232 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
and weaving, and in individual instances considerable progress had been 
made in the accumulation of property. Agent Meigs now thought that 
the point had been reached where the Cherokee people should begin to 
fight their own battles of life, and that any further contributions to their 
support, either in the shape of provisions or tools, would have only a 
tendency to render them more dependent upon the Government and 
less competent to take care of themselves. Those who were already 
advanced in the arts of civilized life should be the tutors of the more 
ignorant. They possessed a territory of perhaps 10,000,000 acres of 
land, principally in the States of Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennes- 
see, for the occupation of which they could enumerate little more than 
10,000 souls or 2,000 families. If they were to become an agricultural 
and pastoral people, an assignment of 640 acres of land to each family 
would be all and more than they could occupy with advantage to them- 
selves. Such an allotment would consume but 1,250,000 acres, leaving 
more than 8,000,000 acres of surplus land which might and ought to be 
sold for their benefit, and the proceeds (which he estimated at $300,000, 
to be paid in fifty annual installments) applied to their needs in the 
erection of houses, fences, and the clearing and breaking up of their 
land for cultivation. The authority and laws of the several States within 
whose limits they resided should become operative upon them, and they 
should be vested with the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens of 
those States. These views met with the concurrence of the administra- 
tion, and would possibly have been carried into effect but for the intense 
hostility thereto of not only the unprogressive element among the Cher- 
okees themselves but of the efficials and people of the States most in- 
terested, who could not view with complacency the permanent occupa- 
tion of a single acre of land within their limits by the aboriginal owners. 
TENNESSEE DENIES THE VALIDITY OF CHEROKEE RESERVATIONS. 
About this time trouble arose between the authorities of the State of 
Tennessee and the surveyor (Robert Houston) who had been intrusted 
with the duty of laying off such individual reservations as should be 
taken under the provisions of the treaties of 1817 and 1819. Mr. 
Houston reported to the Secretary of War that the legislature of Ten- 
nessee had refused to confirm all such reservations taken in virtue of 
the provisions of those treaties subsequent to the Ist of July, 1818, or, 
in other words, after the time provided for taking the Cherokee census 
had expired, and desired the opinion and instructions of the Department 
thereon. The question involved in this dispute was deemed of suffi- 
cient importance to secure an official opinion from the Attorney-Gen- 
eral prior to directing any further action.!. An opinion was rendered? 
by Attorney-General Wirt, the substance of which was that the right 
of taking these reservations having been in the first instance given by 


1 Letter of Secretary of War to Attorney-General, July, 26, 1820. 
> August 12, 1820. 
