I will not undertake a sweeping vindication of men whom do not know, against a vague charge of this kind, made without the least specification of facts. If there are some, who, from unworthy motives, have affected an interest in his good cause, it is no more than happens in every other good cause. I know none such; I defend none such, if they are known to others. But, with respect to the individual most meritoriously conspicuous for his efforts in this cause, the author of the essays of William Penn, (so often alluded to on this floor, but which stood in no need of such mention to give them reputation in the country), I will say of that gentleman that he is quite above the reach of that mputation, come it whence it may. He needs no defence against it. It cannot attach itself to him, not even as posBible to be conceived of. Sir, I will go further: With some means of information, though not of my own seeking, I will say that not a shadow of proof has been adduced that one dollar has been expended by the Indians to procure or to compensate any exertion that has been made on their behalf. I have no belief that a dollar has been so expended by them.

66

[H. or R.

From the rigor of this system, however, as practised by Great Britain and all the other European powers in America, the humane and liberal policy of the United States has voluntarily relaxed. A celebrated writer on the law of nations, to whose authority British jurists have taken particular satisfaction in appealing, after stating, in the most explicit manner, the legitimacy of colonial settlements in America, to the exclusion of all rights of uncivilized Indian tribes, has taken occasion to praise the first settlers of New England and the founder of Pennsylvania, in baving purchased of the Indians the lands they resolved to cultivate, notwithstanding their being furnished with a charter from their sovereign. It is this example which the United States, since they became, by their independence, the sovereigns of the territory, have adopted and organized into a political system. Under that system, the Indians residing within the United States are so far independent that they live under their own customs, and not under the laws of the United States; that their rights upon the lands where they inhabit or hunt are secured to them by boundaries defined in amicable treaties between the United States and themselves; and that, whenever those boundaries are varied, it is also by amicable and voluntary treaties, by which they receive from the United States ample compensation for every right they have to the lands ceded by them."

Such, in 1814, was the opinion entertained of our Indian relations, by John Quincy Adams, James Bayard, Henry Clay, and Albert Gallatin.

I say this, because I think it due to truth and fact, and not because there would have been any impropriety in such an expenditure, applied in a proper way, and as it is constantly done by men who have large interests at stake. So far from its being improper, had I, when these troubles began, three or four years ago, been called upon by the Cherokees for my humble advice, I would, in lieu of every thing else, have advised them to retain the services, at any cost, of the ablest counsel in the United But I pass to a narrower view of the subject. I shall States. How can it be expected that this friendless, un-treat this matter plainly and practically. I shall go into no represented people, with no voice in our councils, no access abstractions, no refinements. I go to the substance. What to our tribunals, no place in our community, should, with-is the question? It is, whether, by passing this bill, we out aid, plead their own cause effectively against the States that surround them, and the General Government itself! I am only astonished that they have been able to sustain their cause as they have; and had their whole annuity been applied for the purpose I have named, it would have been the best use that they could have made of it. Had this been done, their fate would not now be trembling on our decision, coerced under the previous question, in a midnight session.

will furnish the means to carry into effect the policy "prescribed" by the Executive for the removal of the Indians. Yes, sir, "prescribed;" I use the word, but it is not my own. At an early stage of the session, the course for which this bill furnishes an appropriation, was by a member of this House, friendly to the bill, said to be "prescribed" by the President. This language, I believe, is novel on this floor. I never heard it, nor heard of it before, in any connexion with this House. I was not aware that there exAs I have already stated, I shall not go into the consti- isted an authority on earth that could prescribe any thing tutional argument. It has been most ably treated, and an to this House. It struck my ear, but it seemed to excite array of authorities set forth, which has not been, and, in no surprise; it passed as matter of course; no one promy judgment, cannot be shaken. I will, in passing, but tested against it as an infringement of the privileges of add one to their number, which has not yet been cited, this House. I did, indeed, theu almost give up the cause and which shows that the principle on which the Govern-in despair. What hope could be left, when, organized as ment has hitherto acted toward the Indians, and which it is now proposed to repudiate, has been incorporated, as far as it was in our power to incorporate it, into the law of nations. We were happy enough to lay down those principles as the basis of our policy toward the Indians, when that policy was under discussion at Ghent, in 1814. The British negotiators then made this allegation against our

envoys:

parties are, in and out of this House, a measure like this could be said to be "prescribed" by the Executive ?

