Note 411 — II—HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE CHEROKEE

The last party of emigrant Cherokee had started for the West in December, 1838. Nine months afterwards the refugees still scattered about in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee were reported to number 1,046.411 By persistent effort at Washington from 1836 to 1842, including one continuous stay of three years at the capital city, Thomas finally obtained governmental permission for these to remain, and their share of the moneys due for improvements and reservations confiscated was placed at his disposal, as their agent and trustee, for the purpose of buying lands upon which they could be permanently settled. Under this authority he bought for them, at various times up to the year 1861, a number of contiguous tracts of land upon Oconaluftee river and Soco creek, within the present Swain and Jackson counties of North Carolina, together with several detached tracts in the more western counties of the same state. The main body, upon the waters of Oconaluftee, which was chiefly within the limits of the cession of 1819, came afterward to be known as the Qualla boundary, or Qualla reservation, taking the name from Thomas’ principal trading store and agency headquarters. The detached western tracts were within the final cession of 1835, but all alike were bought by Thomas from white owners. As North Carolina refused to recognize Indians as landowners within the state, and persisted in this refusal until 1866,412 Thomas, as their authorized agent under the Government, held the deeds in his own name. Before it was legally possible under the state laws to transfer the title to the Indians, his own affairs had become involved and his health impaired by age and the hardships of military service so that his mind gave way, thus leaving the whole question of the Indian title a subject of litigation until its adjudication by the United States in 1875, supplemented by further decisions in 1894.