Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 7.djvu/11

INDIAN TREATIES. Tnn editor of this work has considered it obligatory upon him to exhibit, as preliminary matter to the treaties between the United States and the Indian tribes, the general principles which have been recognised by the Supreme Court of the United States in relation to the Indian tribes, the Indian title to the lands occupied blysthem, and the effect of treaties with them upon their claims to these lan , or the claims of others under Indian nts. gmln the case of Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. William M’Intosh, 8 VlTheat0n’s Reports, 543; 5 Condensed Reports, 515, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, who delivered the opinion of the Court, said : The plaintiffs in this cause claim the land, in their declaration mentioned, under two grants, purporting to be made, the first in 1773, and the last in 1775, by the chiefs of certain Indian tribes, constitutin the I llinois and the Piankeshaw nations; and the question is, whether this title can be reco nised in the courts of the United States'! The Iacts, as stated in the case agreed, show the authority of the chiefs who executed this conveyance, so for as it could be given by their own people; and likewise show, that the particular tribes for whom these chiefs acted were in rightful possession of the land they sold. The inquiry, therefore, is, in a (great measure, confined to the power of Indians to give, and of private in ividuals to receive, a title which can be sustained in the courts of this country. As the right of society, to prescribe those rules by which property may be a uired and preserved, is not and cannot be drawn into question; as the fiile to lands, especially, is and must be admitted to depend entirely on the law of the nation in which they lie; it will be necessary, in pursuing this inquiry, to examine, not singly those principles of abstract justice, which the Creator of all things has im ressed on the mind of his creature man, and which are admitted to regulate, in a great degree, the rights of civilized nations, whose perfect independence is acknowledged; but those principles also which our own government has adopted in the particular case, and given us as the rule for our decision. On the discovery of this immense continent, the great nations of Europe were eager to appropriate to themselves so much of it as they could respectively acquire. Its vast extent offered an ample field to the ambition and enterprise of all; and the character and religion of its inhabitants afforded an apology for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendency. The potentates of the old world found no difficulty in convincing themselves that they made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the new, by bestovving on them civi `zation and Christianity, in exchange for unlimited independence. But, as the were all in pursuit of nearly the same object, it was necessary: in ordler to avoid coniiicting settlements, and consequent war with eac other, to establish a principle, which aH should acknowledge as the law by which the right of uisition, which they all asserted, should be regulated as between themilelves. This principle was, that discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession. 1 A m