* Push-ma-ta-ha is said to have addressed himself to his brethren will say to them, he is no more. They will hear the tidings like the in the following manner, before his death:

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the speaker; how strictly they were scrutinized; how often were only the sudden gusts "of a calm world and a long they were repeated—" volat irrevocabile verbum.-It flew sometimes into foreign lands; it passed into other tongues; strangers sat in judgment on it as evidence of our national character-if time spared it, it became history.

Deeply solicitous never to say anything which would dishonor himself, or discredit the republic-for the rest, he was anxious only to express just thoughts in plain language. Truth, beautiful in berself, lost nothing of her grace by the simplicity of her garb.

Various petitions, memorials, and resolutions had been received, touching the Indians. A deep concern for their welfare had been professed by public meetings, by religious societies, by pious and benevolent individuals of every age, sex, and condition; but principally in those quarters of the Union which the Indians themselves no longer inhabited, and where least was known relative to their present condition and future prospects. Some political agitators had, probably, assisted to excite, or to direct, this ferment; but the zeal of the multitude was generally honest, though it might not be according to know ledge.

It was worthy of remembrance, however, that the few hundred, or few thousand persons, who wrote, talked, memorialized, and petitioned, were nothing in comparison with the millions who were silent and satisfied-the great body of the people, who were content with the course of the Government, and who relied with entire confidence, as well on the firmness as the wisdom and justice of their public agents.

It might be remarked, too, (he hoped without offence to any one,) that this deep feeling, admitting it to be so, was as sudden as it was deep. The Indians had nearly disappeared from eleven of the thirteen old States. They had perished, or removed, or been absorbed into the mass of the population. A few yet lingered-ghosts of old habits and lost dialects-dim shadows of departed tribes. Heretofore their gradual disappearance has produced no violent sensation. The legislation of the country, its arts, its agriculture, its commerce, its institutions, had all proceeded quietly on their march towards maturity and greatness, without alarm or remorse. Our population had advanced upon the wilderness with almost incredible rapidity, and no one was shocked when the hunter and his game retired before the bardy pioneers of christianity and civilization.

Nearly all the old States, except Georgia, most of them, while they were yet colonies, had assumed the guardianship of the Indians within their limits, and legislated for them. Some of the new ones had imitated that example. In 1825, a bill, absolutely like the present in principle, passed the Senate without a division, and almost without debate. In 1826, Alabama passed her first act, subjecting the Indians to her laws; yet so sluggish was that sensibility, now so acute, that no murmur of disapprobation disturbed the public repose. It did not follow, indeed, that the feeling now alleged to exist, was not just and proper, because it had been so tardy in exhibiting itself. If the subject of removing the Indians, with their own consent, which is all that this bill proposes, were a new one; if their condition had never before been thought of, some ardor might have been expected, in the first burst of unenlightened and mistaken sympathy. As it is, if this sensibility be at once so extensive, so impetuous, and so morbid, as it is represented; so novel a transport on so stale a subject, we might perhaps, assign it to a principle of our nature. Emotion to the moral, was like motion to the natural world-unnecessity-a law of existence, which at once agitated and preserved it. Judividuals and masses felt its effects; communities of men had their currents and counter-currentslike the air and the ocean. It would often be in vain to seek their proximate causes. If found, they might as often disappoint the object of the search. Sometimes, they

peace;" sometimes merely the subsiding swell of the past tempest. But the House, he hoped, were not expected to partake in every temporary excitement by which a partion of the people of this Union might be agitated.

To every remonstrance against real grievances; to every calm, deliberate, and settled expression of public sentment, that House must ever lend a ready and attentive ear-but they were to distinguish between the sober judg ment of the many, and the distempered fancies of the few. They were not partisans, but lawgivers; their province was to hear, weigh, and deliberate. If they looked to the people for practical opinions upon the operation of their laws, the people, in turn. looked to them for sound and liberal views of public policy-the result of wider obser vation, deeper reflection, and longer experience. He had no doubt that the discussions which took place there, would have much influence on public opinion; even on the opinion of those whom mistaken zeal had heretofore led to array themselves in opposition to the benevolent views of the President. He regretted his inability to contribute, by argument or eloquence, to disabuse the public mind of a portion of its prejudices. The humble task he had as sumed, was more suitable to his poor abilities. The House and the people were always competent to draw their own conclusions from admitted facts. To present as many of these as possible, and to review the past policy of the coun try, with respect to the Indians, was all he should attempt. He had spared no pains in collecting information; but, in communicating it to the House, condense the matter as le might, he much feared he should detain them longer than they desired.

