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1839. July 10. continued. that he has any motive whatever, except the preservation of peace & good order on that frontier. It is therefore, he adds, of no concern to him what measures the Cherokee people may take to form a new Government, provided these objects are insured.

July 12. The National Convention pass a decree, signed at Illinois Camp Ground, by George Lowry, President of the Eastern Cherokees; George Guess, President of the Western Cherokees; 2 Vice Presi-dents of the Eastern & 3 Vice Presi-dents of the Western Cherokees; - a select committee of eleven each from the eastern & western Cherokees; John Ross, Principal Chief of the former & John Looney, Acting Principal Chief of the latter; & Going Snake, Speaker of the Easter Council. - They declare that their fathers have existed as a separate & distinct nation, in the proposition and exercise of the essential & appropriate attributes of sovereignty, poser a period exc-tending into antique-ty beyond the records & memory of man: that these attributes, with the rights & franchises which they in-volve, remain in full force, as do also the national & social relations of the Cherokee people to each other & to the body politic, - excepting in those par-ticulars which have grown out of the provisions of the treaties of 1817 & 1819, between the United States & the Cherokee Nation, under which a por-tion of their people removed to that country (on the west) and became a separate community: but the body of the eastern Cherokee having re-cently been compelled by the force of circumstances to follow the former & remove to the same places, thus bring together again the two branches of the ancient Cherokee family, it has become essential to the general welfare that a union should be formed, and a system of government matured, adapted to their present con-dition & providing equally for the