American side.
To the usual causes of antagonism between the native and the white
man there was added in the interior of the Pacific northwest the
impossibility of any retreat of the former; for the frontier was
closing in from both directions. "An unprogressive being * * * *,
quite well satisfied with the present, unstimulated by the past,
non-apprehensive of the future" was here brought face to face with one
"in all things the reverse, a restless mortal dissatisfied with the
present, with a history pointing upwards, apprehensive of the future
and always striving for individual and social betterment."[1] "Now
that we propose to invade these mountain solitudes," wrote the builder
of the Mullan Road, "to wrest from their hidden wealth, where under
heavens can the Indian go?"[2]
The answer seemed patent enough to a good many thoughtful Westerners,
who were not cruel men. "The experience of those who have seen most
of the Indians," said the Oregonian, "has been neither flattering to
the efforts of the Government, nor consoling to the hopes of the true
Christian philanthropist; but the purposes of the red man's creation
in the economy of nature are well nigh accomplished, and no human hand
can avert his early extermination from the face of the North American
Continent. Silently but irresistibly the purposes of Providence take
their way through the ages, and across the line of their march treaties
would seem but shreds, and the plans of men on the tide of history
but waifs upon the sea."[3] A belief in such predestination, however
exculpatory for white men, would scarcely help in the working out of
any system looking toward the upraising of the Indians. Mullan's type
of predestination was more blunt: "The Indian," he said, "is destined
to disappear before the white man, and the only question is, how it
may best be done, and his disappearance from our midst tempered with
those elements calculated to produce to himself the least amount of
suffering, and to us the least amount of cost."[4]
The writer in the Oregonian, quoted above, held that it was a
fundamental error in the treatment of Indians to acknowledge their
rights to the soil and to make treaties with them as if they were
nations. Governor Ashley, of Montana, also declared that treaty-making
with Indians ought to cease.[5] To the same effect C. H. Hale,
Superintendent of Indian affairs in Washington Territory, wrote as
follows: "I am well satisfied that a radical change should be made
in our mode of treatment towards the Indians. I do not consider the
language as any too strong when I say, that for us to negotiate
treaties with them as it is usually done is little better than a farce.
We profess by such an act to recognize their equality in status and in
power, and to clothe them with a national existence that does not at
all pertain to them. Instead of thus exalting them in mere form, they
should be treated as they really are, the wards of the government."[6]
The rougher element among the whites, who were in contact with the
Indians, bothered themselves not at all concerning theories or treaties
and seldom showed towards Indians even ordinary human feeling. "A d--d
Indian," as was the usual expression, got no consideration at their
hands. Indians were killed by desperadoes in Montana with despicable
wantonness.[7] A farmer Indian of the Walla Walla tribe had taken some
wheat to mill at Walla Walla and had hitched his horses to his wagon
to feed, when a gambler came from a nearby saloon and took one of the
horses. The owner could not recover it, because men feared to testify
against one of the roughs: but the Indian was reimbursed by employes
of the Umatilla agency.[8] In southern Idaho Indian women and children
were killed in attacks made by volunteer soldiers, and it was charged
that many Indian women were violated.[9] In the former case, however,
it was claimed that the Indian women fought as hard as the men and that
they were indistinguishable from the men in a melee.