Much had been said of the Indians' original title to this continent. He did not intend to enter at large into this part of the subject. The European settlers founded their title on the rights of discovery and conquest; they derived it from the law of nature and nations. Their claims were sanctioned by the opinions of such respectable writers as Vattel, Locke, and Grotius, and by the practice of the civilized world. They quoted the divine law: The earth, they said, was given to man for his inheritance, and was destined by the Creator to sustain the greatest portion of life and happiness. It was originally common, and appro priated by use and cultivation. All the colonies adopted these principles; they recognised a title in the Indians to those lauds only which they had subdued and cultivated, but never imagined that the savage had a natural right to exclude his fellow-man from all that he roamed over in the chase. The history of all the colonies would bear him out in these assertions. He might appeal to their charters. laws, public documents, and State papers. It would be tedious to enumerate or quote, yet he could not forbear reading one or two extracts. They would be received with the more indulgence on account of their source. The first was from the works of a learned and eminent jurist of the eastern States, whose eulogy had lately been eloquently made elsewhere, by a distinguished Senator from Mas sachusetts. That Senator had placed the name of Nathan Dane beside those of Solon and Lycurgus. It would be cruel in so good a judge to expose any thing less than extraordinary merit to so dangerous a contrast. Mr. Dane, in his valuable compilation of law, has the following obser vations on Indian title:

"A citizen, by our law, may have the right of soil and fee on wild lands; an Indian, in his native state, cannet; and so has the law of England, of America, and of christendom, viewed his case, from the first discovery of America. His deed has been viewed only as extinguishing his claim, and as giving quo ad him to the grantee; a right of peaceable entry, and not as passing the soil and fee. A universal practice, in two respects, evinces this: In every English patent, in ancient times, in America, and it is believed in every European christian grant, there never was

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"The relation which the Indians sustain to the Govern

n exception of the Indian heathen title; though generally here was an exception of other christian grants or settlement of the United States is peculiar in its nature. Their nents previously made." independence, their rights, their title to the soil which they occupy, are all imperfect in their kind."

2. "Every Englishman who came to America, viewed is English patent as giving him the legal title to the land; nd he settled with the Indians as of convenience, of equity, r humanity, and not as a matter of law, essential to his tle. Hence, even William Penn, as humane towards the adians as he was, began to fix forever his settlements on is patent title before he even conferred with the Indians bout their lands; and had he never agreed with them, he ad no idea of quitting Pennsylvania for want of a title to is lands.

After commenting upon their being permitted to make peace and war, to dispose of their lands by treaty, and their being without representation in our Government, he proceeds:

The learned and reverend gentleman, it was obvious, had adopted and transeribed, with a little inaccuracy, the opinion of the Supreme Court, which would hereafter be adverted to.

