become their interest and their
voluntary care. Instead, therefore, of an augmentation of military
force proportioned to our extension of frontier, I propose a moderate
enlargement of the capital employed in that commerce as a more
effectual, economical, and humane instrument for preserving peace and
good neighborhood with them.

On this side the Mississippi an important relinquishment of native title
has been received from the Delawares. That tribe, desiring to extinguish
in their people the spirit of hunting and to convert superfluous lands
into the means of improving what they retain, has ceded to us all the
country between the Wabash and Ohio south of and including the road from
the rapids toward Vincennes, for which they are to receive annuities in
animals and implements for agriculture and in other necessaries. This
acquisition is important, not only for its extent and fertility, but as
fronting 300 miles on the Ohio, and near half that on the Wabash. The
produce of the settled country descending those rivers will no longer
pass in review of the Indian frontier but in a small portion, and, with
the cession heretofore made by the Kaskaskias, nearly consolidates our
possessions north of the Ohio, in a very respectable breadth--from
Lake Erie to the Mississippi. The Piankeshaws having some claim to the
country ceded by the Delawares, it has been thought best to quiet that
by fair purchase also. So soon as the treaties on this subject shall
have received their constitutional sanctions they shall be laid before
both Houses.

The act of Congress of February 28, 1803, for building and employing
a number of gunboats, is now in a course of execution to the extent
there provided for. The obstacle to naval enterprise which vessels of
this construction offer for our seaport towns, their utility toward
supporting within our waters the authority of the laws, the promptness
with which they will be manned by the seamen and militia of the place
in the moment they are wanting, the facility of their assembling from
different parts of the coast to any point where they are required in
greater force than ordinary, the economy of their maintenance and
preservation from decay when not in actual service, and the competence
of our finances to this defensive provision without any new burthen are
considerations which will have due weight with Congress in deciding
on the expediency of adding to their number from year to year, as
experience