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A CENTURY OF DISHONOR.

The commissioners who negotiated the treaty were apprehensive that they would be accused of having made too liberal terms with the Indians, and in their report to the department they enumerate apologetically the reasons which made it impossible for them to get the land cheaper. Mr. Cass says of the terms: “Under any circumstances, they will fall infinitely short of the pecuniary and political value of the country obtained.”

The Indians, parties to this treaty, surrendered by it almost the last of their hunting-grounds, and would soon be driven to depending wholly upon the cultivation of the soil.

In 1818 the Delawares again ceded land to the United States—ceded all to which they laid claim in the State of Indiana—and the United States promised to provide for them “a country to reside in on the west side of the Mississippi,” and “to guarantee to them the peaceable possession” of the same. They were to have four thousand dollars a year in addition to all the sums promised by previous treaties, and they were to be allowed to remain three years longer by sufferance in their present homes. The Government also agreed to pay them for their improvements on their lands, to give them a hundred and twenty horses, and a “sufficient number of pirogues to aid in transporting them to the west side of the Mississippi;” also provisions for the journey.

In 1829 a supplementary Article was added to this treaty. The United States Government began to show traces of compunction and pity. The Article says, “Whereas the Delaware Nation are now willing to remove,” it is agreed upon that the country in the fork of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, selected for their home, “shall be conveyed and forever secured by the United States to the said Delaware Nation, as their permanent residence; and the United States hereby pledges the faith of the Government to guarantee to the said Delaware Nation, forever, the quiet and peaceable and undisturbed enjoy-