editorial staff of the New York Tribune,[637] had, in 1861, been sent
by the Indian Office to inspect the houses that Robert S. Stevens had
contracted to build for the Sacs and Foxes of Mississippi and for the
Kaws.[638] The whole project of the house-building was a fraud upon
the Indians, a scheme for using up their funds or for transferring
them to the pockets of promoters like Stevens[639] and M.C.
Dickey[640] without the trouble of giving value received.
From a letter[641] of protest, written by Stevens against Wattles's
mission of inspection, it can be inferred that there was a movement on
foot to induce the Indians to emigrate southward. Stevens, not wholly
disinterested, thought it a poor time to attempt changes in tribal
[Footnote 636: Robinson, _Kansas Conflict_, 358.]
[Footnote 637:--Ibid., 370. For other facts touching Wattles
and his earlier career, see Villard, _John Brown_, index; Wilson,
_John Brown: Soldier of Fortune_, index.]
[Footnote 638; On the entire subject of negotiations with the Indians
of Kansas, see Abel, _Indian Reservations in Kansas and the
Extinguishment of Their Titles_. The house-building project is
fully narrated there.]
[Footnote 639: For additional information about Stevens, see _Daily
Conservative_, February 11, 12, 13, 28, 1862. Senator Lane
denounced him as a defaulter to the government in the house-building
project. See _Lane_ to Dole, April 22, 1862; Smith to Dole, May
13 1862; Dole to Lane, May 5, 1862, _Daily Conservative_, May 21,
1862. In July, Lane, hearing that certificates of indebtedness were
about to be issued to Stevens on his building contract for the
Sacs and Foxes, entered a "solemn protest against such action" and
requested that the Department would let the matter lie over until the
assembling of Congress [Interior Department, _Register of Letters
Received_, January 2, 1862 to December 27, 1865, "Indians," no. 4].
Governor Robinson's enemies regarded him as the partner of Stevens
[_Daily Conservative_, November 22, 1861] in the matter of some
other affairs, and that fact may help to explain Senator Lane's bitter
animosity. The names of Robinson and Stevens were connected in the
bond difficulty, which lay at the bottom of Robinson's impeachment.]
[Footnote 640: Dickey's interest in the house-building is seen in
the following: Dickey to Greenwood, February 26, 1861, Indian Office
General Files, _Kansas_, 1855-1862, D250; same to same, March 1,
1861, Ibid., D 251.]
[Footnote 641: Stevens to Mix, August 24, 1861, Indian Office Special
Files, no. 201, _Sac and Fox_, S439 of 1861.]
policy. His conclusions were right, his premises, necessarily
unrevealed, were false. Wattles became involved in the emigration
movement, if he did not initiate it, and, subsequent to making his
report upon the house-building, received a private communication from
Dole, asking his opinion "of a plan for confederating the various
Indian tribes, in Kansas and Nebraska, into one, and giving them
a Territory and a Territorial Government with political
privileges."[642] This was in 1861, long before any scheme that Lane
or Pomeroy had devised would have matured. Wattles started upon a tour
of observation and inquiry among the Kansas tribes and discovered
that, with few exceptions, they were all willing and even anxious to
exchange their present homes for homes in Indian Territory. Some had
already discussed the matter tentatively and on their own account
with the Creeks and Cherokees. On his way east, after completing his
investigations, Wattles stopped in New York and "consulted with our
political friends" there "concerning this movement, and they not only
gave it their approbation, but were anxious that this administration
should have the credit of originating and carrying out so wise and so
noble a scheme for civilizing and perpetuating the Indian race."
Would Wattles and his friends have said the same had they been fully
cognizant of the conditions under which the emigrant tribes had been
placed in the West?
In February of 1862, the House of Representatives called[643] for the
papers relating to the Wattles mission[644] and, in March, Wattles
expatiated upon the
[Footnote 642: Wattles to Dole, January 10, 1862, Indian Office
Special Files, no. 201, _Central Superintendency_, W 528 of
1862.]
[Footnote 643: Department of the Interior, _Register of Letters
Received_, "Indians," no. 4, p. 439.]
[Footnote 644: The papers relating to the mission are collected in
Indian Office Special Files, no. 201.]
emigration and consolidation scheme in a report to Secretary
Smith.[645] Then, yet in advance of congressional authorization, began
a systematic course of Indian negotiation, all having in view the
relieving of Kansas from her aboriginal encumbrance. No means were too
underhand, too far-fetched, too villainous to be resorted to. Every
advantage was taken of the Indian's predicament, of his pitiful
weakness, political and moral. The reputed treason of the southern
tribes was made the most of. Reconstruction measures had begun for the
Indians before the war was over and while its issue was very far from
being determined in favor of the North.
