Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Our Indian neighbors are advancing, many of them with spirit, and others
beginning to engage in the pursuits of agriculture and household
manufacture. They are becoming sensible that the earth yields subsistence
with less labor and more certainty than the forest, and find it their
interest from time to time to dispose of parts of their surplus and waste
lands for the means of improving those they occupy and of subsisting their
families while they are preparing their farms. Since your last session the
Northern tribes have sold to us the lands between the Connecticut Reserve
and the former Indian boundary and those on the Ohio from the same boundary
to the rapids and for a considerable depth inland. The Chickasaws and
Cherokees have sold us the country between and adjacent to the two
districts of Tennessee, and the Creeks the residue of their lands in the
fork of the Ocmulgee up to the Ulcofauhatche. The three former purchases
are important, in as much as they consolidate disjoined parts of our
settled country and render their intercourse secure; and the second
particularly so, as, with the small point on the river which we expect is
by this time ceded by the Piankeshaws, it completes our possession of the
whole of both banks of the Ohio from its source to near its mouth, and the
navigation of that river is thereby rendered forever safe to our citizens
settled and settling on its extensive waters. The purchase from the Creeks,
too, has been for some time particularly interesting to the State of
Georgia.
The several treaties which have been mentioned will be submitted to both
Houses of Congress for the exercise of their respective functions.
Deputations now on their way to the seat of Government from various nations
of Indians inhabiting the Missouri and other parts beyond the Mississippi
come charged with assurances of their satisfaction with the new relations
in which they are placed with us, of their dispositions to cultivate our
peace and friendship, and their desire to enter into commercial intercourse
with us. A state of our progress in exploring the principal rivers of that
country, and of the information respecting them hitherto obtained, will be
communicated as soon as we shall receive some further relations which we
have reason shortly to expect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account