GRADUAL EXTINCTION OF THE RED MAN.
LINE CREEK FIFTY YEARS AGO--HOPOTHLAYOHOLA--McINTOSH--UNDYING HATRED--
A BIG POWWOW--MASSACRE OF THE McINTOSHES--NEHEMATHLA--ONCHEES--THE
LAST OF THE RACE--A BRAVE WARRIOR--A WHITE MAN'S FRIENDSHIP--THE
DEATH-SONG--TUSKEGA, OR JIM'S BOY.
I have been to-day, the 23d of August, over the same spot I wandered
over this day fifty years ago. What changes have supervened it is
difficult to realize. This was then a dense, unsettled wilderness. The
wild deer was on every hill, in every valley. Limpid streams purled
rippling and gladly along pebbly beds, and fell babbling over great
rocks. These alone disturbed the profound silence, where solitude
brooded, and quiet was at home. These wild forests extended west to
Line Creek, then the dividing line between the Indian possessions and
the newly acquired territory now constituting the State of Alabama.
Upon this territory of untamed wilderness there wandered then fifty
thousand Indians, the remnant of the mighty nation of Muscogees, who
one hundred and thirty years ago welcomed the white man at Yamactow,
now Savannah, and tendered him a home in the New World. Fifty years
ago he had progressed to the banks of the Ocmulgee, driving before him
the aboriginal inhabitant, and appropriating his domains. Here for a
time his march was stayed. But the Indian had gone forward to meet the
white man coming from the Mississippi to surround him, the more surely
to effect his ultimate destruction and give his home and acres to the
enterprise and capacity of the white man.
Wandering through these wilds fifty years ago, I did not deem this end
would be so soon accomplished. Here now is the city and the village,
the farm-house and extended fields, the railroads and highways, and
hundreds of thousands of busy men who had not then a being. The
appurtenances of civilization everywhere greet you: many of these are
worn and mossed over with the lapse of time and appear tired of the
weight of wasting years. The red men, away in the West, have dwindled
to a mere handful, still flying before the white man, and shrinking
away from his hated civilization.
Is this cruel and sinful--or the silent, mysterious operation of the
laws of nature? One people succeeds another, as day comes after day,
and years follow years. Upon this continent the Indian found the
evidences in abundance of a preceding people, the monuments of whose
existence he disregards, but which, in the earth-mounds rising up over
all the land, arrest the white man's attention and wonder. He inquires
of the Indian inhabitant he is expelling from the country, Who was the
architect of these, and what their signification? and is answered: We
have no tradition which tells; our people found them when they came,
as you find them to-day. These traditions give the history of the
nations now here, and we find in every Southern tribe that they tell
of an immigration from the southwest.
The Muscogee, Natchez, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, all have the history of
their flying from beyond the Mississippi, and from the persecutions of
superior and more warlike nations, and resting here for security,
where they found none to molest them, and only these dumb evidences of
another people, who once filled the land, but had passed away.
When the white man came, he found but one race upon the two
continents. Their type was the same and universal, and only these
mounds to witness of a former race. Ethnology has discovered no other.
All the remains of man indicate the same type, and there remains not a
fossil to record the existence of those who reared these earth-books,
which speak so eloquently of a race passed away.
How rapidly the work of demolition goes on! Will a century hence find
one of the red race upon this continent? Certainly not, if it shall
accomplish so much as the century past. There is not one for every
ten, then; and the tenth remaining are now surrounded on all sides,
and, being pushed to the centre, must perish.
They are by nature incapable of that civilization which would enable
them to organize governments and teach the science of agriculture.
They were formed for the woods, and physically organized to live on
flesh. The animals furnishing this were placed with them here, and the
only vegetable found with them was the maize, or Indian corn. The
white man was organized to feed on vegetables, and they were placed
with him in his centre of creation, and he brought them here, and with
himself acclimated them, as a necessity to his existence in America.
