'hereditary bondsmen,' and those who sail in his wake, have bestowed a variety of appellations more familiar to the readers of the Criminal Calendar than to the admirers of polite literature. After perusing the said pages, the sleepers awakened will infinitely oblige me by revealing their candid opinion of these Texans - who, they will perceive, are only off-shoots from the Yankees' - my own idea being that their growth as a community, their establishment and sustentation of a constitutional government, and their endeavors, by means of that government, to raise in the wilderness the rarest monument of civilization, constitute one of the most remarkable passages in the history of associated man."

ART. IX.-1. The Case of the Seneca Indians in the State of New York, illustrated by facts. Printed for the information of the Society of Friends, by direction of the Joint Committees, etc. Philadelphia: 1840. pp. 256.

2. Appeal to the Christian Community, on the Condition and Prospects of the New York Indians, in Answer to a book entitled," The Case of the New York Indians," and other publications of the Society of Friends. By NATHANIEL T. STRONG, a Chief of the Seneca Tribe. New York: 1841.

3. Treaties between the United States of America and the several Indian Tribes, from 1778 to 1837. Compiled and printed by the direction and under the supervision of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Washington, D. C.: 1837.

4. Chief Justice Marshall's Decisions in the Supreme Court of the United States. (Cranch's, Wheaton's, Peters's, and Dallas's Reports, bearing on Indian Titles, on Resumption of Grants under imputation of Fraud, and Limit of Executive Discretion, in loco.)

THE fate of the red man in the new world is among the heaviest responsibilities that rest on the white man, coming from the old, who is so rapidly supplanting him. Though the race be destined, as would seem, gradually to melt away in the presence of civilization, still it changes not our duties toward them, as a Christian and responsible nation. We are answerable for our treatment of that fated race, both to God

and man. We stand before the bar of Christendom as guardians of their temporal and eternal interests. In assuming national independence, the United States assumed also the responsibility of the Indian tribes within their borders. It was the lien upon our land, coming down with the original title, and is therefore to be faithfully paid off by us, as men and Christians. But how? that is the question. Three possible schemes presented themselves. To incorporate them with the European population as citizens, amalgamating the races by intermarriage, was one supposable plan. But this European feelings forbade, and it could not therefore have been even tried by a government dependent on the popular will. The second was, to hold them as an independent people within our borders, to leave them undisturbed in their forests, and thus retain them within the old settlements of the whites permanently. This, too, was an impossible rule; for it forbade all increase of the white settlements, since the whole of the new states, as well as one half the territorial extent of the old, were thus encumbered, at the period of our independence, by Indian possession. The only remaining scheme was, to hold them in a state of dependent pupilage, to extinguish their possessory title from time to time, through voluntary cession by Indian treaties, and eventually to remove them to new forest homes in the further west, whenever the government, as their guardian, should deem it most expedient for them to remove. On this last and only feasible principle, did the federal government actually recognize them, and from the first has acted toward them, at first by simple cession, but for the last twenty-two years upon an organized system of removal to a tract of country specially appropriated for them, with a liberal provision for their emigration, instruction, and comfortable establishment, uninterfered with by the white man, in their new homes west of the Mississippi. Now that there are no difficulties in this Indian plan, we do not say. On the contrary, we think their whole case one of the hardest problems that any Christian government has ever been called on to solve; but still, under all circumstances, and under the light of all past experience, we think it without question the wisest and the best, however in its details it may have been fraudulently carried out. In saying this, however, we intend to cast no slight upon the Indian treaties of cession or removal, held by our government; for we find in them all reasonable fidelity to the guardianship they have

undertaken, and a sincere desire to find the best means to fulfil it. Our only quarrel with them is, that they have exercised too little authority, instead of too much, over those whom they profess to hold, and hold rightly, in a state of "pupilage." Not that they have consulted the Indian will too little, is our charge, as the Quaker plea puts it, but that they have consulted it too much, is our chief count against them; and in the present case we hold it obviously to be that out of which all the difficulty has arisen. It is the wise choice, and not the voluntary choice, that a guardian is bound to give, above all, to a half-witted pupil. Benevolence towards such is a stern virtue, and such, we deem, is the only true benevolence towards the poor Indian. It is the height of cruelty towards him to leave him unguided in his choice-to him, truly, summum jus" is "summa injuria." But to connect these general principles with the case before us.

