ondition would
have been far better than it now is--they would have passed from the
hunter to the pastoral state, and have grown in numbers, virtue and
intelligence. But these laws and these treaties, have been year after
year violated by our own people, and the result has been a constant
deterioration of the Indians. This is especially true of those laws
intended to prevent our citizens from hunting on the Indian lands,
residing in their country, and trading with them without a license from
the United States. These have generally been a dead letter upon the
national statute book, and the encroachments of the lawless
frontiers-men, the trader, the land speculator, and the vender of
spirituous liquors, have impoverished degraded, and vitiated, more or
less, every tribe within the limits of the United States. It is to this
intercourse, with these classes of persons, that the bad faith, the
savage barbarities, and border-wars, of which so much complaint is made
against the Indians, are to be mainly attributed. The rapacity of our
people, for their peltries and their land, the feeble execution of laws
made for their protection, and the loose morality which has governed our
general intercourse with them, have wasted their numbers, debased their
character, and tarnished the honor of that nation, which, from the very
organization of its government, has claimed to be their benevolent
protector.

The plan of removing the Indians beyond the limits of the United States
is not new. If not original with Mr. Jefferson, it was commended by him,
and has been approved, we believe, by each successive administration
since his day. It looked of course to a peaceable not a forcible removal
of them. Whether the details of the original plan corresponded with
those of the law, under which this removal is going on, we do not know.

The substance of the present plan may be gathered from the following
provisions:

1st. To secure the lands on which they are placed to the several tribes
by patent, with only such restrictions as are necessary to prevent white
men from purchasing them, or encroaching upon them.

2d. To establish a territorial government, all the offices of which,
(except those of the governor and secretary,) are to be filled with
Indians, wherever competent natives can be obtained.

3d. To provide for a general council of delegates, chosen by and from
the tribes, with legislative powers; their enactments not to be valid
till th