What, then, is this prescribed policy? It is to co-operate with the States, and particularly with Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, in removing the Indians. I name these States, for a reason that I shall presently state. I omit North Carolina and Tennessee, because the provisions of the bill do not apply to them. In the State of Tennessee there is a large and valuable tract of land, occupied by the Cherokee Indians. Those lands lie north and east of the congressional reservation line of the State of Tennessee. The United States have long since ceded their interest in them to the State of Tennessee; and whenever the Indian title to them is extinguished, it will of course be, as in Such was the charge of the British negotiators, in their similar cases it always has been, at the expense of that letter of 4th September, 1814. To this charge the Ameri-State. For this reason and to prevent the provisions of cau envoys made the following reply:

"The American Government has now, for the first time, in effect, declared that all Indian nations living within its line of demarcation are its subjects, living there upon sufferance on lands which it also claims the exclusive right of acquiring; thereby menacing the final extinction of these nations."

"If the United States had now asserted that the Indians within their boundaries, who have acknowledged the United States as their only protectors, were their subjects, living only at their sufferance on their lands, far from being the first in making that assertion, they would only have followed the example of the principles uniformly and invariably asserted, in substance, and frequently avowed in express terms by the British Government itself.

the bill, as originally draughted, from applying to the States of North Carolina and Tennessee, an amendment was moved by a Senator, and adopted as a feature of the bill.* Those States have no interest in it.

The amendment referred to is in these words: "Within the

bounds of any one or more of the States or Territories, where the land claimed and occupied by the Indians is owned by the United

States, or the United States are bound to the State, within which it lies, to extinguish the Indian title thereto.”

H. OF R.]

Removal of the Indians.

[MAY 19, 1830. The bill then provides the means for co-operating with | and Alabama. These States, claiming to be the only the States of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, in re- sovereigns within their limits, extended their laws over moving the Indians within their limits. It is not a substan- the Indians, which induced the latter to call on the United tive measure, ending where it begins, in the legislation of States for protection." Congress and the action of the General Government. It is a joint policy. We are to do part, and the States to do part. We are to furnish the money, and a portion of the machinery. The great principle of motion proceeds from the States. They are to move the Indians. We are to pay the expense of the operation.

What is the warraut for such a statement? I admit, as amply as gentlemen please, that it has long been the policy of the General Government to remove the Indians from their lands, if their consent could be obtained, in treaties negotiated with them, as thus far independent societies. It is a policy we have long pursued, and with a success which, one would think, would satisfy the warmest friend of Indian cessions. We have acquired east and west of the Mississippi, by treaties, about two hundred and thirty millions of acres of land. I do not wish to be understood as condemning this policy. The consideration paid to the Indians has, I believe, generally been to them a fair equivalent for the value which the lands ceded possessed in their hands. But with the four southern tribes, the policy had been pushed so far, and so rapidly, that they had come to the resolution that they would cede no more. We tried it with each tribe; through the agency of the most respectable and skilful commissioners; by the offer of the largest bribes; by the force of the most unwearied importunity. The answers came, at last, in terms from one of them, and in substance from all: "that they would not cede another foot of land." Such, no doubt, was their determination, but they could not have adhered to it; and if the States had been willing to exercise a little patience, there is no doubt that they would, in the course of no long period of years, have obtained all they wish. This they did not think it expedient to do. The United States having abandoned for the present the hope of obtaining by treaty any more lands from the southern tribes, and it having been determined, in the words of President Monroe, that force was not to be thought of, the matter must, under the constitution and laws of the States, for the present, have rested where it stood three years ago. There is no way known to the constitution and laws of the United States, by which the Indian land can be acquired, but conquest in open war, and amicable agreement by treaty.

The President, after an argument on the extent of the right of the Indians to erect an independent Government, || an argument sufficiently examined already in this debate, goes on to say:

"Actuated by this view of the subject, I informed the Indians inhabiting parts of Alabama and Georgia, that their attempt to establish an independent Government would not be countenanced by the Executive of the United States, and advised them to emigrate beyond the Mississippi, or submit to the laws of the States."

It is plain that it was the first part only of this advice, viz. the removal, that the President thought it for the interest of the Indians to follow. This we see in the following language of the Secretary of War, in his instructions to Generals Carroll and Coffee, bearing date 30th May, 1830: "A crisis in our Indian affairs has arrived. Strong indications are seen of this in the circumstance of the Legisla tures of Georgia and Alabama extending their laws over the Indians within their respective limits. These acts, it is reasonable to presume, will be followed by other States interested in those portions of their soil, now in the occepancy of the Indians. In the right to exercise such jurs diction, the Executive of the United States fully concurs; and this has been officially announced to the Cherokee Ir dians. The President is of opinion that the only mode left for the Indians to escape the effects of such enactments, and consequences yet more destructive, which are conse quent on their contiguity with the whites, is to emigrate.”

