ected
equally with both these objects, our trade with those tribes is thought
to merit the attention of Congress. In their original state game
is their sustenance and war their occupation, and if they find no
employment from civilized powers they destroy each other. Left to
themselves their extirpation is inevitable. By a judicious regulation of
our trade with them we supply their wants, administer to their comforts,
and gradually, as the game retires, draw them to us. By maintaining
posts far in the interior we acquire a more thorough and direct control
over them, without which it is confidently believed that a complete
change in their manners can never be accomplished. By such posts, aided
by a proper regulation of our trade with them and a judicious civil
administration over them, to be provided for by law, we shall, it is
presumed, be enabled not only to protect our own settlements from their
savage incursions and preserve peace among the several tribes, but
accomplish also the great purpose of their civilization.

Considerable progress has also been made in the construction of ships of
war, some of which have been launched in the course of the present year.

Our peace with the powers on the coast of Barbary has been preserved,
but we owe it altogether to the presence of our squadron in the
Mediterranean. It has been found equally necessary to employ some of
our vessels for the protection of our commerce in the Indian Sea, the
Pacific, and along the Atlantic coast. The interests which we have
depending in those quarters, which have been much improved of late, are
of great extent and of high importance to the nation as well as to the
parties concerned, and would undoubtedly suffer if such protection was
not extended to them. In execution of the law of the last session for
the suppression of the slave trade some of our public ships have also
been employed on the coast of Africa, where several captures have
already been made of vessels engaged in that disgraceful traffic.

JAMES MONROE.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

DECEMBER 12, 1820.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 6th of December,
requesting that the agent employed under the act entitled "An act
authorizing the purchase of fire engines and building houses for the
safekeeping of the same" should report in the manner stated in the said
resolution his conduct in execution of the said act, I now transmit