tion, were made for lands within the Indian hunting-grounds North Carolina and Virginia,

ficers and soldiers of the Revolutionary War by such grants and extinguished the arrears due the armny by similar means. It was one of the great resources which sustained the war, not only by those States but by other States. The nltimate fee, encumbered with the right of occupancy, was in the Crown to a great extent, paid their of previous to the Revolution, and in the States afterward, and subject to grant. This right of occupuncy was protected by the political power, and rospected by the courts nntil extin guished." So the Supreme Court and the State courts have uniformly held."

President Adams, in his Message of 1828, thus describes the policy of the United States toward the Indians at that time:

"At the establishment of the Federal Government the principle pendent powers, and also as pendcnt powers, we, negotiated with them by treatics; as proprietors, prevail on them to sell; as brethren of the human race, rude adopted of considering them as forcign and inde

proprictors of lands. was As inde-

purchased of them all the land which we could we and ignorant, we endeavored to bring them to the knowledge of religion and letters." Kent says: tablishcd colonics in America, assumed the ultimate dominion to be in themselves, and elaimed the exclusive right title to the soil, subject only to the lndian right of occupancy. The natives were admitted to be the rightful occupants of the soil, with a legal it, and to use it according to dispose of the soil at their own will, except to the govern ment claiming the right of pre-emption." The United States adopted the same "The European nations which, respectively, es- to grant a just elaia to retain possession of to their own discretion, though not as well as

principle; and their exelusive right to

• Clark s. Smith, 13 Peters.

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