No effort can save the red man from extermination that humanity or
Christianity may suggest. When deprived of his natural food furnished
by the forest, he knows not nor can he be taught the means of
supplying the want. The capacities of his brain will not admit of the
cultivation necessary to that end. And as he has done in the presence
of civilization, he will know none of its arts; and receiving or
commanding none of its results, he will wilt and die.
Here, on the very spot where I am writing, is evidence in abundance of
the facts here stated. Every effort to civilize and make the nomadic
Indian a cultivator of the earth--here has been tried, and within my
memory. Missionary establishments were here, schools, churches,
fields, implements, example and its blessings, all without effect.
Nothing now remains to tell of these efforts but a few miserable
ruins; nothing in any change of character or condition of the Indian.
And here, where fifty years ago, with me, he hunted the red deer and
wild turkey for the meat of his family and the clothing of himself and
offspring--to-day he would be a curiosity, and one never seen by half
the population which appropriates and cultivates the soil over which
he wandered in the chase. His beautiful woods are gone; the green corn
grows where the green trees grew, and the bruised and torn face of his
mother earth muddies to disgust, with her clay-freighted tears, the
limpid streams by which he sat down to rest, and from which he drank
to quench his thirst from weariness earned in his hunt for wild game,
which grew with him, and grew for him, as nature's provision. The deer
and the Indian are gone. The church-steeple points to heaven where the
wigwam stood, and the mart of commerce covers over all the space where
the camp-fires burned. The quarrels of Hopothlayohola and McIntosh are
history now, and the great tragedy of its conclusion in the death of
McIntosh is now scarcely remembered.
True to his hatred of the Georgians, Hopothlayohola, in the recent
war, away beyond the Mississippi, arrayed his warriors in hostility to
the Confederacy, and, when numbering nearly one hundred winters, led
them to battle in Arkansas, against the name of his hereditary foe,
and hereditary hate--McIntosh; and by that officer, commanding the
Confederate troops, was defeated, and his followers dispersed. Since
that time, nothing has been known of the fate of the old
warrior-chief.
It had been agreed between the United States and Georgia, and the
famous Yazoo Company, in order to settle the difficulties between the
two latter, that the United States should purchase, at a proper time,
from the Indian proprietors, all the lands east of the Chattahoochee
and a line running from the west bank of that stream, starting at a
place known as West Point, and terminating at what is known as Nickey
Jack, on the Tennessee River. The increase of population, and the
constant difficulties growing out of the too close neighborhood of the
Indians, induced the completion of this agreement. Commissioners on
the part of the Government were appointed to meet commissioners or
delegations from the Indians, to treat for the sale of their lands
within the limits of the State of Georgia. McIntosh favored the sale,
Hopothlayohola opposed it. As a chief, McIntosh was second to his
great antagonist in authority, and, in truth, to several other chiefs.
But he was a bold man, with strong will, fearless and aggressive, and
he assumed the power to sell. In the war of 1812-15, he had sided with
the Americans, Hopothlayohola with the English; and leading at least
half the tribe, McIntosh felt himself able to sustain his authority.
The commissioners met the Indian delegation at the Indian Springs,
where negotiations were commenced by a proposition placed before the
chiefs, and some days given for their consideration of it. Their talks
or consultations among themselves were protracted and angry, and
inconclusive. Every effort was made to induce Hopothlayohola to accede
to the proposition of McIntosh. The whites united in their efforts to
win his consent to sell: persuasions, threats, and finally large
bribes were offered, but all availed nothing. Thus distracted and
divided, they consumed the time for consultation, and met the white
commissioners to renew the strife, in open council with these. Each
chief was followed to this council by the members of his band,
sub-chiefs, and warriors. McIntosh announced his readiness to sell,
and sustained his position with reasons which demonstrated him a
statesman, and wise beyond his people.