As if urged thereto by some influence malign or fate sinister, the
loyal portion of two of the southern tribes, the Creeks and the
Seminoles, took in April, 1862, a certain action that, all unbeknown
to them, expedited the northern schemes for Indian undoing. The action
referred to was tribal reörganization. Each of the two groups of
refugees elected chiefs and headmen and notified the United States
government that it was prepared to do business as a nation.[646] The
business in mind had to do with annuity payments[647] and other dues
but the Indian Office soon extended it to include treaty-making.
[Footnote 645: Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Central
Superintendency_, W 528 of 1862; Department of the Interior,
_Register of Letters Received_, "Indians," no. 4, p. 517.]
[Footnote 646: Ok-ta-ha-ras Harjo and others to Dole, April 5, 1862,
Indian Office General Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869, O 45; Coffin to
Dole, April 15, 1862, transmitting communication of Billy Bowlegs
and others, April 14, 1862 ibid., _Seminole_, 1858-1869, C1594;
_Letters Registered_, vol. 58.]
[Footnote 647: On the outside of the Seminole petition, the office
instruction for its answer of May 7, 1862, reads as follows: "Say that
by resolution of Congress the annuities were authorized to be used to
prevent starvation and suffering amongst them and that being the only
fund in our hands must not be diverted from that purpose at present."]
Negotiations with the Osages had been going on intermittently all this
time. No opportunity to press the point of a land cession had ever
been neglected and much had been made, in connection with the project
for territorial organization, of the fact that the Osages had
memorialized Congress for a civil government, they thinking by means
of it to prevent further frauds and impositions being practiced upon
them.[648] Coffin and Elder, suspicious of each other, jealously
watched every avenue of approach to Osage confidence. On the ninth of
March, Elder inquired if Coffin had been regularly commissioned to
open up negotiations anew and asked to be associated with him if he
had.[649] A treaty was started but not finished for Elder received a
private letter from Dole that seemed to confine the negotiations to
a mere ascertaining of views.[650] Then the Indians grown weary of
uncertainty took matters into their own hands and appointed several
prominent tribesmen for the express purpose of negotiating a treaty
that would end the "suspense as to their future destiny."[651] From
the treaty of cession that Coffin drafted, he having taken a miserably
unfair advantage of Osage isolation and destitution, the Osages turned
away in disgust.[652] In November, some of their leading men journeyed
up to Leroy to invite the dissatisfied Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la to winter
with them.[653] Coffin seized the occasion to reopen the subject of a
cession and the Indians manifested
[Footnote 648: Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Neosho_, A
476 of 1862. See also Indian Office report to the Secretary of the
Interior, May 6, 1862. The Commissioner's letter and the memorial were
sent to Aldrich, May 9, 1862.]
[Footnote 649: Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Neosho_, E 94.
of 1862.]
[Footnote 650: Coffin to Dole, April 5, 1862, Ibid., C 1583.]
[Footnote 651: Communication of April 10, 1862, transmitted by Chapman
to Dole, Ibid., C 1640.]
[Footnote 652: Elder to Coffin, July 9, 1862, Ibid., E 114.]
[Footnote 653: Coffin to Dole, November 16, 1862, Ibid., C
1904.]
a willingness to sell a part of their Reserve; but again Coffin was
too grasping and another season of waiting intervened.
With slightly better success the Kickapoos were approached. Their
lands were coveted by the Atchison and Pike's Peak Railway Company
and Agent O.B. Keith used his good offices in the interest of that
corporation.[654] Good offices they were, from the standpoint of
benefit to the grantees, but most disreputable from that of the
grantors. He bribed the chiefs outrageously and the lesser men
among the Kickapoos indignantly protested.[655] Rival political and
capitalistic concerns, emanating from St. Joseph, Missouri, and from
the northern tier of counties in Kansas,[656] took up the quarrel and
never rested until they had forced a hearing from the government. The
treaty was arrested after it had reached the presidential proclamation
stage and was in serious danger of complete invalidation.[657] It
passed muster only when a Senate amendment had rendered it reasonably
acceptable to the Kickapoos.
Not much headway was made with Indian treaty-making in 1862.[658] In
March, 1863, an element
[Footnote 654: Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Kickapoo_, I
655 of 1862 and I 361 of 1864.]
