PUBLIC LANDS. 165 



any title by grant from another which the grantor did not 

 possess. 



What is the Indian title ? It is mere occupancy for the 

 purpose of hunting. It is not like our tenures. They have 

 no idea of a title to the soil itself. It is overrun by them, 

 rather than inhabited. It is not a true and legal possession. 

 [Vattel, b. 1, ^ 81, p. 37, and § 209, b. 2, p. 96. Montes., b. 

 18, ch. 12. Smith, Wealth of Nat., b. 5, ch. 1.] It is a right 

 not to be transferred, but extinguished : regulated by treaties, 

 not by deeds of conveyance. It depends upon the law of 

 nations, not upon municipal right. [J. Q. Adams, Fletcher 

 vs. Peck, Cranch, vol. 6, p. 121.] 



But beside that the Indians have no idea of individual 

 property in the land, and pretend to no right but as a com- 

 munity, and that founded on a residence or occupancy, that 

 residence itself is not of a permanent nature. They occupy 

 only till they find a more convenient spot, or till they are 

 driven from the one which they select by some neighboring 

 hostile tribe, and then seek another hunting-ground in the vast 

 expanse of unoccupied country before them. In this w^ay 

 the Sauks have passed from the lower waters of the St. 

 Lawrence to the Missisippi. Their last occupation of the 

 mouth of Rock River and the western bank of the Missi- 

 sippi, was made at the period nearly of the American Revo- 

 lution, when they were driven south by the Chippewas. It 

 is only about ten years ago, as stated by Nicollet, that the 

 northern Chippewas drove the Sioux to the south of their 

 old limits, and compelled them to pitch their tents some hun- 

 dreds of miles farther, stretching to the west and south of 

 the Missouri. 



If, however, it were otherwise, society could not allow that 

 a small community of 5,000 or 6,000, if civilized men, 

 claiming property in severalty, and by a permanent tenure. 