It is fair to remember, in judging of atrocities committed by whites,
that not a few of the frontiersmen were inflamed by memories of horrid
deeds committed by Indians upon relatives and friends.[10] We of the
present generation, indeed, can scarcely understand how ingrained was
racial hatred in the white frontiersman of that day. "From the cradle
up he was the recipient of folk lore which placed the Indian as his
hereditary and implacable enemy. To the childish request, 'Grandma,
tell me a story,' it was bear or Indian, ghost stories being too tame
for frontier life, and that the bear and Indian did not stand upon
the same plane as objects to be exterminated, seldom entered into the
thoughts of the grandmother or the little one soon to take part in the
conquest of the wilderness. * * * * Granny might bring tears to the
eyes of her little auditors by telling how the bear cubs moaned over
their dead mother, but no tears flowed for the Indian children made
destitute by this perpetual conflict."[11] "On the other hand, there
might have been in an early day a measure of truth in the assertion
that murder is merit; scalps enviable trophies; plunder legitimate; the
abduction of women and their violation, a desirable achievement."[12]
In judging of Indian populations, however, and of the relations of
whites to them, discriminations need to be made. There were within
tribes bad Indians and good Indians, just as there were bad whites
and good whites; and it was generally the bad men on both sides that
made trouble. Moreover, there was a great difference between such
comparatively well ordered tribes as the Coeur d'Alenes or the Nez
Perces and the scattered banditti of southern Idaho and southeastern
Oregon. This difference is dwelt upon in a report of the Committee on
Indian Affairs of the Idaho Legislature, which was made in 1866. In the
northern portion of the Territory, the report said, "the Nez Perces,
Coeur d'Alenes, Pend d'Oreilles, etc., have been for a long time
gradually adopting the pursuits of peace and habits of civilization,
under good influences, acquired property and permanent habitations and
rely for surer subsistence upon the cultivation of the soil and the
raising of stock. But in South Idaho, throughout that portion of the
Territory south of Snake River, your committee regret to say, a far
different condition of affairs has existed from the organization of the
Territory, and still continues. The scattered clans in all this region,
known as the Shoshones or Snakes, inhabit a country for the most
part destitute of timber and game, spreading into wide deserts, and
affording them secure retreats in rugged mountains and deep canyons.
Never having any fixed habitations, they acquire no property except by
plunder, and hold none except for temporary subsistence and plunder.
So, far from cultivating the soil, or any arts of peace, they have
to a great extent ceased to depend for food upon fish, grass seeds,
crickets, roots, etc., and rely upon what they seize by murder and
robbery on the public highways and frontier settlements. * * * * * They
have no recognized head, but simply leaders of clans, and know nothing
of treaty obligations. Nothing, therefore, but vigorous war, that will
push them to extremities of starvation or extermination, can ever bring
peace to our borders and security to our highways."[13]
If one tries to imagine himself in the conditions that then existed in
southern Idaho, he will, perhaps, better understand why even humane
people could have had stern and cruel opinions with regard to the
treatment of some classes of Indians. There was no danger of attack
upon settlements of any size; there was, in fact, no declared war.
But stock was constantly being stolen, lone men murdered, and pack
trains attacked. If a few men pursued the Indians, the latter would
turn and fight like fiends, and with the advantage of knowledge of the
country. To dwellers in secure homes, these enumerations may appear not
particularly significant, but to one with understanding of frontier
conditions they mean much. If travellers, for example, had their
animals stolen, it meant all the discomfort and danger of being left
afoot in a country of great distances. If a rancher had his stock run
off, it meant temporary impoverishment and disablement. For white men
to steal horses was quite generally recognized as a capital crime; why,
then, compunction for Indians? Men, moreover, who looked down upon the
mutilated remains of comrades, cut off in the unceasing assassinations,
were very likely to vow vengeance upon the whole murderous race.
Finally, there were wider considerations affecting the whole community;
Indian attacks deterred packers, freighters, and stage owners,
thereby raising freights, delaying mails, making supplies more scarce
and costly, impeding immigration, and hindering the investment of
capital,--in a word, checking prosperity in a way to which no civilized
community would submit.
The men who went out to find and to kill Indians who were thus damaging
the communities, were not always nice men; but they often showed
self-denial in leaving good-paying employments, and they endured
great privations and did a necessary work for civilization.[14] The
character of the United States troops, likewise, who served in these
regions during the Civil War was sometimes questionable; but frontier
communities were justifiably grateful to men like those of General
Conner's command, many of whom in the Bear River expedition endured
freezing, wounds, and death in corralling and fighting a large band of
predatory Indians.[15]
The exasperation of the southern Idaho communities, under continual
Indian harassment, became extreme. This was especially true in Owyhee.
