The relations of Indians with Indians need not be considered at length. Suffice it to say that many clauses were devoted to the regulation of the affairs of those tribes that were, either politically or ethnologically, closely connected with each other; as, for example, the Choctaws and Chickasaws on the one hand and the Creeks and Seminoles on the other. Still other clauses assured the tribes of protection against hostile invasion from red men and from white, and assured all the great tribes, except the Cherokees,[286] of similar protection against domestic violence.[287] The Cherokees, very possibly, were made an exception because of the known intensity of their factional strife and hatred, which, purely for its own selfish ends, the Confederacy had done so much to augment. There may also have been some lingering doubt of John Ross's sincerity in the matter of devotion to the Confederacy. The time had been and might come again when the Confederacy would find it very expedient to play off one faction against another. Injuries coming to the Indians from a failure to protect were to be indemnified out of the Confederate treasury. Could the United States, throughout the more than a hundred years of its history have had just such a law, its national treasury would have been saved millions and millions of dollars paid out in claims, just and unjust, of white men against the Indians. As affecting their relations with white men, the Indians were conceded the right to determine absolutely, by their own legislation, the conditions of their own tribal citizenship. This would mean, of course, the free continuance of the custom of adoption, a custom more pernicious in Indian history than even the principle of equal apportionment in Frankish; because it was the entering wedge to territorial encroachment. The white man, once adopted into the tribe as a citizen, was to be protected against unjust discrimination or against the forfeiture of his acquired status. The provisions against intruders were legitimately severe, those of the United States had never been severe enough. The executive power had always been very weak and very lax but now it was to reside in the tribal Council and would bid fair to be firm because interested, or, perhaps, we should say disinterested. The Confederacy, on its part, promised that the aid of the military should be forthcoming for the expulsion of intruders on application by the agent, should the tribal authority prove inadequate. The Indians might compel the removal of obnoxious men from agency and military reserves. Unauthorized settlement within the Indian country by citizens of the Confederate States was absolutely forbidden under pain of punishment by the tribe encroached upon.