council, where several innocent chiefs were killed when absolutely engaged in promoting a peace with you, the Thirteen United States.”
The next year the President instructed the governor of the territory northwest of the Ohio to “examine carefully into the real temper of the Indian tribes” in his department, and says: “The treaties which have been made may be examined, but must not be departed from, unless a change of boundary beneficial to the United States can be obtained.” He says also: “You will not neglect any opportunity that may offer of extinguishing the Indian rights to the westward, as far as the Mississippi.”
Beyond that river even the wildest dream of greed did not at that time look.
The President adds, moreover: “You may stipulate that any white persons going over the said boundaries without a license from the proper officers of the United States may be treated in such manner as the Indians may see fit.”
I have not yet seen, in any accounts of the Indian hostilities on the North-western frontier during this period, any reference to those repeated permissions given by the United States to the Indians, to defend their lands as they saw fit. Probably the greater number of the pioneer settlers were as ignorant of these provisions in Indian treaties as are the greater number of American citizens to-day, who are honestly unaware—and being unaware, are therefore incredulous—that the Indians had either provocation or right to kill intruders on their lands.
At this time separate treaties were made with the Six Nations, and the governor says that these treaties were made separately because of the jealousy and hostility existing between them and the Delawares, Wyandottes, etc., which he is “not willing to lessen,” because it weakens their power. “Indeed,” he frankly adds, “it would not be very difficult, if circumstances required it, to set them at deadly variance.”