A meeting of citizens offered rewards for scalps; one hundred dollars
for that of a buck, fifty dollars for that of a squaw and twenty-five
dollars for "everything in the shape of an Indian under ten."[16] When
fifty-five Indians were reported killed in Humboldt, the local paper in
Owyhee rejoiced that these were made "permanently friendly"; the next
item, in contrast, is an announcement of a Christmas Festival for the
Sunday School children at the Union Church, at which there were to be
an address, songs by the children, and distribution of gifts.[17] The
month previous, on report of seventy Indians being killed and scalped
in Nevada, the same paper burst out with,--"Here's seventy more reasons
for those safely-located, chicken-hearted, high-toned-treaty-moral
suasion philanthropists to ignorantly wail about, and we're glad of
it."[18] Since it was so extremely difficult to catch these Indian
marauders, a novel proposal was advanced, possibly not in real earnest:
"If some Christian gentlemen will furnish a few bales of blankets from
a small-pox hospital, well inoculated," the _Avalanche_ announced,
"we will be distributing agent, and see that no Indian is without a
blanket. That kind of peace is better than treaties." "These ideas suit
us exactly," commented the _Idaho World_.[19]
In the case of Indians such as these in southern Idaho, the reservation
system as yet was impossible; but for the more amenable Indians, who
lived farther to the west and north, this system seemed not only
possible, but necessary. For the mining advance was sweeping away the
native means of subsistence. Game was receding into the more remote
localities, and the camass and cous grounds were being continually
devastated by the hogs of settlers. The fish supply, to be sure, still
remained, but the location of the fisheries on the streams along which
most of the travel proceeded made necessary a contact with whites which
brought evil results to the Indians. It was fortunate, therefore, that
arrangements for the establishment of reservations were well under way,
when the mining advance began. For the Indians east of the Cascades
the treaties of 1855 (ratified in 1859) provided five reservations,
each the size of a large county. These were the Yakima, the Warm
Springs, the Umatilla, the Nez Perces and the Flathead. On all of these
reservations agents were to be stationed, mills were to be erected,
farming tools furnished, and schools and teachers provided. The policy
itself was conceived on generous, humane, and enlightened principles,
and it is doubtful if, under the circumstances, a better could have
been devised. But the test came in administration; the difficulties and
weaknesses, as the system worked out, proved to be many and formidable.
Among the first of these obstacles to become apparent was the natural
unfitness of the Indian for civilized life.
It was always a difficult task for a white settler in a new country to
get a start in the cultivation of the soil. He had to be able to gain
support in some manner while he was building his house, breaking up the
soil, and waiting for his crops to mature. Tools were generally scarce
and dear, and many shifts and ingenious devices had to be employed.
To be sure, the American frontiersman had become so expert in this
work, that he went at it with comparative ease; but how difficult such
work is for the untrained white man may be seen today in the case of
Englishmen coming direct from the old country to western Canada.[20]
Much more difficult it was, then, for the Indians. The ordinary Indian
was very poor, ignorant, and conservative. A few, it was true, had
large herds of ponies, but the average Indian might have two or three,
and these worthless for the stern work of breaking prairie sod. The
shrewd Indians who owned large herds, moreover, could see no reason for
raising crops when stock-raising paid better and was vastly easier and
more agreeable. And this was the more true when, as on the Umatilla
reservation, wheat had to be hauled long distances to be ground.
