Editing Indian removal (section)

===George Washington===
President [[George Washington]], in his 1790 address to the [[Seneca Nation]] which called the pre-Constitutional Indian land-sale difficulties "evils", said that the case was now altered and pledged to uphold Native American "just rights".<ref name="NY-State" /><ref name="Region" /> In March and April 1792, Washington met with 50 tribal chiefs in Philadelphia—including the Iroquois—to discuss strengthening the friendship between them and the United States.<ref name="MalinowskiAbrams1995" /> Later that year, in his fourth annual message to Congress, Washington stressed the need to build peace, trust, and commerce with Native Americans:<ref name="Manweller2012" />

{{Blockquote|I cannot dismiss the subject of Indian affairs without again recommending to your consideration the expediency of more adequate provision for giving energy to the laws throughout our interior frontier, and for restraining the commission of outrages upon the Indians; without which all pacific plans must prove nugatory.  To enable, by competent rewards, the employment of qualified and trusty persons to reside among them, as agents, would also contribute to the preservation of peace and good neighbourhood.  If, in addition to these expedients, an eligible plan could be devised for promoting civilization among the friendly tribes, and for carrying on trade with them, upon a scale equal to their wants, and under regulations calculated to protect them from imposition and extortion, its influence in cementing their interests with our's [sic] could not but be considerable.<ref name="MillerCenter2016" />}}

In his seventh annual message to Congress in 1795, Washington intimated that if the US government wanted peace with the Indians it must behave peacefully; if the US wanted raids by Indians to stop, raids by American "frontier inhabitants" must also stop.<ref name="MillerCenter20167" /><ref name="MoquinDoren1973" />