188 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



creeks, and lakes, the Indian names of which required 

 an equal exercise of jaws. Besides these "permanent lo- 

 cations," there were a great number of "floating reserva- 

 tions," to be afterwards located by the reservee's, or by 

 that numerous class of "reservation speculators," who 

 were able to obtain the right from the individual Indians, 

 in the way of "a fair business transaction." Need I say 

 that one of the ingredients in these transactions, was 

 neither cold water nor honesty. And here let me mention 

 one of the good traits in President Jackson's administra- 

 tion, which was an after determination to refuse his sanc- 

 tion to all treaties having these "supicious looking reser- 

 vations" embodied in them. At the date of this treaty, 

 this great tract of country, composed of some of the 

 richest soil in the world, covered in part with unbroken 

 forests, and interspersed with those native fields of wav- 

 ing grass, which cover the beautiful rolling prairies of 

 the West, contained scarcely a trace of civilization. 



Has magic waved her wand over this land? No. But 

 the native enterprize of our national character and the 

 roving disposition of our population, united with the love 

 of emigration and excitement incident to the settlement 

 of a new country, as well as the hope and expectation of 

 bettering their condition in life, has filled — no, not filled, 

 but scattered — an enterprizing and thriving population 

 over the whole of that region, so few short years since, a 

 savage wilderness. Where then rose the lone wigwam, 

 composed of sticks, rushes, and grass, now stand cities, 

 towns, villages, mills, farms, and all the paraphamalia 

 of the white man. And where are the late inhabitants? 

 Ask our government! Or ask the wind, the wave, or 

 silent earth. A remnant of them would have continued 

 upon their "reservations," but "treaties," made with 

 whom, or when, or where, the Great Spirit only knows, 

 found their way to Washington, and these, too, have been 

 hunted down, if not by "blood hounds," of the canine race, 

 by those but a small remove in the scale above; their 

 corn-fields trampled under the feet of armed men and 



