Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 7.djvu/15

INDIAN TREATIES. 5 each other, and were continued until finally settled in the year 1763, by the treaty of Paris. Each nation had granted and partially settled the country, denominated by the French, Acadie, and by the English, Nova Scotia. By the twelfth article of the treaty of Utrecht, made in 1703, his most Christian majesty ceded to the Queen of Great Britain, “ all Nova Scotia or Acadie, with its ancient boundaries." A great part of the ceded territory was in the possession of the Indians, and the extent of the cession could not be adjusted by the commissioners to whom it was to be referred. The treaty of Aix la Chapelle, which was made on the principle of the status ante bellum, did not remove this subject of controversy. Commis— sioners for its adjustment were appointed, whose very able and elaborate, though unsuccessful arguments, in favour of the title of their respective sovereigns, show how entirely each relied on the title given by discovery to lands remaining in the possession of Indians. Ader the termination of this fruitless discussion, the subject was transferred to Europe, and taken up by the cabinets of Versailles and London. This controversy embraced not only the boundaries of New England, Nova Scotia, and that part of Canada which adjoined those colonies, but embraced our whole western country also. France contended not only that the St. Lawrence was to be considered as the centre of Canada, but that the Ohio was within that colony. She founded this claim on discovery, and on having used that river for the transportation of troops, in a. war with some southern Indians. This river was comprehended in the chartered limits of Virginia; but, though the right of England to a reasonable extent of country, in virtue of her discovery of the seacoast, and of the settlements she made on it, was not to be questioned; her claim of all the lands to the Pacific ocean, because she had discovered the country washed by the Atlantic, might, without derogating from the principle recognised by all, be deemed extravagant. It interfered, too, with the claims of France, founded on the same principle. She therefore sought to strengthen her original title to the lands in controversy, by insisting that it had been acknowledged by France in the fifteenth article of the treaty of Utrecht. The dispute respectincr the construction of that article, has no tendency to impair the principle, that discovery gave a title to lands still remaining in the possession of the Indians. Vt/hichever title prevailed, it was still a title to lands occupied by the Indians, whose right of occupancy neither controverted, and neither had then extinguished. These conflicting claims produced a long and bloody war, which was terminated by the conquest of the whole country east of the Mississippi. In the treaty of 1763, France ceded and guarantied to Great Britain, all Nova Scotia or Acadie, and Canada, with their dependencies; and it was agreed, that the boundaries between the territories of the two nations, in America, should be irrevocably fixed by a line drawn from the source of the Mississippi, throuch the middle of that river and the lakes Maurepas and Ponchartrain, to the sea. 'l`his treaty expressly cedes, and has alwa ·s been understood to cede, the whole country, on the English side of the dividing line, between the two nations, although a great and valuable part of it was occupied by the Indians. Great Britain, on her part, surrendered to France all her pretensions to the country west of the Mississippi. It has never been supposed that she surrendered nothing, although she was not in actual possession of a foot of land. She surrendered all right to acquire the country; and any after attempt to purchase it from the Indians, would have been considered and treated as an invasion of the territories of France. By the 20th article of the same treaty, Spain ceded Florida, with its dependencies, and all the countries she claimed east or south-east of the Mississipipi, to Great Britain. Great part of this territory also was in possession 0 the Indians. A 2