The court of Great Britain cannot allow of this article relating only to the persons of the savages, and not their country. The words of this treaty are clear and precise; that is to say, the Five Nations, or Cantons, are subject to the dominion of Great Britain, which by the received exposition of all treaties must relate to the country, as well as to the persons of the inhabitants; it is what France has acknowledged in the most solemn manner; she had well weighed the importance of this acknowledgment at the time of signing this treaty, and Great Britain can never give it up. The countries possessed by these Indians are very well known, and are not at all so undetermined as it is pretended in the memorial. They possess and make them over, as other proprietors do in all other places.

Whatever pretext might be alleged by France in considering these countries as the appurtenances of Canada, it is a certain truth that they have belonged, and (as they have not been given up or made over to the English) belong still, to the same Indian nations, which by the fifteenth article of the treaty of Utrecht, France agreed not to molest, Nullo in posterum impedimento aut molestia afficiant.

Notwithstanding all that has been advanced in this article, the court of Great Britain cannot agree to France having the least title to the river Ohio and the territory in question.

N. B. This was all the country from the Alleghany Mountains to the Ohio, and down the same and on both sides thereof to the river Mississippi.

Even that of possession is not, nor can it be alleged on this occasion, since France cannot pretend to have had any such before the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, nor since, unless it be that of certain forts, unjustly erected lately on the lands which evidently belong to the Five Nations, or which these have made over to the crown of Great Britain or its subjects, as may be proved by treaties and acts of the greatest authority. What the court of Great Britain maintained, and what it insists upon, is that the Five Nations of the Iroquois, acknowledged by France to be the subjects of Great Britain, are, by origin or by right of conquest,

the lawful proprietors of the river Ohio and the territory in question. And as to the territory which has been yielded and made over by these people to Great Britain (which cannot but be owned must be the most just and lawful manner of making an acquisition of this sort), she reclaims it as belonging to her, having continued cultivating it for above twenty years past, and having made settlements in several parts of it from the sources even of the Ohio to Pichawillanes in the centre of the territory between the Ohio and the Wabash.

In 1755 the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations were so solicitous to ascertain the territory of the Six Nations that Dr. Mitchell, by their desire, published a large map of North America, and Mr. Pownall, the present secretary of the Board of Trade, then certified, as appears on the map, that the doctor was furnished with documents for the purpose from that board. In this map Dr. Mitchell observes "that the Six Nations have extended their territories ever since the year 1672, when they subdued and were incorporated with the ancient Shawanese, the native proprietors of these countries and the river Ohio; besides which they likewise claim a right of conquest over the Illinois, and all the Mississippi, as far as they extend. This," he adds, "is confirmed by their own claims and possessions in 1742, which include all the bounds here laid down, and none have ever thought fit to dispute them." And, in confirmation of this right of the Six Nations to the country on the Ohio, as mentioned by the king's ministers in their memorial to the Duc de Mirepoix in 1755, we would just remark that the Six Nations, Shawanese, and Delawares were in the actual occupation of

the lands southward of the Great Kenhawa for some time after the French had encroached upon the river Ohio; and that in the year 1752 these tribes had a large town on Kentucky River, two hundred and thirty-eight miles below the Scioto; that in the year 1753 they resided and hunted on the southerly side. of the river Ohio, in the lower country, at about three hundred and twenty miles below the Great Kenhawa, and in the year 1755 they had also a large town opposite to the mouth of the Scioto, at the very place which is the southern boundary line of the tract of land applied for by Mr. Walpole and his associates. But it is a certain fact that the Cherokees never had any towns or settlements in the country southward of the Great Kenhawa; that they do not hunt there, and that neither the Six Nations, Shawanese, nor Delawares do now reside or hunt on the southerly side of the river Ohio, nor did for several years before they sold the country to the king. These are facts which can be easily and fully proved.

In October, 1768, at a Congress held with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix, they observed to Sir William Johnson:

Now, brother, you, who know all our affairs, must be sensible that our rights go much farther to the southward than the Kenhawa, and that we have a very good and clear title as far south as the Cherokee River, which we cannot allow to be the right of any other Indians, without doing wrong to our posterity, and acting unworthy those warriors who fought and conquered it; we therefore expect our right will be considered.

In November, 1768, the Six Nations sold to the king all the country on the southerly side of the

river Ohio as far as the Cherokee River; but notwithstanding that sale, as soon as it was understood in Virginia, that government favored the pretensions of the Cherokees, and that Dr. Walker and Colonel Lewis (the commissioners sent from that colony to the Congress at Fort Stanwix) had returned from thence, the late Lord Botetourt sent these gentlemen to Charleston, South Carolina, to endeavor to convince Mr. Stuart, the southern superintendent of Indian affairs, of the necessity of enlarging the boundary line which he had settled with the Cherokees; and to run it from the Great Kenhawa to Holston River. These gentlemen were appointed commissioners by his Lordship, as they had been long conversant in Indian affairs, and were well acquainted with the actual extent of the Cherokee country. Whilst these commissioners were in South Carolina, they wrote a letter to Mr. Stuart, as he had been but a very few years in the Indian service (and could not, from the nature of his former employment, be supposed to be properly informed about the Cherokee territory), respecting the claims of the Cherokees to the lands southward of the Great Kenhawa, and therein they expressed themselves as follows.

Charleston, South Carolina, February 2,1769.-The country southward of the Big Kenhawa was never claimed by the Cherokees, and now is the property of the crown, as Sir William Johnson purchased it of the Six Nations at a very considerable expense, and took a deed of cession from them at Fort Stainwix.

In 1769 the House of Burgesses of the colony of Virginia represented to Lord Botetourt, "That they

have the greatest reason to fear the said line" (meaning the boundary line which the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations have referred to in the map annexed to their Lordships' report), "if confirmed, would constantly open to the Indians, and other enemies to his Majesty, a free and easy ingress to the heart of the country on the Ohio, Holston River, and the Great Kenhawa; whereby the settlements which may be attempted in those quarters will, in all probability, be utterly destroyed, and that great extent of country [at least eight hundred miles in length] from the mouth of the Kenhawa to the mouth of the Cherokee River, extending eastward as far as Laurel Hill, so lately ceded to his Majesty, to which no tribe of Indians at present set up any pretensions, will be entirely abandoned to the Cherokees; in consequence of which, claims totally destructive of the true interest of his Majesty may at some future time arise, and acquisitions justly ranked among the most valuable of the late war be altogether lost."

From the foregoing detail of facts it is obvious— 1. That the country southward of the Great Kenhawa, at least as far as the Cherokee River, originally belonged to the Shawanese.

2. That the Six Nations, in virtue of their conquest of the Shawanese, became the lawful proprietors of that country.

3. That the king, in consequence of the grant from the Six Nations, made to his Majesty at Fort Stanwix in 1768, is now vested with the undoubted right and property thereof.