The treaties made with Indian tribes have, of course, been mainly treaties of cession. Most of our readers will be surprised to learn the extent of lands east of the Mississippi which are embraced in sales to the United States; being no less than the entire States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, with considerable portions of Tennessee, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And these treaties were not a mere form to amuse and quiet savages, a half-compassionate, half-contemptuous humoring of unruly children. The United States were not then grown so great that they could afford to value lightly the free relinquishment of the soil by the native owners of it. At the time most of the treaties with tribes east of the Mississippi were concluded, not only did the right remain in the Indians, but enough of power, to make it as much a diplomatic triumph to obtain a cession on favorable terms, as it would be to negotiate a successful treaty with one of the States of Central America to-day. The United States were clearly the stronger party in every such case; but the Indians were, in the great body of instances, still so formidable, that to wrest their lands from them by pure, brutal violence would have required an exertion of strength which the government was ill prepared to make. So that, while it is true that the Indians were generally made ready to negotiate by the use of military force and by the pressure of white settlements, it is not true that the considerations and privileges accorded them in these treaties were a gift out of good-nature. So much for the power of the Indians when they made these treaties. Their right to their lands is quite as well established historically. In the early history of the Western world, the principle was fully recognized, that, while sovereignty rested, not with the Indians, but with the civilized power claiming by virtue of discovery, the Indians were the rightful occupants, with a just and perfect claim to retain possession and enjoy the use until they should be disposed voluntarily to part with it. Great Britain, Holland, France, and Spain, the four powers claiming sovereignty by virtue of discovery within the present territory of the United States, conceded no less than this to the natives; while France, in the cession of the province of Louisiana, expressly reserved the rights allowed the Indians by its own treaties and articles, "until, by mutual consent of the United States and the said tribes or nations, other suitable articles shall have been agreed upon."