"Yet the jurisdiction of the whole country which they inhabit, according to the established law of nations, appertains to the Government of the United States; and the right of disposing of the soil attaches to the power that holds the jurisdiction. Indians, therefore, have no other pro"SEO. 18. Exactly so it was with the eight great pro-perty in the soil of their respective territories, than that of rietors of Carolina, Lord Baltimore in Maryland, Roswell mere occupancy." ad others in Massachusetts, and in all other English if not ristian places in America. Our ancestors seem to have Inde the true distinction, when by law they declared that dians had property in the lands they possessed and imroved, by subduing them, inferring they had no property Mr. W. said he would trouble the House with reading land not subdued by them; this distinction was founded only one or two more passages, from a work of high the law of nature, which has ever required that labor literary reputation: he spoke of the North American e bestowed upon a thing common, in order to make it in- Review, a journal always ably conducted, and never more vidual property. Europeans, in fact, have ever consider- so than at the period to which he referred. The remarks 1 our Indians as capable of property in a fish or wild in question were the more valuable, from having been east, because capable of bestowing on either that labor written at a time when the public mind was entirely withecessary and adequate to appropriate to oneself property out excitement on the rights of the Indians, and when it om the common stock; but they have never considered was, therefore, to be presumed the author of the interestem capable of property in lands generally, because gen-ing article before him expressed settled, sober, and delially incapable of subduing them from a wilderness to a ltivated state, and in this respect wholly unlike Euroeans."-4 Dane's Abridgment, 69. The observations of Mr. Dane in relation to William Penn ere borne out by an extract from his letter to the Indians, which he [Mr. W.] invited the attention of the House. Now, the great God hath been pleased to make me oncerned in your part of the world, and the King of the untry where I live, hath given me a great province there; but I desire to enjoy it with your leave and consent."roud's History of Pennsylvania, vol. 1, p. 195. For further illustrations of this topic, so far as it related Pennsylvania, he would refer gentlemen to a work to be und in the Library of Congress, entitled "A Historical eview of the Constitution of Pennsylvania." Desiring to draw his authorities, as far as possible, from urces unsuspected of any bias against the Indians, he ould next refer to the language used by a distinguished rist and civilian, the late Chief Magistrate of the United tates, in his oration on the festival of the pilgrims, Deember 22d, 1802:

berate opinions. In the review of "Letters on the eastern States," "The twelfth letter," says the reviewer, "treats of the past, present, and future state of the Indians; a subject which involves some questions of casuistry, and some of policy. It is a point sometimes mooted, not indeed by sincere moralists, but by political railers, who seize at any handle of national calumny, what right we or our fathers have, or had, to dispossess the aboriginal lords of the soil. This is an excellent question for disputation, for many of the arguments are on one side, while most of the truth is on the other. Nothing seems clearer, in the abstract, than that the original incumbents are the rightful proprietors of the soil; that it is not within the right of foreign intruders, under the pretence that they are civilized, while the incumbents are savage, to expel them from their possessions; nor is such a right not naturally possessed, to be acquired by such sort of purchases as are commonly made by civilized colonists of savage owners. In short, half-taught casuists are apt to shrug up their shoulders and look wise when the subject of such purchases is mentioned; and leave to be shrewdly suspected that the • There are moralists who have questioned the right of transaction is, after all, no better than a legal or a pious he Europeans to intrude upon the possessions of the abori- fraud. We are not at leisure to enter into the inquiry, how inals in any case, and under any limitations whatever. But far the temper and character of our early settlers, or the ave they maturely considered the subject? The Indian actual policy of our Government toward the natives, may ght of possession itself stands, with regard to the great-justify this supercilious righteousness of censure. st part of the country, upon a questionable foundation. There may have been something suspicious in the heir cultivated fields, their constructed habitations, a tone of feeling of the early colonists, a little too frequent pace of ample sufficiency for their subsistence, and what- allusions to the invasion of Canaan, and an ominous dispover they had annexed to themselves by personal labor, sition to return thanks for driving out the heathen. Our as undoubtedly, by the law of nature, theirs. But what early historians exult, with an alarming complacency, over the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand a pestilence which is said to have raged among the natives niles, over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of a year or two before the landing at Plymouth, and to have *covered the country which first presented itself to our forefathers with graves. But, notwithstanding all these incitements to mild and charitable judgments, it must not be forgotten that the property which vests in the mere right of possession depends on an extremely vague and indefinite tenure. It can scarcely be understood to extend beyond the limits of one organized civil society, where the established compensations by which every citizen pays all the rest for protecting him in his possessions, may seem

rey "

*

*

Shall the lordly savage not only disdain the virtues nd enjoyments of civilization himself, but shall he control ne civilization of a world?"

It was known to many gentlemen around him, that the Rev. Dr. Morse, about ten years ago, made a long report the War Department, on the condition of the American udians, after having been appointed a special agent to xamine into the subject, and after visiting in person seveal of the tribes. In that report, the learned and reverend uthor remarks:

VOL. VI-186.

North American Review, July 1820, page 93.

