Chapter 5

3. A treaty signed at the mouth of the Teton River on the 5th of July, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs, headmen, and warriors of the Sione and Ogalla bands of Sioux Indians, and on the 12th of July, 1825, at Camp Hidden Creek, by chiefs and warriors of the Siounes of the Fireheart's band on the part of their respective bands.

4. A treaty signed at the mouth of the Teton River on the 6th of July, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs, headmen, and warriors of the Chayenne tribe of Indians on the part of said tribe.

5. A treaty signed at the Auricara village on the 16th July, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs, headmen, and warriors of the Hunkpapas band of the Sioux tribe of Indians on the part of said band.

6. A treaty signed at the Ricara village on the 18th July, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs, headmen, and warriors of the Ricara tribe of Indians on the part of said tribe.

7. A treaty signed at the Mandan village on the 30th of July, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs and warriors of the Mandan tribe of Indians on the part of said tribe.

8. A treaty signed at the lower Mandan village on the 30th of July, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs and warriors of the Belantse Etea, or Minnetaree, tribe of Indians on the part of said tribe.

9. A treaty signed at the Mandan village on the 4th of August, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs and warriors of the Crow tribe of Indians on the part of said tribe.

10. A treaty signed at Fort Atkinson, Council Bluffs, on the 25th of September, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs, headmen, and warriors of the Ottoe and Missouri tribe of Indians on the part of said tribe.

11. A treaty signed at Fort Atkinson, Council Bluffs, on the 30th of September, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs, headmen, and warriors of the Pawnee tribe of Indians on the part of said tribe.

12. A treaty signed at Fort Atkinson, Council Bluffs, on the 6th of October, 1825, by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and by certain chiefs, headmen, and warriors of the Maha tribe of Indians on the part of said tribe.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _January 10, 1826_

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I transmit to the Senate a treaty signed at Prairie des Chiens, in the Territory of Michigan, on the 19th of August, 1825, by William Clark and Lewis Cass, commissioners on the part of the United States, and certain chiefs and warriors of the Sioux, Chippeways, Socs, Foxes, Winnebagoes, Menominies, Ottoways, Potawatamies, and Ioway tribes of Indians on the part of said tribes, and I request the advice of the Senate with regard to its ratification.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _January 20, 1826_

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

In compliance with the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 23d ultimo, I transmit herewith reports[003] from the Secretary of War and the Commissioner of the General Land Office, with the statements desired by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _January 23, 1826_

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

In compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 27th December last, requesting a statement of moneys paid out of the public Treasury to the late President of the United States as compensation for his services in various other offices which he has filled under the Government of the United States, and on other accounts, and also of claims for allowances made by him upon the Government which have been disallowed, I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of the Treasury, with documents, containing the information desired by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _January 24, 1826_

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

In compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 12th December last, I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of the Navy, with the documents and proceedings of the naval courts-martial in the cases of Captain Charles Stewart and of Lieutenants Joshua R. Sands and William M. Hunter.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _January 30, 1826_

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I transmit herewith to the Senate, for their consideration and advice with regard to their ratification--

1. A treaty concluded on the 10th day of August, 1825, at Council Grove by Benjamin H. Reeves, George C. Sibley, and Thomas Mather, commissioners on the part of the United States, and certain chiefs and headmen of the Great and Little Osage tribes of Indians on the part of the said tribe.

2. A treaty concluded on the 16th day of August, 1825, at the Sora Kanzas Creek by the same commissioners on the part of the United States and certain chiefs and headmen of the Kanzas tribe or nation of Indians on the part of said tribe.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _January 31, 1826_

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

In compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 18th instant, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State, with the correspondence with the British Government, relating to the boundary of the United States on the Pacific Ocean, desired by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _January 31, 1826_

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I transmit herewith to the Senate, for their consideration and advice with regard to its ratification, a treaty concluded by the Secretary of War, duly authorized thereto, with the chiefs and headmen of the Creek Nation, deputed by them, and now in this city.

It has been agreed upon, and is presented to the consideration of the Senate as a substitute for the treaty signed at the Indian Springs on the 12th of February last. The circumstances under which this received on the 3d of March last your advice and consent to its ratification are known to you. It was transmitted to me from the Senate on the 5th of March, and ratified in full confidence yielded to the advice and consent of the Senate, under a firm belief, founded on the journal of the commissioners of the United States and on the express statements in the letter of one of them of the 16th of February to the then Secretary of War, that it had been concluded with a large majority of the chiefs of the Creek Nation and with a reasonable prospect of immediate acquiescence by the remainder.

This expectation has not merely been disappointed. The first measures for carrying the treaty into execution had scarcely been taken when the two principal chiefs who had signed it fell victims to the exasperation of the great mass of the nation, and their families and dependents, far from being able to execute the engagements on their part, fled for life, safety, and subsistence from the territories which they had assumed to cede, to our own. Yet, in this fugitive condition, and while subsisting on the bounty of the United States, they have been found advancing pretensions to receive exclusively to themselves the whole of the sums stipulated by the commissioners of the United States in payment _for all_ the lands of the Creek Nation which were ceded by the terms of the treaty. And they have claimed the stipulation of the eighth article, that the United States would "_protect_ the emigrating party against the encroachments, hostilities, and impositions of the whites and of all others," as an engagement by which the United States were bound to become the instruments of their vengeance and to inflict upon the majority of the Creek Nation the punishment of Indian retribution to gratify the vindictive fury of an impotent and helpless minority of their own tribe.

