Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/233

Rh of the common law as pertain to the simple rights of humanity can come into the argument.

It has been assumed that on the first occasion of contact between the red man and the white man on each portion of this continent, as successively entered upon by colonists, the Indians then and there in occupancy — after their mode of use — had the full right of ownership, as if indigenous or lawful inheritors. Following the localities on the seaboard and the interior then occupied by tribes of the savages, we might be tempted to identify them with such spots, and, assigning each tract to each party, might infer a long and secure occupancy, known and certified, so as to cover a complete title. But such a conclusion on our part would be wide of the mark.

The right of any one tribe — or, as often loosely named, any one nation — of the savages to any particular region of territory here over which they roamed, or where they planted their cabins or cultivated their maize, was simply the right of present occupancy and possession. We can hardly, in any case known to us, say that it was a right of inheritance even, much less of continuity through generations of this or that same stock identified with a particular locality. We draw upon our fancies somewhat, if not in excess, when we speak of the ancestral forests, lakes, streams, and mountains passing by inheritance through the generations of a tribe. They were an Ishmaelitish race. The fact of possession was more often found through conquest than through inheritance. We have positive historical knowledge, in a large number and in a wide variety of cases, of the transient occupancy of one or another region by those whom the white men found upon it. The aborigines were in a chronic state of civil war. The war-path for them alternated with the hunting-path, though both paths often were on the same route. Their wars were for conquest, for revenge, for self-defence, and not infrequently ended only in the extermination of one party,