Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/251

Rh either of theory or practice, in the disposal of the whole question by the whites. We can afterwards acquaint ourselves with any terms or bargains by which the English alone of all the colonists, with a slight exception for the Dutch and the Swedes, appear to have qualified their general assumption that the Indians had no territorial rights whatever. In treating in later pages upon the subject of the cession made by Indian chiefs or tribes of portions of territory, — by private bargain, covenant, or formal treaty transfer, — we shall have occasion to note what were the Indians' views of their land tenure, and what was the valuation which they set or allowed the white man to set upon the property surrendered.

The result of the white man's view of the tenure of the natives to the soil, as we are to attempt to define it, was, — as we see it now over the larger part of this continent, and as coming generations will surely see over the remainder of it, — this, the succession of the civilized white man, or possibly the civilized Indian, to the savage red man in occupying it. This was from the first, and will be, inevitable. The nature and constitution of things, as we say, decide it. According to our preference of thought and phrase, we may assert either that fate compelled or that a wise Providence decreed it. The reasoning was as follows: If the earth and man have the relation of place and occupant to each other, then each portion of the earth and the whole of it will belong to those men whose best use of it will give them the mastery of it. If this earth is to support human life, then the extending and increasing needs of man must decide the conditions under which it shall be populated and ruled. If the magnificent resources of this continent, instead of being unused or wasted, were to be turned to the account of man's subsistence, improvement, development, and general welfare, then certainly the red man's habits and ways of life must give place to those of the white man. All our regrets and reproaches, — our