SIX HUNDRED MORE

August 8, 1877—Cherokee Advocate—A band of Indians, six hundred in number, of the 
Tribe of Poncas (so said) have lately arrived a their new home in the Indian Territory
 west of Arkansas.  We do not know how true the report is, but it is said also that 
they will occupy a portion of the Cherokee country.  We hope if so it will be that 
portion, or part of it lying west of 96 °, for the Cherokees have no more country to 
spare east of that line.
	Let us distinctly understand this.
	To give any more foreigners the picked portions of our country for the 
pittance of the dollar and a quarter an acre, while we claim it is covered by a 
title in fee and say that it is worth $10 an acre to the Railroads is a kind of 
generosity that would do us honor perhaps if we could afford it.  But we cannot 
afford it.  According to our arrangement made with the Shawnee and Delaware there 
are 250,000 acres of the 600,000 of choice agricultural land within the Cherokee 
limits already gone from the Cherokee and their children forever for which it is 
customary to boast that we have received one dollar and a quarter an acre.  It is 
true but a fraction of the amount of land traded away thus it is yet under 
cultivation and our reservation does not seem much diminished.  But it is gone 
nevertheless under the contract we have made, which contract provides that when 
the time shall come, each individual Shawnee and Delaware shall have choice of our 
whole domain to the number of 160 acres to include the place selected for residents, 
the whole of it being already paid for by these tribes at the price mentioned.  
When this arrangement was made, we were contending for something that should most 
certainly have enhanced their value of the lands so sold, which was, that they 
were not held by what is called an	to Indian Title merely but a title in fee 
from the United States.  And under such a title and no better we also contended 
that at that same time that the land, thus let go for a dollar and a quarter an 
acre was worth $10 to the railroad who hankered for and claimed it and were thus 
so greatly interested in supporting a territorial Bill in Congress.  At all events 
let us understand that the land we have left is or ought to be worth as much to us 
as to anyone else not with a view of letting any more of it go, but of retaining 
and holding it firmly and permanently to the last quarter of an acre.
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