[Footnote 655:--Ibid., B 355 of 1863 and I 361 of 1864.]
[Footnote 656: Albert W. Horton to Pomeroy, June 20, 1863 and O.B.
Keith to Pomeroy, June 20, 1863, Indian Office Consolidated Files,
_Kickapoo_, G 59 and P 64 of 1863.]
[Footnote 657: Lane and A.C. Wilder requested the Interior Department,
September 1, 1863, "that no rights be permitted to attach to R.R.
Co. until charges of fraud in connection with Kickapoo Treaty are
settled." Their request was replied to, September 12, 1863 [Interior
Department, _Register of Letters Received_, January 2, 1862 to
December 27, 1865, "Indians," no. 4, 361].]
[Footnote 658: Dole, however, seems to have become thoroughly
reconciled to the idea. He submitted his views upon the subject once
more in connection with a memorial that Pomeroy referred to the
Secretary of the Interior "for the concentration of the Indian tribes
of the West and especially those of Kansas, in the Indian country ...
" [Dole to Smith, November 22, 1862, Indian Office _Report Book_,
no. 12, pp. 505-506; Department of the Interior, _Register of
Letters Received_, vol. D, November 22, 1862]. (cont.)]
conditioning a greater degree of success was introduced into the
government policy.[659] That was by the Indian appropriation act,
which, in addition to continuing the practice of applying tribal
annuities to the relief of refugees, authorized the president to
negotiate with Kansas tribes for their removal from Kansas and with
the loyal portion of Indian Territory tribes for cessions of land
on which to accommodate them.[660] As Dole pertinently remarked to
Secretary Usher, the measure was all very well as a policy in prospect
but it was one that most certainly could not be carried out until
Indian Territory was in Federal possession. Blunt was still striving
after possession or re-possession but his force was not "sufficient to
insure beyond peradventure his success."[661]
Scarcely had the law been enacted when John Ross and other Cherokees,
living in exile and in affluence, offered to consider proposals for
a retrocession to the United States public domain of their Neutral
Lands. The Indian Office was not yet prepared to treat and not until
November did Ross and his associates[662] get any
[Footnote 658: (cont.) December 26, 1862, Dole wrote to Smith thus:
"... It being in contemplation to extinguish the Indian title to lands
... in Kansas and provide them with homes in the Indian Territory ...
I would recommend that a commissioner should be appointed to negotiate
... I would accordingly suggest that Robt. S. Corwin be appointed ..."
[Indian Office _Report Book_, no. 13, pp. 12-13]. Now Corwin's
reputation was not such as would warrant his selection for the post.
He was not a man of strict integrity. His name is connected with many
shady transactions in the early history of Kansas.]
[Footnote 659: Presumably, Lane was the chief promoter of it. See
Baptiste Peoria to Dole, February 9, 1863, Indian Office General
Files, _Osage River_, 1863-1867.]
[Footnote 660: _U.S. Statutes at Large_, vol. xii, 793.]
[Footnote 661: Dole to Usher, July 29, 1863, Indian Office _Report
Book_, no. 13, p. 211.]
[Footnote 662: His associates were then the three men, Lewis Downing,
James McDaniel, and Evan Jones, who had been appointed delegates with
him, (cont.)]
real encouragement[663] to renew their offer, yet the Cherokees had
as early as February repudiated their alliance with the southern
Confederacy. That the United States government was only awaiting a
time most propitious for itself is evident from the fact that, when,
in the spring following, refugees from the Neutral Lands were given
an opportunity to begin their backward trek, they were told that they
would not be permitted to linger at their old homes but would have to
go on all the way to Fort Gibson, one hundred twenty miles farther
south.[664] That was one way of ridding Kansas of her Indians and a
way not very creditable to a professed and powerful guardian.
Almost simultaneously with Ross's first application came an offer from
the oppressed Delawares to look for a new home in the far west, in
Washington Territory. The majority preferred to go to the Cherokee
country.[665] Some of the tribe had already lived there and wanted to
return. Had the minority gained their point, the Delawares would have
traversed the whole continent within the space of about two and a half
centuries. They would have wandered from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
from the Susquehanna River to the Willamette, in a desperate effort to
escape the avaricious pioneer, and, to their own chagrin, they would
have found him on the western coast also. Never again would there be
any place for them free from his influence.
In the summer of 1863, negotiations were undertaken
[Footnote 662: (cont.) by the newly-constructed national council, for
doing business with the United States government [Commissioner of
Indian Affairs, _Report_, 1863, p. 23].]