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large tract with a very small population; and would t rally disappear long before they had alienated all the lands."

to furnish an equitable ground on which those possessions are held by him. This right of property may even ac quire a benevolent extension, beyond the pale of the political organization that immediately protects it, and may "To take measures to preserve the Indians, is to tab be recognised by all similar organizations; that is to say, measures to preserve so much barbarity, helplessness, api there is a sort of common bond among all civilized nations, want, to the exclusion of so much industry and thriftinen to respect certain pretensions to property over the soil No personal injustice should be, or is tolerated; but the occupied respectively by each other. And yet so ex laws which have for their end to keep up the existe tremely feeble is this right of property, as recognised by of large bodies of half clad barbariaus, who will not e one nation in another that two princes have but to affront cannot sustain themselves by the arts of civilized life, a each other and go to war, and all the stipulations supposed laws to prevent comfort and improvement from taking the to exist are swept away, and you turn in your troops, with place of misery and want. The object of true humanity out scruple, upon the peaceful village of your neighbor. is not blindly to better the condition of a given individual, If such is the acknowledged frail foundation of the right whether he will be bettered or not, but to put a happer in nations who profess to be in alliance with each other by individual in the place of a less happy one. If it can be the bonds of civilization, on what good ground can a sa-done by, changing the nature of the latter, it is well; if t vage tribe lay claim to all the land that they can wander cannot, leave him to the operation of his character nat over in the chase, and to every forest in which the deer babits. Do not resist the order of Providence, which is car seeks refuge from their arrows? Who has recognised rying him away; and, when he is gone, a civilized man their property and what treaty has mankind entered into step into his place, and your end is attained. Had with them, to give them up fair continents to be so poorly British Government, when our settlements began, placed improved Naturally speaking, all men have a right to the whole of America under the administration of commslive on the earth; and a ship's company of exiles, forced sioners, and retained a right of pre-emption over all the by persecution, or a crowded population, or any other lands, the United States would have been to this day a cause, to a barbarous coast, have as good a natural right great-perhaps not a great-Massapee, or herring-posi to land and settle on it, as the native tribes to continue parish." there to hunt and fish. To avoid present inconvenience “Little, however, as we join in the regret whieb s and war, it is usual and most prudent to attempt to purchase sometimes expressed at the vanishing of the Indian tribes a right of the incumbents; but it is clear that they have we heartily participate the wish, that, before they are gue no more natural property in the soil than you. If it be forever, no pains should be spared, and no time lost insaid, in answer to this, that a tribe of savages might, with doing what? Can you imagine in collecting their tre equal reason, invade a cultivated shore, and claim an equa-ditions, describing their manners, and, above all, preserv lity of right with its civilized inhabitants, arguing that they ing specimens of their language." were their own judges, how a region ought to be inhabited, and that they held hunting and fishing to be a more proper mode of existence than tilling and pasturage; we answer, then, in the dry special pleading of the theory, this is true; and they must go to war, and the strongest be the rightful owner, as the barbarous nations did, when they came down from the wall of China, and took possession of the fair shores of the Mediterranean. But, in common sense and practice, there is no confusion in this case; nor would any sincere moralists be inclined to put the set-it. tlement at Plymouth on the footing of the invasion of Great Britain by a horde of Esquimaux."

The reviewer [said Mr. W.] proceeds: "What ought to be our conduct, in the present state of things towards the Indians, is a more important question; because it is one which will decide our treatment of a large class of fellowmen. It is tolerably well ascertained that they cannot support the neighborhood of civilization, Foreign and ignorant judges may sneer at this; but it is a simple fact, ascertained by experience. It would not be easy to substantiate a single act of violence, far less any systematically oppressive treatment towards the savages in this State, for instance, since the time when they had thirty churches in the neighborhood of Boston, and some of them served by ministers of their own race. And yet those churches, like so many others throughout our country, have vanished; and what is the cause? Simply this, that the Indians have either mingled with the whites, and thus been confounded with the mass, which has happened to so small a degree as scarce to deserve to be mentioned; or, remaining distinct, they have dwindled away, in consequence of necessary checks on their increase, not implying a volun tary oppression on our part. Drunkenness and other vices, of which the aliment has been imparted to them, have thinned their numbers. They lived by hunting and fish ing; we have cut down the forests, and killed the deer and the bears, and put to rout the beavers, and have built mill-dams across the rivers, and frightened away the sal mon, and come in all hungry to divide the spoil of the shad and the alewives, They must always have covered a very

