people under the protection of the United States?  Could the Indians establish a separate republic on each of their reservations in Ohio?  And if they were so disposed would it be the duty of this Government to protect them in the attempt?  If the principle involved in the obvious answer to these questions be abandoned, it will follow that the objects of this Government are reversed, and that it has become a part of its duty to aid in destroying the States which it was established to protect.

Actuated by this view of the subject, I informed the Indians inhabiting parts of Georgia and Alabama that their attempt to establish an independent government would not be countenanced by the Executive of the United States, and advised them to emigrate beyond the Mississippi or submit to the laws of those States.

Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national character.  Their present condition, contrasted with what they once were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies.  Our ancestors found them the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions.  By persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for a while their once terrible names.  Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast over-taking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek.  That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the States does not admit of a doubt.  Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a calamity.  It is too late to inquire whether it was just in the United States to include them and their territory within the bounds of new States, whose limits they could control.  That step can not be retraced.  A State can not be dismembered by Congress or restricted in the exercise of her constitutional power.  But the people of those States and of every State, actuated by feelings of justice and a regard for our national honor, submit to you the interesting question whether something can not be done, consistently with the rights of the States, to preserve this much-injured race.  As a means of effecting this end I suggest for your consideration the propriety of setting apart an ample district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any State or Territory now formed, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they shall occupy it, each tribe having a distinct control over the portion designated for its use.  There they may be secured in the enjoyment of governments of their own choice, subject to no other control from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve peace on the frontier and between the several tribes.  There the benevolent may endeavor to teach them the arts of civilization, and, by promoting union and harmony among them, to raise up an interesting commonwealth, destined to perpetuate the race and to attest the humanity and justice of this Government.