They were to present, with special particularity, to the President's notice a statement of the improper methods and influences that had been used to secure the apparent consent of the nation to the treaty of 1817. They were authorized to enter into a new treaty with the United States, in lieu of the recent one, in which an alteration might be made in certain articles of it, and some additional article inserted relative to the mode of payment of their annuity as between the Eastern and Arkansas Cherokees.[241] The delegation was received and interviews were accorded them by the President and Secretary of War, but they secured nothing but general expressions of good will and promises of protection in their rights and property. [Footnote 224: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. VII, p. 156.] [Footnote 225: Confidential message of President Jefferson to Congress, January 18, 1803.] [Footnote 226: The letter of President Jefferson authorizing a delegation of Cherokees to visit the Arkansas and White River country was dated January 9, 1809, and will be found in the American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. II, p. 125, as well as among the records of the Indian Office.] [Footnote 227: January 9, 1817.] [Footnote 228: Letter of Secretary of War to General Jackson, May 14, 1817.] [Footnote 229: In a letter to Return J. Meigs, under date of September 18, 1816, the Secretary of War says that "the difficulties which have arisen between the Cherokees and the Osages, on the north of the Arkansas, and with the Quapaws, on the south, cannot be finally settled until the line of the cession shall be run and the rights of the Quapaws shall be ascertained. Commissioners appointed by the President are now sitting at Saint Louis for the adjustment of those differences; but should the line of the Osage treaty prove that they are settled upon the Osage lands, nothing can be done for the Cherokees. It is known to you and to that nation that the condition upon which the emigration was permitted by the President was that a cession of Cherokee lands should be made equal to the proportion which the emigrants should bear to the whole nation. This condition has never been complied with on the part of the nation, and of course all obligation on the part of the United States to secure the emigrants in their new possessions has ceased. When the subject was mentioned to the Cherokee deputation last winter, so far were they from acknowledging its force, that they declared the emigrants should be compelled to return."] [Footnote 230: May 14, 1817.] [Footnote 231: On the 17th of May, 1817, these commissioners were advised that the lands proposed to be given the Cherokees on the west of the Mississippi River, in exchange for those then occupied by them, were the lands on the Arkansas and immediately adjoining the Osage boundary line.] [Footnote 232: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. VII, p. 156.]