"The President views the Indians as the children of the Government. He sees what is best for them; and that s perseverance in their refusal to fly the dangers that surround them, must result in their misery and final destruetion. He would, if appeals to their reason fail, induce them, by rewards, to avoid the threatened calamity.

"Your first business, should you consent to engage in this work of mercy to the Indians, would be to ascertain upon whom, as pivots, the will of the Cherokees and Creeks turns. Go to them, not as a negotiator, but friend. Open to each a view of his danger, and the danger that threatens his people. This may be made up of references to their present state, as to numbers, when compared with the past, the causes that have produced this thinuing of their num Here, then, the States step in with the novel, and, as I bers; and here you might enlarge on their comparative regard it and deem it fully proved in this debate, the un- degradation as a people, and the total impossibility of constitutional and illegal extension of their ordinary civil their ever attaining to higher privileges while they retain and criminal jurisdiction over these tribes, accompanied their present relations to a people who seek to get rid of with enactments peculiarly operative and oppressively them; to the inefficiency of their own laws for their ad binding on them. The Indians (with whom we have ne- vancement; and, finally, to the fact that these will be super gotiated treaties promising them protection,) come and seded and trodden under foot by the exercise over then ask to be protected against this unheard of assumption of the laws of the States. And here you might amply They ask us to ward off the blow aimed at them; to arrest illustrate the really difficult relation which the Cherokees, the strong arm stretched out against them. The Presi- particularly, bear to this question, by the passing over dent tells them he cannot do it. The Executive Govern-them of the various laws of four States." ment reiterates that we cannot, shall not, will not, give them this protection; and the President advises them to remove westward,

This is the language held by the President and Secretary of War, as to the character and effect of these State laws That the Indians regard them in the same light as connected with their own removal, is seen, if it need confirmati in Governor Carroll's despatch to the Secretary of War In a letter dated Winchester, Tennessee, 2d September, 1829, that most respectable and distinguished citizen uses the following language:

Now, what are these laws? I will not now specify their provisions. It is sufficient to say, in the general, that they are such, by all admission, that the Indians cannot live under them. The Indians say they cannot live under them. The Executive tells then they cannot live under them. The States evidently do not expect that they can or will live under them. The laws were, beyond all question, not passed with any such design; they are not so regarded by the Indians, nor by ourselves. What says the Chief Magistrate! "A portion of the southern tribes having mingled much with the whites, and made some progress Sir, I have seen an authentic account of the proceed in the arts of civilized life, have lately attempted to erect ings of the Choctaw council, lately convened to conside an independent Government within the limits of Georgia this subject of emigration. It was a scene, we are told

"The truth is, they (the Indians) rely, with great cofidence, on a favorable report on the petition they have before Congress. If that is rejected, and the laws of the States are enforced, you will have no difficulty in pro curing an exchange of lands with them."

Removal of the Indians.

by the Mississippi papers, that could not be witnessed with- he says: " By persuasion and force they have been made out tears. After the new chief had been installed in office, to retire from river to river, and from mountain to moun" he introduced to the council the subject of a removal in tain." When were any means employed to detrude the this way he first stated some of the laws of Mississippi, Indians, better entitled than these laws to the name of and then inquired of them whether they would remain force? He does not probably refer to open wars against where they were, and submit to these laws, or remove hostile nations in which he has been himself, so benefiover the Mississippi. He also stated the substance of the cially for his country, and so much to his own fame, dislast talk to them of the President of the United States. The tinguished. No. I take the message to intend legislative captains and others rose and spoke: the general sentiment force, moral force, duress, the untiring power of civilized was, we are distressed-we cannot endure the laws of Mis- man pushing his uncivilized neighbor farther and farther sissippi-we do not think our great father loves us-we into the woods. This I take to be the force to which the I must go, as he will not help us while we remain here." President alludes. And if this kind of action, unavoidably incident to the contiguity of the two races, be justly called force, how much more so the legislation of which the Indians complain, avowedly instituted to effect their removal, and confessedly insupportable in its nature!

