The 200 letters in this volume chronicle more than forty years of history in the old Cherokee Nation - from removal through the Civil War to Reconstruction - as recorded in the correspondence of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot families. The minority leaders in the Nation, they were better known as the "Treaty Party." In 1835 they agreed to removal of the Cherokee Nation westward to Indian Territory. As a consequence the family leaders were assassinated by the opposing faction under Chief John Ross. Here, arranged in sequence with annotation and chapter introductions by Edward Everett Dale and Gaston Litton, are the lives and thoughts of such proud cavaliers of Cherokee blood as John Rollin Ridge, who followed the Gold Rush to California; Stand Watie, Confederate general in the Civil War; and E. C. Boudinot, the Cherokee delegate to the Confederate Congress.