The situation had reached this point by the year 1791.  For seven years the Federal authorities had been vainly endeavoring to make some final settlement of the question by entering into treaties with the Northwestern and Southwestern tribes.  In the earlier treaties the delegates from the Continental Congress asserted that the United States were invested with the fee of all the land claimed by the Indians.  In the later treaties the Indian proprietorship of the lands was conceded. [Footnote:  American State Papers, Vol.  IV., Indian Affairs, I., p. 13.  Letter of H. Knox, June 15, 1789.  This is the lettering on the back of the volume, and for convenience it will be used in referring to it.] This concession at the time seemed important to the whites; but the Indians probably never understood that there had been any change of attitude; nor did it make any practical difference, for, whatever the theory might be, the lands had eventually to be won, partly by whipping the savages in fight, partly by making it better worth their while to remain at peace than to go to war.

    Knox and the Treaties.

The Federal officials under whose authority these treaties were made had no idea of the complexity of the problem.  In 1789 the Secretary of War, the New Englander Knox, solemnly reported to the President that, if the treaties were only observed and the Indians conciliated, they would become attached to the United States, and the expense of managing them, for the next half-century, would be only some fifteen thousand dollars a year. [Footnote:  American State Papers, Vol.  IV., Indian Affairs, I., p. 13.] He probably represented, not unfairly, the ordinary Eastern view of the matter.  He had not the slightest idea of the rate at which the settlements were increasing, though he expected that tracts of Indian territory would from time to time be acquired.  He made no allowance for a growth so rapid that within the half-century six or eight populous States were to stand within the Indian-owned wilderness of his day.  He utterly failed to grasp the central features of the situation, which were that the settlers needed the land, and were bound to have it, within a few years; and that the Indians would not give it up, under no matter what treaty, without an appeal to arms.

    Treaties with the Southern Indians.

In the South the United States Commissioners, in endeavoring to conclude treaties with the Creeks and Cherokees, had been continually hampered by the attitude of Georgia and the Franklin frontiersmen.  The Franklin men made war and peace with the Cherokees just as they chose, and utterly refused to be bound by the treaties concluded on behalf of the United States.  Georgia played the same part with regard to the Creeks.  The Georgian authorities paid no heed whatever to the desires of Congress, and negotiated on their own account a series of treaties with the Creeks at Augusta, Galphinton, and Shoulder-bone, in 1783, 1785, and 1786.