TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS BY THE UNITED STATES,—CONTINUED.
The Friends have for many years had schools for the education of the
children in different States, and persons employed to engage the
Indians in agriculture and manual arts, but they, as well as the
missionaries, complain that their efforts have been rendered abortive
by the continual removals of the red people by the government.
Scarcely was the war over, and American independence proclaimed, when
a great strife began betwixt the Republicans and the Indians, for
the Indian lands—a strife which extended from the Canadian lakes to
the gulph of Florida, and has continued more or less to this moment.
Under the British government, the boundaries of the American states
had never been well defined. The Americans appointed commissioners to
determine them, and appear to have resolved that all Indian claims
within the boundaries of the St. Lawrence, the great chain of lakes,
and the Mississippi, should be extinguished. They certainly embraced a
compact and most magnificent expanse of territory. It was true that the
Indians, the ancient and rightful possessors of the soil, had yet large
tracts within these lines of demarcation; but, then, what was the power
of the Indians to that of the United States? They _could_ be compelled
to evacuate their lands, and it was resolved that they _should_. It
is totally beyond the limits of my work to follow out the progress of
this most unequal and iniquitous strife; whoever wishes to see it fully
and very fairly portrayed may do so in a work by an American—“Drake’s
Book of the North American Indians.” I can here only simply state,
that a more painful and interesting struggle never went on between the
overwhelming numbers of the white men, armed with all the powers of
science, but unrestrained by the genuine sentiments of religion, and
the sons of the forest in their native simplicity. The Americans tell
us that this apparently hard and arbitrary measure will eventually
prove the most merciful. That the Indians cannot live by the side of
white men; they are always quarrelling with and murdering them; and
that is but too true; and the Indians in strains of the most indignant
and pathetic eloquence, tell us the reason why. It is because the white
invaders are eternally encroaching on their bounds, destroying their
deer and their fish, and murdering the Indians too without ceremony.
It is this recklessness of law and conscience, and the ever-rolling
tide of white population westward, which raised up Tecumseh, and
his companions, to combine the northern tribes in resistance. Brant
assured the American commissioners, that unless they made the Ohio
and the Muskingum their boundaries, there could be no peace with the
Indians. These are the causes that called forth Black-Hauk from the
Ouisconsin, with the Winnebagoes, the Sacs, and Foxes; that roused the
Little-Turtle, with his Miamies, and many other chiefs and tribes,
to inflict bloody retribution on their oppressors, but finally to be
compelled themselves only the sooner to yield up their native lands.
These are the causes that, operating to the most southern point of the
United States, armed the great nations of the Seninoles, the Creeks,
the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees; and have made famous the
exterminating campaigns of General Jackson, the bloody spots of Fort
Mimms, Autossee, Tippecanoe, Talladega, Horse-shoe-bend, and other
places of wholesale carnage. At Horse-shoe-bend, General Jackson
says—“determined to exterminate them, I detached General Coffee with
the mounted and nearly the whole of the Indian force, early in the
morning (March 27, 1814), to cross the river about two miles below
their encampment, and to surround the Bend, so that none of them should
escape by crossing the river.”
“At this place,” says Drake, “the disconsolate tribes of the South
had made a last great stand; and had a tolerably fortified camp. It
was said they were 1000 strong.” They were attacked on all sides; the
fighting was kept up five hours; _five hundred and fifty-seven_ were
left dead on the peninsula, and a great number killed by the horsemen,
in crossing the river. _It is believed that not more than twenty
escaped!_ “We continued,” says the _brave General Jackson_, “to destroy
many of them who had concealed themselves under the banks of the river,
until we were prevented by the night!”
And what had these unfortunate tribes done, that they should be
exterminated? Simply this:—When the United States remodelled the
southern states, reducing the Carolinas and Georgia, and creating the
new states of Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi, they stipulated,
in behalf of Georgia, to extinguish all the Indian titles to lands in
that State, “as soon as it could be done on peaceable terms.” Georgia,
impatient to seize on these lands, immediately employed all means to
effect this object. When the Indians, in national council, would not
sell their lands, they prevailed on a half-breed chief, M’Intosh, and
a few others, of no character, to sell them; and, on this mock title,
proceeded to expel the Indians. The Indians resisted; an alarm of
rebellion was sounded through the States, and General Jackson sent to
put it down. The Indians, as in all other quarters, were compelled to
give way before the irresistible American power. We cannot go at length
into this bloody history of oppression; but the character of the whole
may be seen in that of a part.
But the most singular feature of the treatment of the Indians by
the Americans is, that while they assign their irreclaimable nature
as the necessary cause of their expelling or desiring to expel them
from all the states east of the Mississippi, their most strenuous and
most recent efforts have been directed against those numerous tribes,
that were not only extensive but rapidly advancing in civilization.
