Return J. Meigs had for nearly twenty years[270] occupied the position
of United States agent for the Cherokee Nation. As a soldier of the
Revolutionary war he had marched with Arnold through the forests of
Maine and Canada to the attack on Quebec in 1775.[271]
He had also, by his faithful, intelligent, and honest administration
of the duties of his office as Indian agent, secured the perfect
confidence of his official superiors through all the mutations of
administration. He had acquired a knowledge of and familiarity with
the habits, character, and wants of the Cherokees such as was perhaps
possessed by few, if indeed by any other man.
Any suggestions, therefore, that he might make concerning the solution
of the Cherokee problem were deserving of grave consideration. His
views were submitted in detail upon the condition, prospects, and
requirements of the Cherokee Nation in a communication to the Secretary
of War.[272] To his mind the time had arrived when a radical change in
the policy of managing their affairs had become essential. Ever since
the treaty of 1791 the United States, in pursuance of a policy therein
outlined for leading the Cherokees toward the attainment of a higher
degree of civilization, in becoming herdsmen and cultivators instead
of hunters, had been furnishing each year a supply of implements for
husbandry and domestic use. In consequence a respectable proportion of
that nation had become familiarized with the use of the plow, spade,
and hoe. Many of their women had learned the art of spinning and
weaving, and in individual instances considerable progress had been
made in the accumulation of property. Agent Meigs now thought that
the point had been reached where the Cherokee people should begin to
fight their own battles of life, and that any further contributions
to their support, either in the shape of provisions or tools, would
have only a tendency to render them more dependent upon the Government
and less competent to take care of themselves. Those who were already
advanced in the arts of civilized life should be the tutors of the
more ignorant. They possessed a territory of perhaps 10,000,000 acres
of land, principally in the States of Georgia, North Carolina, and
Tennessee, for the occupation of which they could enumerate little
more than 10,000 souls or 2,000 families. If they were to become an
agricultural and pastoral people, an assignment of 640 acres of land
to each family would be all and more than they could occupy with
advantage to themselves. Such an allotment would consume but 1,280,000
acres, leaving more than 8,000,000 acres of surplus land which might
and ought to be sold for their benefit, and the proceeds (which he
estimated at $300,000, to be paid in fifty annual installments) applied
to their needs in the erection of houses, fences, and the clearing
and breaking up of their land for cultivation. The authority and
laws of the several States within whose limits they resided should
become operative upon them, and they should be vested with the rights,
privileges, and immunities of citizens of those States. These views met
with the concurrence of the administration, and would possibly have
been carried into effect but for the intense hostility thereto of not
only the unprogressive element among the Cherokees themselves but of
the officials and people of the States most interested, who could not
view with complacency the permanent occupation of a single acre of land
within their limits by the aboriginal owners.