Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/232

212 are entertained about any advantage or property obtained in our victory over Great Britain. We rest without a single throb of conscience in the fullest enjoyment of them. Indeed, we are ready to put the most indulgent construction upon, and to strain to the fullest vindication which candor and justice will allow, the sort and right of tenure which Great Britain had enjoyed to the territory which we conquered from her. Our Government is not responsible for trespass against the natural rights of the aborigines which Britain committed in following what it would call a law of Nature, after discovery. A striking illustration is found of the views of our Government on this matter in the course pursued by General St. Clair, when he went, in 1788, as governor of the Northwest Territory, to Fort Harmar, — Marietta, — at the confluence of the Muskingum and the Ohio, to enter into treaties with savages north and west of the latter river. When the savages complained that the whites were not willing to regard the river as a boundary, St. Clair flatly told them, that, as they had been allies of our British enemies in the war, they must meet as the consequence of defeat the loss of their lands.

It is time for us now to turn to the aboriginal tribes, to inquire what had been and were their territorial rights before and while they were being ground in the mill by rival European nationalities, all intruders.

What were the right and tenure by which the red men, on the first coming of Europeans as colonists to this continent, are to be understood as holding the soil, either in localities by their several tribes, or as a race in possession of the whole territory? Of course we put out of sight all those terms — instruments, covenants, and constitutions — in use among nations, states, and municipalities under civilization, to define their bounds and mark their jurisdiction. No state-paper offices, no registries of deeds, no treaty sanctions even, have place in this question; and only such