1802; and this was known to Georgia, and she took the stipulation, subject to this obligation, which is distinctly recognized in her own compact.

Again, it has been urged against some of the treaties guarantying this country to the Cherokees that the "just claims of the State of Georgia were" prejudiced thereby, contrary to the constitution. This is begging the question ; for Georgia has no "just claim" to the Cherokee country, and therefore none is prejudiced. Georgia has no right, constitutional or any other, that is incompatible with the engagements you have made to the Indian nations, or that is invaded by any law you have passed "to prevent wrongs being done to them, and to preserve peace and friendship with them."

But, sir, you cannot take a step in the argument towards the result contended for by the friends of this bill, without blotting out a treaty, or tearing a seal from your bond. I give to the bill the connection which it has in fact, whatever may be said to the contrary, with the laws of the States to which it is subsidiary, and with the decision of the President, that the Indians must submit or remove. Now, sir, I say you are bound to protect them where they are, if they claim it at your hands. That you violate no right of the States in doing it, and will violate the rights of the Indian nations by not doing it. That when the United States, in consideration of the cession of land made by the Cherokees to this government, guaranteed to them the "remainder of their country forever," you meant something by it. Sir, it is in vain to talk upon this question; impossible, patiently to discuss it. If you have honor, it is pledged; if you have truth, it is pledged; if you have faith, it is pledged—a nation's faith, and truth, and honor! And to whom pledged? To the weak, the defenceless, the dependent. Fidem Anglorum in foedere elegimus, they say to you. Selecting your faith and no other, you would not have it otherwise, we reposed our trust and confidence in you, and

you alone. And for what pledged? Wherever you open your eyes you see it, and wherever you plant your foot you feel it. And by whom pledged? By a nation in its youth-a Republic, boastful of its liberty; may it never be added, unmindful of its honor. Sir, your decision upon this subject is not to be rolled up in the scroll of your journal and forgotten. The transaction of this day, with the events it will give rise to, will stand out upon the canvass in all future delineations of this quarter of the globe, putting your deeds of glory in the shade. You will see it every where-You will meet it on the page of history, in the essay of the moralist, in the tract of the jurist. You will see it in the vision of the poet; you will feel it in the sting of the satirist; you will encounter it in the indignant frown of the friend of liberty and the rights of man, wherever despotism has not subdued to its dominion, the very look. You will meet it upon the stage; you will read it in the novel, and the eyes of your children's children through. out all generations, will gush with tears as they run over the story, unless the oblivion of another age of darkness should come over the world, and blot out the record and the memory of it. And, Sir, you will meet it at the bar above. The Cherokees, if they are men, cannot submit to such laws and such degradation. They must go. Urged by such per suasion, they must consent to go. If you will not interfere in their behalf, the result is inevitable-the object will be accomplished. When the Cherokee takes his last look of the cabin he has reared-of the field he has cultivated-of the mound that covers the ashes of his fathers for unknown generations, and the bones of his family, and friends, and leaves all to be desecrated by the greedy and obtrusive bor. derer-Sir, I will not venture upon a description of this scene of a nation's exit and exile. I will only say—I would not encounter the secret, silent prayer that should be breathed from the heart of one of these sufferers, armed with the faith and hope would give it, if there be a God that the wrongs of the injured, for all the land the sun has looked

energy

that

avenges

upon. These children of nature will go to the stake, and bid you strike without the motion of a muscle; but if they can bear this; if they have reduced whatever there is of earth about them, to such a subjection to the spirit within, as to bear this, we are the men to go into the wilderness, and leave them here as our betters.

Mr. Speaker, there are many collateral arguments bearing upon the main point of this'discussion, that I intended to have urged, and many directly in my way that I have passed over, and most of them I have but touched. But full of interest as this question is, I dare not venture longer upon the patience of the house. At this age of the world, and in view of what they have been, and what we were, and of what they have become, and we are, any thing but a breach of faith -the deep and lasting infamy, to say nothing of the appalling guilt of it—with the Indian Tribes. If the great men who have gone before us were so improvident as to involve the United States in contradictory and incompatible obligations, a breach of faith with all the world besides, rather than with these our confiding neighbors. If we must be made to blush, let it be before our equals. Let there be at least dignity in our humiliation, and therefore something of generosity, or courageous daring-something besides unmixed selfishness and domineering cowardice in the act that produces it.

EXTRACT FROM A DISCOURSE,

STYLED "INDIAN RIGHTS AND OUR DUTIES."

BY HEMAN HUMPHREY, D. D.

WHAT has become of those powerful tribes that two cen. turies ago dwelt where we now dwell; and kindled their watch-fires where our proudest cities rise; and owned all these rivers, and bays, and harbors, and great lakes, and lofty mountains, and fertile vallies? Where are they? A nobler race of wild men never existed in any age or country. We are accustomed to speak of them as ferocious savages. And it is true that they were uncivilized. They had no schools, nor Colleges. They had never enjoyed the blessed light of Christianity; and in their wars with one another, they were as cruel, as they were brave and crafty. It is true, also, that when we began to extend our settlements far into the country, and they saw us in possession of their finest hunting grounds and fisheries, they became jealous of us and being instigated by the French, who then flanked our whole northern and western frontier, from the gulph of St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Missouri, they made depredations upon our property and cruelly butchered some of our people.

All this is true. But savages as they were, they bore with our gradual encroachments much longer than we should have borne with theirs under similar circumstances, and taught us lessons which may well put to the blush all our boasted religion and civilization.

'The Indians,' says Dr. Trumbull, 'at the first settlement

of our fathers, performed many acts of kindness towards them. They instructed them in the manner of planting and dressing the Indian corn. They carried them safe through rivers and waters. They gave them much useful information respecting the country, and when the English and their children were lost in the woods, and they were in danger of perishing with hunger, or cold, they conducted them to their wigwams, fed them, and restored them to their families and parents. By selling them corn when pinched with famine, they relieved their distresses, and prevented their perishing in a strange land and uncultivated wilderness.' The same historian tells us, that it was nearly sixteen years after the settlement of Plymouth, before the Indians commenced hostilities upon their English neighbors; and again that the English lived in tolerable peace with all the Indians in New England, except the Pequots, for about forty years.'

Thus, when we were few and they were many,—we were weak and they were strong--instead of driving us, back into the sea, as they might have done at any time, they cherished our perilous infancy, and tendered to us the sacred emblems of peace. They gave us land as much as we wanted, or sold it to us for nothing. They permitted us quietly, to clear up the wilderness, and to build habitations, and school houses, and churches. And when everything began to smile around us, under the combined influence of industry, education, and religion, these savages did not come to us and say, 'We want your houses—we want your fine cultivated farms: you must move off. There is room enough for you beyond the western rivers, where you may settle down on a better soil, and begin anew.'

Nor when we were strongly attached to our fire sides, and to our father's sepulchres, did they say, 'You are mere tenants at will: we own all the land, and if you insist upon staying longer, you must dissolve your government and submit to such laws as we choose to make for you.'

No-the Indian tribes of the seventeenth century, knew