JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
That's part of a short (12pp) and stiff little report from President James Monroe asking if Indians of all sorts did indeed have title to their lands within the United States, which means, I guess, that this was really a question in 1822. Given the number of treaties and the number of treaties with the Indian Nations abrogated and annulled, it still didn't set me up for this basic question, which really surprised me. The publication comes a few years after the end of the first Seminole War (1816 or so to 1819), the aim of which was to move the Seminoles from north Florida (Florida having just been ceded to the U.S. a few years earlier) to, well, somewhere else--this occurred in 1819, when the Indians succumbed and were forced to live in central-ish Florida. This didn't last for long, though, as the Second Seminole War (a much more expanded conflict fought 1835-1842) decimated the Seminole population, the remaining people subsequently were removed from central Florida completely away to Indian Territory. This was all before the official "removal policies" begun under Monroe and John C. Calhoun (and many others), something that people like Ben Franklin and George Washington were against back in their late days.
The answer seems to be that the question was too big for an answer. and that each treaty had to be treated individually--in short to me it reads like a null response.
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