The current seems to be setting very strong against extending
any relief to our red brethren. Governor Lincoln's ex-message
has served to turn back all the kind feelings that were
beginning to expand toward the Marshpee tribe, and force and
intimidation are to be substituted for kindness and mercy.
We cannot but think that Massachusetts will be dishonored by
pursuing the stern course recommended by Ex-Governor Lincoln,
who seems, by one of his letters to Mr. Fiske, to have
contemplated almost with pleasure, the prospect of
superintending in person, military movements against a handful
of Indians, who could not have mustered twenty muskets on the
plantation.
We see now how unjust we have been to the Georgians in their
treatment of the Cherokees, and if we persist in oppressing
the Marshpee Indians, let us hasten to _unresolve_ all the
glowing resolves we made in favor of the Georgia Indians. If
Governor Lincoln is right in his unkind denunciation of the
poor Marshpee Indians, then was not Governor Troop of Georgia
right, in his messages and measures against the Cherokees? If
the Court at Barnstable was right in imprisoning the Indians
for attempting to get their rights, as they understood them,
and made their ignorance of the law no excuse, were not the
Courts of Georgia justifiable in their condemnation of the
Cherokees, for violations of laws enforced against the will of
the helpless Indians?
Oh, it was glorious to be generous, and magnanimous and
philanthropic toward the Cherokees, and to weep over the
barbarities of Georgia, because that could be turned to
account against General Jackson; but when it comes home to our
own bosoms, when a little handful of red men in our own State,
come and ask us for permission to manage their own property,
under reasonable restrictions, and presume to resolve that all
men are free and equal, without regard to complexion; Governor
Lincoln denounces it as _sedition_, the Legislature are
exhorted to turn a deaf ear, and the Indians are left to their
choice between submission to tyrannical laws, or having the
militia called out to shoot them. How glorious this will read
in history!
The next is from the Barnstable Patriot, of February 5, 1834, of a
different character.