Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/540

520 law, from its formation to this day, to any theory as to the tenure by which any band of the aborigines held territory here. We shall soon notice how vacillating, inconstant, and self-stultifying has been the course of our Government from the lack of such a theory held and consistently followed. The development of wealth and enterprise on our domain has been such in its rapidity and amazing results, that the keenest and most kindled imagination could not have brought it into dreams or visions. The rushing in of millions of immigrants from foreign lands, year by year, with increasing volume and force of tide; the steady pressure of restless adventurers, unsuccessful and discontented in the half-developed centres of civilization, to seek unlimited space of new territory, never entered into the calculations of our statesmen, who thought that we should hear no more of Indians if we could once get them to settle on the other side of the Mississippi. President Van Buren bore the epithet of “slyness,” but he certainly won the repute of sagacity. There is no reason to doubt his integrity of purpose when, in 1838, he sought to persuade the Choctaws, Creeks, and Cherokees to move to lands in Arkansas, to be covenanted to them in exchange for those occupied by them in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and assured them that as the former lands, though admirably suited for Indians, would be of no use to white men, they would never again be disturbed. The title of “The Great American Desert” is still ringing in the ears of men as familiar to them in their youth, who have since seen it parted into flourishing States and Territories, furnishing millionnaires with fortunes scraped from its surface or its depths. It is but fair to admit that a policy of government, such as it was, adopted without any prescience of these developments, would find that it had been blundering, though not necessarily mean and unjust in intent, in making, evading, or breaking contracts with Indians. And in reference to a large and grievous class of wrongs which