2456 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
the earnest assurances of the Secretary of War that the United States 
could and would fully protect their interests.! 
CHEROKEES CHARGE THE UNITED STATES WITH BAD FAITH. 
No sooner had the removal of the Cherokees been effectually accom- 
plished than the latter began to manifest much dissatisfaction at what 
they characterized a lack of good faith on the part of the Government 
in carrying out the stipulations of the treaty of 1835. The default 
charged had reference to the matter of payment of their claims for 
spoliations, improvements, annuities,ete. Each winter at least one dele- 
gation from the nation maintained a residence in Washington and urged 
upon the Executive and Congress with untiring persistency an adjudi- 
cation of all disputed matters arising under the treaty. 
At length the term of President Van Buren expired and was suc- 
ceeded by a Whig administration. Then as now, the official acts of an 
outgoing political party were considered to be the legitimate subject of 
criticism aud investigation by its political enemies. President Harrison 
lived but a month after assuming the duties of his office, but Vice-Presi- 
dent Tyler as his successor considered that the treatment to which the 
Cherokees had been subjected during Jacksou’s and Van Buren’s ad- 
ministrations would afford a field for investigation fraught with a rich 
harvest of results in political capital for the Whig party. 
President Tyler promises a new treaty.—Accordingly, therefore, in the 
fall of 1841, just previous to the departure of the Cherokee delegation 
from Washington to their homes, the President agreed to take proper 
measures for the settlement of all their difficulties, expressing a de- 
termination to open the whole subject of their complaints and to bring 
their affairs to a satisfactory conclusion through the medium of a new 
treaty. In conformity with this determination the Commissioner of In- 
dian Affairs? instructed the agent for the Cherokees to procure all the 
information possible to be obtained upon every subject connected with 
Cherokee affairs having a tendency to throw any light upon the wrongs 
and injustice they might have sustained to the end that full amends 
could so far as possible be made therefor. Before much information 
was collected under the terms of these instructions a change seems to 
have taken place in the views of the President, and the order for in- 
vestigation was revoked. The draft of the new treaty was, however, 
in the mean time prepared under direction of the Secretary of War. It 
contained provisions regulating the licensing of traders in the Cherokee 
country, the jurisdiction over crimes committed by citizens of the United 
States resident in that country, the allotment of their lands in severalty 
by the Cherokee authorities, and the establishment of post-offices and 
post-routes within their limits. It further contemplated the appoint- 
ment of two commissioners, whenever Congress should make provision 

‘Commissioner of Indian Affairs to Maj. William Armstrong, August 26, 1840, 
* September 22, 1841. 
