ROYCE. ] TREATY OF DECEMBER 29, 1835. 287 
They say it cannot bind them because they did not make it; that it was made by a 
few unauthorized individuals; that the nation is nota party toit. * * * They 
retain the forms of their government in their proceedings among themselves, though 
they have had no election since 1830; the chiefs and headmen then in power having 
been authorized to act until their government shall again be regularly constituted. 
Under this arrangement John Ross retains the post of principal chief. * * * The 
influence of this chief is unbounded and unquestioned. The whole nation of eighteen 
thousand persons is with him, the few, about three hundred, who made the treaty 
having left the country. Itis evident, therefore, that Ross and his party are in fact 
the Cherokee Nation. *~ * * Many who were opposed to the treaty have emigrated 
to secure the rations, or because of fear of an outbreak. * * * The officers say 
that, with all his power, Ross cannot, if he would, change the course he has hereto- 
fore pursued and to which he is held by the fixed determination of his people. He 
dislikes being seen in conversation with white men, and particularly with agents of 
the Government. Were he, as matters now stand, to advise the Indians to acknowl- 
edge the treaty, he would at once forfeit their confidence and probably his life. Yet 
thovgh unwavering in his opposition to the treaty, Ross’s influence has constantly 
been exerted to preserve the peace of the country, and Colonel Lindsay says that 
he (Ross) alone stands at this time between the whites and bloodshed. The opposi- 
tion to the treaty on the part of the Indians is unanimous and sincere, and it is not 
a mere political game played by Ross for the maintenance of his ascendancy in the 
tribe. 
HENRY CLAY’S SYMPATHY WITH THE CHEROKEES. 
It is interesting in this connection, as indicating the strong and wide- 
spread public feeling manifested in the Cherokee question, to note that 
it became in some sense a test question among leaders of the two great 
political parties. The Democrats strenuously upheld the conduct of 
President Jackson on the subject, and the Whigs assailed him with ex- 
treme bitterness. The great Whig leader, Henry Clay, in replying! to 
a letter received by him from John Gunter, a Cherokee, took occasion 
to express his sympathy with the Cherokee people for the wrongs and 
sufferings experienced by them. He regretted them not only because 
of their injustice, but because they inflicted a deep wound on the char- 
acter of the American Republic. He supposed that the principles 
which had uniformly governed our relations with the Indian nations had 
been too long and too firmly established to be disturbed. They had 
been proclaimed in the negotiation with Great Britain by the commis- 
sioners who concluded the treaty of peace, of whom he was one, and any 
violation of them by the United States he felt with sensibility. By 
those principles the Cherokee Nation had a right to establish its own 
form of government, to alter and amend it at pleasure, to live under its 
own laws, to be exempt from the United States laws or the laws of any 
individual State, and to claim the protection of the United States. He 
considered that the Chief Magistrate and his subordinates had acted in 
direct hostility to those principles and had thereby encouraged Georgia 
to usurp powers of legislation over the Cherokee Nation which she did 
not of right possess. 

1 September 30, 1836. 
