ith or get a title from. It is
scarcely necessary to say of negotiations thus conducted, that they
embraced no general scheme of Indian relations; that they aimed
invariably at the accomplishment of immediate and more or less local
objects, and often attained these at the cost of much embarrassment in
the future, and even at the expense of neighboring settlements and
colonies.

Throughout the history of Colonial transactions, we find few traces of
any thing like impatience of the claims of the Indians to equality in
negotiation and in intercourse. Neither the power nor the character of
the aborigines was then despised as now. Strong in his native illusions,
his warlike prestige unbroken, the Indian still retained all that
natural dignity of bearing which has been found so impressive even in
his decline. The early literature of the country testifies to the
disposition of the people to hold the more romantic view of the Indian
character, even where the animosities of race were deadliest; nor does
it seem that the general sentiment of the Colonies regarded the
necessity of treating on equal terms with the great confederacies of
that day as in any degree more derogatory than the civilized powers of
Europe in the same period esteemed the necessity of maintaining
diplomatic relations with the great Cossack power of the North. Indeed,
the treaty with the Delawares in 1778 actually contemplated the
formation of a league of friendly tribes under the hegemony of the
Delawares, to constitute the fourteenth State of the confederation then
in arms against Great Britain, with a proportional representation in
Congress. And this was proposed, not by men accustomed to see negroes
voting at the polls, and even sitting in the Senate of the United
States, but by our conservative and somewhat aristocratic ancestors.

But after the establishment of our national independence, incidental to
which had been the destruction of the warlike power of the "Six
Nations," the nearest and most formidable of all the confederacies known
to Colonial history, we note a louder tone taken--as was natural
enough--with the aboriginal tribes, a greater readiness to act
aggressively, and an increasing confidence in the competency of the
white race to populate the whole of this continent. Earlier Indian wars
had been in a high sense a struggle for life on the part of the infant
settlements: they had been engaged in reluctantly, after being postponed
by every exp