Chap. II. NATIVE RESERVES AS REAL PAYMENT. 39 
of any territory without a positive sanction on the part 
of the natives, it was determined that Barrett should 
explain our views to them. He confessed that they 
would be sure to accept a payment, and that certainly 
they had a right to it, as we should probably include 
villages and cultivations in such large districts as we 
proposed to buy. 
A very important part of our projected plan was, to 
reserve a tenth portion of the land bought by us for 
the benefit and use of the natives. We had it in view 
thus to secure a valuable property to them, which 
might preserve their chiefs in circumstances equal to 
those of the higher order of settlers in future times. 
We had looked forward to the time when the value 
bestowed on these native reserves, by the improvement 
and cultivation of the other lands with which they 
should be intermingled, and by the presence of a large 
and thriving civilized community, might afford the 
means of furnishing the natives with abundant re- 
venue to support the dignity of their chiefs, with 
improved clothes and food, with houses lilce those of 
Europeans, with cattle and agricultural implements, 
with education and the means of religious worship ; 
in short, with all that might make them respectable in 
the eyes of the future colony. It had of course been 
provided that these reserves, although tapu for the 
natives, should be inalienable by them, as it was fore- 
seen that, without such a precaution, the natives would 
part with their reserves for a nominal value, as soon as 
they should acquire a real one in the eyes of speculat- 
ing colonists. It had also been provided that the 
defects of the system of Indian reserves in North 
America should be avoided. There the reserves have 
been selected in huge blocks which lie unimproved 
themselves, and which, while they produce no benefit 
