of which was entitled
1 Royce, Cherokee Nation, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 222-228, 1888.
^Indian Treaties, pp. 265-269, 1S37; Royce, op. cit., pp. 219-221 and table, p. 378.
mooney] CHEEOKEE GOVEENMENX — Missions 107
to send lour representatives to the Cherokee national legislature,
which met at Newtown, or New Echota, the capital, at the junction
of Conasauga and Coosawatee rivers, a few miles above the present
Calhoun, Georgia. The legislature consisted of an upper and a
lower house, designated, respectively (in the Cherokee language), the
national committee and national council, the members being elected
for limited terms by the voters of each district. The principal officer
was styled president of the national council; the distinguished John
Ross was the first to hold this office. There was also a clerk of the
committee and two principal members to expressthe will of the coun-
cil or lower house. For each district there were appointed a council
house for meetings twice a year, a judge, and a marshal. Companies
of "light horse" were organized to assist in the execution of the laws,
with a "ranger" for each district to look after stray stock. Each head
of a family and each single man under the age of sixty was subject to
a poll tax. Laws were passed for the collection of taxes and debts,
for repairs on loads, for licenses to white persons engaged in farming
or other business in the nation, for the support of schools, for the
regulation of the liquor traffic and the conduct of negro slaves, to pun-
ish horse stealing and theft, to compel all marriages between white
men and Indian women to be according