While the events connected with the negotiation and the execution of
the treaty of 1828 with the Western Cherokees were occurring those
Cherokees who yet remained in their old homes east of the Mississippi
River were burdened with a continually increasing catalogue of
distressing troubles. So soon as the treaty of 1828 was concluded it
was made known to them that inducements were therein held out for a
continuance of the emigration to the Arkansas country. Agent Montgomery
was instructed[347] to use every means in his power to facilitate this
scheme of removal, and especially among those Cherokees who resided
within the chartered limits of Georgia.
Secret agents were appointed and $2,000 were authorized by the
Secretary of War to be expended in purchasing the influence of the
chiefs in favor of the project.[348] A. R. S. Hunter and J. S. Bridges
were appointed[349] commissioners to value the improvements of the
Cherokees who should elect to remove.
After nearly a year of zealous work in the cause, Agent Montgomery
was only able to report the emigration of four hundred and thirty-one
Indians and seventy-nine slaves, comparatively few of whom were from
Georgia.[350] Nine months later three hundred and forty-six persons had
emigrated from within the limits of that State.[351] The hostility
manifested by the larger proportion of the Cherokees toward those who
gave favorable consideration to the plan of removal was so great as to
require the establishment of a garrison of United States troops within
the nation for their protection.[350]
_President Jackson's advice to the Cherokees._--Early in 1829,[352]
a delegation from the nation proceeded to Washington to lay their
grievances before President Jackson, but they found the Executive
entertaining opinions about their rights very different from those
which had been held by his predecessors. They were advised[353] that
the answer to their claim of being an independent nation was to be
found in the fact that during the Revolutionary war the Cherokees were
the allies of Great Britain, a power claiming entire sovereignty of
the thirteen colonies, which sovereignty, by virtue of the Declaration
of Independence and the subsequent treaty of 1783, became vested
respectively in the thirteen original States, including North Carolina,
and Georgia. If they had since been permitted to abide on their
lands, it was by permission, a circumstance giving no right to deny
the sovereignty of those States. Under the treaty of 1785 the United
States "give peace to all the Cherokees and receive them into favor and
protection." Subsequently they had made war on the United States, and
peace was not concluded until 1791. No guarantee, however, was given by
the United States adverse to the sovereignty of Georgia, and none could
be given. Their course in establishing an independent government within
the limits of Georgia, adverse to her will, had been the cause of
inducing her to depart from the forbearance she had so long practiced,
and to provoke the passage of the recent[354] act of her legislature,
extending her laws and jurisdiction over their country. The arms of
the United States, the President remarked, would never be employed to
stay any State of the Union from the exercise of the legitimate powers
belonging to her in her sovereign capacity. No remedy for them, could
be perceived except removal west of the Mississippi River, where alone
peace and protection could be afforded them. To continue where they
were could promise nothing but interruption and disquietude. Beyond the
Mississippi the United States, possessing the sole sovereignty, could
say to them that the land should be theirs while trees grow and water
runs.
The delegation were much cast down by these expressions of the
President, but they abated nothing of their demand for protection
in what they considered to be the just rights of their people. They
returned to their country more embittered than before against the
Georgians, and lost no opportunity, by appeals to the patriotism as
well as to the baser passions of their countrymen, to excite them to a
determination to protect their country at all hazards against Georgian
encroachment and occupation.[355]