244 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC., PRIOR TO TREATY OF 1818 



nations, the undersigned, in affording explanations on several of the 

 topics adverted to by the British plenipotentiaries during this nego- 

 tiation, were actuated by the sole motive of removing erroneous 

 impressions. 



******* 



Considering the present state of the negotiation, the undersigned 

 will abstain, at this time, from adducing any evidence or remarks 

 upon the influence which has been exerted over the Indian tribes 

 inhabiting the territories of the United States, and the nature of 

 those excitements which have been employed by British traders and 

 agents. 



The arguments and facts already brought forward by the under- 

 signed respecting the political condition of those tribes render it 

 unnecessary for them to make many observations on those of the 

 British plenipotentiaries on that subject. The treaties of 1763, and 

 of 1783, were those principally alluded to by the undersigned to 

 illustrate the practice of Great Britain. She did not admit in the 

 first, nor require in the last, any stipulations respecting the Indians, 

 who. in one case, had been her enemies, and in the other her allies, 

 and who, in both instances, fell by the peace within the dominions 

 of that Power against whom they had been engaged in the preceding 

 war. 



The negotiation of 1761, was quoted for the purpose of proving 

 what appears to be fully established by the answer of England to 

 the ultimatum of France, delivered on the 1st of September of that 

 year, that His Britannic Majesty would not renounce his right of 

 protection over the Indian nations reputed to be within his dominions, 

 that is to say, between the British settlements and the Mississippi. 

 Mr. Pitt's letter, cited by the British plenipotentiaries, far from 

 contradicting that position, goes still further. It states that " the 

 fixation of the new limits to Canada, as proposed by France, is 

 intended to shorten the extent of Canada, which was to be ceded to 

 England, and to lengthen the boundaries of Louisiana, which France 

 was to keep, and in the view to establish what must be not admitted, 

 namely, that all which is not Canada is Louisiana, whereby all the 

 intermediate nations and countries, the true barrier to each province, 

 would be given up to France." This is precisely the principle 

 uniformly supported by the undersigned, to wit, that the recogni- 

 tion of a boundary gives up to the nation in whose behalf it is 

 made, all the Indian tribes and countries within that boundary. It 

 was on this principle that the undersigned have confidently relied 

 on the treaty of 1783, which fixes and recognises the boundary of 

 the United States without making any reservation respecting Indian 

 tribes. 



But the British plenipotentiaries, unable to produce a solitary 

 precedent of one European Power treating for the savages inhab- 

 iting within the dominions of another, have been compelled, in sup- 

 port of their principle, to refer to the German Empire, a body 

 consisting of several independent States, recognised as such by the 

 whole world, and separately maintaining, with foreign Powers, the 

 relations belonging to such a condition. Can it be necessary to 

 prove that there is no sort of analogy between the political situation 

 of these civilized communities and that of the wandering tribes of 

 North American savages? 