Furthermore, it was not at all the proper thing for a common Indian to
begin a new sort of enterprise without the consent and example of his
chief. Plowing, and like work, again, was for the Indian inexpressibly
awkward and hard to learn, and, moreover, contrary to his ideas and
to the ideas of his women of what a man ought to do. It was entirely
natural that he should prefer to such drudgery, the sport of hunting
and fishing and moving around. It was not his habit to stay in one
place, for when the camass was ripe he needed to be near the grounds
where it grew, and when the salmon were running it was necessary to be
at the fisheries. Moreover, it was not sanitary for those Indians with
their tepee habits to dwell long in one place; when Indians were forced
to do so, filth brought disease and death. So, it was a hard, long
task [the white man had been at it for thousands of years], this task
of settling down to the orderliness and laboriousness and anxiety of
civilized ways,--certainly a task not to be done in a year or decade,
according to the swiftness and impatience of Americans. Under the most
favoring conditions it was a task that demanded time for slow and
painful growth.[21]
The conditions were not the most favorable.
In the first place the Government that was finally responsible was
far away, at its best worked slowly, and was now handicapped by an
absorbing and expensive war. A new party, moreover, was in power, and
new men were at work. The financial problem, which this new party had
to face, was stringent; it was not to be wondered at, therefore, that
funds indispensable to the right working of the reservation system
reached their destinations tardily. On September 25, 1861, for example,
only a portion of the funds appropriated for the Oregon superintendency
in 1860 had arrived, and the remainder had been remitted so far behind
time as seriously to impair efficiency.[22] Agent Bancroft, and some
of his employes, in two years received pay for only one quarter.[23]
Moreover, when funds did arrive for the different agencies, they were
in checks, which were hard to cash and reckoned on a legal tender
basis, while the entire business of the Coast was on a gold basis.
It was, consequently, very difficult to secure and retain efficient
employes.[24] Native employes also, in particular, wanted their pay
promptly on doing their work and felt aggrieved if they did not
get it. Nor could the business of the Department be economically
conducted; merchants naturally asked higher prices for goods when paid
for in vouchers. The practice by agents of issuing vouchers itself
was a most pernicious and corrupting one, but it was the only way in
which the agency business could at times be carried on at all. Goods
which were bought were frequently long delayed for lack of cash for
transportation, or money was borrowed for transportation at the high
rates of interest which prevailed on the Coast.[25] Goods of all
sorts solemnly promised to the Indians, and improvements in the shape
of mills, etc., were delayed for months and years; it was natural,
therefore, for the Indians to feel that the Great Father was not
particular about keeping his engagements, and that they in turn need
not be particular about keeping theirs.
Furthermore, the Government did not provide adequate protection for
Indians who were on reservations. We have noticed before how the
Nez Perces reservation was invaded by miners in defiance of treaty
obligations. A still more conspicuous example of the failure to
provide protection occurred at the Warm Springs reservation, where
repeated raids of the Snakes terrorized and impoverished the agency
Indians and discouraged them from attempting the cultivation of the
soil. The Snakes on one occasion killed or captured many women and
children, drove off the cattle and horses, both of the Indians and
the Government, compelled the employes to flee for their lives,
and plundered the agency. Troops pursued them without effect; and,
moreover, hardly had the pursuers returned, when another raid took the
remainder of the stock.[26]
No feature of the reservation system was the cause of so much
dissatisfaction to Indians, agents, and superintendents as was the
payment of annuities. Not a few of the Indians of some tribes--notably
of the Nez Perces--were men of self-respect and shrewdness, who felt
insulted at being offered gewgaws and calico.[27] Calico and loss of
land became connected in the Indian mind.[28] Among the Yakimas it
was noted that there was great reluctance shown by many at receiving
annuities. A reported speech by Qui-tal-i-can, a Yakima Indian, on the
occasion of distribution of annuities at the Yakima agency, illustrates
the attitude of independence held by some Indians: "The white men
propose to bring all Indians to one land. Not good. Like driving horses
into a corral. Suppose Indians went to Boston and told all the Bostons
to go to one place. Would it be well? I am a poor man, but I will not
say to the Agent, I am a dog. The Great Spirit will take care of us. He
will always cause the grass to grow and the water to run. I am somewhat
ashamed to be here today. My land is not to be sold for a few blankets
and a few yards of cloth."[29] The Indians in general, moreover, quite
rapidly learned to prefer that which was substantial to that which was
trashy.