Sir, it is force. It is because it is force that our interference for protection is invoked. I know it comes in the form of law; but is not the law force? Suppose the Indians disobey the laws, (and they are no more bound to obey them than the Mexicans are,) is there no force then? Are not the sheriff, the constable, the jailor, the executioner, ministers of force? No force! A law passed over my head by a power which I cannot resist, a law intended to make me fly the country, because I cannot live under This bill is to appropriate the funds for their removal. it, and I not forced to go! There was no force, then, apSuch is the bill of which we are told that there is nothing|plied against the Huguenots by the revocation of the edict in it objectionable, that it contemplates nothing compul- of Nantz. They had only to adopt the catholic faith, and sory. This is the removal which is said to be voluntary. dragoons were sent among them to assist in their converThese are the laws which are said to have no connexion sion. There was no force employed by the British Gowith the subject; into which, we have been told, it is irre-vernment towards the puritans. They needed only to conlevant and idle to inquire.

have lost sight of the ordinary significancy of terms. I had supposed the general idea of the nature of law was settled in the common agreement of mankind. Sages, when they attempted to describe it in its highest conception, had told us that its seat was the bosom of God, and its voice the harmony of the worlds. I had been taught to reverence the law as a sort of earthly Providence; as the great popular sovereign; the unthroned and scepterless prince; the mild dictator, whose province it was to see that not a single subject of its sway received harm. With these conceptions, how can I understand it when I hear that the Indians claim to be protected against the laws of the States? Protected against the laws! I thought it was the object of the law to protect every good man from all harm whatever; and even to visit on the bad man only the specific penalty of his proven offence. But protection against the faw; protection against the protector! Sir, I cannot understand it: it is incongruous. It confounds my faculties. There must be fatal mischief concealed in so strange a contradiction of language.

It has been asked, in a highly respectable quarter, "what has a Cherokee to fear from the laws of Georgia!" Is it necessary for me to answer that question, and tell what a man has to fear from laws under which it is admitted he cannot live? But I will answer the question specifically and, in the answer I give, I implore gentlemen whose duty it is to vindicate the honor of Georgia, not to understand me as casting any imputation upon it. I will say nothing which the most tender sensibility can construe into an aspersion of her honor, because I mean nothing which can be so construed. I will state, then, what a Cherokee has to fear from the laws of Georgia.

[MAY 19, 1830.

fear from this law of Georgia! He has this to fear. The
citizens of Georgia, I admit, freely and cheerfully, to be
as orderly, virtuous, and humane a people as the citizens
of any other State of the Union.
I presume, however,
that in Georgia, as in every other State, there are indi-
viduals, in considerable numbers, who regard the law only
for its terrors; whom justice and honesty do not control, er
cept as they are enforced by the law. Such men exist in
all the States; they keep our courts of criminal jurisdie
tion constantly employed. In my own State, and in per
haps the most orderly community in it, the country has
lately seen, with horror and astonishment, that there are
men capable of atrocities which would shock the brigands
of Calabria. Well, then, sir, suppose the State of Geor
gia to contain some such; they have but to cross the Chero-
kee line; they have but to choose the time and the place,
where the eye of no white man can rest upon them, and
they may burn the dwelling, waste the farm, plunder the
property, assault the person, murder the children of the
Cherokee subjects to Georgia, and, though hundreds of the
tribe may be looking on, there is not one of them that can
be permitted to bear witness against the spoiler. When I
am asked, then, what the Cherokee has to fear from the
law of Georgia, I answer, that, by that law, he is left at
the mercy of the firebrand and dagger of every unprinci
pled wretch in the community. Am I told the laws of
Georgia are kindly administered towards this people; that
they have often obtained justice in the courts of Georgia!
I do not doubt it I know it, on the best authority. But
the law of which I speak, is a new law; it has not yet gone
into operation; and, when it has gone into operation, let it
be administered as mildly as you please, it cannot admit
an Indian's testimony against a white man not resident in
the nation.

By the fifteenth section of her law of 19th December, 1829, it is provided "that no Indian, or descendant of any Indian, residing within the Creek or Cherokee nation of What has a Choctaw to fear from the laws of Mississip Indians, shall be deemed a competent witness in any court pi! He has this to fear. The fifth section of one of those in this State to which a white person may be a party, ex-laws provides "that any person or persons who shall 25cept such white person reside within the said nation."

