Page:A Century of Dishonor.pdf/292

274 right to the occupation of their lands independent of the States within whose chartered lines they happen to be; that until they cede them by treaty, or other transaction equivalent to treaty, no act of a State can give a right to such lands. * * * The Government is determined to exert all its energy for the patronage and protection of the rights of the Indians.”

And the year before General Washington had said to the Six Nations: “In future yon cannot be defrauded of your lands. No State or person can purchase your lands unless at some public treaty held under the authority of the United States. The General Government will never consent to your being defrauded; but it will protect you in all your just rights. * * * You possess the right to sell, and the right of refusing to sell your lands. * * * The United States will be true and faithful to their engagements.”

What could Cherokee men and women have thought when, only thirty years later, they found this United States Government upholding the State of Georgia in her monstrous pretensions of right to the whole of their country, and in her infamous cruelties of oppression toward them? when they found this United States Government sending its agents to seduce and bribe their chiefs to bargain away their country; even stooping to leave on the public records of official instructions to a commissioner such phrases as these: “Appeal to the chiefs and influential men—not together, but apart, at their own houses;” “make offers to them of extensive reservations in fee-simple, and other rewards, to obtain their acquiescence;” “the more careful you are to secure from even the chiefs the official character you bear, the better;” “enlarge on the advantage of their condition in the West: there the Government would protect them.” This the Secretary of War called “moving on them in the line of their prejudices.”

In a report submitted to the War Department in 1825 by Thomas L. McKenney is a glowing description of the Cherokee