I communicate herewith such papers as bear any material relation to
the subject.
TH. JEFFERSON.
JANUARY 15, 1808.
_To the Senate of the United States_:
Although it is deemed very desirable that the United States should
obtain from the native proprietors the whole left bank of the
Mississippi to a certain breadth, yet to obliterate from the Indian
mind an impression deeply made in it that we are constantly forming
designs on their lands I have thought it best where urged by no
peculiar necessity to leave to themselves and to the pressure of
their own convenience only to come forward with offers of sale to
the United States.
The Choctaws, being indebted to certain mercantile characters beyond
what could be discharged by the ordinary proceeds of their huntings, and
pressed for payment by those creditors, proposed at length to the United
States to cede lands to the amount of their debts, and designated them
in two different portions of their country. These designations not at
all suiting us, their proposals were declined for that reason, and with
an intimation that if their own convenience should ever dispose them to
cede their lands on the Mississippi we should be willing to purchase.
Still urged by their creditors, as well as by their own desire to be
liberated from debt, they at length proposed to make a cession which
should be to our convenience. James Robertson, of Tennessee, and Silas
Dinsmore were thereupon appointed commissioners to treat with them on
that subject, with instructions to purchase only on the Mississippi.
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