It would be going out of my way to dwell on the point, yet I cannot but remark, in passing, that this law makes a singular discrimination, both as respects the credibility of Indian testimony and the rights of Georgian citizens, whom it is the presumable intention of the law to protect against evidence which cannot, in its alleged nature, be sufficiently responsible. Georgia has attached the different portions of the Cherokee country to her several adjacent counties, and made them parts of those counties. It is well known, also, that, in proportion as the Cherokees have been drawn off by emigration, citizens of Georgia have advanced into the country, and numbers of them are now resident there. Against these latter, the Cherokee is a competent witness in a court of law. Here, then, we have the singular incongruity that Indian testimony is good against a Georgian citizen in one part of a county, and not good against him in the other. Thus the citizen of the county of Gwin nett, who lives at Lawrenceville, is safe against Indian testimony. But the citizen of the same county, west of the Chatahoochee, may be tried and convicted on that testimony in the same court. So, too, the Cherokee is an incompetent witness; he cannot give testimony, on a sufficiently responsible sanction, against any citizen of Law renceville; but the court will receive his testimony as adequate in any cause in which a citizen of Georgia from the other side of the river is a party. It is an obvious consequence of this state of things, that the same Indian, in the same court, and on the same day, is and is not a competent witness. This hour, he is, according to the argument, an uncivilized pagan, possessing no religion nor superstition by which the court can bind his conscience; the next hour he may swear away the life of any Georgian reeident in the Indian country. Does not this show that the law has no foundation in any political or social necessity? But I return to the question, what has the Cherokee to

sume on him or themselves, and exercise, in any manner whatever, the office of chief, mingo, head man, or other post of power established by the tribal statutes, ordinances, or customs of the said Indians, and not particularly recog nised by the laws of this State, shall, on conviction, upon indictment or presentment before a court of competent jurisdiction, be fined in any sum not exceeding one thousand dollars, and be imprisoned any time not exceeding twelve months, at the discretion of the court before whom convie tion may be had."

Now, sir, there is a treaty between the United States and the Choctaw nation, negotiated at Doak's stand, not ten years ago, and signed on behalf of the United States by the present Chief Magistrate, and the respectable member [Mr. HINDS] from Mississippi. The thirteenth article of that treaty is as follows: " to enable the mingoes, chiefs, and head men of the Choctaw nation to raise and organize a corps of light-horse, consisting of ten in each district, so that good order may be maintained, and that all men, both white and red, may be compelled to pay their just debts, it is stipulated and agreed that the sum of two hundred dollars shall be appropriated by the United States for each district annually, and placed in the hands of the agent, to pay the expenses incurred in raising and establishing the said corps; which is to act as executive officers, in maintaining good order, and compelling bad men to remove from the nation, who are not authorized to live in it by a regular permit of the agent."

Now, as I understand the law of Mississippi, any person who should presume to act as a chief among the Choctaws, and to exercise the authority given him by this treaty, and put in action the force which the United States not only recognise and sauction, but support and pay, would be subject to fine and imprisonment. If they come to the President and say, here is the treaty, and here is your own signature and seal; the President has been induced, by his

MAY 19, 1830.]

Removal of the Indians.

[H. OF R.

official advisers, to tell them he cannot protect them, and [ for the voluntary removal of the Indians; and this, as I to prison they must go, and their fine they must pay, have said, was long before the attempt had ever been whenever it shall be the interest of any one to drag them made, by the States of Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi, before the courts of Mississippi. Sir, it has been stated to extend their laws over the Indians within their limits. to me, I do not vouch for the fact, but so I have been in- That this pretension is of the most recent character, the formed, that, since the passage of this law, the whiskey passages cited by the gentleman from Maine [Mr. EVANS] traders have made their inroads into the Choctaw country; from the speech of the Senator from Mississippi, in 1827, the chief dare not exercise their own strict laws against abundantly prove-if, indeed, the fact be not too notorious them, for fear of incurring the severe penalties above re to require proof. cited; and thus the first-fruits of this State legislation has been to arrest the progress of the reform, which had commenced and made the most extraordinary progress among the nation, in that vice to which they are supposed to have the strongest natural disposition.

I have shown, sir, what an Indian has to fear from the laws of the States. I now feel warranted in repeating that it is the object of this bill to appropriate a sum of money to co-operate with the States in the compulsory removal of the Indians,

Notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, I pronounce this to be a new policy. We have been told that it is the established policy of the Government; that many successive Presidents have recommended it; and many successive Congresses have appropriated funds to carry it into effect; and much surprise is expressed that now, for the first time, it should meet with opposition. I maintain, on the contrary, that it is a new policy, and I challenge the proof that it is not.

