34 The Winning of the West 



pealing to the President then the feeling of race 

 and national kinship rose, and the Government no 

 longer hesitated to support in every way the hard- 

 pressed wilderness vanguard of the American peo- 

 ple. 



The situation had reached this point by the year 

 1791. For seven years the Federal authorities had 

 been vainly endeavoring to make some final settle- 

 ment of the question by entering into treaties with 

 the Northwestern and Southwestern tribes. In the 

 earlier treaties the delegates from the Continental 

 Congress asserted that the United States were in- 

 vested with the fee of all the land claimed by the 

 Indians. In the later treaties the Indian proprietor- 

 ship of the lands was conceded. 1 This concession 

 at the time seemed important to the whites; but the 

 Indians probably never understood that there had 

 been any change of attitude; nor did it make any 

 practical difference, for, whatever the theory might 

 be, the lands had eventually to be won, partly by 

 whipping the savages in fight, partly by making it 

 better worth their while to remain at peace than to 

 go to war. 



The Federal officials under whose authority these 

 treaties were made had no idea of the complexity of 

 the problem. In 1789, the Secretary of War, the 

 New Englander Knox, solemnly reported to the 

 President that, if the treaties were only observed and 



1 American State Papers, Vol. IV, Indian Affairs, I, p. 13. 

 Letter of H. Knox, June 15, 1789. This is the lettering on 

 the back of the volume, and for convenience it will be used 

 in referring to it. 



