As the continuance of the act for establishing trading houses with the
Indian tribes will be under the consideration of the Legislature at its
present session, I think it my duty to communicate the views which have
guided me in the execution of that act, in order that you may decide
on the policy of continuing it in the present or any other form, or
discontinue it altogether if that shall, on the whole, seem most for
the public good.

The Indian tribes residing within the limits of the United States
have for a considerable time been growing more and more uneasy at the
constant diminution of the territory they occupy, although effected by
their own voluntary sales, and the policy has long been gaining strength
with them of refusing absolutely all further sale on any conditions,
insomuch that at this time it hazards their friendship and excites
dangerous jealousies and perturbations in their minds to make any
overture for the purchase of the smallest portions of their land. A
very few tribes only are not yet obstinately in these dispositions. In
order peaceably to counteract this policy of theirs and to provide an
extension of territory which the rapid increase of our numbers will call
for, two measures are deemed expedient. First. To encourage them to
abandon hunting, to apply to the raising stock, to agriculture, and
domestic manufacture, and thereby prove to themselves that less land and
labor will maintain them in this better than in their former mode of
living. The extensive forests necessary in the hunting life will then
become useless, and they will see advantage in exchanging them for
the means of improving their farms and of increasing their domestic
comforts. Secondly. To multiply trading houses among them, and place
within their reach those things which will contribute more to their
domestic comfort than the possession of extensive but uncultivated
wilds. Experience and reflection will develop to them the wisdom of