Sir, I do not know that even the voluntary removal of the Indians was ever regularly considered and adopted by Congress, the only power competent to adopt it. I know that, from time to time, steps have been taken to effect such a voluntary removal by treaties, and that appropriations have been made to carry the treaties into effect. This is the most that has been done by Congress. I am aware that, at the second session of the eighteenth Congress, a bill passed the Senate, but was not, I believe, acted on in the House, which made an approach toward a systematic removal of the Indians; carefully guarded, however, to be purely voluntary; and this bill passed at a time before the coercion of State laws was thought of. The provisions of that bill are widely different from the provisions of the bill before us, and coincide with the judicious amendment to the latter which the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. HEMPHILL] has already announced the intention of offering, and for which I tender him my hearty thanks. The third section of the bill which passed the Senate in 1825, provides

I therefore pronounce again the policy of this bill to be wholly novel. Its great distinctive element, the part to be performed by State legislation, is entirely new. It is not three years old. When gentlemen tell me this is the an cient policy of the Government, let them point out the laws, passed by the States, under which it was impossible for the Indians to live, and which required them to remove in order to escape destruction. These laws cannot be pointed out. It is a new policy. The State laws are not two years old; and the refusal of the Executive of the United States to protect the Indians against them, is not a year old. On the 11th of last April, the officer at the head of the bureau of Indian Affairs informs the Cherokee dele gation, by direction of the Secretary of War, "That the Secretary is not now prepared to decide the question, involved in the act of the Legislature of Georgia, to which you refer, in which provision is made for extending the laws of Georgia over your people after the 1st of June, 1830. It is a question which will doubtless be the subject of congressional inquiry, and what is proper in regard to it will no doubt be ordered by that body."

So late, then, as the 11th of April of the last year, the essential feature of this "ancient policy” had not received the sanction of the present Executive. On the 30th of the May following, (not yet a year,) we learn from the instructions of the Department to Generals Carroll and Coffee, that, "in the right to exercise such jurisdiction"— that of the States over the Indians-" the Executive fully concurs."

It is, in my judgment, much to be regretted that the President should have felt himself authorized to decide this question, which, about six weeks before, had been pronounced by the Secretary of War to be a matter in regard to which "no remedy exists, short of one which Congress alone can supply."

On the strength of these documents, I may venture to pronounce this policy (which has been recommended to us as the ancient and established policy of the Government,) to be the growth of the last twelve months.

"That the President be, and he is hereby, authorized, And now, sir, let us proceed to contemplate it in some by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to ap- of its details. The notion which seems to accompany this point five commissioners, to receive a reasonable compen-plan of removal, in both the voluntary and compulsory sation, who shall, under his instructions, hold treaties with forms, the notion, I mean, of an Indian State to be elevated the Osages, the Kanzas, or any other tribe having just to an equality with the political members of this Union, claims to the country, for a cession of territory westward appears to have presented itself vaguely to the old Conof the State and Territory aforesaid, for the purpose above gress. In the treaty with the Delawares, negotiated in specified: and to visit the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, 1778, it is provided as follows in the sixth article: and Chickasaws, residing in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi; the Delawares, Kickapoos, Shawnees, Weas, Ioways, Piankeshaws, Cherokees, and Osages, residing in Missouri and Arkansas; and the Wyandots, Shawnees, Senecas, Delawares, Kaskaskias, and the Miami aud Eel river Indians, residing in Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, in order to make known to them the views of the Government; and, under the directions of the President, and with the consent of the Indians, to adopt such measures, and form such arrangements, or to enter into such treaties, as may be deemed proper to effect the same, and to pledge, in such manner as he may direct, the faith of the nation, as he is above authorized to do; the said commissioners to act either jointly or separately, as he may direct."

This is the nearest approach that I am aware was ever made to the enactment, by Congress, of a systematic plan

"It is further agreed on between the contracting parties, (should it for the future be found conducive for the mutual interests of both parties,) to invite any other tribes, who have been friends to the interests of the United States, to join the present confederation, and to form a State, whereof the Delaware nation shall be the head, and have a representation in Congress." It was also provided in the treaty of Hopewell with the Cherokees, in order "that the Indians may have full confidence in the justice of the United States, respecting their interests, they shall have the right to send a deputy, of their choice, whenever they see fit, to Congress."

It is unnecessary to say that these stipulations were never carried into effect. They are properly quoted as illustrating the opinions, held at that period, on the subject of Indian relations. Each of these treaties existed prior to the constitution, and was recognised by that instrument, and,