The policy of their removal therefore became a subject of serious consideration with the national council. This involved a question as to what were the essential prerequisites of Cherokee citizenship, and who of the objectionable class were entitled, on any score, to the privileges of such citizenship, as well as who were mere naked intruders. Upon these points the national council assumed to exercise absolute control, and proceeded to enact laws for the removal of all persons, both white and colored, whom the council should declare not entitled to remain in the Cherokee country.[677] The action of the council in this respect was communicated to the Indian Department in the fall of 1874, through the United States agent for that tribe, coupled with a demand for the removal by the military force of the United States of all who had thus been declared to be intruders. The Department not being fully satisfied of the justice of this demand, detailed an inspector to proceed to the Indian country and make a thorough investigation of the subject. His report[678] revealed the fact that there were large numbers of people in that country who had been declared intruders by the national authorities, but who had presented to him strong _ex parte_ evidence of their right to Cherokee citizenship, either by blood, by adoption, or under the terms of the 9th article of the treaty of 1866 defining the status of colored people. Affidavits in large numbers corroborative of the inspector's report continued to be filed in the Indian Department during the succeeding summer, from which it appeared that many persons belonging to each of the classes alluded to had applied to the courts or to the council of the nation for an affirmative ruling upon their claim to citizenship, but that in many instances such applications had been entirely ignored. In other cases, where the courts had actually affirmed the right of applicants, the council had arbitrarily and without notice placed their names upon the list of intruders and called upon the United States for their removal. In this situation of affairs the Indian Department advised[679] the principal chief of the Cherokees that the Department would neither remove these alleged intruders nor permit their removal until the Cherokee council had devised a system of rules by which authority should be vested in the Cherokee courts to hear and determine all cases involving the citizenship of any person. These rules should be subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, to whom an appeal should also lie from any adverse decision of those courts. As there were a number of these intruders, however, who made no claim to the right of Cherokee citizenship, it was directed by the Interior Department, in the spring of 1877, that all who should not present _prima facie_ evidence of such right should be summarily removed from the Territory. The main cause of difficulty, however,