It had been the policy of the Federal Government, from the beginning of its official relations with the Indian tribes, to encourage and assist the individuals of those tribes in grasping and accepting the pursuits and habits of civilized life, with a view to their preparation for the condition in which the rapidly encroaching white settlements would in a few years inevitably place them. With the disappearance of game the hunter must become a tiller of the soil or a herdsman, with the alternative of starvation. This humane policy, begun systematically in the first administration of Washington,[188] took the form of a considerable annual expenditure in the purchase for the Indians of hoes, plows, rakes, and other agricultural implements, as well as looms, cards, and spinning wheels. Among the northwestern tribes these efforts at industrial civilization were productive of trifling results. The southern tribes, however, and more especially the Creeks and Cherokees, had, in considerable numbers, manifested a partial though gradually increasing tendency toward self-support. Many of them, in addition to raising the necessaries of life, were producers in a limited degree of cotton, from which their women had learned to make a coarse article of cloth; others owned considerable herds of cattle and hogs, and altogether these tribes had made a degree of progress which was alike commendable to themselves and encouraging to the Government. However, the persistent and unremitting demands of the border settlers for more land, backed by the thorough sympathy and influence of the State governments of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, as well as by their Senators and Representatives in Congress, acted as a powerful lever for moving the Congress and Executive of the United States to seek the complete possession of the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw lands. As early as 1803[189] President Jefferson had suggested the desirability of the removal of these tribes beyond the Mississippi River, although the first official action taken in this direction was contained in the fifth section of an act of Congress approved March 26, 1804, erecting Louisiana into two Territories. This act appropriated $15,000 to enable the President to effect the desired object. This was supplemented in 1808,[190] when the Secretary of War, in a letter to Agent Meigs giving permission for a delegation of Cherokees to visit Washington, instructed him to improve every opportunity of securing the consent of the Cherokees to an exchange of their lands for a tract west of the Mississippi.