Such [said Mr. W.] were the opinions of a sensible ma and accomplished scholar, speculating on the condition d' this extraordinary people, in the calm retirement of hi closet, ten years since. Will the House consent to hear him a little further? He quotes from the work which he is reviewing, this description of the vagrant Indians of New England.

It is remarkable how few of the natives are to be found in our population, and how rarely they blend with The discolorings from Indian are infinitely fewer than those arising from negro mixture. The few that remain are not so numerous as the gipsies in many parts of Ea rope, to which they may in many points be compared Two or three, or sometimes a larger group, perambulate the country, offering medicinal herbs, or brooms for sak almost the only article they manufacture. They are a harmless set of beings, and lead a life of hardship, though not of labor. I have sometimes thought, when I have see some of these poor Indians, on the revolving turns of fate that here were the descendants perhaps of the aachens who once held the country, and made treaties with our ancestors, when they might have annihilated them, gaining a scanty livelihood from the ebaritable purchases of ther posterity. They preserve most of the traits of the Indiso character, though embedded in civilization, and knowing no other language than the English. They are seldom ¦ seeu to laugh, are prone to intoxication, yet obliged, from poverty, to have intervals of sobriety; and in traversing the country, while they commonly make use of our roads, they retain a knowledge of its natural topography, and are never afraid of being lost in the forest, as they always know their direction, and often traverse the country, as was the primitive practice, from one stream to another, at the shortest carrying place, and still are acquainted with all the rivers and ponds, and the most probable places of ind ing game."-pp. 237, 238.

The reviewer proceeds:

"A small party of vagrants of this description, was late ly, and perhaps is now, wandering in our neighborhood One might easily have mistaken them for gipsies, but it

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the shade of copper color, instead of the dark olive in their their native wilderness to wandering hordes of ignorant complexions. Their party of six or eight consisted of and "brutal barbarians? Are our sciences, our arts, our three generations, of whom the two first retained a little literature, our institutions-all that makes life valuable, acquaintance with their native Indian dialect, which in the and adds grace and dignity to human nature, to be surrenthird was lost. They did not appear to share the quality dered to the natural claim of the Indian to the forest. And which is said to sit deep in gipsy blood, that of mistaking if not abandoned, why impeded? Are we to check the their neighbor's hen-roost for their own. Whether they course of human happiness-obstruct the march of science would have been able to hold fast their integrity, through-stay the works of art, and stop the arm of industry, bethe tempting season of June-eating and early Catharine cause they will efface in their progress the wigwam of the pears, we cannot undertake to say. While they honored red hunter, and put out forever the council fire of his us with their presence, they led a mighty houest life of tribe! basket weaving; and it was no unpleasant sight in the Mr. W. said, leaving this branch of the subject, he evening, to see the red flames and the heavy smoke curling would next attempt to trace an outline of our policy towards up round a comfortable iron pot, which they understood how the Indians. He did not mean to go back to the discovery to keep boiling as well as their neighbors. Neither can of America, the Pope's bull, or the conquest of Mexico. they be said to have beeen devoid of taste: for they took up He would begin with the confederation, and meant to do their abode on about the pleasantest spot which the dis- little more than present brief abstracts of official documents. trict contains, and added, by their romantic encampment, a new beauty to Jamaica pond, of a kind we suppose not wholly to the taste of the neighboring municipality; who soon approved their descent from the pilgrims, and, after a lapse of two or three weeks, drove out these heathen without further ceremony."

This [continued Mr. W.] was perhaps the best practical commentary he could make upon that part of the eloquent address of the gentleman, who had just sat down, ^[Mr. EVERETT] and the memorial of the inhabitants of the State of Massachusetts.

The continental Congress, on the 12h of July, 1775, appointed commissioners on Indian affairs, to treat with them, preserve peace, and prevent their taking any part in the approaching commotions.

