Sequoyah next paid a visit to the Arkansas Cherokees. This band had separated from the main body when the Cherokees decided to combat civilization with civilization and had moved west where they could enjoy the ancient ways of their ancestors. Though this body had spurned all civilized innovations and had clung slavishly to tradition, strangely enough, they readily seized the new art Sequoyah brought with him and learned it with a zest that almost put their eastern brethren in the shade. In the Autumn of this same year, 1823, the Cherokee Council publicly acknowledged Sequoyah’s service to the nation by sending him through their President, the noted John Ross, a silver medal commemorative of his achievement. So highly had the Cherokees come to esteem Sequoyah’s greatness that five years later they elected him to represent them in Washington. There he was cordially received and recognized as an intellectual peer. On this occasion he sat for his portrait. The Treaty of Washington of 1828 reveals that he still enjoyed high favor from the Government, for it provided for a sum to be paid to Sequoyah and his heirs “for the great benefits he has conferred upon the Cherokee people in the beneficial results they are now experiencing from the use of the alphabet discovered by him.” It is worthy to note that for many years the Government paid this pension—_the only literary pension it has ever paid_. The Cherokees had now passed into a state of semi-civilization. They had a National Congress which had passed laws against intemperance and polygamy. They had a national press and a national newspaper, the _Cherokee Phoenix_. The first copy of this unique paper appeared on February 18, 1828. It was printed in both English and Cherokee by a hand press which had been purchased in Boston, shipped by water to Augusta, Georgia, and then transported laboriously by wagon over two hundred miles to the Cherokee national capital. Such a journalistic record is without rival in primitive society, and the _Cherokee Phoenix_ holds the honor of being the father of all aboriginal newspapers. Rapid strides, economically as well as politically and intellectually, had been made. Many Cherokees had amassed considerable wealth and enjoyed some of the refinements and luxuries of a more polished society. The majority of them possessed herds of cattle, together with horses, hogs, and sheep. Husbandry was so efficiently practiced that some products were actually exported, as evidenced by the large cargoes of wheat and tobacco that were floated on flat-boats down the Tennessee to New Orleans. The manufacture of woolen and cotton cloth had even assumed a productiveness permitting of exportation. In short, prosperity was on the boom and everything augured well for the Cherokees’ happy attainment of civilization.