against the whites, but had tamely, like sheep, moved off as they were approached, they would have shamed Europeans into yielding through magnanimity what the overcoming of resistance has led them to claim as their rights over the savages.
President J. Q. Adams, in his message of 1828, states emphatically what had been the theory acted upon by the Government since established by the Constitution: “The principle was adopted of considering the Indians as foreign and independent powers, and also as proprietors of lands. As independent powers, we negotiated with them by treaties; as proprietors, we purchased of them all the land which we could prevail on them to sell; as brethren of the human race, rude and ignorant, we endeavored to bring them to the knowledge of religion and of letters.”
The decision of the Supreme Court, in 1832 (Worcester vs. Georgia), confirmed this view as to the treaty-making power and as to the foreign nationality of the Indians. But it has proved of no avail, either as holding our Government to any consistent course of policy, or as adding to the security of the Indians in any of our negotiations with them. Had the inquiry at any time been fairly pressed by an intelligent Indian upon any one of our statesmen, “Do you admit that my tribe owns the unbounded region over which we roam and hunt, precisely as your people individually own their house-lots and farms?” the answer, if candid and manly, would need to have been, “No; I do not.”
The following passage in the recently published diary of John Quincy Adams,[1] is of interest here. It is a record of a Cabinet meeting under his Presidency, Dec. 22, 1825, — the business relating to the affairs of the Creek Indians and Georgia: —
“Mr. Clay [Secretary of State] said that it was impossible to civilize Indians; that there never was a full-blooded Indian who
took to civilization. It was not in their nature. He believed- ↑ Vol. vii. p. 90.
