laid off into districts, with a council-house, a judge, and a mar- shal iu each district. A national committee and council were the supreme authority in the nation. Schools were flourishing in all the villages. Priuting-presses were at work.

Their territory was larger than the three States of Massachu- setts, Rhode Island, aud Connecticut combined, It embraccd the North-western part of Georgia, the North-east of Alabama, a corner of Tennessce and of North Carolina. They were en thusiastic in their efforts to establish and perfeet their own system of jurisprudence. Missions of several sects were estab- lished in their country, and a large number of them had pro- fessed Christianity, and were living exemplary lives.

There is no instance in all history of a race of people passing in so short a space of time from the barbarous stage to the agricultural aud civilized. And it was such a community as this that the State of Georgia, by one made ontlaws!-passing bigh-handed outrage, on the 19th of December, 1829, a law to annnl all laws and ordinances made by the Cherokee nation of Indians;" declaring "all laws, ordinances, orders, and regulations of any kind whatever, made, passed, or enacted by the Cherokee Indians, either in general council or in any other way whatever, or by any authority whatevor, null and void, and of no effect, as if the same had never existed; also, that no Iu dian, or descendant of any Indian residing within the Creek or Cherokce nations of Indians, shall be deemed a competent wit ness in any court of this State to which a whito iman may be a party."

What had so ehanged the attitude of Georgia to the Indians within her borders Simply the fact that the Indians, finding themselves hemmed in on all sides by fast thickening white settlements, had taken a firm stand that they would give np no more land. So long as they would eede and cede, and grant and grant tract after tract, and had millions of acres still left to cede and grant, the selfishness of white men took no alarm;