e same,
and every part thereof." At the time of that treaty, the northwest
territory was occupied by a number of powerful and warlike tribes of
savages, yet no reservation of any kind was made in their favor by the
English negotiators. The Iroquois confederacy of New York, and more
particularly the Mohawks, had stood out stoutly on the side of the king,
but they were wholly forgotten in the articles of peace. Of this action,
Joseph Brant, the Mohawk leader, in his communications with Lord Sidney,
in 1786, most bitterly complained, expressing his astonishment "that
such firm friends and allies could be so neglected by a nation
remarkable for its honor and glory." Yet if Brant had been better
acquainted with the policy and usage of European nations, he would have
known that England had granted away not only the sovereignty, but the
very soil of the territory itself, subject only to the Indian rights of
occupancy. In all the ancient grants of the crown to the duke of York,
Lord Clarendon and others, there passed "the soil as well as the right
of dominion to the grantee." France, while adopting a liberal policy
toward the savages of the new world, claimed the absolute right of
ownership to the land, based on first discovery. Spain maintained a like
claim. The war for supremacy in the Saint Lawrence, the Mississippi and
the Ohio valleys between Great Britain and France, terminating in the
peace of 1763, was a war waged for the control of lands and territory,
notwithstanding the occupancy of the Indian tribes. If a country
acquired either by conquest or prior discovery, is filled with a people
attached to the soil, and having fixed pursuits and habitations, the
opinion of mankind would seem to require that the lands and possessions
of the occupants should not be disturbed, but if the domain discovered
or conquered is filled with a race of savages who make no use of the
land, save for the purpose of hunting over it, a different solution must
of necessity result. There can be no admixture of races where the one is
civilized and the other barbarous. The barbarian must either lose his
savagery and be assimilated, or he must recede. The North American
Indian was not only brave, but fierce. In the wilds and fastnesses of
his native land, he refused to become either a subject or a slave. No
law of the European could be formulated for his control; he obeyed only
the laws of nature under which he roamed in freedom. He knew nothing of
f