8407. TERRITORY, Purchases of Indian.—
To be prepared against the occupation
of Louisiana by a powerful and enterprising
people [the French], it is important that, setting
less value on interior extension of purchases
from the Indians, we bend our whole
views to the purchase and settlement of the
country on the Mississippi, from its mouth to
its northern regions, that we may be able to
present as strong a front on our western as
on our eastern border, and plant on the Mississippi
itself the means of its own defence. We
now own from 31° to the Yazoo, and hope this
summer to purchase what belongs to the Choctaws
from the Yazoo up to their boundary,
supposed to be about opposite the mouth of
Arkansas. We wish at the same time to begin
in your quarter, for which there is at present
a favorable opening. The Cahokias extinct,
we are entitled to their country by our paramount
sovereignty. The Peorias, we understand,
have all been driven off from their
country, and we might claim it in the same
way; but as we understand there is one chief
remaining, who would, as the survivor of the
tribe, sell the right, it is better to give him
such terms as will make him easy for life, and
take a conveyance from him. The Kaskaskias
being reduced to a few families, I presume we
may purchase their whole country for what
would place every individual of them at his
ease, and be a small price to us,—say by laying
off for each family, wherever they would
choose it, as much land as they could cultivate,
adjacent to each other, enclosing the whole
in a single fence, and giving them such an
annuity in money or goods forever as would
place them in happiness; and we might take
them also under the protection of the United
States. Thus possessed of the rights of these
tribes, we should proceed to the settling of their
boundaries with the Pottawatamies and Kickapoos,
claiming all doubtful territory, but paying
them a pr ce for the relinquishment of their
concurrent claim, and even prevailing on them,
if possible, to cede, for a price, such of their
own unquestioned territory as would give us a
convenient northern boundary. Before broaching
this, and while we are bargaining with the
Kaskaskias, the minds of the Pottawatamies
and Kickapoos should be soothed and conciliated
by liberalities and sincere assurances of
friendship. Perhaps by sending a well-qualified
character to stay some time in Duquoin's village,
as if on other business, and to sound him
and introduce the subject by degrees to his
mind and that of the other heads of families,
inculcating in the way of conversation, all
those considerations which prove the advantages
they would receive by a cession on these
terms, the object might be more easily and effectually
obtained than by abruptly proposing it
to them at a formal treaty. Of the means,
however, of obtaining what we wish, you will
be the best judge; and I have given you this
view of the system which we suppose will best
promote the interests of the Indians and ourselves,
and finally consolidate our whole country
into one nation only; that you may be enabled
the better to adapt your means to the
object, for this purpose we have given you a
general commission for treating.—
To Governor Harrison. Washington ed. iv, 473.
(W.
Feb. 1803)