[Footnote 663: See Office letter of November 19, 1863.]
[Footnote 664: David M. Harlan to Dole, December 20, 1864, Indian
Office General Files, Cherokee 1859-1865, H 1033.]
[Footnote 665: Johnson to Dole, May 24, 1863, ibid., _Delaware_,
1862-1866.]
in deadly earnest. A commencement was made with the Creeks in May,
Agent Cutler calling the chiefs in council and laying before them
the draft of a treaty that had been prepared, upon the advice
of Coffin,[666] in Washington and that had been entrusted for
transmission to the unscrupulous ex-agent, Perry Fuller.[667] The
Creek chiefs consented to sell a tract of land for locating other
Indians upon, but declared themselves opposed to any plan for
"sectionizing" their country and asked that they might be consulted as
to the Indians who were to share it with them. The month before they
had prayed to be allowed to go back home. Well fed and clothed though
they were, and quite satisfied with their agent, they were terribly
homesick.[668] Might they not go down and clean out their country for
themselves? It seemed impossible for the army to do it.[669]
Coffin next came forward with a suggestion that Indian colonization in
Texas would be far preferable to colonization elsewhere, although if
nothing better could be done, he would advocate the selection of the
Osage land on the Arkansas and its tributaries.[670] Why he wanted to
steer clear of the Indian Territory is not
[Footnote 666: "... I would most respectfully suggest that a Treaty be
gotten up by you and the Sec. of the Interior, and sent to me and Gov.
Carney and some other suitable com. to have ratified in due form and
returned. And you will pardon me for saying that the Treaty should
be a model for all that are to follow with the broken and greatly
reduced, and fragmental tribes in the Indian Territory, and may
be made greatly to promote the interests of the Indians and the
Government especially in view of the removal of the Indians
from Kansas and Nebraska as contemplated by recent Act of
Congress."--COFFIN to Dole, March 22, 1863, Ibid., Land Files,
_Southern Superintendency_, 1855-1870, C 117.]
[Footnote 667: Cutler to Dole, May, 1863, Ibid., General Files,
_Creek_, 1860-1869, C 240.]
[Footnote 668: Ok-ta-ha-ras Harjo and others to "Our Father," April 1,
1863, (Indian Office General Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869).]
[Footnote 669: Same to same, May 16, 1863, Ibid., O 6.]
[Footnote 670: Coffin to Dole, May 23, 1863, Ibid., Land Files,
_Southern Superintendency_, 1855-1870.]
evident. The Pottawatomies[671] asked to be allowed to settle on the
Creek land,[672] but the Creeks were letting their treaty hang fire.
They wanted it made in Washington, D.C., and they wanted one of their
great men, Mik-ko-hut-kah, then with the army, to assist in its
negotiation.[673] Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la had died in the spring[674] and
they were seemingly feeling a little helpless and forlorn.
Thinking to make better progress with the treaties and better terms
if he himself controlled the government end of the negotiations,
Commissioner Dole undertook a trip west in the late summer.[675] By
the third of September the Creek treaty was an accomplished fact.[676]
Aside from the cession of land for the accommodation of Indian
emigrants, its most important provision was a recognition of the
binding force of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. In due course,
the treaty went to the Senate and, in March, was accepted by that body
with amendments.[677] It went back to the
[Footnote 671: A treaty had been made with the Pottawatomies by W.W.
Ross, their agent, November 15, 1861 [ibid., _Pottawatomie_,
I 547 of 1862]. Its negotiation was so permeated by fraud that the
Indians refused to let it stand [Dole to Smith, January 15, 1862].
At this time, 1863, Superintendent Branch, against whom charges of
gambling, drunkenness, licentiousness, and misuse of annuity funds
had been preferred by Agent Ross [Indian Office General Files,
_Pottawatomie_, R 21 and 143 of 1863], was endeavoring to
persuade Father De Smet to establish a Roman Catholic Mission on their
Reserve. De Smet declined because of the exigencies of the war. His
letter of January 5, 1863, has no file mark.]
[Footnote 672: Cutler to Dole, June 6, 1863, Indian Office General
Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869.]
[Footnote 673:--Ibid.]
[Footnote 674: Coffin to Dole, March 22, 1863.]
[Footnote 675: Proctor's letter of July 31, 1863 would indicate that
Dole went to the Cherokee Agency before the Sac and Fox. Proctor was
writing from the former place and he said, "Mr. Dole leaves to-day
for Kansas ..." [Indian Office General Files, _Southern
Superintendency_, 1863-1864, C 466].]
