2 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT

Half a world, with all the climates under heaven, abounding in fertile soils, precious minerals, forests of the most valuable timber, and innumerable tribes of wild animals, was to be explored, the natives ex- terminated or subdued, and the countries discovered to be added to the possessions of the European na- tions that sent forth men to discover and conquer

' them.

Of all the various principles on which right of soil has been founded, there is none superior to imme- morial occupancy. The right of the Indians to the country they inhabited was founded in nature. The tenure by which they held it was the free and boun- teous gift of Heaven, and such as no man had a right to question, or any nation either a legal or equitable pretence to destroy.

The dark superstition of the times regarded the Deity as the partial God of Christians. The Spa- niards made this doctrine, under the sanction of the pope, their measure of right, in wresting the rich countries of South America, and the Island of Cuba, from the natives. Even our Queen Elizabeth and King James, although they denied the authority of the pope, yet, from the principle of avarice, and the passion of ambition, they adopted the fanciful distinc- tion of Christian and heathen right, so far as to make it the measure of justice by which they claimed the countries discovered by their subjects.

Europeans at first subdued with little difficulty the uncivilized Indians, who were ignorant of the use of fire—arms, or scientific warfare, and who re-