250 CESSIONS OF LAND BY INDIAN TRIBES. 
other; and the assertion of such a right necessarily carried with it a 
modified denial of the Indian title to the land discovered. It recognized 
in them nothing but a possessory title, involving a right of occupancy 
and enjoyment until such time as the European sovereign should 
purchase it from them. The ultimate fee was held to reside in such 
sovereign, whereby the natives were inhibited from alienating in any 
manner their right of possession to any but that sovereign or his sub- 
jects. 
The recognition of these principles seems to have been complete, as is 
evidenced by the history of America from its discovery to the present 
day. France, England, Portugal, and Holland recognized them unquali- 
fiedly, and even Catholic Spain did not predicate her title solely upon 
the grant of the Holy See. 
No one of these countries was more zealous in her maintenance of these 
doctrines than England. In 1496 King Henry VII commissioned John 
and Sebastian Cabot to proceed upon a voyage of discovery and to take 
possession of such countries as they might find which were then un- 
known to Christian people, in the name of the King of England. The 
results of their voyages in the next and succeeding years laid the foun- 
dation for the claim of England to the territory of that portion of North 
America which subsequently formed the nucleus of our present posses- 
sions. 
The policy of the United States since the adoption of the Federal Con- 
stitution has in this particular followed the precedent established by the 
mother country. In the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the 
United States following the Revolutionary war, the former not only re- 
linquished the right of government, but renounced and yielded to the 
United States all pretensions and claims whatsoever to all the country 
south and west of the great northern rivers and lakes as far as the 
Mississippi. 
In the period between the conclusion of this treaty and the year 1789 
it was undoubtedly the opinion of Congress that the relinquishment of 
territory thus made by Great Britain, without so much as a saving clause 
guaranteeing the Indian right of occupancy, carried with it an absolute 
and unqualified fee-simple title unembarrassed by any intermediate es- 
tate or tenancy. In the treaties held with the Indians during this pe- 
riod—notably those of Fort Stanwix, with the Six Nations, in 1784, and 
Fort Finney, with the Shawnees, in 1786—they had been required to ac- 
knowledge the United States as the sole and absolute sovereign of 
all the territory ceded by Great Britain. 
This claim, though unintelligible to the savages in its legal aspeets, 
was practically understood by them to be fatal to their independence 
and territorial rights. Although in a certain degree the border tribes 
had been defeated in their conflicts with the United States, they still 
retained sufficient strength and resources to render them formidable 
antagonists, especially when the numbers and disposition of their 
