sachusetts to
Georgia; nor later still, when the Colonies had become States, and the
representatives of the new nation of the Western world were received in
all the courts of Europe--was the policy abandoned of treating with the
Indian tribes as parties having equal powers of initiative, and equal
rights in negotiation. In nearly four hundred treaties, confirmed by the
Senate as are treaties with foreign powers, our government recognized
Indian tribes as nations with whom the United States might contract
without derogating from its sovereignty.

The treaties made with Indian tribes have, of course, been mainly
treaties of cession. Most of our readers will be surprised to learn the
extent of lands east of the Mississippi which are embraced in sales to
the United States; being no less than the entire States of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, with
considerable portions of Tennessee, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And these
treaties were not a mere form to amuse and quiet savages, a
half-compassionate, half-contemptuous humoring of unruly children. The
United States were not then grown so great that they could afford to
value lightly the free relinquishment of the soil by the native owners
of it. At the time most of the treaties with tribes east of the
Mississippi were concluded, not only did the right remain in the
Indians, but enough of power, to make it as much a diplomatic triumph to
obtain a cession on favorable terms, as it would be to negotiate a
successful treaty with one of the States of Central America to-day. The
United States were clearly the stronger party in every such case; but
the Indians were, in the great body of instances, still so formidable,
that to wrest their lands from them by pure, brutal violence would have
required an exertion of strength which the government was ill prepared
to make. So that, while it is true that the Indians were generally made
ready to negotiate by the use of military force and by the pressure of
white settlements, it is not true that the considerations and privileges
accorded them in these treaties were a gift out of good-nature.

So much for the power of the Indians when they made these treaties.
Their right to their lands is quite as well established historically. In
the early history of the Western world, the principle was fully
recognized, that, while sovereignty rested, not with the Indians, but
with the civilized power claiming by virtue o