"Here in the neighborhood of the whites," he said, "we are subject to
continual annoyance and wrong. These have continued long, and they
have dwarfed our mighty nation to a tribe or two, and our home to
one-tenth of its original dimensions. This must go on if we remain in
this proximity, until we shall be lost, and there will be none to
preserve our traditions. Let us sell our lands, and go to the
proffered home beyond the Great River. Our young men have been there:
they have seen it, and they say it is good. The game is abundant; the
lands are broad, and there is no sickness there." Turning to
Hopothlayohola, who stood, with dignified and proud defiance in his
manner, listening, he proceeded: "Will you go and live with your
people increasing and happy about you: or will you stay and die with
them here, and leave no one to follow you, or come to your grave, and
weep over their great chief? Beyond the Great River the sun is as
bright, and the sky is as blue, and the waters are as clear and as
sweet as they are here. Our people will go with us. We will be one,
and where we are altogether, there is home. To love the ground is
mean; to love our people is noble. We will cling to them--we will do
for their good; and the ground where they are will be as dear to us as
this, because they will be upon it, and with us.
"The white man is growing. He wants our lands. He will buy them now.
By and by he will take them, and the little band of our people left
will wander without homes, poor and despised, and be beaten like dogs.
We must go to a new home, and learn like the white man to till the
earth, grow cattle, and depend on these for food and life. Nohow else
can many people live on the earth. This makes the white man like the
leaves; the want of it makes the red men weak and few. Let us learn
how to make books, how to make ploughs, and how to cultivate the
ground, as the white man does, and we will grow again, and again
become a great people. We will unite with the Cherokee, the Choctaw,
and the Seminole, and be one people. The Great Spirit made us one
people. Yes, we are all the children of one family: we are the red men
of the Great Spirit, and should be one people for strength and
protection. We shall have schools for our children. Each tribe shall
have its council, and all shall unite in great council. They will be
wise through learning as the white man is, and we shall become a great
State, and send our chiefs to Congress as the white man does. We shall
all read, and thus talk, as the white man does, with the mighty dead
who live in books; and write and make books that our children's
children shall read and talk with, and learn the counsels of their
great fathers in the spirit-land. This it is which makes the white man
increase and spread over the land. In our new home he promises to
protect us--to send us schools and books, and teach our children to
know them; and he will send us ploughs, and men to make them, and to
teach our young men how to make them.
"The plough will make us corn for bread, for the strength of the body;
the books will be food for the head, to make us wise and strong in
council. Let us sell and go away, and if we suffer for a time, it will
be better for our children. You see it so with the white man; shall we
not learn from him, and be like him?"
When he had concluded his talk, it was greeted in their own peculiar
manner by his followers as good. Hopothlayohola, the great red chief,
turning from McIntosh as if disdaining him, addressed the
commissioners of the Government:
"Our great father, your head chief at Washington, sent us a talk by
you, which is pleasant to hear, because it promises the red man
much--his friendship, his protection, and his help; but in return for
this he asks of us much more than we are willing to give even for all
his promises. The white man's promises, like him, are white, and bring
hope to the red man; but they always end in darkness and death to him.
"The Great Spirit has not given to the red man, as He has to the white
man, the power to look into the dark, and see what to-morrow has in
its hand; but He has given him the sense to know what experience
teaches him. Look around, and remember! Away when time was young, all
this broad land was the red man's, and there was none to make him
afraid. The woods were wide and wild, and the red deer, and the bear,
and the wild turkey were everywhere, and all were his. He was great,
and, with abundance, was happy. From the salt sea to the Great River
the land was his: the Great Spirit had given it to him. He made the
woods for the red man, the deer, the bear, and the turkey; and for
these He made the red man. He made the white man for the fields, and
taught him how to make ploughs, to have cattle and horses, and how to
make books, because the white man needed these. He did not make these
a necessity to the red man.
"Away beyond the mighty waters of the dreary sea, He gave the white
man a home, with everything he wanted, and He gave him a mind which
was for him, and only him. The red man is satisfied with the gifts to
him of the Great Spirit; and he did not know there was a white man who
had other gifts for his different nature, until he came in his winged
canoes across the great water, and our fathers met him at Yamacrow.
