convention of the eastern and western
Cherokee, held at the Illinois camp ground, Indian territory, passed
an act of union, by which the two were declared '"one body politic.
under the style and title of the Cherokee Nation." On behalf id' the
eastern Cherokee the instrument bears the signature of John Ross,
principal chief. George Lowrey, president of the council, and Going
snake (I'nadu-na'I), speaker of the council, with thirteen others. For
the western ('herokee it was signed by John Looney, acting principal
chief , George Guess (Sequoya), president of the council, and fifteen
others. On September r>. L839, a convention composed chiefry of
eastern ('herokee assembled at Tahlequah, Indian territory -then first
officially adopted as the national capital —adopted a new constitution,
which was accepted by a convention of the Old Settlers at Fort Gib-
son, Indian Territory, on JuneCherokee, by the treaty of L817, have been
already noted. The great majority of those thus voluntarily remov-
ing belonged to the conservative hunter element, who desired to rees-
tablish in the western wilderness the old Indian life from which,
through the influence of schools and intelligent leadership, the body
of the Cherokee was rapidly drifting away. As the lands upon which
the emigrants had settled belonged to the Osage, whose claim had not
yet been extinguished by the United States, the latter objected to
their presence, and the Cherokee were compelled to fight to maintain
their own position, so that for the first twenty years or more the his-
tory of the western band is a mere petty chronicle of Osage raids and
Cherokee retaliations, emphasized from time to time by a massacre on
a larger scale. By the