On the 27th of January, 1776, they took measures to supply the Indians with goods.

On the 5th of February, 1776, upon the memorial of a Mohegan Indian of Connecticut, Congress resolved "That a friendly commerce between the people of the United States and the Indians, and the propagation of the gospel, and the cultivation of the civil arts among the latter, may produce many and inestimable advantages to both; and that the commissioners for Indian affairs be desired to consider of proper places in their respective departments for the residence of ministers and schoolmasters, and report the same tof Congress."

To resume the thread of his remarks, interrupted by this long quotation, which he trusted, however, was not alto gether destitute of interest, Mr. W. declared he was not disposed to enter into abstract or speculative doctrines on the subject of Indian title. Those who were, probably would say, all property is founded on utility on its ten- On the 10th of April, 1776, a similar resolution was dency to sustain a greater portion of life, promote the adopted as to the Delaware Indians. On the 27th of May, happiness of human beings, and develop the moral and 1777, the committee appointed to confer with a committee intellectual faculties of man. Property in any thing was of the Assembly of Pennsylvania, concerning a complaint acquired by the common consent of mankind, in conse-made by the Indians, report, "That they have conferred quence of the labor bestowed on it. Hence, in the progress of civilization, property might be acquired and secured for the common good, in many things. to which in a savage state no individual could acquire an exclusive title, without obstructing the end and aim of property itself human happiness.

with the said committee, by whom they were informed that a considerable number of the inhabitants of Pennsylvania have seated themselves upon lands belonging to the Indians, without their leave, or any authority from the State; and that the Indians are very uneasy on account of such intrusions: Whereupon, Resolved, That the executive What, for example, was more emphatically a man's own power, or Legislature of Pennsylvania, ought to take prothan the creations of his own genius, the fruit of his own per measures to quiet the minds of the said Indians, by invention the poetry of Milton, or the Machinery of Ark-assuring them that they shall have full satisfaction, either wright? To secure this property, in civilized society, was the object of copyright and patent laws.

But if a savage invented a bow or a trap, though he might have a property in the thing made, he could hardly bave a right to exclude his fellow-savage from the use of an invention which increased the facility of procuring subsistence, and so far improved the condition of the race. On what principle, then, could a people of savages exclude their civilized fellow-men from participation in a soil which they disdain to cultivate ?

But of what avail are speculative doctrines on this subject The common consent of mankind has settled it. Recognised by every respectable writer on the law of untions; acted upon by every civilized State-to what practical result would a further inquiry lead? Do we intend to be more wise, and just, and pious, than all the world besides? Do we mean to be only theoretically so? Is it proposed to practice on these dogmas? Does the wildest enthusiast dream of re-ceding to the savages the whole extent of country, which we, or our ancestors, obtained from them, as it is alleged, by lawless violence or delusive bargains Are our thirteen millions of people to abandon their farms, their cities, their flourishing agriculture, their widely extended commerce, their cherished manufactures, their forts, their dockyards, their schools, their colleges, their temples, their homes, and their altars, to restore

by the removal of the intruders, or by allowing them an adequate consideration for the soil, at the option of the Indians."

On the 2d of November, 1782, a committee of Congress report, "That they have had a conference with two deputies of the Catawba nation of Indians; that their mission respects certain tracts of land reserved for their use in the State of South Carolina, which they wish may be so secured to their tribe as not to be intruded into by force, nor alienated even with their own consent: Whereupon, Resolved, That it be recommended to the Legislature of the State of South Carolina to take such measures for the satisfaction and security of the said tribe, as the said Legislature shall in their wisdom think fit."

On the 22d of September, 1788, Congress issued a proclamation forbidding settlements on, or purchases of, Indian lands, without the limits or jurisdiction of any particular State.

Cu the 15th of October, 1788, after adopting some resolutions relative to Indian affairs, Congress resolved" that the preceding measures shall not be construed to affect the territorial claims of any of the States, or their legislative rights within their respective limits."

On the 30th of October, 1788, Congress adopted the following preamble and resolution:

"Whereas it appears that the application of the Legis