and the Delawares, as well as with the Miamis, the Weas, the Piankeshaws, the Kaskaskias and the Peorias. By these treaties, these different tribes cede to the United States the most extensive and most advantageous portions of their respective territories, and retain, as we have already said, but a limited and circumscribed demesne, termed a " reserve," for the wants of each particular tribe, and intended as their future residence.
We remark daily in the newspapers that great numbers of emigrants are spreading already over the territories ceded; yet the conditions precedent of the treaties between the Government and many of the tribes expressly forbid the whites to settle there before the survey and sale of the lands to the profit of the Indians. Notwithstanding these conditions, the whites settle there, and even defy the authorities to deter them.
The new organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska abrogates the protecting " intercourse laws." Thereby it has overthrown the feeble barrier which opposed the introduction of intoxicating liquors, which the inhabitants so expressively define by the term " Indian firewater." In a few short years these little reservations, or Indian settlements, will be surrounded by a white population; these whites, being for the most part vicious and corrupt, will introduce and furnish liquors in abundance, in order to satisfy the depraved taste of the Indian. In all this the sole object is to deprive these unfortunate men of all that remains to them in land and money. In this position of affairs, I cannot conceive how the Indians can be protected against the dangerous influences which will inevitably sur
round them on all sides. Ere long (perhaps by the close of 1856) the delegates of the Territory of Kansas will knock
at the door of Congress for admittance into the Union. If this request be granted, we may at once bid farewell to the independence of the Indians and the maintenance of their reservations. The new State will directly establish her jurisdiction over all the inhabitants found within her limits.