with a report from the Secretary of the Navy, with the
accompanying documents, in answer to the resolution of the Senate of
August 6, 1846, calling for the report of the board of naval officers,
recently in session in this city, including the orders under which it
was convened and the evidence which may have been laid before it.

JAMES K. POLK.

WASHINGTON, _August 7, 1846_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I transmit herewith, for the consideration and constitutional action of
the Senate, articles of a treaty which has been concluded by the
commissioners appointed for the purpose with the different parties into
which the Cherokee tribe of Indians has been divided, through their
delegates now in Washington. The same commissioners had previously been
appointed to investigate the subject of the difficulties which have for
years existed among the Cherokees, and which have kept them in a state
of constant excitement and almost entirely interrupted all progress on
their part in civilization and improvement in agriculture and the
mechanic arts, and have led to many unfortunate acts of domestic strife,
against which the Government is bound by the treaty of 1835 to protect
them. Their unfortunate internal dissensions had attracted the notice
and excited the sympathies of the whole country, and it became evident
that if something was not done to heal them they would terminate in a
sanguinary war, in which other tribes of Indians might become involved
and the lives and property of our own citizens on the frontier
endangered. I recommended in my message to Congress on the 13th of April
last such measures as I then thought it expedient should be adopted to
restore peace and good order among the Cherokees, one of which was a
division of the country which they occupy and separation of the tribe.
This recommendation was made under the belief that the different
factions could not be reconciled and live together in harmony--a belief
based in a great degree upon the representations of the delegates of the
two divisions of the tribe. Since then, however, there appears to have
been a change of opinion on this subject on the part of these divisions
of the tribe, and on representations being made to me that by the
appointment of commissioners to hear and investigate the causes of
grievance of the parties against each other and to examine into their
claims against the Government it would probably be found that an
arrangement co