a sailing vessel in 1835 and the old engine of the Walk-in-theWater was again transferred to a new boat named the Charles Townsend. The Superior went down in a gale in 1843 and the Henry Clay earned unenviable fame by bringing the first epidemic of cholera to Detroit in 1832.

In 1825 the Erie Canal was opened and through water 'transit was installed between the Great Lakes and tidewater. Passenger traffic grew rapidly and people from the eastern states began migrating westward in swarms. This stimulated the building of more lake steamboats and the upbuilding of the West. But most of the early immigrants hurried through Michigan to settle in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. This was due to a propaganda of mischief by which the American Fur Company sought to discourage settlement because the fur business would suffer if the state were cut up into farms. Michigan was represented as having a pestilent climate in which a person from the settled districts of the East would soon die of fever and ague or other malarial diseases, so for several years the flood of settlers held their noses and fairly ran across Michigan.

The sense of appreciation of justice as to individual rights of property and person has been slowly developed during all the ages of human history. Primitive men never divided the land on which they lived into individual plats, lots or farms. They held their land in common, tilled it when and where they pleased and each man gathered and stored his own product. When necessity required, the individual stores became a part of the common stores, for the main purpose was to keep life in the tribe rather than in the family. The rights and even the existence of the family were dependent upon the tribe. In that period the organization of human society was much like that of the beehive or the ant hill. Men toiled and fought more for the common good than for individual profit.

Out of that condition arose the first development of federation by which several tribes banded together for mutual benefit, on the principle that a bundle of sticks is stronger than any single stick and, therefore, a federation of tribes must be more secure of its rights than any single tribe. The evolutionary prog

ress then was from the individual to the family, from the family to the clan, from the clan to the tribe, from the tribe to the federation of tribes and thus to the state and nation. At this point the evolutionary process seemed to stop as if the limit of the process of civilization had been reached. Each nation assumed that because it was independent in the control of its internal affairs it had reached the goal of its ambition and owed nothing to any other nation. The idea that a perfectly organized society of nations is quite as necessary as an organized society of individuals is very slowly penetrating the mind of the world.

The reasons and necessities which lie back of this society of nations which is to be, because it must be, are exactly the same as the reasons which led to the formation of the clan, the tribe, the state and the nation-mutual protection, mutual aid and the establishment of justice and right everywhere and to all people.

Our own Civil War arose out of the dispute as to whether the Union or the individual state is supreme. Certain states held that the Union was a voluntary agreement from which any state was privileged to withdraw whenever the policy of the Federal Government was not agreeable to it. Certain other states held that the Union constituted an indissoluble nation from which no member could withdraw and that each state owed allegiance to the federation, while the federation or Union was equally bound to respect and defend the just rights of each individual state.

As long as men consider this question in its largest aspect as between the state and the nation, there is an incurable disagreement; but as soon as they reduce it to its lowest terms-the case between the individual and society-it becomes as simple as the addition of 1 and 9. The individual who elects to withdraw himself from the social compact and flouts the common rules which govern society at once classes himself as an outlaw, and presently his hand is against every man and every man's hand is raised against him. The question of right, of justice, or of expediency are not at all affected by the number of people involved. Right principle is eternal and indestructible.

Before the Americas were discovered national rights and feudal rights had long been recognized by all European peoples. But when they invaded the New World they seemed to ignore any consideration of right so far as the native people were concerned. They plundered them of their accumulated wealth of gold and silver; slaughtered them as if they were wild beasts, and then began two simultaneous undertakings which were in open contradiction. They endeavored to Christianize all these people through the agency of missionaries-most of whom were noble, unselfish and heroic characters-and at the same time professed adherents of Christianity began to occupy the lands of the aborigines without their consent and to exterminate the rightful owners of the soil when they resisted their occupation. This was most unchristian conduct; but the rule of Might discarded all questions of Right, and organized Christian civilization preyed on unorganized barbarism.

CHAPTER XLVIII

LAND TREATIES WITH MICHIGAN INDIANS

B

EFORE Michigan could be rightly and decently opened up to white settlement the consent of the Indians must be obtained by treaties. The Indian was an intelligent man, considering his opportunities. He was quick to see the ultimate result of continued invasion of the European swarm and the constant extension of private land tenure. He would not cede away all his territorial rights because that would make him an exile with no place to go and no means of livelihood. The idea of subsisting himself by gainful industry had never occurred to him. He must have a vast area in which to hunt wild game for his food and plant a few vegetables to eke out his subsistence. His first step toward gainful industry was offered through the fur trade, and white settlement would, of course, soon extinguish that.

Unable to obtain cessions of territory which would make him complete master of all the territory, the white man went as far as he could toward beguiling his red brother out of his patrimony in the land. When the Indian proved reluctant his good will was obtained by presents and his consent was gained by plying him with rum until his judgment and sense of caution were temporarily suspended. If he refused to treat at all, treaty negotiations were preceded by warfare to impress him with the uselessness of resistance to the will of the white man.

For nearly a century the Northwest Territory, of which Michigan was a part, had been claimed by right of discovery or settlement by France, Great Britain and the United States in turn. During all that time not a rood of land had been ceded to any of these governments by the Indians. To establish some color of rightful ownership the Government of the United States began the absorption of Michigan Territory by a nibbling process. The first bite was the Treaty of Greenville, obtained in 1795, by

which the Indians ceded a strip of land six miles wide, running from the junction of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers of Ohio to the latitude of the foot of Lake Huron.

This narrow strip could offer little inducement to a horde of land-hungry people of the eastern states or to foreign immigrants, so in 1818 Gov. Cass prepared to take a much larger bite out of the Indian lands of Michigan Territory. This was accomplished by the Treaty of Saginaw. The story of the making of that treaty is decidedly humorous when viewed from the standpoint of the white man and quite tragic when viewed from the standpoint of the Indian.

Gov. Cass realized that it was a hazardous undertaking. The Michigan Indians had long been pensioners of the British goverment, receiving regular gratuities from the British agents at Amherstburg. Those agents had repeatedly asserted that their government had no intention of settling in the Indian country, but merely wanted to trade with the Indians and protect them against the invasions of the Americans. The Americans on the other hand were eager to dispossess the Indians of their lands and convert them into private farms, fenced in. That would mean the destruction of wild game and fur-bearing animals and the driving away of the Indians.

The War of 1812-14 had forced the British out of Michigan and demonstrated the ability of the Americans to hold the Territory against the British and Indians combined. It was, however, a matter of discretion to allow the situation to cool and give the Indians time to think it over, while the Americans held on to Detroit and the little territory already ceded before proposing another cession of far greater area. The plan of Gov. Cass in his treaty-making was to go as far as he could rather than as far as he liked. In other words, to obtain by peaceful means all the area of Michigan that the Indians would grant without making a stand to fight for their rights.

During the summer of 1819 Gov. Cass obtained authority from the Government at Washington to negotiate a treaty with the Indians of Michigan for the cession of as much land as they would grant.