Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/524

504 either the alliance of the natives or their neutrality. Of course, the tribes with whom we first formed treaties were few, and were on our immediate borders. Till the beginning of this century the treaties were almost wholly confined to Indians on this side of the Mississippi, after its confluence with the Ohio, and down to the Gulf of Mexico. Till quite recently these treaties have been steadily multiplying with natives on further reaches of territory, and judging by the increase of new tribal names on our records one would suppose that we have come into contact with thickening multitudes of them. There was always an over-estimate of the number of Indians on our soil; and this over-estimate has been helped in our days by the greed of agents, guardians, and bounty distributors, interested to make the number of their wards as large as possible. The census of 1850 was the first in which the United States Government made a systematic effort for anything like exactness in estimating the Indians within its borders. Separate censuses had at times been made by the colonies. The annexation of States and Territories — as Florida, Texas, and California — has of course swollen the Indian census.

During the war of the Revolution we found, as we had every reason to expect, that the savage allies of our British foes, continually plied by active agents among them, under good pay, and well supplied with arms, were, and were long afterwards to be, a pestering and destructive enemy. The confederation had committed to it the oversight and management of the Indians, and the power to make compacts and treaties with them. It accomplished a great deal of hard work in this direction, and negotiated many treaties, such as they were, securing by purchase more than a hundred million acres. It came into collision, however, with the claims and rights asserted by the States and Territories, though at the time of the adoption of the Constitution all these disputes had been adjusted, save those with North Carolina and Georgia. Only the Iroquois and the