Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 7.djvu/18

 8 INDIAN TREATIES. ment with which they are cormectt-:d._  new and old members of the society mingle with each other; the distinction between them is gradually lost, and they make one people. Where this incorporation IS practicable, humanity demands, and a wise policy requires, that the rights of the ponuered to property should remain ummpaired; that the new subjects hhiould be governed as equitably as the old, and that confidence in their security should gradually banish the painful sense of being separated from their ancient connexions, and united by force to stran(ge_rs. _ When the conquest is complete, an the conquere inhabitants can be blended with the conquerors, or safely governed as a distinct people, public opinion, which not even the conqueror can disregard, imposes these restraints upon him; and he cannot neglect them without injury to his fame, and hazard to his power. But the tribes of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages, whose occupation was war, and whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from the forest. To leave them in possession of their country, was to leave the country a wilderness; to govern them as a distinct pecp e, was impossible, because they were as brave and as high—spir1ted as they were fierce, and were ready to repel by arms every attempt on their independence. What was the inevitable consequence of this state of things'! The Europeans were under the necessity either of abandoning the country, and relinquishing their pompous claims to it, or of enforcing those claims b the sword, and by the adoption of principles adapted to the condition od a people with whom it was impossible to mix, and who could not be governed as a distinct society, or of remaining in their npjgbbourhood, and exposing themselves and their families to the perpet hazard of being massacred. Frequent and bloody wars, in which the whites were not always the aggressors, unavoidably ensued. European policy, numbers, and skill, prevailed. As the white population advanced, that of the Indians necessarily receded. The country in the immediate neighbourhood of agriculturists became unfit for them. The game fled into thicker and more unbroken forests, and the Indians followed. The soil, to which the crown originally claimed title, being no longer occupied by its ancient inhabitants, was parcelled out according to the will of the sovereign power, and taken possession of by etsons who claimed immediately from the crown, or mediately, througli) its grantees or deputies. That law which regulates, and ought to regulate in general, the relations between the conqueror and conquered, was incapable of application to a people under such circumstances. The resort to some new and different rule, better adapted to the actual state of things, was unavoidable. Every rule which can be suggested will be found to be attended with great difficulty. _ However extravagant the pretension of converting the discovery of an inhabited country into conquest may appear; if the principle has been asserted in the first instance, and afterwards sustained; if a country has been acquired and held under it; if the property of the great mass of the community originates in it, it becomes the law of the land, and cannot be questione . So, too, with respect to the concomitant principle, that the Indian inhabitants are to be considered merely as occupants, to be pro— tected, indeed, while in peace, in the possession of their lands, but to be incapable of transferring the absolute title to others. However this restriction maybe opposed to natural right, and to the usages of civilized nations, yet, 1f it be indispensable to that system under which the country has been settled, and be adapted to the actual condition of the two people, 1t may, perhaps, be supported by reason, and certainly cannot be rejected by courts of justice. It was doubted whether a state can be seised in fee of lands subject to the lndnm title, and whether a decision that they were seised in fee, might