.

But how were the savage wards occupying these lands, and thus suddenly
coming under the guardianship of the republic, to be dealt with? Were
they to be evicted by force and arms, and their possessory rights
entirely disregarded, or were their claims as occupants to be gradually
and legitimately extinguished by treaty and purchase, as the frontiers
of the white man advanced? In other words, was the seisin in fee on the
part of the states, or the United States, to be at once asserted and
enforced, to the absolute and immediate exclusion of the tribes from the
lands they occupied, or was a policy of justice and equity to prevail,
and the ultimate right to the soil set up, only after the most diligent
effort to ameliorate the condition of the dependent red man had been
employed? The answer to this question had soon to be formulated, for on
March 1st, 1784, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee and James
Monroe, delegates in the Continental Congress on the part of the State
of Virginia, in pursuance of the magnanimous policy of her statesmen,
executed a deed of cession to the United States, of all her claim and
right to the territory northwest of the Ohio, the same to be used as a
common fund "for the use and benefit of such of the United States as
have become, or shall become, members of the confederation or federal
alliance of the states." The only reservations made were of a tract of
land not to exceed one hundred and fifty thousand acres to be allowed
and granted to General George Rogers Clark, his officers and soldiers,
who had conquered Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and the western British posts
under the authority of Virginia, said tract being afterwards located on
the Indiana side of the Ohio, adjacent to the falls of that river, and
known as the "Illinois Grant," and a further tract to be laid off
between the rivers Scioto and Little Miami, in case certain lands
reserved to the continental troops of Virginia upon the waters of the
Cumberland, "should, from the North Carolina line, bearing in further
upon the Cumberland lands than was expected," prove to be deficient for
that purpose. The cession of Virginia was preceded by that of New York
on the first day of March, 1781, and followed by that of Massachusetts,
on the 19th day of April, 1785, and that of Connecticut on the 14th of
September, 1786, and thus the immense domain now comprising the states
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, with the excepti