thousands of families, and had wantonly desolated
"our villages and settlements, and destroyed our citizens;" that they
should make atonement for the enormities they had perpetrated, and due
compensation to the republic for their wanton barbarity, and that they
had nothing wherewith to satisfy these demands except by consenting to
the fixing of boundaries. Wherefore, it was resolved that a convention
be held with the tribes; that they be received into the favor and
protection of the United States, and that boundaries be set "separating
and dividing the settlements of the citizens from the Indian villages
and hunting grounds."

It will be seen that in all this report there is nothing said of vested
rights, or the just and lawful claims of the Indian occupants. If
clemency was granted, it was a matter of grace. The government claimed
the absolute jus disponendi, without any word of argument on the part of
the savages. On the same day that the above resolution for holding a
convention with the Indian tribes was agreed upon, preliminary
instructions to the commissioners were decided upon by congress. It was
determined first, that all prisoners of whatever age or sex must be
delivered up; second, that the Indians were to be informed that after a
long contest of eight years for the sovereignty of the country, that
Great Britain had relinquished all her claims to the soil within the
limits described in the treaty of peace; third, that they be further
informed that a less generous people than the Americans might, in the
face of their "acts of hostility and wanton devastation," compel them to
retire beyond the lakes, but as the government was disposed to be kind
to them, "to supply their wants, and to partake of their trade," that
from "motives of compassion" a veil should be drawn over what had
passed, and boundaries fixed beyond which the Indians should not come,
"but for the purpose of trading, treating, or other business equally
unexceptionable." There were other instructions, but is not essential
to this inquiry that they be enumerated.

It is at once apparent that the commissioners on behalf of the
government who went into the treaties of Fort Stanwix, Fort McIntosh,
and that at the mouth of the Great Miami, if they obeyed the
instructions of congress, gave the Indian tribes to understand that the
United States absolutely owned every foot of the soil of the northwest,
were entitled to the immediate possession of it, and i