The Great Spirit gave him a country, and He gave the red man a
country. Why did he leave his own and come to take the red man's? Did
the Great Spirit tell him to do this? He gave him His word in a book:
do you find it there? Then read it for us, that we may hear. If He
did, then He is not just. We see Him in the sun, and moon, and stars.
We hear Him in the thunder, and feel Him in the mighty winds; but He
made no book for the red man to tell Him his will, but we see in all
His works justice. The sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the
ground keep their places, and never leave them to crowd upon one
another. They stay where He placed them, and come not to trouble or to
take from one another what He had given. Only the white man does this.
A few--a little handful--came in their canoe to the land of the red
man, as spirits come out of the water. The red man gave them his hand.
He gave them meat, and corn, and a home, and welcomed them to come and
live with him. And the flying canoes came again and again, and many
came in them, and at last they brought their great chief, with his
long knife by his side, and his red coat, and he asked for more land.
Our chiefs and warriors met him, and sold him another portion of our
lands; and his white squaws came with him, and they made houses and
homes near our people. They made fields, and had horses and herds, and
grew faster than our people, and drove away the deer and the turkeys
deeper into the woods. And then they wanted more land, and our chiefs
and warriors sold them more land, and now again another piece, until
now we have but a little of our all. And you come again with the same
story on your forked tongues, and wish to buy the last we have of all
we had, and offer us a home away beyond the Great River, and money,
and tell us we shall there have a home forever, free from the white
man's claims, and in which we shall dwell in peace, with no one to
make us afraid.
"Our traditions tell us that our fathers fled before the powerful red
men who dwell beyond the Great River, and who robbed us of our homes
and made them their own, as you, the white men, have done. Have you
bought the home of our fathers from these red men? or have you taken
it? that you bid us take it from you, and go back, and make a new home
where the fathers of our fathers sleep in death? If you have not, will
they not hunt us away again, as you have? How shall we know you will
not come and make us sell to you, for the white man, the homes you
promise shall always be ours and a home for our children's children?
"We love the land where we were born and where we have buried our
fathers and our kindred. It is the Great Spirit which teaches us to
love the land, the wigwam, the stream, the trees where we hunted and
played from our childhood, where we have buried out of sight our
ancestors for generations. Who says it is mean to love the land, to
keep in our hearts these graves, as we keep the Great Spirit? It is
noble to love the land, where the corn grows, and which was given to
us by the Great Spirit. We will sell no more; we know we are passing
away; the leaves fall from the trees, and we fall like these; some
will stay to be the last. The snow melts from the hills, but there is
some left for the last; we are left for the last, like the withered
leaf and little spot of snow. Leave to us the little we have, let us
die where our fathers have died, and let us sleep where our kindred
sleep; and when the last is gone, then take our lands, and with your
plough tear up the mould upon our graves, and plant your corn above
us. There will be none to weep at the deed, none to tell the
traditions of our people, or sing the death-song above their
graves--none to listen to the wrongs and oppressions the red man bore
from his white brother, who came from the home the Great Spirit gave
him, to take from the red man the home the Great Spirit gave him. We
are few and weak, you are many and strong, and you can kill us and
take our homes; but the Great Spirit has given us courage to fight for
our homes, if we may not live in them--and we will do it--and this is
our talk, our last talk."
He folded back the blanket he had thrown from his shoulders, and,
followed by his band, he stalked majestically away. They had broken up
their camp and returned to their homes upon the Tallapoosa.
Unawed by the defection of the Tuscahatchees, the band attached to
Hopothlayohola, McIntosh went on to complete the treaty. This chief,
because he had been the friend of the United States in the then recent
war, assumed to be the principal chief of the nation, as he held the
commission of a brigadier-general from the United States; a
commission, however, which only gave him command with his own people.
