WR!TINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1854
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most emphatically expressed, almost amounting to a command, the nation divided, and a portion of them went to Arkansas. They had been driven from their first settlement; they had gone up beyond the white settlements in Arkansas Territory, and had located themselves at Point Remove; so-called from the fact of their removal to it. They remained there until Lovely's pur- chase was made north of the Arkansas from the Osage Indians. White people immediately flocked in beyond them, cutting off again their outlet, and circumscribing them within limits. A treaty was negotiated in 1828, I think, in which it was declared to them that in exchange for the territory they then occupied several hundred miles below Lovely's purchase, and by the settlers on Lovely's purchase, the Neosho and Grand rivers and Verdigris, they should be removed below Fort Smith, and that they should have eternal possession of that land. The exchange took place; the settlers on Lovely's purchase were removed down; head rights or preemptions were granted to them as a recompense for the sacrifice which they had made, by surrendering the cabins which they had occupied, and each man received three hundred and twenty acres of land. The Cherokees received for their compen- sation a nominal sum, and removed to the country in which they now abide. This country was given to them under every solemn obligation of perpetuity. Every right that the United States possessed was invested in them, and it was declared that it should inure to them and their posterity perpetually. The most solemn pledge had been made that a boundless outlet should be given; that the white man should never again be settled beyond them in the jurisdiction of the United States. In conformity with that the Cherokees made the treaty. Up to 1833, I think it was, the nation was divided, one portion of it remaining east of the ·Mississippi, the other west, where they had migrated. The Government gave that portion of land that they were settled upon to the Western Cherokees, and they were treated as an independent and separate tribe from that east of the Mississippi. I have some knowledge personally of the inducements which were furnished the Indians, or which were held out to them, to persuade them to quit their eastern location and remove to that proposed in the west. Under the treaty of 1817, by General Jackson, it was agreed that the census of the nation should be taken, and annuities divided between its two branches; that the amount of annuity should be apportioned to each one; one third, I think, to the Indians west of the Arkansas, and two thirds to
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