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Show MOONEY] TREATY WITH RIDGE PARTY 1835 121 tion, headed by John Ro& s, addressed another earnest memorial to Congress on May 17, 1834. Royce quotes the document at length, with the remark, " Without affecting to pass judgment on the merits of the controversy, the writer thinks this memorial well deserving of reproduction here as evidencing the devoted and pathetic attachment with which the Cherokee clung to the land of their fathers, and, remembering the wrongs and% humiliations of the past, refused to be convinced that justice, prosperity, and happiness awaited them beyond the Mississippi." 1 In August of this year another council was held at Red Clay, southeastward from Chattanooga and just within the Georgia line, where the question of removal was again debated in what is officially described as a tumultuous and excited meeting. One of the principal advocates of the emigration scheme, a prominent mixed- blood named John Walker, jr., was assassinated from ambush while returning from the council to his home a few miles north of the present Cleveland, Tennessee. On account of his superior education and influential connections, his wife being a niece of former agent Return J. Meigs, the affair created intense excitement at the time. The assassination has been considered the first of the long series of political murders growing out of the removal agitation, but, according to the testimony of old Cherokee acquainted with the facts, the killing was due to a more personal motive. 8 The Cherokee were now nearly worn out by constant battle against a fate from which they could see no escape. In February, 1835, two rival delegations arrived in Washington, One, the national, party, headed by John Ross, came prepared still to fight to the end for home and national existence. The other, headed by Major John Ridge, a prominent subchief, despairing of further successful resistance, was prepared to negotiate for removal. Reverend J. F. Schermerhorn was appointed commissioner to arrange with the Ridge party a treaty to be confirmed later by the Cherokee people in general council. On this basis a treaty was negotiated with the Ridge party by which the Cherokee were to cede their whole eastern territory and remove to the West in consideration of the sum of $ 3,250,000 with some additional acreage in the West and a small sum for depredations committed upon them by the whites. Finding that these negotiations were proceeding, the Ross party filed a counter proposition for $ 20,000,000, which was rejected by the Senate as excessive. The Schermerhorn compact with the Ridge party, with the consideration changed to $ 1,500,000, was thereupon completed and signed on March 14, 1835, but with the express stipulation that it should receive the approval of » Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Report Bureau of Ethnology, p. 276,1888. * Commissioner Elbert Herring, November 25, Report of Indian Commissioner, p. 240,1834; author's persona] information from Major R. C Jackson and J. D. Wafford. |
