ANDREW JACKSON.

February 22, 1831. To the Senate of the United States: 

I have received your resolution of the 15th instant, requesting me “to inform the Senate whether the provisions of the act entitled ’An act to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes and to preserve peace on the frontiers,’ passed the 30th of March, 1802, have been fully complied with on the part of the United States Government, and if they have not that he inform the Senate of the reasons that have induced the Government to decline the enforcement of said act,” and I now reply to the same.

According to my views of the act referred to, I am not aware of any omission to carry into effect its provisions in relation to trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes so far as their execution depended on the agency confided to the Executive.

The numerous provisions of that act designed to secure to the Indians the peaceable possession of their lands may be reduced, substantially, to the following:  That citizens of the United States are restrained under sufficient penalties from entering upon the lands for the purpose of hunting thereon, or of settling them, or of giving their horses and cattle the benefit of a range upon them, or of traveling through them without a written permission; and that the President of the United States is authorized to employ the military force of the country to secure the observance of these provisions.  The authority to the President, however, is not imperative.  The language is: 

It shall be lawful for the President to take such measures and to employ such military force as he may judge necessary to remove from lands belonging to or secured by treaty to any Indian tribe any citizen who shall make a settlement thereon.

By the nineteenth section of this act it is provided that nothing in it “shall be construed to prevent any trade or intercourse with Indians living on lands surrounded by settlements of citizens of the United States and being within the ordinary jurisdiction of any of the individual States.”  This provision I have interpreted as being prospective in its operation and as applicable not only to Indian tribes which at the date of its passage were subject to the jurisdiction of any State, but to such also as should thereafter become so.  To this construction of its meaning I have endeavored to conform, and have taken no step inconsistent with it.  As soon, therefore, as the sovereign power of the State of Georgia was exercised by an extension of her laws throughout her limits, and I had received information of the same, orders were given to withdraw from the State the troops which had been detailed to prevent intrusion upon the Indian lands within it, and these orders were executed.  The reasons which dictated them shall be frankly communicated.