Communities, like individuals, often exhibit in early life those characteristics which distinguish their mature age, and become ruling passions when senility marks the downhill of life. Thus Georgia, in her very infancy, exhibited that desire for controlling our National Government which subsequently marked her manhood. Possessing no power under the Constitution to enter into any treaty except by consent of Congress, her Executive appointed three Commissioners to attend and supervise the action of those appointed by the Federal Legislature. The time and place for holding the treaty had been arranged with the Indians by the Governor of Georgia. At Galphinton,[5] the place appointed, the Commissioners of the United States met those of Georgia, who presented them with the form of a treaty fully drawn out and ready for signatures, and demanded of the Commissioners of the United States its adoption. This extraordinary proceeding was treated by the Federal Commissioners in a dignified and appropriate manner, in their report to Congress. One important provision of this inchoate treaty stipulated for the return to the people of Georgia of such fugitive negroes as were then in the Indian country, and of such as might thereafter flee from bondage. The Commissioners appointed by Congress waited at Galphinton several days, and finding only _two_ of the one hundred towns composing the Creek tribe represented in the council about to be held, they refused to regard them as authorized to act for the Creek nation, and would not consent to enter upon any negotiation with them as representatives of that tribe. This course was not in accordance with the ideas of the Commissioners appointed by Georgia. After those of the United States had left, they proceeded to enter into a treaty with the representatives from the two towns, who professed to act for the whole Creek nation. This pretended treaty gave the State of Georgia a large territory; and the eighth article provided, that "the Indians shall restore all the negroes, horses and other property, that are or may hereafter be among them, belonging to the citizens of this State, or to any other person whatever, to such person as the governor shall appoint."[6] This attempt to make a treaty by the State of Georgia, in direct violation of the articles of Confederation, and to bind the Creek nation by an act of the representatives of only two of their towns, constitutes the first official transaction of which we have documentary evidence, in that long train of events which has for seventy years involved our nation in difficulty, and the Exiles of Florida in persecutions and cruelties unequaled under Republican governments.