rid zone, or inhabitants of its more temperate regions, or placed by a harder fate in the severe climates towards its northern or southern extremity, appear to be equally under the dominion of this appetite [love of ardent spirits].' The rude Americans, fond of their own pursuits, and satisfied with their own lot, are equally unable to comprehend the intention or utility of the various accommodations, which, in more polished society, are deemed essential to the comfort of life.' This preference of their own manners is conspicuous on every occasion.' 'Men thus satisfied with their condition, are far from any inclination to relinquish their own habits, or to adopt those of civilized life.' Even where endeavors have been used to wean a savage from his own customs, and to render the accommodations of polished society familiar to him; even when he has been allowed to taste of those pleasures, and been honored with those distinctions, which are the chief objects of our desires, he droops and languishes under the restraint of laws and forms, he seizes the first opportunity of breaking loose from them, and returns with transport to the forest or the wild, where he can enjoy a careless and uncontrolled freedom.' It is easy, in contemplating the situation of such a people, to perceive the difficulties to be encountered in any effort to produce a radical change in their condition. The fulcrum is wanting, upon which the lever must be placed. They are contented as they are; not contented merely, but clinging with a death-grasp to their own institutions. This feeling, inculcated in youth, strengthened in manhood, and nourished in age, renders them inaccessible to argument or remonstrance. Το roam the forests at will, to pursue their game, to attack their enemies, to spend the rest of their lives in listless indolence, to eat inordinately when they have food, to suffer patiently when they have none, and to be ready at all times to die; these are the principal occupations of an Indian. But little knowledge of human nature is necessary, to be sensible how unwilling a savage would be to exchange such a life for the stationary and laborious duties of civilized society. Experience has shown, that the Indians are steadily and rapidly diminishing. And the causes of this diminution, which we have endeavored to investigate, are yet in constant and active operation. It has also been shown, that our efforts to stand between the living and the dead, to stay this tide which is spreading around them and over them, have long been fruit less, and are now hopeless. And equally fruitless and hopeless are the attempts to impart to them, in their present situation, the blessings of religion, the benefits of science and the arts, and the advantages of an efficient and stable government. The time seems to have arrived, when a change in our principles and practice is necessary; when some new effort must be made to meliorate the condition of the Indians, if we would not be left without a living monument of their misfortunes, or a living evidence of our desire to repair them. A retrospective view of the relations which have existed between the civilized communities, planted or reared upon this continent, and the Indians, and an examination of the principles of their intercourse, may assist us in the further prosecution of this inquiry. Not that their example or authority can justify us in any system of oppression, but that maxims of jurisprudence, applied and enforced by wise and learned men, and practically adopted by the rulers of the old world for the government of the new, may be fairly presumed to be founded in the just and relative rights of the parties. If the Christian and civilized governments of Europe asserted jurisdiction over the aboriginal tribes of America, and, under certain limitations, a right to the country occupied by them, some peculiar circumstances must have existed to vindicate a claim, at first sight revolting to the common justice of mankind. And if these circumstances were not then, and are not now, sufficiently powerful to justify such pretensions, their interference was culpable, and so would be ours. The Indians are entitled to the enjoyment of all the rights which do not interfere with the obvious designs of Providence, and with the just claims of others. Like many other practical questions, it may be difficult to define the actual boundary of right between them and the civilized states, among whom or around whom they live. But there are two restraints upon ourselves, which we may safely adopt, that no force should be used to divest them of any just interest they possess, and that they should be liberally remunerated for all they may cede. We cannot be wrong while we adhere to there rules. The discovery of the western continent by Columbus opened to the maritime states of Europe new prospects of gain. It is well known, that their first establishments were made with a view to commerce and to the collection of gold. The system of colonization was gradually introduced, as its advan tages were foreseen or disclosed. At a very early period, so early in fact, that the principle itself must have existed in some shape or other in the public law of Europe, before the discovery, it was assumed by all the nations prosecuting these voyages, that the first discoverer of unknown regions should be entitled to their permanent possession. And as has been well observed by Chancellor Kent, if this question were now open for discussion, the reasonableness of it might be strongly vindicated on broad principles of policy and justice, drawn from the right of discovery; from the sounder claims of agricultural settlers over those of hunters; and from the loose and frail, if not absurd title of wandering savages to an immense continent, evidently designed by Providence to be subdued and cultivated, and to become the residence of civilized nations.' + There can be no doubt, and such are the views of the elementary writers upon the subject, that the Creator intended the earth should be reclaimed from a state of nature and cultivated; that the human race should spread over it, procuring from it the means of comfortable subsistence, and of increase and improvement. A tribe