66 TRANSACTIONS OP THE 



an appropriation for the extinguishment of Indian claims to 

 lands already ostensibly ceded to the United States. 



Two treaties negotiated at Fort Harmar, opposite Marietta, 

 Ohio, in 1789, were the result. One with the Six Nations, 

 and the other with tribes north and west of the Ohio River, 

 wherein the Indian title of occupancy was acknowledged, 

 subject to extinguishment only by purchase, or as the result 

 of a justifiable war. 



Though more than once questioned, this principle has in- 

 variably been sustained by the courts of final resort. The 

 decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States bear 

 consistent testimony to its legal soundness in three leading 

 cases — in 1823, 1831, and 1832. In the second of these de- 

 cisions, Chief Justice Marshall, in delivering the opinion, 

 maintained that the Cherokees were a State ; that the treaties 

 with them recognized them as a people capable of maintain- 

 ing the relations of peace and war ; that the condition of 

 the Indians, in their relations to the United States, was 

 unlike that of any other people ; that, in general, nations 

 not owing a common allegiance are foreign to each other ; 

 but that the relation of the Indians to the United States was 

 marked by peculiar and cardinal distinctions which existed 

 nowhere else ; that the Indians had an unquestionable right 

 to the lands they occupied, until it should be extinguished 

 by voluntary cession to the United States ; that they could 

 not be denominated foreign nations, but might more accu- 

 rately be called domestic dependent nations. 



The Government of the United States being thus 

 thoroughly committed to the principle of Indian right of 

 occupancy of their unceded lands, it becomes a subject of 

 interest to the student of history as well as an addition of 

 practical value to the official records of the Government, 

 to have a carefully compiled work, showing the boundaries 

 of the several tracts of country which have * been thus 

 acquired from time to time (within the present limits of the 

 United States) by cession or relinquishment from the vari- 

 ous Indian tribes. 



