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23 as they had an equal claim to the lands sold for their annuities & having reduced the amount now to be apportioned among them, have of course reduced the quantity now to be allotted to them on Arkansas & its waters & must be settled agreably to the proportion of the Nation on that river, including those who declare their intention of going thither; & therefore, to do justice in the distribution of the annuities, it becomes necessary to ascertain the unclear disposition of the nation for a removal. Friends & Brothers By the 4th article of the Treaty of the 7th Jan: 1806, the United States promised to use their best endeavors to extinguish the claim of the Chickasaws to the reservation made to Doublehead & others on the north side of the Tenessee. Before this could be effected, the Reserves had sold the greater part, if not all, their right, to citizens of the United States, for a valuable consideration, and abandoned the proposition. Having unclear the extinguishment of the Chickasaw claim, the right accrued & was immediately vested in the United States, but your father the President have nevertheless instructed us to obtain from the Nation a relinquishment of their claim and he flatters himself that this will be freely done under existing circumstances, as the whole of your know the fact that those reservations have been sold by the members for whose benefit the reservations were made & have abandoned the proposition before the relinquishment of the Chickasaw nation was obtained. Friends & Brothers We are charged by your Father, the President, to say to you on the present occasion, how much he feels for your prosperity & happiness:- that his fatherly care will accompany those who remove, to their adopted country in the Arkansas, as it existed here, & will be continued to those who remain, as heretofore:- to those who remove, he directs us to say that an agent will be appointed for them, and a factory established to supply them with the necessary articles, in exchange for their peltries?: in short, that he will hold them as fast by the hand of friendship there, as he has done here: and, in return, he expects a continuance of your friendship & attachment to the United States & its citizens. This is an encreased? decree, as he has, by this act of exchange, given you a country abounding in game & fertility,- from which, by moderate labour, you can raise an abundance of corn & other supplies for the support of your families; & situated on navigable streams, where you can get supplies of all kinds that may be necessary for your wants - a country double in value to the country you surrender for it. Friends