like all previous efforts, failed of accomplishing the desired end. Thus the question still stands, and all those persons who have been able to make out a _prima facie_ showing of Cherokee citizenship, under the ruling of the Department, are allowed to remain in the Territory unmolested. GENERAL REMARKS. With the exception of these questions and complications arising out of the construction of the various articles of the treaty of July 19, 1866, nothing of an important character has occurred in connection with the official relations between the Cherokee Nation and the Federal Government since the date of that treaty. Their history has been an eventful one. For two hundred years a contest involving their very existence as a people has been maintained against the unscrupulous rapacity of Anglo-Saxon civilization. By degrees they were driven from their ancestral domain to an unknown and inhospitable region. The country of their fathers was peculiarly dear to them. It embraced the head springs of many of the most important streams of the country. From the summit of their own Blue Ridge they could watch the tiny rivulets on either side of them dashing and bounding over their rocky beds in their eagerness to join and swell the ever increasing volume of waters rolling toward the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico: the Tennessee and the Cumberland, the Kanawha and the Kentucky, the Peedee and the Santee, the Savannah and the Altamaha, the Chattahoochee and the Alabama, all found their beginnings within the Cherokee domain. The bracing and invigorating atmosphere of their mountains was wafted to the valleys and low lands of their more distant borders, tempering the heat and destroying the malaria. Much of their country was a succession of grand mountains, clothed with dense forests; of beautiful but narrow valleys, and extensive well watered plains. Every nook and corner of this vast territory was endeared to them by some incident of hunter, warrior, or domestic life. Over these hills and through the recesses of the dark forests the Cherokee hunter had from time immemorial pursued the deer, elk, and buffalo. Through and over them he had passed on his long and vengeful journeys against the hated Iroquois and Shawnee.