part of the New York Indians now reside. The Menomonee treaty
assigned them 500,000 acres, coupled with the original condition that
they should remove to them within three years after the date of the
treaty, modified by the supplement so as to empower the President to
prescribe the term within which they should remove to the Green Bay
lands, and that if they neglected to do so within the period limited
so much of the land as should be unoccupied by them at the termination
thereof should revert to the United States. To these lands the New
York Indians claimed title, which was resisted, and, for quieting
the controversy, by the treaty of 1831 the United States paid a large
consideration; and it will be seen that by using the power given in the
treaty the Executive might put an end to the Indian claim. Instead of
this harsher measure, for a grant of all their interest in Wisconsin,
which, deducting the land in the actual occupancy of New York Indians,
amounts to about 435,000 acres, the treaty as amended by the Senate
gives 1,824,000 acres of lands in the West and the sum of $400,000 for
their removal and subsistence, for education and agricultural purposes,
the erection of mills and the necessary houses, and the promotion of
the mechanic arts. Besides, there are special money provisions for the
Cayugas, the Onondagas, the Oneidas of New York, the Tuscaroras, and
St. Regis Indians, and an engagement to receive from Ogden and Fellows
for the Senecas $202,000; to invest $100,000 of this sum in safe stocks
and to distribute $102,000 among the owners of improvements in New York
according to an appraisement; to sell for the Tuscaroras 5,000 acres
of land they hold in Niagara County, N.Y., and to invest the proceeds,
exclusive of what may be received for improvements, "the income from
which shall be paid to the nation at their new homes annually, and the
money which shall be received for improvements on said lands shall
be paid to the owners of the improvements when the lands are sold."
These are the substantial parts of the treaty, and are so careful of
Indian advantage that one might suppose they would be satisfactory to
those most anxious for their welfare. The right they cede could be
extinguished by a course that treaty provisions justify and authorize.
So long as they persevere in their determination to remain in New York
it is of no service to them, and for this naked right it is seen what
the United States propose to give