New Echota treaty led
to a series of murders and assassinations and other acts of outlawry.
amounting almost to civil war between the Ross and Ridge factions,
until the Government was at last obliged to interfere. The Old Set-
tler- also had their grievances and complaints against the newcomer-.
so that the history of the Cherokee Nation for the next twenty years
i- largely a chronicle of factional quarrels, through which civilization
and every good work actually retrograded behind the condition of a
generation earlier.
Sequoya, who had occupied a prominent position in the affairs of
the Old Settlers and assisted much in the reorganization of the Nati
had become seized with a desire to make linguistic investigations among
the remote tribes, very probably with a view of devising a universal
Indian alphabet. His mind dwelt also on the old traditionof a lost
band of Cherokee living somewhere toward the western mountains.
In 1841 and L842, with a few Cherokee companions and with hi- pro-
visions and papers loaded in an ox cart, he made several journey- into
the West, received everywhere with kindness by even the wildest t ribes.
Disappointed in his philologic results, he started out in L843 in quest
of the lost Cherokee, who were believed to be somewhere in northern
Mexico, but. being now an old man and worn out by hardship, he sank
under the effort and died alone and unattended, it i< said — near the
148 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
village of San Fernando, Mexico, in August of that year. Rumors
having come of his helpless condition, a party had been sent out from
the Nation to bring him back, but arrived