Indians know their own interests in land and governance, including sovereignty. Key passages below:

“The obscurity of many old Patents is equally weak, nor should it preclude justice when so much more is taken up in the Patent, than is comprised in the Indian Deed. That the Indians are apt to deny the sales of their ancestors, as well as their own, is without foundation … Each Nation is perfectly well acquainted, with their exact original bounds, the same is again divided into due proportions for each Tribe, and afterwards subdivided into shares to each family, with all which they are most particularly acquainted, neither do they ever infringe upon one another, or invade their neighbours hunting grounds. …” (672)

“I have just received from Gen' Gage a copy of a Treaty lately made at Detroit by Coll: Bradstreet with the Hurons and some Ottowaes, & Missisagaes ; these people had subscribed to a Treaty with me at Niagara in August last, but by the present Treaty I find, they make expressions of subjection, which must either have arisen from the ignorance of the Interpreter, or from some other mistake; for I am well convinced, they never mean or intend, anything like it, and that they can not be brought under our Laws, for some Centuries, neither have they any word which can convey the most distant idea of subjection, and should it be fully explained to them, and the nature of subordination punishment etc, defined, it might produce infinite harm, but could answer no purpose whatever; they likewise make a cession of all their Country, or rather the Country of the Six Nations, for they have none but what they hold from them, & notwithstanding their friends, the French endeavoured to render them as Independent as possible, thro' policy, they yet would never take upon themselves seriously an affair of that nature —I am impatient to hear the exact particulars of the whole transaction, and I dread its consequences, as I recollect that some attempts towards Sovereignty not long ago, was one of the principal causes of all our troubles.” (674)

Date of letter

Sir William Johnson to the Lords of Trade, October 30, 1764. In “Documents relative to the colonial history of the state of New-York, Volume 7,” procured by John Romeyn Brodhead, edited by F.B. O'Callaghan, pg 670-675. Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1856. GKS ID: 58855.