27-4 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
authorized them to expend $2,000 in bribing the chiefs for this very 
purpose, and had made his action in this respect a matter of public 
record. 
CHEROKEES PROPOSE AN ADJUSTMENT. 
In January, 1834, a few weeks after the assembling of Congress, the 
Cherokee delegation again arrived in Washington.' Sundry inter- 
views and considerable correspondence with the War Department 
seemed barren of results or even hope. The delegation submitted? a 
proposition for adjustment in another form. Remarking upon their 
feeble numbers, and surrounded as they were by a nation so powerful 
as the United States, they could not but clearly see, they said, that their 
existence and permanent welfare as a people must depend upon that 
relation which should eventually lead to an amalgamation with the 
people of the United States. As the prospects of securing this object 
collectively, in their present location in the character of a territorial or 
State government, seemed to be seriously opposed and threatened by 
the States interested in their own aggrandizement, and as the Chero- 
kees had refused, and would never voluntarily consent, to remove west 
of the Mississippi, the question was propounded whether the Govern- 
ment would enter into an arrangement on the basis of the Cherokees 
becoming prospectively citizens of the United States, provided the 
former would cede to the United States a portion of their territory for 
the use of Georgia; and whether the United States would agree to 
have the laws and treaties executed and enforced for the effectual pro- 
tection of the Cherokees on the remainder of their territory for a defi- 
nite period, with the understanding that upon the expiration of that 
period the Cherokees were to be subjected to the laws of the States 
within whose limits they might be, and to take an individual standing 
as citizens thereof, the same as other free citizens of the United States, 
with liberty to dispose of their surplus lands in such manner as might 
be agreed upon. 
Cherokee proposals declined.—The reply® to this proposition was that 
the President did not see the slightest hope of a termination to the em- 
barrassments under which the Cherokees labored except in their re- 
moval to the country west of the Mississippi. 
Proposal of Andrew Ross.—In the mean time* Andrew Ross, who was 
a member of the Cherokee delegation, suggested to the Commissioner 
of Indian Affairs that if he were authorized so to do he would proceed 
to the Cherokee country and bring a few chiefs or respectable individ- 
uals of the nation to Washington, with whom a treaty could be effected 
for the cession of the whole or part of the Cherokee territory. His plan 

: raaaiens of War to Governor Lumpkin, of Georgia, January 28, 1834. 
2March 28, 1834. 
3May 1, 1834. 
4March 3, 1834. 
