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Show MOONEY] TREATY OF WASHINGTON 1828 139 for anyone of the tribe who should undertake to cede or exchange iand belonging to the Nation. 1 After a long series of negotiations such pressure was brought to bear upon a delegation which visited Washington in 1828 that consent was at last obtained to an exchange of the Arkansas tract for another piece of seven million acres lying farther west, together with * fca perpetual outlet west" of the tract thus assigned, as far west as the sovereignty of the United States might extend. 2 The boundaries given for this seveu- million- acre tract and the adjoining western outlet were modified by treaty at Fort Gibson five years later so as to be practically equivalent to the present territory of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory, with the Cherokee strip recently ceded. The preamble of the Washington treaty of May 6,1828, recites that " Whereas, it being the anxious desire of the Government of the United States to secure to the Cherokee nation of Indians, as well those now living within the limits of the territory of Arkansas as those, of their friends and brothers who reside in states east of the Mississippi, and who may wish to join their brothers of the West, a permanent koine, and which shall, under the most solemn guarantee of the United States, be and remain theirs forever- a home that shall never, in all future time, be embarrassed by having extended around it the lines or placed over it the jurisdiction of a territory or state, nor be pressed upon by the extension in any way of any of the limits of any existing territory or state; and whereas the present location of the Cherokees in Arkansas being unfavorable to their present repose, and tending, as the past demonstrates, to their future degradation and misery, and the Cherokees being anxious to avoid such consequences," etc.- therefore, they cede everything confirmed to them in 1817. Article 2 defines the boundaries of the new tract and the western outlet to be given in exchange, lying immediately west of the present Arkansas line, while the next article provides for the removal of all whites and others residing within the said boundaries, " so that no obstacles arising out of the presence of a white population, or any population of any other sort, shall exist to annoy the Cherokees, and also to keep all such from the west of said line in future." Other articles provide for payment for improvements left behind; for a cash sum of $ 50,000 to pay for trouble and expense of removal and to compensate for the inferior quality of the lands ih the new tract; for $ 6,000 to pay for recovering stock which may stray away " in quest of the pastures from which they may be driven ;" $ 8,760 for spoliations committed by Osage and whites; $ 500 # to George Guess ( Sequoya)-; who was himself one of the signers- in consideration of the beneficial results to his tribe from the alphabet invented by him; $ 20,000 in ten annual payments for education; $ 1,000 for a printing 1 Royce, Cherokee Nation, op. cit., p. 245. a ibid., pp. 247, 248. |
