fully acknowledged by them.  It was not, at least, admitted by Tecumseh.  His doctrine seems to have been that we acquired no rights over the Indians or their country either by discovery or superior civilization; and that the possession and jurisdiction can only be obtained by conquest or negociation.  In regard to the latter, he held that purchase from a single tribe, although at the time sojourners on the lands sold, was not valid as it respected other tribes.  That no particular portion of the country belonged to the tribe then within its limits—­though in reference to other tribes, its title was perfect; that is, possession excluded other tribes, and would exclude them forever; but did not confer on the tribe having it, the right to sell the soil to us; for that was the common property of all the tribes who were near enough to occupy or hunt upon it, in the event of its being at any time vacated, and could only be vacated by the consent of the whole.  As a conclusion from these premises, he insisted that certain sales made in the west were invalid, and protested against new ones on any other than his own principles.

It must be acknowledged that these views have much plausibility, not to grant to them any higher merit.  If the Indians had been in a nomadic instead of a hunter state, and in summer had driven their flocks to the Allegheny mountains—­in winter to the banks of the Wabash and Tennessee rivers, it could scarcely be denied that each tribe would have had an interest in the whole region between, and as much right as any other tribe to be heard on a question of sale.  The Indians were not shepherds, wandering with their flocks of sheep and cattle in quest of new pastures, but hunters, roaming after deer and bison, and changing their location, as the pursuit from year to year, or from age to age, might require.  We do not perceive a difference in principle in the two cases; and while we admit the difficulty of acquiring their territory on the plan of Tecumseh, we feel bound also to admit, that as far as its preservation to themselves was concerned, his was the only effective method.

In its support he displayed in council the sound and logical eloquence for which he was distinguished—­in war the prowess which raised him into the highest rank of Indian heroes.

At what period of his life he first resolved upon making an effort to stop the progress of the whites west of the mountains, is not certainly known.  It was probably several years anterior to the open avowal of his plan of union, which occurred in 1805 or ’6.  The work before him was herculean in character, and beset with difficulties on every side; but these only quickened into more tireless activity his genius and his patriotic resolution.  To unite the tribes as he proposed, prejudices must be overcome, their original manners and customs re-established, the use of ardent spirits utterly abandoned, and finally, all intercourse with the whites cut off.  Here