348 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
and within a few days thereafter he died. He was in many respects a 
remarkableman. Though of Scotch-Indian parentage he was the cham- 
pion of the full-blood as against the mixed-blood members of the nation, 
and for nearly half a century had been a prominent figure in all the im- 
portant affairs of the Cherokee Nation. Notwithstanding his many op- 
portunities for immense gains he seems to have died a poor man and 
his family were left without the necessaries of life. His sixty slaves, 
and everything he possessed in the way of houses, stock, and other like 
property, were swept away during the war.! 
CESSION AND SALE OF CHEROKEE STRIP AND NEUTRAL LANDS, 
The seventeenth article of the treaty of July 19, 1866, ceded to the 
United States, in trust to be disposed of for the benefit of the Chero- 
kees, both the tract known as the ‘neutral land,” previously alluded 
to, and that known as the “ Cherokee strip.” The latter was a narrow 
strip, extending from the Neosho River west to the western limit of the 
Cherokee lands. The Cherokee domain, as described in the treaty of 
1855, extended northward to the south line of the Osage lands. When 
the State of Kansas was admitted to the Union its south boundary was 
made coincident with the thirty-seventh degree of north latitude, which 
was found to run a short distance to the southward of the southern 
Osage boundary, thus leaving the narrow ‘“ strip” of Cherokee lands 
within the boundaries of that State. 
The proviso of the seventeenth article just mentioned required that 
the lands therein ceded should be surveyed, after the manner of survey- 
ing the publie lands of the United States, and should be appraised by 
two commissioners, one of whom should be appointed by the United 
States and the other by the Cherokee Nation, such appraisement not to 
average less than $1.25 per acre. After such appraisement, the lands 
were to be sold under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior on 
sealed bids, in tracts of not exceeding 160 acres each, for cash, with the 
proviso that nothing should forbid the sale, if deemed for the best inter- 
ests of the Indians, of the entire tract of ‘neutral land” (except the por- 

' John Ross, or Kooeskoowe, was of mixed Scotch and Indian blood on both father’s 
and mother’s side. His maternal grandfather was John Stuart, who for many years 
prior to the Revolutionary war was British superintendent of Indian affairs for the 
southern tribes and who married a Cherokee woman. He was born about 1790 in 
that portion of the Cherokee Nation within the present limits of Georgia, and died in 
Washington, D. v., August 1,1866. As early as 1813 Ross made a trip to the Cherokee 
country west of the Mississippi, ascending the Arkansas River to the present limits 
of Indian Territory, and wrote a detailed account of the situation and prospects of 
his brethren, the character cf the country, ete. In 1820 (and perhaps earlier) he had 
become president of the Cherokee national committee, and continued so until the 
adoption of a constitution by the Cherokee Nation, July 26,1827. Of this constitu- 
tional convention Mr. Ross was the president, and under its operation he was elected 
principal chief, a position which he continued to hold until his death. 
