nation. They were followed in 1870 by the Shawano, chiefly also from Kansas, to the number of 770. l These immigrants settled chiefly along the Verdigris, in the northwestern part of the Nation. Under the same treaty the Osage, Kaw, Pawnee, Ponca, Oto and Missouri, and Tonkawa were afterward settled on the western extension known then as the Cherokee strip. The captive Nez Perces of Joseph's band were also temporarily located there, but have since been removed to the states of Washington and Idaho. In 1870 the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railway, a branch of the Union Pacific system, was constructed through the lands of the Cherokee Nation under an agreement ratified by the Government, it being the first railroad to enter that country. 2 Several others have since been constructed or projected-. The same year saw a Cherokee literary revival. The publication of the Advocate, which had been suspended since some years before the war, was resumed, and by authority of the Nation John B. Jones ^ began the preparation of a series of schoolbooks in the Cherokee language and alphabet for the benefit of those children who knew no English. 3 In the spring of 1881 a delegation from the Cherokee Nation visited the East Cherokee still remaining in the mountains of North Carolina and extended to them a cordial and urgent invitation to remove and incorporate upon equal terms with the Cherokee Nation in the Indian territory. In consequence several parties of East Cherokee, numbering in all 161 persons, removed during the year to the western Nation, the expense being paid by the Federal government. Others afterwards applied for assistance to remove, but as no further appropriation was made for the purpose nothing more was done.* In 1883 the East Cherokee brought suit for a proportionate division of the Cherokee funds and other interests under previous treaties, 5 but their claim was 1 Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, PP- 35<>- 3oH, IKSH; Constitution and Law* of the Cherokee Nation, pp. 277- 284: St. Louis, 1875. * Royce, op. clt., p. 367. 3Fo « ter, Sequoyah, pp. 147. 148,1885; Pilling, Iroquoian Bibliography, 1888, articles" Cherokee Advocate" and " John B. Jones." Theschoolbook series seems to have ended with the arithmetic- cause, as the Cherokee national superintendent of schools explained to the author, '• t< x> mueh white man." * Commissioner H. Price, Report of Indian Commissioner, p. lxv, 1881, and p. lxx. 1882; see also p. 175. * Report of Indian Commissioner, p. lxv, 18H3. |