Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/562

542 for the rights of people of African descent residing among them. These rights the councils of the Indian nations refused to yield or sanction. So Congress was called upon to appropriate three hundred thousand dollars to remove elsewhere the proscribed race. Probably this assertion of a prerogative and breach of compact by those Indian councils comes the nearest of any instance in our history to an effective assertion and defence of its claimed sovereignty by any Indian tribe. Congress stipulated with the people of Georgia to extinguish the Indian title to all lands in that State, and yet covenanted with the Creeks and Cherokees that they should hold their lands there forever. Now it is not strange that the arts of the white man in making, breaking, and trifling with Indian treaties should seem to warrant what a head of our modern peace commission tells us, thus: “Whatever our people may choose to say of the insincerity or duplicity of the Indians, would fail to express the estimate entertained by many Indians of the white man's character in this respect of broken promises, cunning, cupidity, and cruelty.” But even the principle supposed to have been adopted and followed from the first by our Government in recognizing a right of occupancy and of perpetual use by any Indian tribe of territory actually inhabited and hunted over by them, has by no means been honored in all cases. This local native right would have been of some value to the Indian and some restraint upon the white man, had it really been respected in its terms and consequences as among civilized parties. It is notorious, however, that this right has never been able to stand against the white man's purpose and resolve to acquire any territory when he could plead his need or desire of it. The Indian's right to hold was subordinate to the white man's right to buy, — a right which involved the other right of compelling the Indians to sell, on terms, too, which in effect the purchaser himself dictated.