M. VAN BUREN.

[Footnote 57:  Relating to the sale or exchange of Government drafts, etc.]

WASHINGTON, January 11, 1840.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I transmit herewith a report and statement of the Secretary of the Treasury, furnishing the information called for by the resolution of the 30th ultimo, in relation to the amount of money drawn from the Treasury in each of the five years preceding the commencement of the present session of Congress, except the amount drawn under the special pension laws.  The statement showing the amount, it will be seen from the accompanying communication of the Secretary of War, will take some little time, but will be prepared as early as possible and transmitted.

M. VAN BUREN.

WASHINGTON, January 13, 1840.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I again submit to you the amended treaty of June 11, 1838, with the New York Indians.  It is accompanied by minutes of the proceedings of a council held with them at Cattaraugus on the 13th and 14th days of August, 1839, at which were present on the part of the United States the Secretary of War and on the part of the State of Massachusetts General H.A.S.  Dearborn, its commissioner; by various documentary testimony, and by a memorial presented in behalf of the several committees on Indian concerns appointed by the four yearly meetings of Friends of Genesee, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.  In the latter document the memorialists not only insist upon the irregularity and illegality of the negotiation, but urge a variety of considerations which appear to them to be very conclusive against the policy of the removal itself.  The motives by which they have been induced to take so deep an interest in the subject are frankly set forth, and are doubtless of the most beneficent character.  They have, however, failed to remove my decided conviction that the proposed removal, if it can be accomplished by proper means, will be alike beneficial to the Indians, to the State in which the land is situated, and to the more general interest of the United States upon the subject of Indian affairs.

The removal of the New York Indians is not only important to the tribes themselves, but to an interesting portion of western New York, and especially to the growing city of Buffalo, which is surrounded by lands occupied by the Senecas.  To the Indians themselves it presents the only prospect of preservation.  Surrounded as they are by all the influences which work their destruction, by temptation they can not resist and artifices they can not counteract, they are rapidly declining, and, notwithstanding the philanthropic efforts of the Society of Friends, it is believed that where they are they must soon become extinct; and to this portion of our country the extraordinary spectacle is presented of densely populated and highly improved settlements inhabited by industrious, moral,