who, in violation of the laws of Congress and express
treaty provisions, were committing outrages upon the
Indians: The report of the Secretary further
states, that the Sacs and Foxes “claimed the
right of occupying a part of the country upon Rock
river, even after it had been sold to citizens of
the United States, and settled by them.”
But the report does not state that under the treaty
of 1804, by which these lands were ceded, it is expressly
provided that so long as they remain the property
of the United States, the Indians of said tribes shall
enjoy the privilege of “living and hunting upon
them;” it does not state that for six or eight
years before the government had sold an acre of land
upon Rock river, the white settlers were there, in
violation of the laws, trespassing upon these Indians,
and thus creating that very hostility of feeling,
which, is subsequently cited as a reason for the chastisement
inflicted upon them by the United States: it does
not state, that in the year 1829, government, for
the purpose of creating a pretext for the removal
of the Indians from Rock river, directed a few quarter
sections of land, including the Sac village, to be
sold, although the frontier settlements of Illinois
had not then reached within fifty or sixty miles of
that place, and millions of acres of land around it,
were unoccupied and unsold: it does not state
that instead of requiring the Indians to remove from
the quarter sections thus prematurely sold, to other
lands on Rock river, owned by the United States, and
on which, under the treaty, they had a right to hunt
and reside, they were commanded to remove to the west
side of the Mississippi: it does not state, that
the “serious aggressions” and “formidable
attitude” assumed by the “British party,”
in 1831, consisted in their attempt to raise a crop
of corn and beans, in throwing down the fences of
the whites who were enclosing their fields, in “pointing
deadly weapons” at them and in “stealing
their potatoes:” it does not state that
the murder of the Menominie Indians, at Fort Crawford,
by a party of the “British band,” was in
retaliation, for a similar “flagrant outrage,”
committed the summer previous, by the Menominies,
upon Peah-mus-ka, a principal chief of the Foxes and
nine or ten of his tribe, who were going up to Prairie
des Chiens on business and were within one day’s
travel of that place: it does not state that
one reason assigned by the “British party”
for refusing to surrender the murderers of the Menominies,
was the fact that the government had not made a similar
demand of that tribe for the murderers of the Sacs:
it does not state that the “hostile attitude”
assumed by the Sacs and Foxes, in 1832, after recrossing
the Mississippi, and their establishment on Rock river,
simply amounted to this; that they came over with
their women and children for the avowed purpose of
raising a crop of corn with the Winnebagoes—were
temporarily encamped on that stream—had
committed no outrage upon person or property—and