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The scheme thus adopted for the management of the Indian nations, and so far as may be for their civilization, by the government of the United States, has from time to time. been carried out by them in their earlier treaties, extinguishing Indian title on parts of the hunting grounds of different tribes, and of later years over the whole, as they became surrounded by the whites, and, as is ever the case, contaminated by the intercourse; and removing thence the remnant of such tribes to wider and safer territorial possessions in the west, with new provisions, as already said, for their benefit. Those not familiar with the subject, or who take their impressions from the Quaker publication before us, will be hardly prepared for the number of such treaties. On turning to the volume of Indian documents in our heading, we find the following-some combined, others single-treaties. We give a list, as exhibiting the settled policy and course of the nation, not only as to the cession of Indian lands to the government, or to other pre-emptive owners, but also of their actual removal by emigration to new homes; both which are here ignorantly charged upon the special treaty before us, as being unheard-of injuries, and as originating but from individual cupidity.

WITH THE

Appalachicolas,
Caddoes,
Chayennes,
Cherokees,

Chickasaws,

LIST OF INDIAN TREATIES.

2 Treaties, the first for Cession, the last for Emigration. 1 Ces. & Emig. | Chippewas,

1 Trade, etc. Choctaws,

18 Ces. & Emig. Comanches,

8

Creeks,

21 Ces. & Emig.

11

1 Trade, etc.

12 Ces. & Emig.

Besides several with minor tribes, the provisions for whom are included in the larger.

It thus appears, that out of the fifty-five Indian tribes with whom the government have held treaties, there are but thirteen with whom they have not made agreement for the cession of their lands, and but twelve more with whom "emigration," also, from their original homes to the far west, has not been connected with cession; and wherever emigration has not entered into the treaty, it has been simply because the Indian title of occupancy did not, as yet, interfere with those higher interests to which the general government holds the Indian title subservient. On precisely the same principles, therefore, under the same authority, watched over by the same guardianship with the three hundred and fortyfour Indian treaties above enumerated, has the present one under discussion with the Senecas been negotiated, carried on, and perfected, being the twelfth in order with this very tribe, and in no one of them, so far as our examination goes, and as, if leisure serves, we shall show, has such equitable, or rather large payment been made for the Indian title and improvements, and such ample provisions secured for their removal, support, Christian instruction, and permanent home in the west. Such, then, are the general facts, about which there can be no question. But to proceed. A treaty constitutionally made, in accordance with a settled policy of the

general government, on principles uniformly acted upon in Indian treaties, with more than the usual guardianship watching over the Indian interests, and negotiated on terms such as, in the official opinion of that very sworn guardian, were more than equitable; being such, to use his own emphatic words, as would, "if extended to any county in Massachusetts, nearly depopulate it in six months," (Senate Documents, No. 9,) this, we say, is the treaty now held up to scorn by a numerous and influential body of religionists in our country in the enthusiasm of an ignorant zeal-held up, we say, to the scorn and contempt of the nation, as an unheard-of atrocity among a Christian people-public indignation invoked in bitter terms against the individual citizens whose vested rights are concerned in it; and, although the treaty stands proclaimed by the executive, as a part of the supreme law of the land, yet still, the most unconstitutional means resorted to to defeat its operation. For ourselves, at least, we speak, when we say, that the history of our country affords no instance of more high-handed persecution than this against the rights of individuals, and that, too, preached up under the plea, false, however sincere, of justice and Christian charity. Now, we accuse not so numerous and respectable a body as the Friends of the four quarterly meetings, of a willing injustice; but we do accuse them of that which both law and morals hold to be a high offence in those who take upon themselves the office of public teachers" crassa ignorantia aut negligentia" - culpable ignorance or carelessness, such as reaches, in point of fact, to all the results of malice, and which the law, therefore, holds punishable. Of this, we think, they stand condemned; and, though tied to narrow limits in the review of their "Case," can, we think, make it good. Let us see. Supposing a reader of the Quaker "Case" to know nothing of the subject beyond what he there learns, what will be the impression given him by reading it? Evidently this that the case of the Senecas is a new and peculiar one, both as to the cession of their land to private pre-emptive claimants, and still more as to their emigration to a new home-that it is a case, in short, of persecution and tyranny, not to say of villany and fraud-that the preemptive holders are a characterless band of land speculators, without principle or mercy, who, having entrapped the poor ignorant Indians into an inequitable bargain for the sale of their freehold (!) rights, are now making the general