This assumption was denied by Hopothlayohola, chief of the
Tuscahatchees, Tuskega, and other chiefs of the nation, who insisted
upon the ancient usages, and the power attaching through these to the
recognized head-chief of the nation. Strong representations and
protests against the treaty were sent to Washington, and serious
complications were threatened, very nearly producing collision between
the State of Georgia and the General Government. The hostility to
McIntosh and his party culminated in a conspiracy for his
assassination. Fifty warriors were selected, headed by a chief for the
purpose. These received their orders, which were that on a day
designated they should concentrate at a given spot, and at night
proceed to the house of McIntosh, in secret, and surrounding it at or
near daylight, call him up, and as he came forth, all were to fire
upon him. His brother, his son, and son-in-law, Rolla and Chillie
McIntosh, and Hawkins, were all doomed to die, and by the hands of
this executory band. That there might be no mistake as to the day,
each warrior was furnished with a bundle of sticks of wood, each of
these represented a day--the whole, the number of days intervening
between the time of receiving them, and the day of execution. Every
night upon the going down of the sun one of these was to be thrown
away--the last one, on the night of concentration and assassination.
It was death to betray the trust reposed, or to be absent from the
point of rendezvous at the time appointed.
The secret was faithfully kept--every one was present. The house of
McIntosh stood immediately upon the bank of the Chattahoochee River,
at the point or place now known as McIntosh's Reserve. It was
approached and surrounded under the cover of night, and so stealthily
as to give no warning even to the watch-dogs. McIntosh and his son
Chillie were the only victims in the house, the two others were away.
Hawkins was at his own home, Rolla McIntosh no one knew where.
Hopothlayohola had accompanied this band, but not in the character of
chief. The command was delegated to another. This chief knocked at the
door, and commanded McIntosh to come out and meet his doom. The
Reverend Francis Flornoy, a Baptist preacher, was spending the night
with the chief, and was in a room with Chillie. The chief McIntosh
knew his fate, and, repairing to the apartment of his guest and son,
told them he was about to die, and directing his son to escape from
the rear of the house, and across the river, said he would meet his
fate as a warrior. Taking his rifle, he went to the front door, and
throwing it open, fired upon the array of warriors as he gave the
war-whoop, and, in an instant after, fell dead; pierced with twenty
balls. Chillie, at this moment, sprang from the window, leaped into
the river, and made his escape, though fired at repeatedly. A
detachment was immediately sent to execute Hawkins at his home, which
was successful in effecting it.
Soon after this tragic occurrence, the McIntosh party, consisting of
fully one-half the nation, emigrated to the lands granted them west of
the State of Arkansas, and made there a home. The remainder of the
Creeks retired to the district of country between the Chattahoochee
and Line Creek, only to learn that to remain upon this circumscribed
territory was certain destruction.
The whites soon populated the acquired territory, and the
Chattahoochee was no barrier to their aggressions upon the helpless
Indian beyond. Feuds grew up: this led to killings, and in the winter
of 1835-6 active hostilities commenced. This war was of short
duration. Before the nation was divided, Hopothlayohola was opposed to
war. In his communication with General Jessup, he told him: "My
strength is gone; my warriors are few, and I am opposed to war. But
had I the men, I would fight you. I am your enemy--I shall ever be;
but to fight you would only be the destruction of my people. We are in
your power, and you can do with us as you will." But the chiefs of the
lower towns would not yield, and made the fight. In a short time this
was concluded by the capture of their leading chief, Nehemathla. He
was decoyed by treachery into the power of General Jessup, who
detained him as a prisoner, and almost immediately his band
surrendered.
Nehemathla was an Onchee chief. This was the remnant of a tribe
absorbed into the nation of the Creeks or Muscogees, and was probably
one of those inferior bands inhabiting the land when this nation came
from the West and took possession of the country. Their language they
preserved, and it is remarkable it was never acquired by white or red
man, unless he was reared from infancy among the tribe. It was
guttural entirely, and spoken with the mouth open, and no word or
sound ever required it to be closed for its pronunciation. They had
dwindled to a handful at the time of his capture, but more obstinately
determined to remain and die upon their parental domain, than any
other portion of the nation.
