grinations through the territory, since denominated Kentucky, met with no marks of a modern Indian town within the whole extent of the country. The villages of Indians known to have been nearest to Kentucky, were on the Scioto and the Miamis of the Ohio in the north, and on the waters of the Tennessee river in the south. From these points, the various war and hunting parties issued to engage in the one or the other pursuit, as the passions, or the opportunties of their expeditions might lead. Here, the Chickasaws and Cherokees of the south, used to engage with various tribes of the Miami confederacy; here they indulged their passions for hunting, in the profusion of game afforded by Kentucky. So much was this ground exempted from settlement, that on neither the Ohio nor the lower Tennessee, are any Indian towns known to have been settled. Yet no situations have generally delighted savage tribes so much, as the margins of water courses; the opportunities of navigation and of fishing, unite to attract them to such spots. Accordingly the banks of most of our western rivers, excepting those of Kentucky, (although they abounded in game and in salt licks,) were found occupied by the native tribes of the forests.

There is another circumstance suggested by Gen. Harrison, which confirms the modern limitation of the Six Nations, whatever may have been their ancient ascendency. The chief seat of the Miamis was the scite of Fort Wayne, between the St. Joseph's and the St. Mary's. Had the Six Nations achieved any great recent success over the Miamis, they would in all probability, have forced them from this favorite spot, which is the key to the country below; and the defeated tribes would have been driven on their confederates upon the lower Wabash. This, however, was not their location.

That long and obstinate wars subsisted between the Iroquois and their immediate western neighbors, about the middle of the last century, derives much probability from another circumstance. *The French for fifty years, used no route to their possessions on the Mississippi, but the circuitous one by lakes

*Letter of Gen. Harrison.

Erie and Michigan, and the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. This distant embarrassed course of communication, could not have been resorted to, from their ignorance of the more direct route, by the Maumee and the Wabash. It is therefore to be presumed, that the prevalence of wars between the adjacent tribes, prevented them from passing over this belligerent ground. It was not till about 1735, that Capt. De Vincennes, accompanied by a Jesuit, accomplished the passage by this latter route. Sometime before this period, the Wyandots probably returned; and peace having been made with the Six Nations, the country was opened to the enterprises of the French, as has been seen. No treaties made with the north-western Indians directly, are known to exist in our imperfect colonial records, previous to the treaty of 1774, between Lord Dunmore and the Shawanees, if even this has been preserved.

The nature of this treaty, the author has been unable to ascertain with any precision from any accessable records. There is a brief notice of its purport, in Burk's Virginia,* which represents, that peace was made by the royal governor with the Shawanees, on "condition that the lands on this side of the Ohio, should be forever ceded to the whites; that their prisoners should be delivered up, and that four hostages should be immediately given for the faithful performance of these conditions," Such a treaty appears at this day, to be utterly beyond the advantages which could have been claimed from Dunmore's expedition. The principal blow had been struck by the left wing of his army apart from him, at the bloody battle of Point Pleasant, in which, under Col. Andrew Lewis, with the choicest spirits of the western backwoodsmen, the Indians fought with an open resolution worthy of their highest military fame, although they retreated. Gov. Dunmore crossed the Ohio seventy-five miles above the mouth of the Kenhawa, and ordered Lewis to join him at the Indian towns eighty miles from the river. Here but little fighting is said to have taken place, when the Governor patched up a peace, which would have little deserved the subsequent suspicions evinced by the legislature of Virginia,t

* 3d vol. p. 396. † Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry.

Niles' Register, vol. 12, p. 145.

had it affected a transfer of such valuable territory even at that day. Then, indeed, the prospect of western prosperity, was thickly veiled, in comparison with its modern reality, and still more splendid indications; yet the "colony and ancient dominion of Virginia," was by no means, insensible to the cradle of empire she possessed, extending from the Alleghany to the Mississippi. This is evinced by the eagerness with which she laid claim in her first constitution of June 29th, 1776, to the extreme boundaries of dominion, under the charter granted by James the first of Great Britian. "Within these limits she asserted the exclusive right of purchasing the soil from the aborigines." So far the title of the Indians to Kentucky and the adjacent country, has been traced to its voluntary conveyance to the British Crown, for a valuable consideration at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, in 1768. This treaty was formed on the principles which had regulated the intercourse of the French and British with the natives of North America, from the earliest period of their connexion.

