SOME OF THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.
Lo! the poor Indian, has absorbed much of the people's attention and vast
sums of Uncle Sam's money; and being a participant in the great Sioux war
of 1862, what I write deals with facts and not fiction, as we progress
from Fort Snelling, Minnesota, to "Camp Release," where we found and
released over four hundred white captives. But I will digress for a time
and look into the causes leading up to this cruel Sioux war that cost so
many lives and so much treasure. There is a great diversity of opinion on
this question, and while not particularly in love with the Indian, I have
not the temerity to criticise the Almighty because he puts his impress
white upon some, and red upon others; neither shall I sit in judgment
and say there are no good Indians--except dead ones. The Indian question
proper is of too great a magnitude to analyze and treat with intelligence
in this little book; but in the abstract, and before we enter upon the
active campaign against them, let us look at it and see if the blame
does not to a great extent rest more with the government than it does
with these people. The Indians came from we know not where--legends have
been written and tradition mentions them as among the earliest known
possessors of this great western world. The biologist speculates, and
it is a matter of grave doubt as to their origin. Certain it is, that
as far back as the time of Columbus they were found here, and we read
nothing in the early history of the voyages of this wonderful navigator
to convince us that the Indians were treacherous;--indeed we would
rather incline to the opposite opinion. The racial war began with the
conquest of the Spaniards. In their primitive condition, the Indians were
possessed of a harmless superstition--they knew no one but of their kind;
knew nothing of another world; knew nothing of any other continent in
this world. When they discovered the white men and the ships with their
sails spread, they looked upon the former as supernatural beings and the
ships as great monsters with wings. Civilization and the Indian nature
are incompatible and evidences of this were soon apparent. The ways of
the Europeans were of course unknown to them. They were innocent of the
white man's avaricious propensities and the practice of "give and take"
(and generally more take than give) was early inaugurated by the sailors
of Columbus and the nefarious practice has been played by a certain class
of Americans ever since. Soon their suspicions were aroused and friendly
intercourse gave place to wars of extermination. The Indian began to
look upon the white man as his natural enemy; fighting ensued; tribes
became extinct; territory was ceded, and abandoned. Soon after American
Independence had been declared, the Indians became the wards of the
nation. The government, instead of treating them as wards and children,
has uniformly allowed them to settle their own disputes in their own
peculiar and savage way, and has looked upon the bloody feuds among
the different tribes much as Plug Uglies and Thugs do a disreputable
slugging match or dog-fight. A writer says:
"If they are wards of the nation, why not take them under the strong arm
of the law and deal with them as with others who break the law? Make an
effort to civilize, and if civilization exterminates them it will be an
honorable death,--to the nation at least. Send missionaries among them
instead of thieving traders; implements of peace, rather than weapons
of war; Bibles instead of scalping knives; religious tracts instead of
war paint; make an effort to Christianize instead of encouraging them in
their savagery and laziness; such a course would receive the commendation
and acquiescence of the Christian world."
There is not a sensible, unprejudiced man in America to-day, who gives
the matter thought, but knows that the broken treaties and dishonest
dealing with the Indians are a disgrace to this nation; and the impress
of injustice is deeply and justly engraven upon the savage mind. The
lesson taught by observation was that lying was no disgrace, adultery
no sin, and theft no crime. This they learned from educated white men
who had been sent to them as the representatives of the government; and
these educated gentlemen (?) looked upon the Indian as common property,
and to filch him of his money by dishonest practices, a pleasant pastime.
The Indian woman did not escape his lecherous eye and if his base
proposals were rejected, he had other means to resort to to enable him to
accomplish his base desire. These wards were only Indians and why respect
their feelings? "Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." The whirlwind came
and oh, the sad results!
The Indians were circumscribed in their hunting grounds by the onward
march of civilization which crowded them on every side and their only
possible hope from starvation, was in the fidelity with which a great
nation kept its pledges. 'Tis true, money was appropriated by the
government for this purpose, but it is equally true that gamblers and
thieving traders set up fictitious claims and the Indians came out in
debt and their poor families were left to starve. Hungry, exasperated and
utterly powerless to help themselves, they resolved on savage vengeance
when the propitious time arrived.
