Wars, in which the whites were not always the aggressoi-s, ensued. European policy, numbers, and skill, prevailed. As the white j)opulation advanced, that of the Indians necessarily receded. The country in the neighbourhood of agriculturalists became unfit for them. The game fled into thicker and more unbroken forests, and the Indians followed. The soil to which the CVown originally claimed title, being no longer occupied, was parceled out according to the will of the sovereign power, and taken possession of by those claiming under it. Hence the absolute title and exclusive right of extinguishing that of the Indians having been vested in, and exercised by, the government cannot exist at the same time in private individuals, and was incompatible with an absolute and complete title in the Indians.
The British government, which was then ours, and wliose rights passed to the United States by, and at, the peace of 1783, asserted, and maintained, a title to all the lands occupied by the Indians in the British colonies in America, and the exclusive right of extinguishing their title by occupancy. These claims were carried to the line of the Mississippi by the terms of the treaty of 1783. Our title to a vast portion of the lands we hold originates in them. The United States therefore maintain the principle which has been received as the foundation of all European title in America."
By the treaty of peace, in 1783, Great Britain relinquished all claim not only to the government, but to the soil, and territorial rights, of the thirteen Colonies as claimed by the American negotiators of that treaty, the boundaries of which collectively were fixed by its second article. And by that treaty all the powers of that government and its right to the soil passed to the Thirteen States, not as a single Sovereignty, but as thirteen Independent Sovereignties.