Our military positions have been maintained at Belle Point, on the Arkansas, at Council Bluffs, on the Missouri, at St. Peters, on the Mississippi, and at Green Bay, on the upper Lakes.  Commodious barracks have already been erected at most of these posts, with such works as were necessary for their defense.  Progress has also been made in opening communications between them and in raising supplies at each for the support of the troops by their own labor, particularly those most remote.

With the Indians peace has been preserved and a progress made in carrying into effect the act of Congress making an appropriation for their civilization, with the prospect of favorable results.  As connected equally with both these objects, our trade with those tribes is thought to merit the attention of Congress.  In their original state game is their sustenance and war their occupation, and if they find no employment from civilized powers they destroy each other.  Left to themselves their extirpation is inevitable.  By a judicious regulation of our trade with them we supply their wants, administer to their comforts, and gradually, as the game retires, draw them to us.  By maintaining posts far in the interior we acquire a more thorough and direct control over them, without which it is confidently believed that a complete change in their manners can never be accomplished.  By such posts, aided by a proper regulation of our trade with them and a judicious civil administration over them, to be provided for by law, we shall, it is presumed, be enabled not only to protect our own settlements from their savage incursions and preserve peace among the several tribes, but accomplish also the great purpose of their civilization.

Considerable progress has also been made in the construction of ships of war, some of which have been launched in the course of the present year.

Our peace with the powers on the coast of Barbary has been preserved, but we owe it altogether to the presence of our squadron in the Mediterranean.  It has been found equally necessary to employ some of our vessels for the protection of our commerce in the Indian Sea, the Pacific, and along the Atlantic coast.  The interests which we have depending in those quarters, which have been much improved of late, are of great extent and of high importance to the nation as well as to the parties concerned, and would undoubtedly suffer if such protection was not extended to them.  In execution of the law of the last session for the suppression of the slave trade some of our public ships have also been employed on the coast of Africa, where several captures have already been made of vessels engaged in that disgraceful traffic.

JAMES MONROE.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

DECEMBER 12, 1820.

To the Senate of the United States: 

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 6th of December, requesting that the agent employed under the act entitled “An act authorizing the purchase of fire engines and building houses for the safekeeping of the same” should report in the manner stated in the said resolution his conduct in execution of the said act, I now transmit to the Senate a report from the agent, which communicates all the information which has been desired.