of wandering hunters, depending upon the chase for support, and deriving it from the forests, and rivers, and lakes, of an immense continent, have a very imperfect possession of the country over which they roam. That they are entitled to such supplies as may be necessary for their subsistence, and as they can procure, no one can justly question. But this right cannot be exclusive, unless the forests which shelter them are doomed to perpetual unproductiveness. Our forefathers, when they landed upon the shores of this continent, found it in a state of nature, traversed, but not occupied, by wandering hordes of barbarians, seeking a precarious subsistence, principally from the animals around them. They appropriated, as they well might do, a portion of this fair land to their own use, still leaving to their predecessors in occupation all that was needed, and more than was used by them. * In the commission granted to the Cabots in 1496, they are authorized to discover and take possession of countries unknown to Christian people. And in the famous bull of Pope Alexander the Sixth, by which he gives Ferdinand and Isabella the New World, he excepts what might have been in possession of some Christian power before 1493. + Commentaries on American Law, Vol. III. p. 312. In the progress of society in the old world, no similar circumstances had existed to render necessary any inquiry into the relative rights and duties of a civilized and barbarous people, thus situated, or to settle the principles of intercommunication between them. The nations of Christendom agreed in the general assumption of sovereignty, and of the ultimate dominion of the soil, as the consequence of discovery; but their farther pretensions seem to have been a matter of internal policy, depending on the peculiar views of each power. The relations,' says Chief Justice Marshall, in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, in the case of Johnson versus McIntosh, which were to exist between the discoverer and the natives, were to be regulated by themselves. The rights thus acquired, no other power could interpose between. Many subtile questions, arising out of these undefined and sometimes undefinable relations, have been agitated and warmly discussed. The controversy at Ghent, between our Commissioners and the British, wherein the latter endeavored to justify the interference of their government in the concerns of our Indians, by a resort to abstract principles and nice investigations into the natural rights of the parties, must be within the recollection of all our readers. The American ministers, by historical deductions, and by an appeal to the uniform pretensions and practice of the British, triumphantly repelled the new, and, we may add, most mischievous claim, then first advanced. They showed, and showed conclusively, that whatever was the relative situation of the United States, and of the aboriginal tribes inhabiting their territories, it was a question affecting the parties alone; and that all the nations of Christendom, holding colonies where any of the primitive race yet remain, had excluded, with jealous care, every other power from any interference in their affairs. And this rigid exclusion is founded in the necessary principles of self-defence, and in the facility with which the Indians yield to any persuasion or impression, coöperating with their innate love of war. Let this principle be once conceded, and its practical application established upon the borders, and the Indians taught to look across the frontier for counsel and assistance, and we may abandon all hope of tranquillity, until our power is effectually employed in breaking the connexion, and in bringing them back to their pristine relations. The position occupied by the Indians is an anomaly in the political world, and the questions connected with it are emi nently practical, depending upon peculiar circumstances, and changing with them. It is the law of the land,' says Chancellor Kent, speaking of the titles derived from conquest and discovery, and no court of justice can permit the right to be disturbed by speculative reasonings on abstract rights.'*We do not mean to say,' observes the Supreme Court of the State of New York, that the condition of the Indian tribes, at former and remote periods, has been that of subjects or citizens of this state. Their condition has been gradually changing, until they have lost every attribute of sovereignty, and become entirely dependent upon, and subject to, our government.' † There Our system of intercourse has resulted from our superiority in physical and moral power. The peculiar character and habits of the Indian nations, rendered them incapable of sustaining any other relation with the whites, than that of dependence and pupilage. There was no other way of dealing with them, than that of keeping them separate, subordinate, and dependent, with a guardian care thrown around them for their protection.' All this, and much more than this, is incontrovertible. They would not, or rather they could not, coalesce with the strangers who had come among them. was no point of union between them. They were as wild, and fierce, and irreclaimable, as the animals, their co-tenants of the forests, who furnished them with food and clothing. What had they in common with the white man? Not his attachment to sedentary life; not his desire of accumulation; not his submission to law; not his moral principles, his intellectual acquirements, his religious opinions. Neither precept nor example, neither hopes nor fears, could induce them to examine, much less to adopt their improvements. The past and the future being alike disregarded, the present only employs their thoughts. They could not, therefore, become an integral part of the people who began to press upon them, as time and circumstances have elsewhere generally united the conquerors and the conquered, but still remained in juxtaposition, and in such circumstances as rendered inevitable a continued intercourse between them and their civilized neighbors. The result of all this was necessarily to compel the latter to prescribe, from * Commentaries on American Law, Vol. III. p. 310. Kent's Commentaries, Vol. III. p. 310. |