So far from refusing to adopt settled, orderly habits, the Choctaws,
Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees, were fast conforming both to the
religion and the habits of the Americans. The Creeks were numbered
in 1814 at 20,000. The Choctaws had some years ago 4041 warriors, and
could not therefore be estimated at less than four times that number in
total population, or 16,000. In 1810, the Cherokees consisted of 12,400
persons; in 1824 they had increased to 15,000. The Chickasaws reckoned
some years ago 1000 warriors, making the tribe probably 4000.
The Creeks had twenty years ago cultivated lands, flocks, cattle,
gardens, and different kinds of domestic manufactures. They were
betaking themselves to manual trades and farming. “The Choctaws,” Mr.
Stuart says, “have both schools and churches. A few books have been
published in the Choctaw language. In one part of their territory,
where the population amounted to 5627 persons, there were above
11,000 cattle, about 4000 horses, 22,000 hogs, 530 spinning-wheels,
360 ploughs, etc.” The missionaries speak in the highest terms of
their steadiness and sobriety; and one of their chiefs had actually
offered himself as a candidate for Congress. All these tribes are
described as rapidly progressing in education and civilization, but
the Cherokees present a character which cannot be contemplated without
the liveliest admiration. These were the tribes amongst whom Adair
spent so many years, about the middle of the last century, and whose
customs and ideas as delineated by him, exhibited them as such fine
material for cultivation. Since then the missionaries, and especially
the Moravians, have been labouring with the most signal success. A
school was opened in this tribe by them in 1804, in which vast numbers
of Cherokee children have been educated. Such, indeed, have been the
effects of cultivation on this fine people, that they have assumed
all the habits and pursuits of civilized life. Their progress may be
noted by observing the amount of their possessions in 1810, and again,
fourteen years afterwards, in 1824. In the former year they had 3
schools, in the latter 18; in the former year 13 grist-mills, in the
latter 36; in the former year 3 saw-mills, in the latter 13; in the
former year 467 looms, in the latter 762; in the former year 1,600
spinning-wheels, in the latter 2,486; in the former year 30 wagons, in
the latter 172; in the former year 500 ploughs, in the latter 2,923;
in the former year 6,100 horses, in the latter 7,683; in the former
year 19,500 head of cattle, in the latter 22,531; in the former year
19,600 swine, in the latter 46,732; in the former year 1,037 sheep,
in the latter 2,546, and 430 goats; in the former year 49 smiths, in
the latter 62 smiths’ shops. Here is a steady and prosperous increase;
testifying to no ordinary existence of industry, prudence, and good
management amongst them, and bearing every promise of their becoming a
most valuable portion of the community. They have, Mr. Stuart tells us,
several public roads, fences, and turnpikes. The soil produces maize,
cotton, tobacco, wheat, oats, indigo, sweet and Irish potatoes. The
natives carry on a considerable trade with the adjoining states, and
some of them export cotton to New Orleans. Apple and peach orchards are
common, and gardens well cultivated. Butter and cheese are the produce
of their dairies. There are many houses of public entertainment kept
by the natives. Numerous and flourishing villages are seen in every
section of the country. Cotton and woollen cloths and blankets are
everywhere. Almost every family in the nation produces cotton for its
own consumption. Nearly all the nation are native Cherokees.
A printing-press has been established for several years; and a
newspaper, written partly in English, and partly in Cherokee, has been
successfully carried on. This paper, called the Cherokee Phœnix,
is written entirely by a Cherokee, a young man under thirty. It had
been surmised that he was assisted by a white man, on which he put
the following notice in the paper:—“No white has anything to do with
the management of our paper. No other person, whether white or red,
besides the ostensible editor, has written, from the commencement of
the Phœnix, half a column of matter which has appeared under the
editorial head.”[61]
The starting of this Indian newspaper by an Indian, is one of the most
interesting facts in the history of civilization. In this language
nothing had been written or printed. It had no written alphabet.
This young Indian, already instructed by the missionaries in English
literature, is inspired with a desire to open the world of knowledge
to his countrymen in their vernacular tongue. There is no written
character, no types. Those words familiar to all native ears, have
no corresponding representation to the eye. These are gigantic
difficulties to the young Indian, and as the Christian would call him,
_savage_ aspirant and patriot. But he determines to conquer them all.
He travels into the eastern states. He invents letters which shall
best express the sounds of his native tongue; he has types cut, and
commences a newspaper. There is nothing like it in the history of
nations in their first awakening from the long fixedness of wild life.
