continuing unadjusted, the principal chief of the Cherokees asked the submission of the subject, from the Cherokee standpoint, to the Attorney-General of the United States for his opinion. This was done in the spring of 1879,[680] by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs through the Secretary of the Interior, wherein the former, alleging that the question submitted by the Cherokee authorities did not fully meet the subject in dispute, and being desirous that a complete statement of the case should be presented to the Attorney-General, suggested three additional inquiries for the consideration of that officer. These inquiries were, first, Have the Cherokee national authorities such original right of sovereignty over their country and their people as to vest in them the exclusive jurisdiction of all questions of citizenship in that nation without reference to the paramount authority of the United States? Second, If not, do they derive any such power or right by the provisions of any of the treaties between the United States and the Cherokees? Third, Can they exclude from citizenship any of the Cherokees who did not remove under the provisions of the treaty of 1835 upon their removal to the Cherokee country as now defined by law? The reply[681] of the Attorney-General was to the effect that it seemed quite plain in executing such treaties as those with the Cherokees, the United States were not bound to regard simply the Cherokee law and its construction by the council of that nation, but that any Department required to remove alleged intruders must determine for itself, under the general law of the land, the existence and extent of the exigency upon which such requisition was founded. One class of these so-called intruders, as previously suggested, was composed of colored people who resided in the Cherokee country prior to the war, either as slaves or freemen, and their descendants. The fourth article of the treaty of July 19, 1866, contained a provision setting apart a tract within the Cherokee country known as the Canadian district, for the settlement and occupancy of "all the Cherokees and freed persons who were formerly slaves of any Cherokee, and all free negroes not having been such slaves who resided in the Cherokee Nation prior to June 1, 1861, who may within two years elect not to reside northeast of the Arkansas River and southeast of Grand River."