A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 4, part 2: John Tyler
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 4, part 2: John Tyler
Presidents -- United States; Tyler, John, 1790-1862; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
This inlet of the Bay of Fundy occupies the position of the St. John,
which is almost due north by the most recent determination from St.
Marys Bay, and is so represented on their own map. That the St. John
was by mistake arising from this cause taken for the St. Croix in the
charter to Alexander is obvious from its being described as lying
between the territories of the Etchemin and Souriquois. Now Etchemin, or
canoe men, is the name given by the Micmac Indians to the race of the
Abenakis, from their skill in the management of the canoe; and this race
has always inhabited the river, whence one of their tribes is still
called St. John's Indians. The language of this tribe, although they
have lived apart for many years, is still perfectly intelligible by the
Indians of the Penobscot, and those in the service of the commission
conversed with perfect ease with the Indians of Tobique. Massachusetts,
then, was right in claiming to the St. John as the eastern limit of
the grant to Sir William Alexander, being the stream understood and
described in it under the name of St. Croix, and wholly different from
the river known to the French under that name. If, therefore, Great
Britain should insist that the question in relation to the St. Croix
shall be reopened, the United States would be able to maintain in the
very terms of the original grant to Alexander (on which the British
argument in 1797 rested) that the St. John is the St. Croix, and the
boundary will be that river to its most northwestern source, the
Asherbish, which flows into the upper end of Lake Temiscouata. Nova
Scotia will then have recovered her lost northwest angle, which can not
be found in any of the many shapes under which the British argument has
been presented, although it forms the place of beginning of what is
called a grant to the United States.
_Note VI_.
The fact that a line drawn from the source of the Kennebec to the mouth
of the Chaudiere or thereabout must be one of the boundary lines of
the grant to the Duke of York has not escaped the notice of Messrs.
Featherstonhaugh and Mudge; but they have not derived the true result
from this discovery. The Kennebec being the western limit of the grant,
the line in question bounds the territory on the southwest, while they
infer that it bounds it on the northeast. In making this inference they
appear to have forgotten that the St. Croix is the eastern boundary of
the grant. By their argument the grant to the Duke of York is blotted
wholly from the map, or, rather, becomes a mathematical line which is
absurd.
_Note VII_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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