Colonel Thomas, as provided by the treaty of 1835, used the funds of the Indians in the purchase of homes. He provided for their education and encouraged religious exercises among them. When the war broke out he led four companies into the Confederate army. They showed capacity for discipline and were not wanting in courage; but like a great many of these highlanders, they had no interest in the cause, and employed the first opportunity to desert, some of them joining the Federal army and many finding their mountain homes. During the war the tribe’s internal affairs were in chaos, its councils were without a head, and its members lapsed into dissipation and laziness. The ban of an adverse fatality seemed to rest over these unfortunate pilgrims on their way from barbarism to civilization. Their chief was stricken with nervous disease when his services were most needed, and years of confusion and imposition followed. There were rival pretenders to the chieftainship, who divided the band into factions and threatened at one time a contest at arms. The animus of this whole affair was the avarice of several white adventurers who were seeking to control the business of the tribe in order to get into their own hands the claims due the Indians from the United States. Even under such circumstances these people demonstrated their capacity for self government. One of the contestants, whose English name was John Ross, was forced to abandon his pretensions, and Lloyd Welsh, his competitor, soon after died. A written constitution had in the meantime been adopted, which is still in force. Nimrod Jarrett Smith, an intelligent and educated member of the tribe, was elected by popular vote to the chieftainship for the term of four years, and has since been re-elected. The Eastern Band of Cherokees have title in fee simple to 50,000 acres of land on the Ocona Lufta and Soco creek, known as the Qualla boundary. A few small tracts belonging to individual Indians are included. Besides this boundary, there are belonging to the band and individuals 1,521 acres in detached tracts lying in the counties of Cherokee, Graham, Jackson, and Swain. According to the census of 1880, there were living in the Qualla reserve, 825; in Cherokee county, 83; in Graham county, 189, and in Macon county, 12, making a total of 1,109. This number is ten per cent. less than in 1870. The Graham county Indians live along the head branches of the Cheowah, those in Cherokee county on Valley river. The Indians have no towns, nor does their manner of life differ in many particulars from that of the white people among whom they reside. A stranger, unless he sees the inmates, does not distinguish an Indian cabin from a white man’s, nor, with few exceptions, an Indian’s little cove farm from one of its class cultivated by a white man.