unqualifiedly, and even Catholic Spain did not predicate her title
solely upon the grant of the Holy See.

No one of these countries was more zealous in her maintenance of these
doctrines than England. In 1496 King Henry VII commissioned John and
Sebastian Cabot to proceed upon a voyage of discovery and to take
possession of such countries as they might find which were then unknown
to Christian people, in the name of the King of England. The results of
their voyages in the next and succeeding years laid the foundation for
the claim of England to the territory of that portion of North America
which subsequently formed the nucleus of our present possessions.

The policy of the United States since the adoption of the Federal
Constitution has in this particular followed the precedent established
by the mother country. In the treaty of peace between Great Britain and
the United States following the Revolutionary war, the former not only
relinquished the right of government, but renounced and yielded to the
United States all pretensions and claims whatsoever to all the country
south and west of the great northern rivers and lakes as far as the
Mississippi.

In the period between the conclusion of this treaty and the year 1789 it
was undoubtedly the opinion of Congress that the relinquishment of
territory thus made by Great Britain, without so much as a saving clause
guaranteeing the Indian right of occupancy, carried with it an absolute
and unqualified fee-simple title unembarrassed by any intermediate
estate or tenancy. In the treaties held with the Indians during this
period--notably those of Fort Stanwix, with the Six Nations, in 1784,
and Fort Finney, with the Shawnees, in 1786--they had been required to
acknowledge the United States as the sole and absolute sovereign of all