Tbe Report of the Indian Bureau for 1876 fully bears out The North Carolina Cherokees have, indecd, this statement. reason to be in a more hopeful condition, for they lave their lands secured to them by patent, eonfirmed by a decision of State courts; but this is what the Department of the Interior has brought itself to say as lo the Western Cherokees' lands, and those of all other civilized tribes in the Indian Territory: "By ireaty ihe Government has ceded to the so-called civilized tribes-the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Semn- iuoles a section of country altogether disproportionate in amount to their needs. **The amount susceptible of cultiva tion must be many-fold greater than can ever be cultivated by the labor of the Indians. But the Indians elaim, it is under stood, that they hold their lands by sanetions so solemn that it would be a gross breach of faith on the part of the Goveru- ment to take away any portion thereof without their consent; and that consent they apparently propose to withhold." Let us set side by side with this last paragraph a quotation from tbe treaty by virtue of which "the Indians claim, it is nnderstood, that they hold" these lands, which they now ap- parently propose to withhold,."

original treaty; we will copy it, and a fow other sentences with it, from an earlier report of this same terior. Only so far back as 1870 we find the Departrment in a We will not copy it from the Department of the In juster framc of mind toward the Cherokees. the Indian tribes hold lands to which they laws that define the reservations to which they shall be con fincd. It cannot be denied that these are in a great measure "A large part of only fixed by are But dependent on the humanity of the American people. the Cherokees, and the other eivilized Indian nations no less, hold lands in perpetuity by titles defined by the supreme law of the land. The United States agrecd 'to possess the Chero- kees, and to guarantee it to them forever,' and that gnarantee was solemaly pledged of seven milliou acres of land.' The