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Show 148 MYTH8 OF THE CHEROKEE [ ETH. ANN. 19 village of San Fernando, Mexico, in August of that year. Rumors having come of his helpless condition, a party had been sent out from the Nation to bring him back, but arrived too late to find him alive. A pension of three hundred dollars, previously voted to him by the Nation, was continued to his widow- the only literary pension in the United States. Besides a wife he left two sons and a daughter. 1 Sequoyah district of the Cherokee Nation was named in his honor, and the great trees of California ( Sequoia gigcmtea) also preserve his memory. In 1846 a treaty was concluded at Washington by which the conflicting claims of the Old Settlers and later emigrants were adjusted, reimbursement was promised for sums unjustly deducted from the five- million- dollar payment guaranteed under the treaty of 1835, and a general amnesty was proclaimed for all past offenses within the Nation. 2 Final settlement of the treaty claims has not yet been made, and the matter is still a subject of litigation, including all the treaties and agreements up to the present date. In 1859 the devoted missionary Samuel Worcester, author of numerous translations and first organizer of • the Advocate, died at Park Hill mission, in the Cherokee Nation, after thirty- five years spent in the service of the Cherokee, having suffered chains, imprisonment, and exile for their sake. 8 The breaking out of the civil war in 1861 found the Cherokee divided in sentiment. Being slave owners, like the other Indians removed from the southern states, and surrounded by southern influences, the agents in charge being themselves southern sympathizers, a considerable party in each of the tribes was disposed to take active part with the Confederacy. The old Ridge party, headed by Stand Watie and supported by the secret secession organization known as the Knights of the Golden Circle, declared for the Confederacy. The National party, headed b}^ John Ross and supported by the patriotic organization known as the Kitoowah society- whose members were afterward known as Pin Indians- declared for strict neutrality. At last, however, the pressure became too strong to be resisted, and on October 7, 1861, a treaty was concluded at Tahlequah, with General Albert Pike, commissioner for the Confederate states, by which the Cherokee Nation cast its lot with the Confederacy, as the Creeks, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Osage, Comanche, and several smaller tribes had already done. 4 1W. A. Phillips, Sequoyah, in Harper's Magazine, September, 1870; Foster, Sequoyah, 1885; Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. liep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 302,1888; letter of William P. Ross, former editor of Cherokee Advocate, March 11,1889, in archives of Bureau of American Ethnology; Cherokee Advocate, October 19,1844, November 2,1844, and March 6,1845; author's personal information. San Fernando seems to have been a small village in Chihuahua, but is not shown on the maps. 8 For full discussion see Royce, op. cit., pp. 298- 312. 8 Pilling, Bibliography of the Iroquoian Languages ( bulletin of the Bureau of Ethnology), p. 174,1888. < See treaties with Cherokee, October 7,1861, and with other tribes, in Confederate States Statutes at Large, 1864; Royce, op. cit., pp. 324- 328: Greeley, American Conflict, n, pp. 30- 34, 1866; Reports of Indian Commissioner for I860 to 1862. |