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…meval hunting grounds, where roamed large herds of buffalo, deer and numerous other game.

Their highways connected with other trails, which the necessities of war and trade had caused to be developed, and some of these highways deeply worn by moccasined feet, stretched southward to the Gulf Coast, and northward to the Canadian lakes where they connected with other trails leading to the frozen regions of the North.

Highways, Rails Later Followed Indian Trails

The roads followed the natural lay of the land, and it is interesting to note that they have been followed during later years in general course by railroads and highways of the white men.

Whether the Cherokees first filtered into the mountain region of the South in small detached bands or whether the movement represented a great national movement it is impossible to say.

When first encountered by the whites the Cherokees had already three clearly defined dialects. They were the eastern, which were spoken by the towns located upon the headwaters of the Savannah River in South Carolina and the nearby Georgia. The towns along the Tuckasegee and Little Tennessee River, which was the very heart of the Cherokee country, and the home of its oldest culture, spoke the middle dialect, and is still spoken by the great majority of those living on the Omalla reservation in North Carolina.

Most of the towns in the valleys of East Tennessee and upper Georgia and along the Hiwassee and Cheowa Rivers in North Carolina spoke the western dialect. It was the softest and the most musical of all the dialects of this most highly musical language, and was also the literary dialect used by the writers and teachers and other inhabitants whose activities centered about New Echota, where the civilization of the nation finally reached its zenith. It is the dialect spoken now by most of the Cherokees of the western bands in Oklahoma.

[Information from old files of Atlanta Georgian.]

Treaties, Many Unjust, Cut Cherokees’ Lands

Under various treaties, not all of which were just to the Cherokees, their possessions had been reduced to small areas in Northern Georgia, Western North Carolina, South—

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[Portrait photograph caption:] GEN. JOHN ELLIS WOOL.

…eastern Tennessee and Northern Alabama.

The Cherokee population, according to a census of 1835, taken by the United States Government, was 18,000. The people had become civilized and had adopted the Christian religion.

They had established a regular system of government: the executive authority was vested in a principal and assistant chief and three councillors chosen by the legislature for the term of four years. The latter, styled the general council, consisting of two houses, a national committee of 16 members and a national council of 24 members, both of which were chosen by the people for the term of four years.

Many valuable improvements had been made upon lands by the native Cherokee inhabitants and those adopted as Cherokee citizens by inter-marriage.

In 1824, there were belonging to them 22,531 head of cattle, 7,683 horses, 46,732 swine, 2,566 sheep, 2,923 ploughs, 49 saw and grist mills, 762 looms, and 2,486 spinning wheels.

At the time of removal they owned about 1,200 Negro slaves, and there were 500 children in school. A newspaper was conducted and printed by natives in Cherokee and English. An alphabet has been invented by one of their race, George Gest, of Sequoyah. The alphabet had immediate and wonderful effect on the people’s development.

At the time of the treaty, they were living very much as their white neighbors lived.

U.S. Pledged to Take Title to Lands Away

At one time the State of Georgia possessed the soil from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River, embracing what constitutes now the states of Alabama and Mississippi. That part of the territory now organized into the states of Alabama and Mississippi was taken over in 1802 by the General Government for a consideration of $1,250,000 and a promise to extinguish the Indian titles to remaining lands still within the boundary of Georgia, as soon as it could be done reasonably and peaceably, at the United States’ expense. This agreement was ratified by the Government on both sides in their legislative capacity.

Georgia called on the Government to fulfill her part of the contract and cause the Indian title to be extinguished. The Government replied that this would be done as soon as it could be accomplished.