Notwithstanding this letter of Agent Meigs no further notice seems to have been taken of the treaty, and it had been entirely lost sight of until attention was again called to it by a Cherokee delegation visiting Washington early in 1824, nearly twenty years after its conclusion.[145]
After diligent search among the records of the War Department, Secretary Calhoun reported[146] that no such treaty could be found and no evidence that any such treaty had ever been concluded. Whereupon the Cherokee delegation produced their duplicate copy of the treaty together with other papers relating to it. The Secretary of War, after receiving a reply[147] to a letter addressed by him to Colonel McKee, of the House of Representatives (who was one of the subscribing witnesses to the treaty), became satisfied of its authenticity, and the President thereupon[148] transmitted the Cherokee duplicate to the Senate, which body advised and consented to its ratification. It was duly proclaimed by the President on the 17th of May, 1824.[149]
[Footnote 142: Commissioner Smith in his letter of October 31, 1804, to the Secretary of War, states that two persons on the part of the United States, to be accompanied by two Cherokee chiefs, had been designated to run the boundaries of this cession. The propriety was then urged on the Cherokees by the commissioners of making a cession of the lands lying between East and West Tennessee. Several days were consumed in urging this proposal, and a majority of the chiefs were probably in favor of it, but Commissioner Smith remarks that a majority, unless it amounts almost to unanimity, is not considered with them sufficient to determine in matters of great interest, particularly in making cessions of lands.]
[Footnote 126: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. VII, p. 228.]
[Footnote 127: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. I, p. 618.]
[Footnote 128: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. II, p. 82.]
[Footnote 129: The President's appointment of these commissioners bore date of June 18, 1801.]
[Footnote 130: This interview occurred, as shown by the Indian Office records, on the 30th of June, 1801, and was adjourned to meet again on the 3d of July.]
[Footnote 131: July 3, 1801. See Indian Office records.]
