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Doc. No 75. 



Her title to the land was not thereby invahdated. If any part of the 

 discovered territory did not enjoy the reputation of being replete with 

 mineral wealth, or other paramount advantages, the policy of the Spanish 

 authorities was to allow the Indians to remain in peaceable possession of 

 it until^ in the process of time, circumstances should be unfolded sufficient 

 to give them an interest in the extinguishment of the Indian title. The 

 Spanish title to the regions in the north of Mexico, which were, and 

 indeed still are, the haunts of the numerous, fierce, and warUke Conian- 

 ches, Apaches, and Navahoes^ and, in the south of Chili, of the brave 

 Arancanians, all of whom rej)ulsed the best efforts of Spain for their sub- 

 jugation, might, were the question a new one, with some show of reason 

 be doubted. Not so in regard to the Indians of the Mosquito coast. 

 Their country offered no temptations to the early adventurers from Spain; 

 consequently the Spaniards did not, for a long time, deem it worth the 

 effort to disturb the aborigines. Had it been otherwise — had the Mosquito 

 coast possessed a Potosi or a Real del Monte — it would hardly be con- 

 tended that the Indians inhabiting it, either by their numbers or their 

 valor, would have efficiently resisted the power of Spain. 



The grounds of the claims of European nations to dominion over the 

 Indian tribes in America have been so frequently, fully, and ably dis- 

 cussed, in the courts of justice of the United States, that it is unnecessary 

 to expatiate on the subject. The cases relating to it are collected, and a 

 luminous abstract of them given, in Kent's Commentaries, vol. 3, pp. 360 

 to 400. The following extract from the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall, 

 in the case of Johnson vs. Mcintosh, is so very apposite to the question 

 respecting the Mosquito shore, and proceeds from so high an authority, 

 that it may with propriety be quoted here: 



On the discovery of this immense continent, the great nations of 

 Europe were eager to appropriate to themselves so much of it as they 

 could respectively acquire. Its vast extent offered an ample field to the 

 ambition and enterprise of all, and the character and religion of its inhab- 

 itants afforded an apology for considering them as a people over whom the 

 superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendency. The potentates 

 of the Old World found no difficulty in convincing themselves that they 

 made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the New, by bestowing 

 on them civilization and Christianity in exchange for unlimited inde- 

 pendence. But, as they were all in pursuit of nearly the same object, it 

 was necessary, in order to avoid conflicting settlements and consequent 

 war with each other, to establish a principle which all should acknowl- 

 edge as the law by which the right of acquisition, which they all asserted, 

 should be regulated as between themselves. This principle was, that 

 discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose 

 authority, it was made, against all other European governments; which 

 title might be consummated by possession. 



The exclusion of all other Europeans necessarily gave to the nation 

 making the discovery the sole right of acquiring the soil from the natives 

 and establishing settlements upon it. It was a right with which no Eu- 

 ropeans could interfere; it was a right which all asserted for themselves, 

 and to the assertion of which by others all assented. 



" Those relations which were to exist between the discoverer and the 

 natives were to be regulated by themselves. The rights thus acquired 

 being exclusive, no other power could interpose between them." (See, 



