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Show 4 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF mDIAN-AFFAIR8. 1 eonnexion with this inquiry the actual causes which have led to the removal of the different tribes from the districts thus formally dedicated to their use were investigated, it is greatly to he feared that, in a majority of instances, the result would not be highly creditable to our national reputation for honor and integrity in the strict observance of the nation's plighted faith. Be this as it may, it was perhaps inevitable, owing to the peculiar character of the Indians, that they should retire as their country became occupied hy the whites. Thus far they seem to form an exception among all people whose territories have been over-ran and wrested from them by a foreign race; for while it has been found in all other instances that a people thus situated have gradually assimilated and he-coma incorporated with, and, as it were, absorbed by the superior nation, the Indians ntill adhere to their tribal organizations, and pertinaciously maintain their existeuce as distinct political communities. In this connexion the remarks npon this subject of the able and distinguished jurist, late Chief Justice Mar-shall, in delivering the opinion of the court in the caseof Johnson and Graham's lessee terms William McIntosh, (5 Condensed Reports, p. 515,) are peculiarly apposite. Said he: "Although we do not mean to engage in the defence of those principles which Europeans have applied to Indian titles, they may, we think, find some excuse, if not justification, in the character and habits of the people whose rights have been rested from them. "The title by conquest is acquired and maintained by force. The conqueror prescribes its limits. Humanity, however, acting upon public opinion, has established as a general rule that the conqnered shall not he wantonly oppressed, and that their condition shall remain as eligible as is compatible with the objects of the couqueet. Most usually, they are incorporated with the victorious nation, and become subjects or citizens of the government with which they are con- I nected. The new and old members of the society mingle with each other; the distinction between them is gradually lost, and they make one people. Where this incorporation is practicable, humanity demands, and a wise policy requires, that the rrghts of the conquered to pruperty should remain unimpaired, that the new subjects should be governed as equitably as the old, and that confidence in their securitv should e-r aduallv banish the ~a infusle nse of bein-e seu.arat ed from tllrir xncieui"conncxiun~,a d u nited hy furcc to strallgem. " TVllrn llle conquest is complete, and the c<.rtqacrcd rnltabilants can hr blended with the conquerors, or safely governed as idistinct people, public opinion, which not even the conqueror can disregard, imposes these restraints upon him. and he cannot neglect them without injury to his fame and hazard to his power. L'But the tribes of Indians inhabitine the country were fierce savages, whose occupation was war, and whose subsist&ce was &awn chiefly from <he forests. To leave them in tbe posseesion of their country was to leave the country a wil-derness; to govern thim as a distinct people was impossible, because they were as brave and high-spirited as they were fierce, and were ready to repel by arms every attack on their independence. .c What was the inevilable consequince of this state of things 2 The Euro-peans were under the necessity either of abandoning the country, and relin-quishing their pompous claims to it, or of enforcing those claims by the sword. aqd by the adoption of principles adapted to the condition of a people with whom it.was impossible to mix, and who could not be governed as a distinct society, or of remaining in their neighborhood and exposing themselves and their fami-lies to the perpetual hazard of being massacred. "Frequent and bloody wars, in which the whites were not always the aggres-sore, unavoidably ensued. European policy, numbe,rs, and skill prevailed. As the white population advanced, that of the Indians necessarily receded. The country in the immediate neighborhood of agriculturists became unfit for them. The game fled into thicker and more unbroken forests, and the Indians folionsd. The soil towhich the crown originally claimed title, being no longer inhabited |