The social and political relations that have existed and still continue between the Government of the United States and the several Indian tribes occupying territory within its geographical limits are, in many respects, peculiar. The unprecedentedly rapid increase and expansion of the white population of the country, bringing into action corresponding necessities for the acquisition and subjection of additional territory, have maintained a constant straggle between civilization and barbarism. In

The most difficult and laborious feature of the work is that involved under the first of these five subdivisions. The ordinary reader in following the treaty provisions, in which the boundaries of the various cessions are so specifically and minutely laid down, would anticipate but little difficulty in tracing those boundaries upon the modern map. In this he would find himself sadly at fault. In nearly all of the treaties concluded half a century or more ago, wherein cessions of land were made,

Another difficulty that has arisen, and one which, in order to avoid confusion, will necessitate the duplication in the atlas of the maps of several States, is the attempt to show not only original, but also secondary cessions of land. The policy followed by the United States for many years in negotiating treaties with the tribes east of the Mississippi River included the purchase of their former possessions and their removal west of that river to reservations set apart for them within the limit