The Inter-tribal Council assembled at the Creek Agency,[106] February 17, but comparatively few delegates were in attendance. William P. Ross, a graduate[107] of Princeton and a nephew of John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokees, went as the head of the Cherokee delegation. It was he who reported the scanty attendance,[108] saying that there were no Chickasaws present, no Choctaws, but only Creeks, Seminoles, and Cherokees. Why it happened so can not now be exactly determined but to it may undoubtedly be ascribed the outcome; for the council did nothing that was not perfectly compatible with existing friendly relations between the great tribes and the United States government. John Ross, in instructing his delegates, had strictly enjoined caution and discretion[109]. William P. Ross and his associates seem to have managed to secure the observance of both. Perchance it was Chief Ross's[110] known aversion to an interference in matters that did not concern the Indians, except very indirectly, and the consciousness that his influence in the council would be immense, probably all-powerful, that caused the Chickasaws to draw back from a thing they had themselves so ill-advisedly planned. It is, however, just possible that, between the time of issuing the call and of assembling the council, they crossed on their own responsibility the boundary of indecision and resolved, as most certainly had the Choctaws, that their sympathies and their interests were with the South. It might well be supposed that in this perilous hour their thoughts would have travelled back some thirty years and they would have remembered what havoc the same state-rights doctrine, now presented so earnestly for their acceptance, although it scarcely fitted their case, had then wrought in their concerns. Strangely enough none of the tribes seems to have charged the gross injustice of the thirties exclusively to the account of the South. On the contrary, they one and all charged it against the federal government, against the states as a whole, and so, rightly or wrongly, the nation had to pay for the inconsistency of Jackson's procedure, a procedure that could so illogically recognize the supremacy of federal law in one matter and the supremacy of state law in another matter that was precisely its parallel. The decision of the Choctaws had found expression in a series of resolutions under date of February 7. They are worthy of being quoted entire. February 7, 1861. RESOLUTIONS _expressing the feelings and sentiments of the General Council of the Choctaw Nation in reference to the political disagreement existing between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union._