apology or explanation. The poet,
John Howard Payne, who was then stopping with Ross, engaged in
the work of collecting historical and ethnologic material relating to the
Cherokee, was seized at the same time, with all his letters and scien-
i Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 278-280, 1888; Everett speech
in House of Representatives, May 31, 1838, pp. 28, 29, 1839, in which the Secretary's reply is given in
full.
= Royce, op. cit., pp. 280-281. » Ibid., p. 281.
hooney] TKKATY OF NEW ECHOTA 1835 L23
tific manuscripts. The national paper, the Cheroket Phamix, had been
suppressed and its oilier plant seized by the same guard a few days
before. 1 Thus in their greatest need the Chei'okee were deprived of
the help and counsel of their teachers, their national press, and their
chief.
Although fortwo months threats and inducements had been held
out to secure a full attendance at the December conference at New
Echota, there were present when the proceedings opened, according
to the report of Schermerhorn himself , only from three hundred to
five hundred men. women, and children, out of a population of over
lT.ooii. Notwithstanding the paucity of attendance and the absence
of the principal officers of the Nation, a committee was appointed to
arrange the details of a treaty, which was finally drawn up and
signed on December 29, L835. s
Briefly stated, by this treaty id' New Echota, Georgia, the Cherokee
Nation ceded to the United States its whole remaining territory cast
of the Mississippi for the sum of five million dollars and a common
joint interest in the territory already occupied by the western Chero-
kee, in what