Nehemathla was more than eighty years of age at the time of his
capture. When brought into the presence of General Jessup, he expected
nothing short of death. The General told him of his crimes, upbraided
him with bad faith to his great father, General Jackson, and drawing
his sword, told him he deserved to die.
The chief, seeing the sword lifted, snatched the turban from his head,
and fiercely and defiantly looking the General in the face, as the
wind waved about his brow and head the long locks white as snow, said
firmly and aloud: "Strike, and let me sleep here with my father and my
children! Strike, I am the last of my race! The Great Spirit gave me
seven sons--three of them died at Emucfaw, two at Talladega, and two
at Aletosee. General Jackson killed them all, and you call him my
great father! When did a father wash his hands in his children's
blood? When did a father rob his children of their homes? When did a
father drive his children in anger into the wilderness, where they
will find an enemy who claim it as the gift of the Great Spirit, and
who will fight to retain it? Strike, and let me die--no time, no place
like this! The mother of my sons, their sisters, perished for food,
when I with my sons was fighting for our homes. I am alone; and not
afraid to die! Strike: eighty winters are on my head--they are heavier
than your sword! They weigh me to the earth! Strike, and let me go to
my squaw, my sons, and my daughters, and let me forget my wrongs!
Strike, and let my grave be here, where all I have is in the ground!
Strike: I would sleep where I was born--all around me are the graves
of my people, let mine be among them; and when the Great Spirit shall
come, let Him find us all together, here with our fathers of a
thousand winters, who first built their wigwams here, and who first
taught their children to be more cautious than the panther--more
watchful than the turkey!"
"I will not strike you," said the General. "No, I will not strike my
foe, a prisoner; but here is my hand in friendship."
"No," said the chief; "you have put your sword in its pocket, put your
hand in its pocket; do not let it reach out to blind me, or to take my
home. I am the white man's enemy; his friendship I fear more than his
anger. It is more fatal to the red man. It takes away his home, and
forces him living to go away and grieve for his country, and the
graves of his fathers, and to starve in a strange land. In his anger
he kills, and its mercy shuts his eyes and his heart away from the
wrongs and the miseries of his people. I have lived and I will die the
white man's enemy. I have done you all the harm in my power. If I
could, I would do you more. My tongue is not forked like yours, my
heart has no lies to make it speak to deceive. Strike, and let me go
to the happy hunting-grounds where all my people are."
He sat down upon the ground, and, in a low, monotonous, melancholy
tone, chanted the death-song.
"Who-ah-who-allee! wait for me, I am coming. Who-ah-who-allee! prepare
the feast, the great warrior's feast. Who-ah-who-allee! let my boys
and my braves come down to welcome me. Who-ah-who-allee! those who
went before me, tell them the old warrior is coming. Who-ah-who-allee!
the white man has come, he treads on their graves, and the graves of
their fathers. Who-ah-who-allee! the last of the Onchee is coming,
prepare--his bow is broken, his arrows are all gone. Who-ah-who-allee!"
Concluding his song with one shrill whoop, he dropped his head and
lifted up his hands--then prone upon the earth he threw himself,
kissed it, rose up, and seemed prepared for the fate he surely
expected.
Nehemathla spoke English fluently, and all his conversation was in
that language. He was informed that there was no intention of taking
his life, but that he would be kept a close prisoner, until his people
could be conquered and collected--when they would be sent to join
their brethren, who had gone with the Cussetas and Cowetas and Broken
Arrows, beyond the Great River of the West. Tamely and sullenly he
submitted to his confinement, until the period approached, when all
were collected and in detachments forwarded to their future homes.