[Footnote 676: Indian Office Land Files, _Treaties_, Box 3,
1864-1866.]
[Footnote 677: Usher to Dole, March 23, 1864, Ibid.,]
Indians but they rejected it altogether.[678] The Senate amendments
were not such as they could conscientiously and honorably submit
to and maintain their dignity as a preëminently loyal and
semi-independent people.[679] One of the amendments was particularly
obnoxious. It affected the provision that deprived the southern Creeks
of all claims upon the old home.[680] Dole's Creek treaty of 1863 was
never ratified.
Other treaties negotiated by Dole were with the Sacs and Foxes of
Mississippi,[681] the Osages, the Shawnees,[682]
[Footnote 678: Its binding force upon them was, however, a subject
of discussion afterwards and for many years [Superintendent Byers
to Lewis V. Bogy, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, February 7, 1867,
Ibid., General Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869, B 94].]
[Footnote 679: For an interpretation of the treaty relative to the
claims of the loyal Creeks, see Dole to Lane, January 27, 1864
[ibid., _Report Book_, no. 13, pp. 287-291]. It is interesting to
note that a certain Mundy Durant who had been sixty years in the Creek
Nation, put in a claim, February 23, 1864, in behalf of the "loyal
Africans." He asked "that they have guaranteed to them equal rights
with the Indians ..." "All of our boys," said he, "are in the army and
I feel they should be remembered ..." [Ibid., General Files,
_Creek_, 1860-1869, D 362].]
[Footnote 680: Article IV. Both the Creeks and the Seminoles, in
apprising the Indian Office of the fact that they had organized as a
nation, had voiced the idea that the southern Indians had forfeited
all their rights "to any part of the property or annuities ..."]
[Footnote 681: The Sacs and Foxes brought forward a claim against
the southern refugees, for the "rent of 204 buildings," amounting to
$14,688.00 [Indian Office Land Files, _Southern Superintendency_,
1855-1870, Letter of May 14, 1864. See also Dole to Usher, March 25,
1865, Ibid., also I 952, C 1264, and C 1298, Ibid.,].
Coffin thought the best way to settle their claim was to give them a
part of the Creek cession [Coffin to Martin, May 23, 1864, and Martin
to Dole, May 26, 1864, Ibid., General Files, _Sac and
Fox_, 1862-1866, M 284]. The Sac and Fox chiefs were willing to
submit the case to the arbitrament of Judge James Steele. Martin was
of the opinion that should their treaty, then pending, fail it would
be some time before they would consent to make another. This treaty
had been obtained with difficulty, only by Dole's "extraordinary
exertions with the tribe" [Martin to Dole, May 2, 1864, Ibid.,
M 270].]
[Footnote 682: Negotiations with the Shawnees had been undertaken in
1862. In June, Black Bob, the chief of the Shawnees on the Big Blue
Reserve in Johnson County, Kansas, protested against a treaty then
before Congress. He claimed it was a fraud (cont.)]
and the New York Indians. He attempted one with the Kaws but
failed.[683] The Osages, who had
[Footnote 682: (cont.) [Telegram, A.H. Baldwin to Dole, June 4, 1862,
ibid., _Shawnee_, 1855-1862, B 1340 of 1862], which was the red
man's usual appraisement of the white man's dealings. A rough draft
of another treaty seems to have been sent to Agent Abbott for the
Shawnees on July 18 and another, substantially the same, December 29.
One of the matters that called for adjustment was the Shawnee contract
with the Methodist Episcopal Church South, Dole affirming that "as the
principal members of that corporation, and those who control it are
now in rebellion against the U.S. Government, the said contract is
to be regarded as terminated...." [Indian Office Land Files,
_Shawnee_, 1860-1865, I 865]. Usher's letter to Dole of December
27, 1862 was the basis of the instruction. Dole's negotiations of 1863
were impeached as were all the previous, Black Bob and Paschal Fish,
the first and second chiefs of the Chillicothe Band of Shawnees,
leading the opposition. Agent Abbott was charged with using
questionable means for obtaining Indian approval [Ibid.,
General Files, _Shawnee_, 1863-1875]. Conditions at the Shawnee
Agency had been in a bad state for a long time, since before the
war. Guerrilla attacks and threatened attacks had greatly disturbed
domestic politics. They had interfered with the regular tribal
elections.