the Cherokee submitted a memorial which,
after asserting that they would never voluntarily consent to abandon
their homes, proposed to satisfy Georgia by ceding to her a portion of
their territory, they to be protected in possession of the remainder
until the end of a definite period to be fixed b}^ the United States, at
the expiration of which, after disposing of their surplus lands, they
should become citizens of the various states within which they resided.
They were told that their difficulties could be remedied only Iry their
removal to the west of the Mississippi. In the meantime a removal
treaty was being negotiated with a self-styled committee of some fif-
teen or twenty Cherokee called together at the agency. It was carried
through in spite of the protest of John Ross and the Cherokee Nation,
as embodied inand humiliations of the past, refused to he
convinced that justice, prosperity, and happiness awaited them beyond
the Mississippi." '
In August of this year another council was held at Ued Clay, south-
eastward from Chattanooga and just within the Georgia line, where
the question of removal was again debated in what i- officially
described a- a tumultuous and excited meeting. One of the prin-
cipal advocates of the emigration scheme, a prominent mixed-blood
named John Walker, jr.. was assassinated from ambush while return-
ing from the council to his home a few miles north of the present
Cleveland, Tennessee. On account of his superior education and
influential connections, his wife being a niece of former agent Return
,1. Meigs, the affair created intense excitement at the time. The
assassination has been considered the first of the long series of political
murders