"The villainy you teach me I will execute," became a living, bloody
issue. This did not apply alone to the Sioux nation, but to the Chippewas
as well. These people have always been friends of the whites, and have
uniformly counselled peace; but broken pledges and impositions filled the
friendly ones with sorrow, and the others with anger. The commissioners,
no doubt, rectified the wrong as soon as it was brought to their notice,
but the Indians were plucked all the same and had sense enough to know
it. Our country is cursed with politicians--the statesmen seem to have
disappeared; but, the politician grows like rank weeds and the desire for
"boodle" permeates our municipal, state and national affairs. Our Indian
system has presented a fat field so long as these wards of the nation
submitted to being fleeced by unprincipled agents and their gambling
friends, but at last, the poor Indian is aroused to the enormity of the
imposition and the innocent whites had to suffer. In some instances the
vengeance of God followed the unscrupulous agent and the scalping knife
in the hand of the injured Indian was made the instrument whereby this
retribution came.
There has been a great deal said of Indian warriors--we have read of them
in poetry and in prose and of the beautiful Indian maiden as well. The
Sioux warriors are tall, athletic, fine looking men, and those who have
not been degraded by the earlier and rougher frontier white man, or had
their intellects destroyed by the white man's fire-water, possess minds
of a high order and can reason with a correctness that would astonish
our best scholars and put to blush many of our so-called statesmen, and
entirely put to rout a majority of the men who, by the grace of men's
votes hold down Congressional chairs. Yet they are called savages and are
associated in our minds with tomahawks and scalping knives. Few regard
them as reasoning creatures and some even think they are not endowed by
their Creator with souls. Good men are sending Bibles to all parts of
the world, sermons are preached in behalf of our fellow-creatures who
are perishing in regions known only to us by name; yet here within easy
reach, but a few miles from civilization, surrounded by churches and
schools and all the moral influences abounding in Christian society;
here, in a country endowed with every advantage that God can bestow,
are perishing, body and soul, our countrymen--perishing from disease,
starvation and intemperance and all the evils incident to their unhappy
condition. I have no apology to make for the savage atrocities of any
people, be they heathen or Christian, or pretended Christian; and we can
point to pages of history where the outrages perpetrated by the soldiers
of so-called Christian nations, under the sanction of their governments,
would cause the angels to weep. Look at bleeding Armenia, the victim of
the lecherous Turk, who has satiated his brutal, bestial nature in the
blood and innocency of tens of thousands of men, women and children; and
yet, the Christian nations of the world look on with indifference at
these atrocities and pray: "Oh, Lord, pour out Thy blessings on us and
protect us while we are unmindful of the appeals of mothers and daughters
in poor Armenia!"
This royal, lecherous, murderous Turk, instead of being dethroned and
held to a strict accountability for the horrible butcheries, and worse
than butcheries, going on within his kingdom and for which he, and he
alone, is responsible, is held in place by Christian and civilized
nations for fear that some one shall, in the partition of his unholy
empire, get a bigger slice than is its equitable share.
The "sick man" has been allowed for the last half century to commit the
most outrageous crimes against an inoffensive, honest, progressive, and
law-abiding people, and no vigorous protest has gone out against it.
Shall we, then, mercilessly condemn the poor Indians because, driven
from pillar to post, with the government pushing in front and hostile
tribes and starvation in their rear, they have in vain striven for a
bare existence? Whole families have starved while the fathers were away
on their hunt for game. Through hunger and disease powerful tribes have
become but a mere band of vagabonds.
America, as she listens to the dying wail of the red man, driven from the
forests of his childhood and the graves of his fathers, cannot afford
to throw stones; but rather let her redeem her broken pledges to these
helpless, benighted, savage children, and grant them the protection they
have the right to expect, nay, demand.
"I will wash my hands in innocency" will not suffice. Let the government
make amends, and in the future mete out to the dishonest agent such
a measure of punishment as will strike terror to him and restore the
confidence of the Indians who think they have been unjustly dealt with.
But to my theme.
The year of which I write was a time in St. Paul when the Indian was
almost one's next door neighbor,--a time when trading between St. Paul
and Winnipeg was carried on principally by half-breeds, and the mode
of transportation the crude Red river cart, which is made entirely of
wood,--not a scrap of iron in its whole make-up. The team they used was
one ox to a cart, and the creak of this long half-breed train, as it
wended its way over the trackless country, could be heard twice a year as
it came down to the settlements laden with furs to exchange for supplies
for families, and hunting purposes. It was at a time when the hostile
bands of Sioux met bands of Chippewas, and in the immediate vicinity
engaged in deadly conflict, while little attention was paid to their
feuds by the whites or the government at Washington.