This expectation has not merely been disappointed. The first measures
for carrying the treaty into execution had scarcely been taken when the
two principal chiefs who had signed it fell victims to the exasperation
of the great mass of the nation, and their families and dependents, far
from being able to execute the engagements on their part, fled for life,
safety, and subsistence from the territories which they had assumed to
cede, to our own. Yet, in this fugitive condition, and while subsisting
on the bounty of the United States, they have been found advancing
pretensions to receive exclusively to themselves the whole of the sums
stipulated by the commissioners of the United States in payment _for
all_ the lands of the Creek Nation which were ceded by the terms of the
treaty. And they have claimed the stipulation of the eighth article,
that the United States would "_protect_ the emigrating party against the
encroachments, hostilities, and impositions of the whites and of all
others," as an engagement by which the United States were bound to
become the instruments of their vengeance and to inflict upon the
majority of the Creek Nation the punishment of Indian retribution to
gratify the vindictive fury of an impotent and helpless minority of
their own tribe.
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