delegates from the Continental Congress asserted that the United States
were invested with the fee of all the land claimed by the Indians. In
the later treaties the Indian proprietorship of the lands was conceded.
[Footnote: American State Papers, Vol. IV., Indian Affairs, I., p. 13.
Letter of H. Knox, June 15, 1789. This is the lettering on the back of
the volume, and for convenience it will be used in referring to it.]
This concession at the time seemed important to the whites; but the
Indians probably never understood that there had been any change of
attitude; nor did it make any practical difference, for, whatever the
theory might be, the lands had eventually to be won, partly by whipping
the savages in fight, partly by making it better worth their while to
remain at peace than to go to war.

Knox and the Treaties.

The Federal officials under whose authority these treaties were made had
no idea of the complexity of the problem. In 1789 the Secretary of War,
the New Englander Knox, solemnly reported to the President that, if the
treaties were only observed and the Indians conciliated, they would
become attached to the United States, and the expense of managing them,
for the next half-century, would be only some fifteen thousand dollars a
year. [Footnote: American State Papers, Vol. IV., Indian Affairs, I., p.
13.] He probably represented, not unfairly, the ordinary Eastern view of
the matter. He had not the slightest idea of the rate at which the
settlements were increasing, though he expected that tracts of Indian
territory would from time to time be acquired. He made no allowance for
a growth so rapid that within the half-century six or eight populous
States were to stand within the Indian-owned wilderness of his day. He
utterly failed to grasp the central features of the situation, which
were that the settlers needed the land, and were bound to have it,