Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/246

226 reaches of dominion, of island or continent, on individuals or companies, he never gave a thought to extinguishing an Indian title, or perplexing himself with the tenure by which the aborigines held the regions given away so lavishly by him.

When on the expansion of our population by pioneer emigration from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, the Americans came into hostile relations with the old French posts beyond the Ohio, they assumed that, having conquered the French and the English, they might take possession of any territory previously held by them. The British from Canada, and such of them as still lingered holding the lake and river posts, under the chagrin of their defeat endeavored to instigate many Indian tribes into a conspiracy against the inflowing emigrants. They also prompted the Indians to affirm that the English had never received any deeds or titles to the disputed lands. These controversies were more or less satisfactorily disposed of by new treaties, beginning with that of Fort Harmar. But when the emigration reached the farther French posts, the plea was that the French had never really owned any territory there, but had set up their trading-houses and missions merely by allowance, — neither receiving nor asking formal covenants to do so, — and thus had never acquired a permanent title to the soil.

The theory under which Europeans came and took possession of parts of this continent, and have been led by the development of circumstances to claim the whole of it, was in their view a very simple one. So far as regarded any rival questions among themselves, the right of occupancy was admitted to be founded upon discovery, confirmed by actual entry upon any defined portion of the territory. This was the political element of the right. But as regards the