ROYCE. | TREATY OF DECEMBER 29, 1835. 259 
President Jackson, but they found the Executive entertaining opinions 
about their rights very different from those which had been held 
by his predecessors. They were advised! that the answer to their 
claim of being an independent nation was to be found in the fact that 
during the Revolutionary war the Cherokees were the ailies of Great 
Britain, a power claiming entire sovereignty of the thirteen colonies, 
which sovereignty, by virtue of the Declaration of Independence and 
the subsequent treaty of 1783, became vested respectively in the thir- 
teen original States, including North Carolina and Georgia. If they 
had since been permitted to abide on their lands, it was by permission, 
a circumstance giving noright to deny the sovereignty of those States. 
Under the treaty of 1785 the United States “ give peace to all the 
Cherokees and receive them into favor and protection.” Subsequently 
they had made war on the United States, and peace was not con- 
cluded until 1791. No guarantee, however, was given by the United 
States adverse to the sovereignty of Georgia, and none could be given. 
Their course in establishing an independent government within the 
limits of Georgia, adverse to her will, had been the cause of inducing 
her to depart from the forbearance she had so long practiced, and to 
provoke the passage of the recent? act of ber legislature, extending her 
laws and jurisdiction over their country. The arms of the United 
States, the President remarked, would never be employed to stay any 
State of the Union from the exercise of the legitimate powers belong- 
ing to her in her sovereign capacity. No remedy for them could be 
perceived except removal west of the Mississippi River, where alone 
peace and protection could be afforded them. To continue where they 
were could promise nothing but interruption and disquietude. Beyond 
the Mississippi the United States, possessing the sole sovereignty, could 
say to them that the land should be theirs while trees grow and water 
runs. 
The delegation were much cast down by these expressions of the 
President, but they abated nothing of their demand for protection in 
what they considered to be the just rights of their people. They re- 
turned to their country more embittered than before against the Geor- 
gians, and lost no opportunity, by appeals to the patriotism as well as 
to the baser passions of their countrymen, to excite them to a determi- 
nation to protect their country at all hazards agaiust Georgian encroach- 
ment and occupation.’ 
GENERAL CARROLL'S REPORT ON THE CONDITION OF THE CHEROKEES. 
About this time* General William Carroll was designated by the 
President to make a tour through the Cherokee and Creek Nations, 
‘Letter of Se cretary - of War to Cherokee ‘delegation, April 18, 1829, 
*December 20, 1823. 
’Agent Montgomery to the Secretary of War, July 11, 1829. 
4Secretary of War to General William Carroll, May 27, 1829. 
