s time it hazards their friendship and excites
dangerous jealousies and perturbations in their minds to make any
overture for the purchase of the smallest portions of their land. A
very few tribes only are not yet obstinately in these dispositions. In
order peaceably to counteract this policy of theirs and to provide an
extension of territory which the rapid increase of our numbers will call
for, two measures are deemed expedient. First. To encourage them to
abandon hunting, to apply to the raising stock, to agriculture, and
domestic manufacture, and thereby prove to themselves that less land and
labor will maintain them in this better than in their former mode of
living. The extensive forests necessary in the hunting life will then
become useless, and they will see advantage in exchanging them for
the means of improving their farms and of increasing their domestic
comforts. Secondly. To multiply trading houses among them, and place
within their reach those things which will contribute more to their
domestic comfort than the possession of extensive but uncultivated
wilds. Experience and reflection will develop to them the wisdom of
exchanging what they can spare and we want for what we can spare and
they want. In leading them thus to agriculture, to manufactures, and
civilization; in bringing together their and our sentiments, and
in preparing them ultimately to participate in the benefits of our
Government, I trust and believe we are acting for their greatest good.
At these trading houses we have pursued the principles of the act of
Congress which directs that the commerce shall be carried on liberally,
and requires only that the capital stock shall not be diminished. We
consequently undersell private traders, foreign and domestic, drive them
from the competition, and thus, with the good will of the Indians, rid
ourselves of a description of men who are constantly endeavoring to
excite in the Indian mind suspicions, fears, and irritations toward us.
A letter now inclosed shows the effect of our competition on the
operations of the traders, while the Indians, perceiving the advantage
of purchasing from us, are soliciting generally our establishment
of trading houses among them. In one quarter this is particularly
interesting. The legislature, reflecting on the late occurrences on
the Mississippi, must be sensible how desirable it is to possess a
respectable breadth of country on that river, from our southern limit to
the