obtained to an exchange of the Arkansas tract for another
piece of seven million acres lying farther west, together with "a per-
petual outlet west" of the trad thus assigned, as fat- west a- the
sovereignty of the United States migh< extend. 4 The boundaries
given for this seven-million-acre tract and the adjoining western
outlet were modified by treat \ at Fort Gibson five years later so as to
he practically equivalent to the present territory of the Cherokee
Nation in Indian Territory, with the Cherokee strip recently ceded.
The preamble of the Washington treaty of May 6, L828, recites that
" Whereas, it being the anxious desire of thet rovernment of the United
States to secure to the Cherokee nati f Indians. ;l s well those now
living within the limits of the territory of Arkansas as thoseof their
friends and brothers who reside in state- east of the Mississippi,
and who may wish to join their brothers of the West, a permanent
//"///-.and which shall, under the mosl solemn guarantee of the United
States, he and remain theirs forever a home that shall never, in all
future time, he eml larrassed by having extended around it the lines
or placed over it the jurisdiction of a territory or state, nor he pressed
upon by the extension in any way of any of the limits of any existing
territory or state; and whereas the present location of the Cherokees
in Arkansas being unfavorable to their present repose, and tending,
a- the past demonstrates, to their future degradation and misery, and
the ( 'herokees being anxious to avoid such consequences," etc. there-
fore, they vfd>' everything confirmed to