The Cherokee Nation Is Terminated and Does Not Exist
Proof 5 - Chief William Charles Rogers Address to Cherokee Council
At the final session of the Cherokee Council on November 9, 1904,
Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 17, No. 2, June, 1939
“But a crisis in our affairs is at hand. The Government which our forefathers cherished and loved and labored so hard to perfect, has been sentenced to die. The scepter must soon pass to other hands. Still, we must force back the resentment we feel and accept the conditions as they are. The decrees of fate are inexorable. Representative bodies are usually brought together to organize or maintain a government; seldom indeed is the spectacle afforded of such a body of men calmly assembled together to prepare for its own dissolution and yet your coming together is largely for that purpose. The importance of this melancholy fact must not be underestimated or approached in a spirit of indifference. The best service of which you are capable is the demand of the hour and painstaking effort should characterize your every act so that the result may redound to the everlasting credit and benefit of our people.”[1]
EDITORIAL ASSERTION:
After the “Cherokee Agreement with Congress in 1902, 32 Statute 716, the last Cherokee Chief, William Charles Rogers, Will Roger’s Father, addressed the final Cherokee Council on November 9, 1904. He acknowledged not only to the Council, but to the world, that the 1902 agreement had brought an end to the government of the Cherokee Nation. He pulled no punches when he makes his final proclamation to the Council. They have come together for the purpose of the dissolution of the Cherokee Nation Government.
(C) This document was produced at the request of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on July 18, 2019, to document the History, Anthropology, Culture, Religion, and Archaeology of The Chickamauga Nation.