Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/563

Rh There have, likewise, been cases in which this occupancy right of tribes to any coveted territory was wholly overlooked and coolly disregarded; no account whatever being made of it. This was signally true in the case of the tribes occupying the present Territories of Oregon and Washington. Our Government, in connection with public and private promoters of the enterprise, offered strong inducements to settlers to enter upon and occupy those lands, without even the slightest previous attempt to extinguish the Indian title, indeed without even a recognition of it. This was all the more to be deplored because the natives there had long been under the influence of the agents of the Hudson Bay Company, who trafficked freely with them, maintaining the most friendly intercourse. The Indians, therefore, were substantially British subjects. When suddenly they found Americans, of whom they were jealous and whom they despised, settling upon their best lands, they were naturally exasperated to acts of hostility.

As an illustration of the system under which treaties have been solemnly made with the pledged faith of the United States, and then by the connivance or assistance of the same supreme authority have been broken and substantially repudiated, may be instanced that with the Sioux, for the infraction of which the long drawn-out penalty is being still inflicted upon us in the threatenings of bloody and costly strife.

The Constitution pronounces all treaties to be the supreme law of the land. Our Supreme Court has pronounced them binding and inviolable, overruling anything in the constitution or laws of the single States. The famous ordinance of 1787, for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio, covenanted that the utmost good faith should always be kept with the Indians, that their lands, property, rights, and liberties should be secured and respected, without encroachment or disturbance, and that from time to time just and humane laws should be