the United States government for having granted to the Choctaws the land that belonged by hereditary preëmption to them and had so belonged from time out of mind. It is exceedingly interesting to know that these Wichitas had been colonized on the very land they claimed as indisputably their own. In all the treaties, negotiated by Pike, except the two of the Third Class,[282] the Wichita and the Comanche, the institution of slavery was positively and particularly recognized, recognized as legal and as having existed from time immemorial. Property rights in slaves were guaranteed. Fugitive Slave Laws were declared operative within the Indian country, and the mutual rendition of fugitives was promised throughout the length and breadth of the Confederacy. The First Class of treaties differs from the Second in this matter but only in a very slight degree. The latter condenses in one clause[283] all that bears upon slavery in its various aspects, the former separates the discussion of the legality of the institution from that of the rendition of slaves. Of the First Class, the Creek Treaty[284] constituted the model; of the Second, the Osage.[285] Aside from the things to which reference has already been made, the Confederate Indian treaties were, in a variety of ways and to the same extent that the Confederate constitution itself was, a reflection upon past history. To avoid the friction that had always been present between the red men and their neighbors, an attempt was now made to redefine and to readjust the relations of Indians with each other both within and without the tribe; their relations with white men considered apart from any political organization; their relations, either as individuals or as tribes, with the several states of the Confederacy; and their relations with the central government. In general, their rights, civil, political, and judicial, as men and as semi-independent communities were now specified under such conditions as made for what in times past would have been regarded as full recognition, and even for enlargement. Indian rights were at a premium because Indian alliances were in demand.