Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/230

210 of offices provided for them, with other provisions for their testamentary or non-testamentary disposal. Excepting always the guardianship of human life, none of the possessions of civilized men are more jealously watched over and secured than is real estate. The whole powers of a gradation of courts are engaged — even without charge to individuals concerned, because having to do with a common public interest — to guard these landed rights of ownership. There certainly is a fundamental difference between this tenure of land as held by civilized men, and that of nomadic roamers or transient squatters over portions of wilderness territory. Precisely what that difference of tenure is, we are to try to define. But it is well for us to anticipate the inquiry by presenting to ourselves in full contrast the claims, usages, and acquired rights of those who by settlement and toil improve the surface of the earth, and those who only skim it.

Another preliminary and comprehensive question now presents itself. As in the last resort we all look to our General Government for protection and security in our titles to land, as to other forms of property, we assume that the fee of the whole territory vests in that Government. How did the Government acquire the right and power to hold this territory, parcelled out to individuals, or secured by it in large spaces to Indians? In answer to this question — postponing the notice of what had previous to our Revolutionary war transpired in the relations, peaceful or warlike, with the aboriginal tribes — we have to say, in general, that our Government holds part of the territory by cession in the treaty with Great Britain closing our national struggle. Portions of the territory have been since added by purchase from the French and Spaniards, and by conquest, annexation, and compensation in our relations with Mexico. But primarily our rights, such as they are, accrue from our victory over Great Britain. That power claimed at least such a portion of our continent as at the period