thousand dollars’ worth of goods at once; and “henceforward, every year, forever, useful goods to the value of nine thousand five hundred dollars.” Peace was declared to be “established” and “perpetual.”
General Wayne told the Indians that they might believe him, for he had never, “in a public capacity, told a lie;” and one of the Indians said, with much more dignity, “The Great Spirit above hears us, and I trust we shall not endeavor to deceive each other.”
In 1813, by a treaty at Vincennes, the bounds of the reservation of the Post of St. Vincennes were defined, and the Indians, “as a mark of their regard and attachment to the United States, relinquished to the United States the great salt spring on the Saline Creek.”
In less than a year we made still another treaty with them for the extinguishment of their title to a tract of land between the Ohio and the Wabash rivers (which they sold to us for a ten years’ annuity of three hundred dollars, which was to be “exclusively appropriated to ameliorating their condition and promoting their civilization”); and in one year more still another treaty, in which a still farther cession of land was made for a permanent annuity of one thousand dollars.
Tn August of this year General Harrison writes to the Secretary of War that there are great dissensions between the Delawares and Miamis in regard to some of the ceded lands, the Miamis claiming that they had never consented to give them up. General Harrison observes the most exact neutrality in this matter, but says, “A knowledge of the value of land is fast gaining ground among the Indians,” and negotiations are becoming in consequence much more difficult. In the course of this controversy, “one of the chiefs has said that he knew a great part of the land was worth six dollars an acre.”
It is only ten years since one of the chiefs of these same tribes had said, “Money is to us of no value.” However, they
