I therefore nominate Charles Pinckney to be minister plenipotentiary, and James Monroe, of Virginia, to be minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary, with full powers to both jointly, or to either on the death of the other, to enter into a treaty or convention with His Catholic Majesty for the purpose of enlarging and more effectually securing our rights and interests in the river Mississippi and in the Territories eastward thereof.

TH.  JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 11, 1803.

Gentlemen of the Senate: 

The spoliations and irregularities committed on our commerce during the late war by subjects of Spain or by others deemed within her responsibility having called for attention, instructions were accordingly given to our minister at Madrid to urge our right to just indemnifications, and to propose a convention for adjusting them.  The Spanish Government listened to our proposition with an honorable readiness and agreed to a convention, which I now submit for your advice and consent.  It does not go to the satisfaction of all our claims, but the express reservation of our right to press the validity of the residue has been made the ground of further instructions to our minister on the subject of an additional article, which it is to be hoped will not be without effect.

TH.  JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 18, 1803.

Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: 

As the continuance of the act for establishing trading houses with the Indian tribes will be under the consideration of the Legislature at its present session, I think it my duty to communicate the views which have guided me in the execution of that act, in order that you may decide on the policy of continuing it in the present or any other form, or discontinue it altogether if that shall, on the whole, seem most for the public good.

The Indian tribes residing within the limits of the United States have for a considerable time been growing more and more uneasy at the constant diminution of the territory they occupy, although effected by their own voluntary sales, and the policy has long been gaining strength with them of refusing absolutely all further sale on any conditions, insomuch that at this time it hazards their friendship and excites dangerous jealousies and perturbations in their minds to make any overture for the purchase of the smallest portions of their land.  A very few tribes only are not yet obstinately in these dispositions.  In order peaceably to counteract this policy of theirs and to provide an extension of territory which the rapid increase of our numbers will call for, two measures are deemed expedient.  First.  To encourage them to abandon hunting, to apply to the raising stock, to agriculture, and domestic manufacture, and thereby prove to themselves that less land and labor will