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have suffered severely - as would any people when reduced to submit to laws, in the enactment of which they have no share, & which are framed only for their oppression. But notwithstanding all the disadvantages attending their grievous situation, we are compelled by unquestionable facts, regarding the emigrants who have removed from east of the Mississippi to the west of that river, to say - that the Cherokee people East are not disposed to exchange their situation for that of those in the west; for it is with regret we are compelled to remark that from the most authentic information in our possession relative to the prosperity & happiness of the Cherokees who have removed to Arkansas, their condition is altogether different from the view in which it has been reported to your department.- We are sorry to discover that nothing short of transplanting all the different tribes from the country east of the Mississippi to the west of that river, will satisfy the government in making that unhappy experiment which it has projected upon the future welfare & happiness of the Indians. The discussions of these subjects, however, you remark would now be "a work of supererogation"; - and, in as much as the President's views upon them appear to be unchangeable, we are therefore necessarily compelled by the force of circumstances to propose an alternative, which, under a different state of things, no pecuniary consideration whatever could have induced us to have considered for a moment; - that basis upon which, alone, the Cherokee people had every reason to believe that their difficulties ought to, and would, have been rejected by the President. We are now driven bu the dire necessity of the cse, under the most earnest solicitude for the peace & salvation of our people, to take the most delicate step, of making another & the last proposition to the President for a final adjustment of those difficulties; and which, if accepted by him, will be closed by a negotiation in detail, and then referred by us to the General Council of the Nation for a final confirmation on its part. - The terms of the propositions heretofore offered by the President, and to which our attention has been called for their re-consideration, have been maturely deliberated & more than once unequivocally rejected by the Council of the Nation. It would be therefore useless for us to make any further remarks on them, than to state that they are wholly inadmissible. We