law which has been passed by Congress for that purpose has
been found entirely ineffectual, because its operation has been
construed to relate to the Indian country exclusively. In calling your
attention to this subject, gentlemen, I am persuaded that it is
unnecessary to remind you that the article of compact makes it your duty
to attend to it. The interests of your constituents, the interests of
the miserable Indians, and your own feelings, will urge you to take it
into your most serious consideration and provide the remedy which is to
save thousands of our fellow creatures. So destructive has been the
progress of intemperance, that whole villages have been swept away. A
miserable remnant is all that remains to mark the homes and situation of
many numerous and warlike tribes."

Again, at Fort Wayne, on the seventeenth of September, 1809, preliminary
to the famous treaty of that year, this entry appears in the journal of
the official proceedings: "The Potawatomis waited on the Governor and
requested a little liquor, which was refused. The Governor observed that
he was determined to shut up the liquor casks until all the business
was finished." This is the conduct throughout of a wise and humane man
dealing with an inferior race, but determined to take no advantage of
their folly.

It was the steady and uniform policy of the United States government to
extinguish the Indian titles to the lands along the Wabash and
elsewhere, so that they might be opened up to the increasing tide of
white settlers. Contrary to the practices of most governments, however,
in their dealings with aborigines, the United States had established the
precedent of recognizing the right of the red men to the occupancy of
the soil and of entering into treaties of purchase with the various
tribes, paying them in goods and money for their land, while allowing
them the privilege of taking wild game in the territory ceded. President
Jefferson had always insisted on the payment of annuities in these
purchases, instead of a lump sum, so that a fund might be created for
the continual support of the tribes from year to year, and so that they
might be enabled to purchase horses, cattle, hogs and the instruments of
husbandry and thus gradually enter upon the ways of civilization. That
the dream of Jefferson was never realized; that the North American
savages never adopted the manners and pursuits of their white brethren,
does not bespeak any the less for the