MooNEY] CHEROKEE GOVERNMENT MISSIONS 107 



to send four representiitivL'.s to the Chei'okee luitioiuil le<^isl:iturc, 

 which mot at Newtown, or New Echota, the capital, at the junction 

 of Conusauofa and Coosawateo riv(>rs, a few miles above tlu^ present 

 Calhoun, Geor(j;ia. The legislature consisted of an upper jind a 

 lower house, desionated, 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 st3'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 coun- 

 cil 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 borse" 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 familj' 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 pun- 

 ish 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 

 l)lood revenge or capital punislunent was taken from the seven clans 

 and vested in the constituted authorities of the nation. It was made 

 treason, punishable with death, for an}- individual to negotiate the sale 

 of lands to the whites without the consent of the national council (3'.l). 

 White men were not allowed to vote or to hold office in the nation.' 

 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 old- 

 est, founded by the Moravians at Spring place, Georgia, in ISOI; 

 Oothcaloga, Geoi'gia, founded by the same denomination in 1821 on 

 the creek of that name, near the present Calhoun; Brainerd, Tennes- 

 see, 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 Peachtree creek; Coosavvatee, Cieorgia 

 ("'Tensawattee," f)y error in the State Papers), founded also by the 

 Baptists in 1821, near the mouth of the river of that name. All were 

 in fiourishing condition, the Brainerd estahlishmcrit especially, with 

 nearly one hundred pupils, being obliged to turn awaj' applicants for 



1 Laws of the Clierokoe Xatiou (several (loeiHneiit.s). 1820, American State Papers: Indian AlTairs. ii. 

 pp.279-a«J, 1834; letterquoted by McKenuey, W2b, ibid., pp. (Vil. 6,i2; Dralie, Indians, pp.43", 43S, ed. 1880. 



