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Qualla Town Jackson Co [County]  NoC [North Carolina]  
November 15, 1868 
 
To the Cherokees of the Cherokee nation West 
Dear friends 
We are informed that an agent of the Government of the United States has been appointed to purchase a large portion if not all of the Cherokee lands west of the Mississippi river. Those lands were guarantied to the Cherokees including the portion of the tribe East as well as West. This position is fully sustained by the Cherokee Treaties acts of Congress and the grant that issues from the United States to the cherokee nation for those lands. We on the part of the Cherokees East beg leave to inform our brethren of the west that we are entirely opposed to a continuance of the ruinous policy of ceding away the soil owned by the Cherokees. A policy that has almost rendered the American Indians homeless and houseless, and made them strangers in the country given to them by the Great Spirit for a permanent home. If however you will not listen to our advice and still determine to make sale of these lands then as we have a mutual Interest therein we hope that you will inform us of the treaty to be concluded that we may send a delegation of responsible chiefs to represent. And permit us in con [deleted text: con ] clusion to state for the information of the Western cher [edge of document: cherokees ]  that unless we be represented in the conclusion of the treaty we shall be compelled through the States Senators to oppose its ratification.  
We hope that the time is not distant when the rail road which is in progress of construction from the country occupied by the cherokees East to that occupied by their brethren west will be completed, with a line of telegraphs, which will enable us to visit each other in less than two days and to converse notwithstanding separated by about six hundred miles and the greatest rivers of the Mississippi valley -- talk with each other as we did before our nation was subjugated and over run by the States of Georgia, alabama and Tennessee. As for North Carolina she [unclear text: guartied ]  our lands by the act of  
1783, and as far as we know never knowingly violated her [unclear text: pleghted [pledged]  ]  faith to us.  
 
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