Again, February 18, 1837, General John E. Wool, of the United States Army, who had been ordered to the command of the troops that were being concentrated in the Cherokee country "to look down opposition" to the enforcement of the treaty, wrote Adjutant-General Jones, at Washington, thus:
I called them (the Cherokees) together and made a short speech. It is, however, vain to talk to a people almost universally opposed to the treaty and who maintain that they never made such a treaty. So determined are they in their opposition that not one of all those who were present and voted at the council held but a day or two since, however poor or destitute, would receive either rations or clothing from the United States lest they might compromise themselves in regard to the treaty. These same people, as well as those in the mountains of North Carolina, during the summer past, preferred living upon the roots and sap of trees rather than receive provisions from the United States, and thousands, as I have been informed, had no other food for weeks."
Four months later,[429] General Wool again, in the course of a letter to the Secretary of War concerning the death of Major Curry, who had been a prominent factor in promoting the conclusion of the treaty of 1835, said that—
Had Curry lived he would assuredly have been killed by the Indians. It is a truth that you have not a single agent, high or low, that has the slightest moral control over the Indians. It would be wise if persons appointed to civil stations in the nation could be taken from among those who have had nothing to do with making the late treaty.
REPORT OF JOHN MASON, JR.
In further testimony concerning the situation of affairs in the Cherokee Nation at this period, may be cited the report of John Mason, Jr., who was in the summer of 1837[430] sent as the confidential agent of the War Department to make observations and report. In the autumn[431] of that year he reported that—
The chiefs and better informed part of the nation are convinced that they cannot retain the country. But the opposition to the treaty is unanimous and irreconcilable. They say it cannot bind them because they did not make it; that it was made by a few unauthorized individuals; that the nation is not a party to it. * * * They retain the forms of their government in their proceedings among themselves, though they have had no election since 1830; the chiefs and headmen then in power having been authorized to act until their government shall again be regularly constituted. Under this arrangement John Ross retains the post of principal chief. * * * The influence of this chief is unbounded and unquestioned. The whole nation of eighteen thousand persons is with him, the few, about three hundred, who made the treaty having left the country. It is evident, therefore, that Ross and his party are in fact the Cherokee Nation. * * * Many who were opposed to the treaty have emigrated to secure the rations, or because of fear of an outbreak. * * * The officers say that, with all his power, Ross cannot, if he would, change the course he has heretofore pursued and to which he is held by the fixed determination of his people. He dislikes being seen in conversation with white men, and particularly with agents of the Government. Were he, as matters now stand, to advise the Indians to acknowledge the treaty, he would at once forfeit their confidence and probably his life. Yet though unwavering in his opposition to the treaty, Ross's influence has constantly been exerted to preserve the peace of the country, and Colonel Lindsay says that he (Ross) alone stands at this time between the whites and bloodshed. The opposition to the treaty on the part of the Indians is unanimous and sincere, and it is not a mere political game played by Ross for the maintenance of his ascendancy in the tribe.
HENRY CLAY'S SYMPATHY WITH THE CHEROKEES.
It is interesting in this connection, as indicating the strong and widespread public feeling manifested in the Cherokee question, to note that it became in some sense a test question among leaders of the two great political parties. The Democrats strenuously upheld the conduct of President Jackson on the subject, and the Whigs assailed him with extreme bitterness. The great Whig leader, Henry Clay, in replying[432] to a letter received by him from John Gunter, a Cherokee, took occasion to express his sympathy with the Cherokee people for the wrongs and sufferings experienced by them. He regretted them not only because of their injustice, but because they inflicted a deep wound on the character of the American Republic. He supposed that the principles which had uniformly governed our relations with the Indian nations had been too long and too firmly established to be disturbed. They had been proclaimed in the negotiation with Great Britain by the commissioners who concluded the treaty of peace, of whom he was one, and any violation of them by the United States he felt with sensibility. By those principles the Cherokee Nation had a right to establish its own form of government, to alter and amend it at pleasure, to live under its own laws, to be exempt from the United States laws or the laws of any individual State, and to claim the protection of the United States. He considered that the Chief Magistrate and his subordinates had acted in direct hostility to those principles and had thereby encouraged Georgia to usurp powers of legislation over the Cherokee Nation which she did not of right possess.