Page:A Century of Dishonor.pdf/54

36 Were there many speeches made by commanders to their troops in those revolutionary days with which these words do not compare favorably?

This treaty, by which our faithful ally, Wicocalind, was reinstated in his tribal yank, was made at Fort M‘Intosh in 1785. The Wyandottes, Chippewas, and Ottawas, as well as the Delawares, joined in it. They acknowledged themselves and all their tribes to be “under the protection of the United States, and of no other sovereign whatsoever.” The United States Government reserved “the post of Detroit” and an outlying district around it; also, the post at Michilimackinac, with a surrounding district of twelve miles square, and some other reserves for trading-posts.

The Indians' lands were comprised within lines partly indicated by the Cuyahoga, Big Miami, and Ohio rivers and their branches; it fronted on Lake Erie; and if “any citizen of the United States,” or “any other person not an Indian,” attempted to settle on any of the lands allotted to the Delaware and Wyandotte nations in this treaty”—the fifth Article of the treaty said—“the Indians may punish him as they please.”

Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, all are largely made up of the lands which were by this first treaty given to the Indians.

Five years later, by another treaty at Fort Harmar, the provisions of this treaty were reiterated, the boundaries somewhat changed and more accurately defined. The privilege of hunting on all the lands reserved to the United States was promised to the Indians “without hinderance or molestation, so long as they behaved themselves peaceably;” and “that nothing may interrupt the peace and harmony now established between the United States and the aforesaid nations,” it was promised in one of the articles that white men committing offences or murders on Indians should be punished in the same way as Indians committing such offences.