"Such being the right of the Indians to the soil, the United States for more than eighty-five years pursued a uniform course of extinguishing the Indian title only with the consent of those Indian tribes which were recognized as having claim by reason of occupancy: such consent being expressed in treaties, to the formation of which both parties approached, as having equal rights of initiative, and equal rights in negotiation. These treaties were made from time to time (not less than 372 being embraced in the general statutes of the United States) as the pressure of white settlements, or the fear or the experience of Indian hostilities, made the demand for the removal of one tribe after another urgent or imperative. _Except only in the case of the Indians in Minnesota, after the outbreak of 1862, the United-States Government has never extinguished an Indian title as by right of conquest_; and in this latter case the government provided the Indians another reservation, besides giving them the proceeds of the sales of the lands vacated by them in Minnesota; so scrupulously, up to that time, had the right of the Indians to the soil been respected, at least in form. It is not to be denied that wrong was often done in fact to tribes in the negotiation of treaties of cession. The Indians were not infrequently overborne or deceived by the agents of the government in these transactions; sometimes unquestionably, powerful tribes were permitted to cede lands to which weaker tribes had a better claim: but, formally at least, the United States accepted the cession successively of all lands, to which Indian tribes could show color of title, which are embraced in the limits of any of the present States of the Union except California and Nevada."--_Report on Indian Affairs_, 1872, pp. 83, 84. In 1871, however, the insolence of conscious strength, and the growing jealousy of the House of Representatives towards the prerogative--arrogated by the Senate--of determining, in connection with the executive, all questions of Indian right and title, and of committing the United States incidentally to pecuniary obligations limited only by its own discretion, for which the House should be bound to make provision without inquiry, led to the adoption, after several severe parliamentary struggles, of the declaration which stands at the head of this paper.