But the goods which they received were ill adapted to their needs,
since these goods were not sent in accordance with their own expressed
desires, nor according to the requisition of the agents. At the
Umatilla reservation, when Mr. Davenport distributed the annuities,
the total amount of goods had a "pretty fair appearance"; but for 91
men there were provided 59 flannel shirts, 22 coats, 23 pants, 51 wool
hats, 49 caps, and 65 pairs of brogans, and there were 122-1/2 pairs
of blankets for the total of 324 persons.[30] Many of the articles
received by the fishing Indians of the Sound country were those
suitable to the more agricultural Indians of the interior,--consisting
of "pitchforks, sickles, scythes without snaiths, frying pans, and
other loose ends of New York stores."[31] It was not to be wondered
at that the Indians traded off or gambled away these goods. Besides
lack of suitability, there was no telling when the goods would arrive
for distribution, and in consequence the Indians might have to go
without needed clothing in winter time: "Really, the worst part of the
annuity business was the uncertainty as to what kind of goods would be
furnished, and at what time, if at all."[32]
It was held by agents and superintendents that this sort of expenditure
was in itself not wise, since it tended to pauperism and indolence. It
would have been better, they said, to expend the money for improvements
such as would help the Indians to become self-supporting,--in
particular for the planting of orchards,--or to pay the Indians for
doing work, rather than to give them articles outright. At any rate, it
was urged, annuities ought not to be issued to all of each tribe, but
only to such as stayed on the reservation and showed inclination for
work and progress.[33]
The reason why there was so much mal-adjustment, so it was universally
claimed by superintendents and agents, was that the annuity goods were
purchased on the Atlantic coast. A newspaper correspondent said that
the fault lay with the "Great Father in New York who annually gets
contracts for furnishing things to poor Lo."[34] So important does this
aspect of the annuity problem seem, that I quote at some length from
the annual reports of three superintendents. Edward R. Geary reported
in 1860 from the Oregon Superintendency as follows:
"Reference to the several lately ratified treaties made with the
Indians in the interior of Washington and Oregon, shows that
the chief objects to which the large sums embraced in the first
payment for their lands ceded to the United States are applicable,
are such as 'providing for their removal to the reservations;'
'breaking up and fencing farms;' 'building houses;' 'supplying
provisions and a suitable outfit,' etc.
"The aggregate amount of these first payments, to be expended for
such objects as above specified, under the five treaties with
the Indians east of the Cascade mountains, and appropriated by
Congress at its last session, is $231,900. Of this, the sum of
$111,000 was expended in the purchase of drygoods, groceries and
hardware on the Atlantic side. This expenditure does not appear to
be in accordance with the spirit and intent of these treaties;
nor does it meet the just expectations of the Indians."
"The whole amount appropriated for first payment of annuities to
the Indians, embraced in four treaties, in Washington Territory,
west of the mountains, is $26,500; of which the entire amount has
been expended in the same market as above.
"Some of the dry goods are not adapted to the condition and habits
of the Indians on this side of the Rocky Mountains, and one-half
the amount would have sufficed for their present wants.
"Suitable goods of the best quality can be purchased in this
market at prices ranging but little above those paid for similar
articles in New York. Thus the freight might have been saved, and
the risk and exposure avoided, by which many articles have been
damaged in the transportation. * * * *"[35]
The successor to Mr. Geary, William H. Rector, wrote as follows in 1861
to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington:
"Your attention has been heretofore called by my predecessor
to the impropriety of disbursing in the Atlantic States the
appropriations made by Congress for beneficial objects. This
course has been pursued ever since the ratification of the
treaties, and still continues to be faithfully observed,
notwithstanding the objections and remonstrances of the
superintendents and agents thereto.