were hollow, and that when instigating him and his people to hostilities against the United States, the agents of Britain had far less anxiety about the rights of the Indians, than the injuries which, through their instrumentality, might be inflicted upon the rising republic.  This feeling towards the whites, and especially to the people of the United States, had a deeper foundation than mere prejudice or self-interest.  Tecumseh was a patriot, and his love of country made him a statesman and a warrior.  He saw his race driven from their native land, and scattered like withered leaves in an autumnal blast; he beheld their morals debased, their independence destroyed, their means of subsistence cut off, new and strange customs introduced, diseases multiplied, ruin and desolation around and among them; he looked for the cause of these evils and believed he had found it in the flood of white immigration which, having surmounted the towering Alleghenies, was spreading itself over the hunting grounds of Kentucky, and along the banks of the Scioto, the Miami and the Wabash, whose waters, from time immemorial, had reflected the smoke of the rude but populous villages of his ancestors.  As a statesman, he studied the subject, and, having satisfied himself that justice was on the side of his countrymen, he tasked the powers of his expansive mind, to find a remedy for the mighty evil which threatened their total extermination.

The original, natural right of the Indians to the occupancy and possession of their lands, has been recognized by the laws of congress, and solemnly sanctioned by the highest judicial tribunal of the United States.  On this principle, there is no disagreement between our government and the Indian nations by whom this country was originally inhabited.[A]

[Footnote A:  6 Wheaton’s Reports, 515.]

In the acquisition of these lands, however, our government has held that its title was perfect when it had purchased of the tribe in actual possession.  It seems, indeed, to have gone farther and admitted, that a tribe might acquire lands by conquest which it did not occupy, as in the case of the Iroquois, and sell the same to us; and, that the title thus acquired, would be valid.  Thus we have recognized the principles of international law as operative between the Indians and us on this particular point, while on some others, as in not allowing them to sell to individuals, and giving them tracts used as hunting grounds by other tribes beyond the Mississippi, we have treated them as savage hordes, not sufficiently advanced in civilization to be admitted into the family of nations.  Our claim to forbid their selling to individuals, and our guarantying to tribes who would not sell to us in our corporate capacity, portions of country occupied as hunting grounds, by more distant tribes, can only be based on the right of discovery, taken in connection with a right conferred by our superior civilization; and seems never in fact to have been