The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 2, July 1898 - April, 1899 Page: 71

The Cherokee Nation of Indians.

cated of the policy Chat has thus far directed the counsels and the
conduct of the government.
The Dawes Commission has reported its inability to effect the
submission of the tribes, and it particularly ,mentions the Chero-
kees as inflexible in their opposition to any agreement that con-
templates the final act of tribal disintegration. The chairman is of
opinion that the only remedy for the "evils that afflict these peo-
pl,e" lies in the division and allotment of their public domain
among the individuals of the several tribes. Tihe Secretary of the
Interior, in his report, presents a gloomy array of vicious results
growing out .of the Indians' methods of administering the public
business, and he concludes his searching arraignment by recom-
mending the total extinction of tribal government in the Territory
and the substitution of a system by which the Indians will become
United States citizens and be governed by United States laws. The
President, in his message to Congress, fully accepts the Secretary's
conclusions, and adds that the conditions of Indian life have so
changed that their system of government has become "practically
impossible," -and that the evils resulting from the perversion of
the great trusts confided to them can only be cured "by the re-
sumption of control by the government which created them."
It does not require any remarkable perspicacity to perceive that
history is about to close its brief page of the Cherokees as a Nation.
Their broad fields and the boundless desire of their neighbors to
possess them is hastening this consummation. The most universal
passion in the breast of man seems to be an immortal longing after
the soil from which he sprung, whether continent, island, or vine-
yard. From the day the was expelled from the garden he has wanted
a paramount estate-a paradise of his own. T'o that end all his
aspirations have pointed, and, whether Israelite, Goth, or Anglo-
Saxon, his mania has 'ever 'been the conquest and possession of the
earth. 'He may be honest in all that concerns the money 'and the
movables of another, he may be sinless of even the desire for the
personalty of his neighbor, but, alas, the allodium of his brother
puts too great a strain upon his virtue; his nature breaks down
under the temptation. And thus it is that the spacious and fertile
acres of the Cherokees are destined, through the devices of the
white man, to pass into other hands.