CHEROKEE PHOENIX

NEW ECHOTA, Oct. 6, 1832

(Note this is the date printed, should be Nov. 11,)

We anticipated in our sixth number, the drawing of the Ga. Lottery, ' the occupation of our lands. Our papers from Ga. brings us accounts of the operations of the lottery at Milledgeville, and the drawing of the lands and gold mines of the Cherokee Nation. We were prepared to see Georgia step, to perpetrate, one of the darkest and most shameless moral crimes that has ever been consummated in Christendom, but the magnitude of this atrocity on our property, has created feelings of astonishment, that language fails to describe, and in a degree not less than if the event had been unexpected. The arguments on the part of the President, for the purpose of inducing the Cherokees to remove west of the Mississippi has been exhausted; but he has sustained Georgia in the nullification of our treaties, and taking possession of our land. The voice of the Cherokees in the assertion of their conventional rights, must likewise be fruitless; the Supreme Court of the U. S. having defined them, by authority of their supreme judicial power; to the full extent claimed by the Cherokees, our remarks therefore is necessarily limited to a brief summary of the numerous barriers which have been erected for the security of the national rights of the Cherokees, and now trodden under foot, and the extent of the loss which the Cherokees will sustain, by the fortunate citizens of Georgia taking forcible possession of our lands. In the year 1785 the United made their first treaty with the Cherokees, in which boundary lines were established, marked; and defined the limits of the Cherokees lands. The U. S. from that time continued to make treaties with the Cherokees down to the treaty of 27th Feb. 1849 amounting to sixteen in all. Each successive treaty contains a successive guaranty by the United States for the remainder of the Cherokee lands forever. These treaties, the President is sworn to have faithfully executed, but he has refused to enforce them, and they have been placed under the dominion of the Georgia Lottery.- The estimated quantity of lands guarantied to the Cherokees by the latter treaty, which lies within the limits of Georgia, is about five millions of acres. This territory has been surveyed into lots of 40 and 160 acres, and are now drawn for the citizens of Georgia,* and her Governor will acquire such a title for his citizens to this property, as we would have to his purse, if we were to take forcible possession, without having previous claim to it. The law of the U. S. of 1802 prohibiting its citizens from surveying Indian lands, has likewise been nullified, the faith of sixteen solemn treaties prostrated, and the genius of liberty has taken its flight from Columbia's happy land.

*The lots which embraces the Indian's improvements are reserved to them by the laws of Georgia.