Thomas Jefferson Papers
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From Thomas Jefferson to the Senate, 31 December 1804

To the Senate

To the Senate of the United States.

Most of the Indians residing within our Northern boundary on this side the Missisipi recieving from us annual aids in money & necessaries, it was a subject of complaint with the Sacs that they recieved nothing and were connected with us by no treaty. as they owned the country in the neighborhood of our settlements of Kaskaskia & St. Louis it was thought expedient to engage their friendship; & Governor Harrison was accordingly instructed in June last to propose to them an annuity of five or six hundred Dollars, stipulating in return an adequate cession of territory, and an exact definition of boundaries. the Sacs & Foxes, acting generally as one nation, and coming forward together, he found it necessary to add an annuity for the latter tribe also, enlarging proportionably the cession of territory; which was accordingly done by the treaty, now communicated, of November the 3d. with those two tribes.

This cession giving us a perfect title to such a breadth of country on the Eastern side of the Missisipi, with a command of the Ouisconsing, strengthens our means of retaining exclusive commerce with the Indians on the Western side of the Missisipi: a right indispensable to the policy of governing those Indians by Commerce rather than by Arms.

The treaty is now submitted to the Senate for their advice and consent.

Th: Jefferson

Dec. 31. 1804

RC (DNA: RG 46, EPIR, 8th Cong., 2d sess.); endorsed by Senate clerks. PoC (DLC). Notation in SJL: “Sac & Fox treaty.” Enclosures: (1) Dearborn to William Henry Harrison, 27 June, conveying instructions from the president on the Kaskaskias cession; Dearborn adds that it “may not be improper” to negotiate a cession on both sides of the Illinois River from the Sacs in exchange for an annuity of $500 or $600; the Sacs should “relinquish all pretensions to any land on the southern side of the Illinois and a considerable tract on the other side”; Harrison should determine if chiefs of any other nations are willing to “follow the example of the old Kaskaskias Chief”; the president also suggests that Harrison consider distributing annuities on a per family basis, with the aggregate allowed to increase in the short run but to decrease “when a family becomes extinct” (Tr in DNA: RG 46, EPIR). (2) Treaty between the United States and the Sacs and Foxes; signed at St. Louis on 3 Nov. by Harrison for the United States and by Layouvois or Laiyuva, Pashepaho or the Giger, Quashquame or Jumping Fish, Outchequaha or Sun Fish, and Hahshequaxhiqua or the Bear for the Sacs and Foxes; the tribes “agree to consider themselves under the protection of the United States” and no other power; in exchange for goods valued at $2,234.50 and annuities of $600 in goods to the Sacs and $400 in goods to the Foxes, the tribes cede land bounded by a line beginning at the mouth of the Gasconade River, then north to a point on the “river Jeffreon” 30 miles from its mouth, then down the Jeffreon to the Mississippi, then up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wisconsin River, then up that river 36 miles, then by a direct line to where the Fox River “leaves the small lake called Sakaegan,” then down the Fox River to the Illinois River, and lastly down the Illinois to the Mississippi; criminal offenders of the tribes are to be subject to U.S. authority, and victims protected by the laws “in the like manner as if the injury had been done to a white man”; chiefs are to make all necessary efforts to return horses or other property stolen by members of the tribes, and the United States “may deduct from the annuity” a sum equal to the value of unrecovered stolen property; white persons settling on Sac and Fox lands shall be removed upon complaints being made to U.S. authorities; members of the tribes may continue to live and hunt upon the ceded lands; the tribes are not to permit any unlicensed traders to reside among them; the United States will establish a trading factory for the use of the tribes; the tribes are to stop waging war on the Osages and will send representatives to St. Louis, where they will negotiate a lasting peace; a tract of land at the mouth of the Wisconsin River, either on the right bank of the Wisconsin or right bank of the Mississippi, is to be ceded for use as a military post; an additional article adds that this treaty shall not affect any grants made by the Spanish government and previously recognized by the tribes (printed copy in same). Printed in ASP description begins American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1832-61, 38 vols. description ends , Indian Affairs, 1:693-5; treaty printed in U.S. Statutes at Large description begins Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States … 1789 to March 3, 1845, Boston, 1855-56, 8 vols. description ends , 7:84-7.

On this day, Isaac A. Coles delivered the message and treaty to the Senate. The treaty was read for the first time on 7 Jan. and ratified 10 days later by a vote of 25 to 3 (JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States … to the Termination of the Nineteenth Congress, Washington, D.C., 1828, 3 vols. description ends , 1:478-9, 481).

perfect title to such a breadth of country: estimated by the administration as encompassing some 50 million acres, the cession included portions of the present-day states of Missouri, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Although a clarification of boundaries had been previously proposed, the Sacs and Foxes were almost certainly unaware that Harrison would seek such a large cession and likely believed that negotiations would mostly concern the murder of three white settlers by some Sacs. Controversy immediately emerged over what the delegation had yielded. In his autobiography, the Sac leader Black Hawk recalled that the Sac negotiators, identified as the last four signatories listed above, had remembered little of what they had done. He surmised that they “had been drunk the greater part of the time they were in St. Louis” and characterized the treaty as “the origin of all our difficulties” (Donald Jackson, ed., Black Hawk: An Autobiography [Urbana, Ill., 1990], 53-6; Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1934-75, 28 vols. description ends , 13:168; William T. Hagan, “The Sauk and Fox Treaty of 1804,” Missouri Historical Review, 51 [1956], 1-7; Pierre Chouteau to TJ, 12 Oct.; Dearborn to TJ, 12 Jan. 1805).

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