It was my fortune to be in New Orleans when the old chief and his
little band arrived at that place. It was winter, and the day of their
debarkation was cold and rainy. The steamer chartered to take them to
Fort Smith, upon the Arkansas, from some cause did not arrive at the
levee at the time appointed for their leaving, and they, with their
women and children, were exposed upon the levee to all the
inclemencies of rain and cold, through a protracted winter night. Many
propositions were made to give them shelter, which were rejected. One
warm-hearted, noble spirit, James D. Fresett, the proprietor of an
extensive cotton-press, went in person to the aged chief, and implored
him to take his people to shelter there. He declined, and when the
importunity was again pressed upon him, impatient of persuasion, he
turned abruptly to his tormentor and sternly said:
"I am the enemy of the white man. I ask, and will accept, nothing at
his hands. Me and my people are children of the woods. The Great
Spirit gave them to us, and He gave us the power to endure the cold
and the rain. The clouds above are His, and they are shelter and
warmth enough for us. He will not deceive and rob us. The white man is
faithless; with two tongues he speaks: like the snake, he shows these
before he bites. Never again shall the white man's house open for me,
or the white man's roof shelter me. I have lived his enemy, and his
enemy I will die." The grunt of approval came from all the tribe,
while many rough and stalwart men stood in mute admiration of the
pride, the spirit, and the determination of this white-haired
patriarch of a perishing people. The next day he went away to his new
home, but only to die. About this time a delegation from both the
Tuscahatchees or Hopothlayohola band and the McIntosh band met by
private arrangement, in New Orleans, to reconcile all previous
difficulties between these parties. Hopothlayohola and Tuskega, or
Jim's Boy, and Chillie McIntosh and Hawkins, constituted the
delegations. I was present at the City Hotel, and witnessed the
meeting. It was in silence. McIntosh and Hopothlayohola advanced with
the right hand extended and met. The clasping hands was the signal for
the others: they met, clasping hands, and unity was restored, the
nations reconciled and reunited, and Hopothlayohola and his people
invited to come in peace to their new homes.
It was evidently a union of policy, as there could be no heart-union
between McIntosh and Hopothlayohola; and though the latter placed his
conduct upon the broad basis of national law and national justice, yet
this was inflicted upon the parent of the other, who denied the law,
or the power under the law, supposing it to exist, of the other to
adjudge and to execute its sentence. In the meeting of these chiefs,
and their apparent reconciliation, was to be seen, a desire that the
nation should reunite, and that there should be amity between the
bands, or divided parties, for the national good, and for the good of
all the parties or people. But there could never be between the two
representative chiefs other than a political reconciliation. There was
no attempt on the part of either to deceive the other. Both acted from
the same high motives, while their features told the truth--personally
they were enemies. The son held the hand of his father's executioner,
red with the life-blood of him who gave him being--a father he
revered, and whose memory he cherished. The filial and hereditary
hatred was in his heart. The feeling was mutual. Both knew it, and the
cold, passive eye, and relaxed, inexpressive features but bespoke the
subdued, not the extinguished passion. Chillie McIntosh is only
one-fourth Indian in blood. Hopothlayohola is a full-blooded Indian.
His features are coarse and striking. His high forehead and prominent
brow indicate intellect, and his large compressed mouth and massive
underjaw, terminating in a square, prominent chin, show great fixity
of purpose, and resolution of will. Unquestionably he was the great
man of his tribe.
Tuskega, or Jim's Boy, was a man of herculean proportions. He was six
feet eight inches in height, and in every way admirably proportioned.
He was the putative son of a chief whose name he bore, and whose
titles and power he inherited. But the old warrior-chief never
acknowledged him as such. The old chief owned as a slave a very large
mulatto man, named Jim, who was his confidant and chief adviser, and
to him he ascribed the parentage of his successor, and always called
him Jim's boy. His complexion, hair, and great size but too plainly
indicated his parentage. He was not a man of much mark, except for his
size, and would probably never have attained distinction but through
hereditary right.
In their new home these people do not increase. The efforts at
civilization seem only to reach the mixed bloods, and these only in
proportion to the white blood in their veins. The Indian is incapable
of the white man's civilization, as indeed all other inferior races
are. He has fulfilled his destiny, and is passing away. No
approximation to the pursuits or the condition of the white man
operates otherwise than as a means of his destruction. It seems his
contact is death to every inferior race, when not servile and
subjected to his care and control.