In this state of things the question is not whether the treaty of the 12th of February last shall or shall not be executed. So far as the United States were or could be bound by it I have been anxiously desirous of carrying it into execution. But, like other treaties, its fulfillment depends upon the will not of one but of both the parties to it. The parties on the face of the treaty are the United States and the Creek Nation, and however desirous one of them may be to give it effect, this wish must prove abortive while the other party refuses to perform its stipulations and disavows its obligations. By the refusal of the Creek Nation to perform their part of the treaty the United States are absolved from all its engagements on their part, and the alternative left them is either to resort to measures of war to secure by force the advantages stipulated to them in the treaty or to attempt the adjustment of the interest by a new compact. In the preference dictated by the nature of our institutions and by the sentiments of justice and humanity which the occasion requires for measures of peace the treaty herewith transmitted has been concluded, and is submitted to the decision of the Senate. After exhausting every effort in our power to obtain the acquiescence of the Creek Nation to the treaty of the 12th of February, I entertained for some time the hope that their assent might at least have been given to a new treaty, by which all their lands within the State of Georgia should have been ceded. This has also proved impracticable, and although the excepted portion is of comparatively small amount and importance, I have assented to its exception so far as to place it before the Senate only from a conviction that between it and a resort to the forcible expulsion of the Creeks from their habitations and lands within the State of Georgia there was no middle term.

The deputation with which this treaty has been concluded consists of the principal chiefs of the nation--able not only to negotiate but to carry into effect the stipulations to which they have agreed. There is a deputation also here from the small party which undertook to contract for the whole nation at the treaty of the 12th of February, but the number of which, according to the information collected by General Gaines, does not exceed 400. They represent themselves, indeed, to be far more numerous, but whatever their number may be their interests have been provided for in the treaty now submitted. Their subscriptions to it would also have been received but for unreasonable pretensions raised by them after all the arrangements of the treaty had been agreed upon and it was actually signed. Whatever their merits may have been in the facility with which they ceded all the lands of their nation within the State of Georgia, their utter inability to perform the engagements which they so readily contracted and the exorbitancy of their demands when compared with the inefficiency of their own means of performance leave them with no claims upon the United States other than of impartial and rigorous justice.

In referring to the impressions under which I ratified the treaty of the 12th of February last, I do not deem it necessary to decide upon the propriety of the manner in which it was negotiated. Deeply regretting the recriminations and recriminations to which these events have given rise, I believe the public interest will best be consulted by discarding them altogether from the discussion of the subject. The great body of the Creek Nation inflexibly refuse to acknowledge or to execute that treaty. Upon this ground it will be set aside, should the Senate advise and consent to the ratification of that now communicated, without looking back to the means by which the other was effected. And in the adjustment of the terms of the present treaty I have been peculiarly anxious to dispense a measure of great liberality to both parties of the Creek Nation, rather than to extort from them a bargain of which the advantages on our part could only be purchased by hardship on theirs.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _February 1, 1826_

_To the Senate of the United States_:

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 50th ultimo, I communicate herewith, in confidence, a report[004] from the Secretary of State, with the documents, containing the information desired by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _February 7, 1826_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 15th of December last, I communicate herewith reports from the Secretaries of the Treasury and War and from the Commissioner of the General Land Office, with documents, relating to the lead mines and salt springs, containing the information desired by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _February 14, 1826_

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

In compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 12th ultimo, I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of the Navy, with the statements relating to naval courts of inquiry and courts-martial since the 1st January, 1824, requested by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _February 15, 1826_

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit to the House of Representatives a report from the late Secretary of War to the late President of the United States, with documents, containing information requested by a resolution of the House of April 10, 1824, relating to the purchases of real estate in behalf of the United States within the territorial limits of any State since the 4th July, 1776.

These papers were prepared during the last session of Congress, but by some accident were not then communicated to the House.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _February 16, 1826_

_To the Senate of the United States_:

In answer to the two resolutions of the Senate of the 15th instant, marked executive, and which I have received, I state respectfully that all the communications from me to the Senate relating to the congress at Panama have been made, like all other communications upon executive business, _in confidence_ and most of them in compliance with a resolution of the Senate requesting them confidentially. Believing that the established usage of free confidential communication between the Executive and the Senate ought for the public interest to be preserved unimpaired, I deem it my indispensable duty to leave to the Senate itself the decision of a question involving a departure hitherto, so far as I am informed, without example from that usage, and upon the motives for which, not being informed of them, I do not feel myself competent to decide.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _February 17, 1826_

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of the Navy, with a further document, prepared in compliance with a resolution of the House of the 10th of April, 1824, and containing information relating to purchasers of real estate in behalf of the United States within the territorial limits of any State since the 4th of July, 1776.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _February 17, 1826_

