oundaries of the United States. We are determined that our whole
conduct shall be marked with openness and sincerity. We therefore
frankly tell you, that we think those commissioners put an erroneous
construction on that part of our treaty with the king. As he had not
purchased the country of you, of course he could not give it away. He
only relinquished to the United States his claims to it. That claim was
founded on a right acquired by treaty with other white nations, to
exclude them from purchasing or settling in any part of your country;
and it is this right which the king granted to the United States. Before
that grant, the king alone had a right to purchase of the Indian
nations, any of the lands between the Great Lakes, the Ohio and the
Mississippi, excepting the part within the charter boundary of
Pennsylvania; and the king, by the treaty of peace, having granted this
right to the United States, they alone have now the right of
purchasing." Thus with perfect candor and justice did we afterwards
admit that our first treaties with the tribes, were founded on a
mistaken and arbitrary notion of our rights in the premises, and without
a due regard to the right of occupancy of the Indian nations. A
government thus frank enough to declare its error, should have been
implicitly trusted by the Indian chieftains, and no doubt would have
been, but for the constant representations of the British agents who for
mercenary gain appealed to their fear and prejudice.

These first errors in our Indian negotiations, however, were extremely
costly to us, and proved to be so many thorns in the side of the
republic. On the 20th of May, 1785, an ordinance was passed by the
continental congress "for ascertaining the mode of disposing of lands in
the western territory," recently acquired under the treaties of Forts
Stanwix and McIntosh. Beginning at the western line of Pennsylvania,
ranges of townships six miles square were to be laid off, extending from
the river Ohio to Lake Erie. These ranges were to be surveyed under the
superintendence of the chief geographer of the United States, assisted
by surveyors appointed from each state, and these surveyors were in turn
placed over the different companies of chain carriers and axemen.
Congress was making strenuous efforts to open up the western country to
purchase and settlement.

But at the first attempts of the government surveyors to enter the Ohio
country, they met with a most determin