The European nations seem to have adopted the principle of prior discovery, as one of peace among themselves, and not as a source of title over the aboriginal inhabitants.* Spain, in the discussions with other European nations, as well as with the United States, placed her title to her American possessions, not upon the celebrated bull of Pope Alexander VI., but upon the rights given by discovery; "Portugal sustained her claim to the Brazils by the same title. France also founded her title to the vast possessions she claimed in America on discovery." The letters patent granted to the Sieur Demonts, in 1603, constituted him Lieutenant General, and the representative of the King in Acadie, which is described as stretching from the 40th to the 46th degree of north latitude. The States of Holland also made acquisitions in America, and sustained their right on the common principle adopted in Europe. No one

of the powers of Europe gave its full assent to this principle, more unequivocally than England. So early as 1495, her monarch granted a commission to the Cabots to discover coun

* 8 Wheaton's Reports; McIntosh against Johnson.

tries then unknown to Christian people, and to take possession of them, in the name of the King of England. In the same manner were granted, the charters to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, and finally to Sir Thomas Gates, and others, in 1606. The latter charter granted the country between 34 and 41 degrees of north latitude: this was afterwards enlarged in 1609, into the grant to the Treasurer and Company of Adventurers of the city of London for the first colony in Virginia. This charter embraced four hundred miles in absolute property, extending along the sea coast and into the land throughout from sea to sea. Between France and Great Britian, whose discoveries, as well as settlements, were nearly cotemporaneous, contests for the country actually covered by the Indians, began as soon as their settlements approached each other, and were continued until finally settled in the year 1763 by the treaty of Paris. In the controversies which were closed by this war, France had contended, not only that the St. Lawrence was to be considered as the centre of Canada, but that the Ohio was within that colony. She founded this claim on discovery, and on having used this river for transportation of troops in a war with some southern Indians. In the treaty of 1763, "France ceded and guarantied to Great Britian, all Nova Scotia or Acadie and Canada, with their dependencies, to the middle of the Mississippi, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain," while Great Britian on her part, surrendered to France all her pretensions to the country west of the Mississippi. "It has never been supposed that she surrendered nothing, although she was not in possession of a foot of the land. She surrendered all right to acquire the country; and any after attempt to purchase it from the Indians, would have been considered and treated as an invasion of the territory of France. Thus, all the nations of Europe who have acquired territory from the Indians on this continent, have asserted in themselves, and have recognized in others, the exclusive right of the discoverer to appropriate the lands occupied by the Indians. By the treaty which concluded the war of our revolution, Great Britian relinquished all claim not only to the go

vernment, but to the "proprietary and territorial rights of the United States." By this treaty, the powers of the government, and the right to soil, which had previously been in Great Britain, passed definitely to these States. "They had before taken possession of them by declaring independence; but neither the declaration of independence, nor the treaty confirming it, could give us more than that, which we before possessed; or to which Great Britain was before entitled. It has never been doubted that the United States, or the several States, had a clear title to all the lands within the boundary lines described in the treaty, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy, and that the exclusive power to extinguish that right, was vested in that government, which might constitutionally exercise it." This extinguishment has been made as mentioned, by the treaty of Fort Stanwix for the country east of the Tennessee river; for the balance of Kentucky, to the Mississippi, a treaty with the Chickasaws on the 19th October, 1818, provided. In addition to these transfers of native title to Kentucky, a conveyance was made by the southern Indians, the Cherokees, to Richard Henderson and Company, on the 17th March, 1775, on the Wataga or Wataugah, the south-eastern branch of Holston. By this treaty was ceded, as it imports, "all the tract or territory of lands now called by the name of TRANSYLVANIA, lying on the Ohio river, and the waters thereof, branches of the Mississippi, and bounded as follows: Beginning on the said Ohio river at the mouth of the Cantuckey Chenoee, or what by the English is called Louisa river; from thence running up the said river, and most northwardly fork of the same to the head spring thereof; thence à south-east course to the top ridge of Powel's mountain; thence westwardly along the ridge of the said mountain unto a point from which a north-west course will hit or strike the head spring of the most southwardly branch of Cumberland river; thence down the said river including all its waters, to the Ohio river; thence up the said river as it meanders to the beginning. Which said tract or territory of lands was at the time of said purchase, and time out of mind, had been the land and hunting grounds of the said tribe of (Chero

B