In the sadly famous case of the removal of the Cherokee tribe from Georgia, it is recorded as the opinion of our Su- preme Court that "the Indians are acknowledged to have an unquestionable, and heretofore unquestioned, right to the lands they occupy until that right shall be extinguished by a volun tary cession to the Government." "The Indian nations have always been considered as distinet independent political communities, retaining their original natnral rights disputed possessors of the soil, from time immemorial, with the single exception of that imposed by irresistible power, which excluded them from iutercourse with any other Europcan po- as the un- tentate than the first discoverer of the coast of the partieular region claimed; and this was a rcstriction which those Eu- ropean potentates imposed on themselves as well as on the generally applied to them, means a people distinct from others. The Constitu tion, by declaring treaties already nade, as well as those to be made, to be the supreme law of the land, has adopted and sanctioned the previous treaties with the Indian nations, and consequently admits their rank among those powers who are The words 'trcaty' and language, selectod in our Indians The very term nation,' so capable of making treatics. tion' are words of our own na- diplo- matic and legislative proceedings by ourselves, having each a We have applied them to Indians as we have applied them to other nations of the definite and well understood meaning. earth. They are applied to all in the same sense."^[1]

In another decision of the Supreme Court we find still greater emphasis put upon the Indian right of occupancy, by stating it as a right, the observance of which stipulated for was in treaties between the United States and other nations.

When the United States acquired and took possession of the Floridas, the treaties which had been made with the Indian