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit herewith to both Houses of Congress a letter from the Secretary of War, with a report from the Ordnance Department, relating to the site of the arsenal of the United States at Augusta, in Georgia, and with regard to which the interposition of the legislative authority is submitted to your consideration as desirable.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _March 1, 1826_

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I communicate to Congress a letter from the Secretary of War, together with a representation from Colonel Brooke, relating to the present condition of the Indians in Florida, and which I recommend to the favorable consideration of Congress.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _March 1, 1826_

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

A resolution of the House of Representatives adopted at the first session of the Eighteenth Congress, and bearing date the 6th of May, 1824, requested the President of the United States to lay before the House at their then next session a detailed report of the system and plan of fortifications then contemplated and recommended by the Board of Engineers, with various particulars specified in the resolution; and on the 5th of January last a further resolution was adopted requesting similar information. I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of War, with a letter from the Chief Engineer, and documents, containing, so far as it has been found practicable to obtain and compile it, the information requested by these resolutions.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _March 5, 1826_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I now submit to the consideration of Congress the propriety of making the appropriation for carrying into effect the appointment of a mission to the congress at Panama.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _March 7, 1826_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I communicate to both Houses of Congress a letter from the Secretary of War, together with copies of one to him from the Senators of the State of Maryland, and several other documents, relating to a claim of that State upon the Government of the United States for interest upon certain expenditures during the late war, which I the more readily recommend to the favorable and early consideration of Congress inasmuch as the principle upon which the claim is advanced appears to have been settled by the act of Congress of 3d March, 1825, authorizing the payment of interest due to the State of Virginia.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _March 8, 1826_.

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit to the House of Representatives a report from the Secretary of State, with the proceedings of the court and marshal of the United States for the district of Alabama, and other documents, in relation to the cargoes of certain slave ships, the _Constitution, Louisa_. and _Marino_. containing the information requested by a resolution of the House of February 16, 1825.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _March 8, 1826_.

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

In compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 10th ultimo, requesting information relating to the proceedings of the joint commission of indemnities due under the award of the Emperor of Russia for slaves and other private property carried away by the British forces in violation of the treaty of Ghent, I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of State and documents containing the information desired by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _March 15, 1826_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I communicate to Congress a letter from the Secretary of War and copies of a resolution of that legislature of the State of Georgia, with a correspondence of the governor of that State, relating to the running and establishing of the line between that State and Florida, which I recommend to the favorable consideration of Congress.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, _March 15, 1826_. _To the House of Representatives of the United States_: In compliance with the resolution of the House of the 5th ultimo, requesting me to cause to be laid before the House so much of the correspondence between the Government of the United States and the new States of America, or their ministers, respecting the proposed congress or meeting of diplomatic agents at Panama, and such information respecting the general character of that expected congress as may be in my possession and as may, in my opinion, be communicated without prejudice to the public interest, and also to inform the House, so far as in my opinion the public interest may allow, in regard to what objects the agents of the United States are expected to take part in the deliberations of that congress, I now transmit to the House a report from the Secretary of State, with the correspondence and information requested by the resolution.

With regard to the objects in which the agents of the United States are expected to take part in the deliberations of that congress, I deem it proper to premise that these objects did not form the only, nor even the principal, motive for my acceptance of the invitation. My first and greatest inducement was to meet in the spirit of kindness and friendship an overture made in that spirit by three sister Republics of this hemisphere.

The great revolution in human affairs which has brought into existence, nearly at the same time, eight sovereign and independent nations in our own quarter of the globe has placed the United States in a situation not less novel and scarcely less interesting than that in which they had found themselves by their own transition from a cluster of colonies to a nation of sovereign States. The deliverance of the Southern American Republics from the oppression under which they had been so long afflicted was hailed with great unanimity by the people of this Union as among the most auspicious events of the age. On the 4th of May, 1822, an act of Congress made an appropriation of $100,000 "for such missions to the independent nations on the American continent as the President of the United States might deem proper." In exercising the authority recognized by this act my predecessor, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate appointed successively ministers plenipotentiary to the Republics of Colombia, Buenos Ayres, Chili, and Mexico. Unwilling to raise among the fraternity of freedom questions of precedency and etiquette, which even the European monarchs had of late found it necessary in a great measure to discard, he dispatched these ministers to Colombia, Buenos Ayres, and Chili without exacting from those Republics, as by the ancient principles of political primogeniture he might have done, that the compliment of a plenipotentiary mission should have been paid _first_ by them to the United States. The instructions, prepared under his direction, to Mr. Anderson, the first of our ministers to the southern continent, contain at much length the general principles upon which he thought it desirable that our relations, political and commercial, with these our new neighbors should be established for their benefit and ours and that of the future ages of our posterity. A copy of so much of these instructions as relates to these general subjects is among the papers now transmitted to the House. Similar instructions were furnished to the ministers appointed to Buenos Ayres, Chili, and Mexico, and the system of social intercourse which it was the purpose of those missions to establish from the first opening of our diplomatic relations with those rising nations is the most effective exposition of the principles upon which the invitation to the congress at Panama has been accepted by me, as well as of the objects of negotiation at that meeting, in which, it was that our plenipotentiaries should take part.