In their new home they had prospered wonderfully. Their numbers increased until they were estimated from 100,000 to 120,000. Many of them lived in comfortable houses, wore white men's clothes, and tilled fields on which were raised in the aggregate great quantities of wheat, corn, cotton and potatoes. They had herds of horses, cattle, sheep and swine large beyond any precedent among the whites. It was common for an Indian to number his horses and cattle by the thousands, while the poorest of them owned scores which foraged in the plenty of limitless rich prairies and bottom land. Churches, school houses and mills abounded, and they had even a printing press, from which they issued a paper and many religious and educational works in an alphabet invented by a full-blood Cherokee. Each tribe constituted an individual Nation under a written Constitution, with a full set of elective officers. Slavery had been introduced by the half-breeds, and the census of 1860 shows the following number of slaves and slave-owners in the five Nations: Owners. Slaves. Choctaws..........................385 2,297 Cherokees.........................384 2,604 Creeks............................287 1,661 Chickasaws........................118 917 Semlnoles..................... ....-- ------. One Choctaw owned 227 negroes. Into the Territory the Government also gathered other tribes and remnants of tribes, Quapaws, Kiowas, Senecas, Comanches, etc., mostly in the "blanket" stage of savagery. 281 The dominant sentiment in the civilized tribes was strongly averse to the war and in favor of peace. The memories and traditions as to the meaning of war were too fresh and grievous. The object lessons as to the advantage of peace were everywhere striking and overwhelming. They hoped to maintain a complete neutrality in the struggle, and pleaded to be allowed to do so. June 17, 1861, John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokees, wrote a long official letter to Gen. Ben. McCulloch, in which he said that his people had done nothing to bring about the war, were friends to both sides, and only desired to live in peace.