This mighty engine, the press, once put in motion by native genius
in the western wilderness, books are printed suitable to the nascent
intelligence of the country. The Gospel of St. Matthew is translated
into Cherokee, and printed at the native press. Hymns are also
translated and printed. Christianity makes rapid strides. The pupils
in the schools advance with admirable rapidity. There is a new and
wonderful spirit abroad. Not only do the Indians throng to the churches
to listen to the truths of life and immortality, but Indians themselves
become diligent ministers, and open places of worship in the more
remote and wild parts of the country. Even temperance societies are
formed. Political principles develop themselves far in philosophical
advance of our proud and learned England. The constitution of the
native state contains admirable stamina; trial by jury prevails; and
universal suffrage—a right, to this moment distrustfully withheld from
the English people, is there freely granted, and judiciously exercised;
every male citizen of eighteen years old having a vote in all public
elections.
The whole growth and being, however, of this young Indian civilization
is one of the most delightful and animating subjects of contemplation
that ever came before the eye of the lover of his race. Here were these
Indian savages, who had been two hundred years termed irreclaimable;
whom it had been the custom only to use as the demons of carnage, as
creatures fit only to carry the tomahawk and the bloody scalping-knife
through Cherry-Valley, Gnadenhuetten, or Wyoming; and whom, that work
done, it was declared, must be cast out from the face of civilized
man, as the reproach of the past and the incubus of the future,—here
were they gloriously vindicating themselves from those calumnies and
wrongs, and assuming in the social system a most beautiful and novel
position. It was a spectacle on which one would have thought the United
States would hang with a proud delight, and point to as one of the most
noble features of their vast and noble country. What did they do? They
chose rather to give the lie to all their assertions, that they drove
out the Indians because they were irreclaimable and unamalgamable, and
to shew to the world that they expelled them solely and simply because
they scorned that one spot of the copper hue of the aborigines should
mar the whiteness of their population. They compel us to exclaim with
the indignant Abbé Raynal, “And are these the men whom both French and
English have been conspiring to extirpate for a century past?” and
suggest to us his identical answer,—“But perhaps they would be ashamed
to live amongst such models of heroism and magnanimity!”
However, everything which irritation, contempt, political chicanery,
and political power can effect, have been long zealously at work to
drive these fine Nations out of their delightful country, and beyond
the Mississippi; the boundary which American cupidity at present sets
between itself and Indian extirpation. Spite of all those solemn
declarations, by the venerable Washington and other great statesmen
already quoted; spite of the most grave treaties, and especially one
of July 2d, 1791, which says, “The United States solemnly guarantee
to the Cherokee nation all their lands not hereby ceded,” by a
juggle betwixt the State of Georgia and Congress, the Cherokees
have been virtually dispossessed of their country. From the period
of the American independence to 1802, there had been a continual
pressure on the Cherokees for their lands, and they had been induced
by one means or another to cede to the States more than _two hundred
millions_ of acres. How reluctantly may be imagined, by the decided
stand made by them in 1819, when they peremptorily protested that
they would not sell another foot. That they needed all they had, for
that they were becoming more and more agricultural, and progressing
in civilization. One would have thought this not only a sufficient
but a most satisfactory plea to a great nation by its people; but
no, Georgia ceded to Congress territories for the formation of two
new states, Alabama and Mississippi, and Georgia in part of payment
receives the much desired lands of the Cherokees. Georgia, therefore,
assumes the avowed language of despotism, and decrees by its senate, in
the very face of the clear recognitions of Indian independence already
quoted, _that the right of discovery and conquest was the title of
the Europeans; that every foot of land in the United States was held
by that title; that the right of the Indians was merely temporary;
that they were tenants at will, removable at any moment, either by
negotiation or force_. “It may be contended,” says the Report of 1827,
“with much plausibility, that there is in these claims more of force
than of justice; _but they are claims which have been recognized and
admitted by the whole civilized world_, AND IT IS UNQUESTIONABLY TRUE,
THAT, UNDER SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES, FORCE _becomes_ RIGHT!”[62]
This language once adopted there needed no further argument about right
or justice. Georgia took its stand upon Rob Roy’s law,
That he shall take who has the power,
And he shall keep who can;
and it forthwith proceeded to act upon it. It decreed in 1828, that the
territories of the Cherokees should be divided amongst the different
counties of Georgia; that after June 1st, 1830, the Cherokees should
become the subjects of Georgia; that all Cherokee laws should be
abolished, and all Cherokees should be cut off from any benefit of the
laws of the State—that is, that no Indian, or _descendent of one_,
should be capable to act as a witness, or to be a party in any suit
against a white man. The Cherokees refusing to abandon their hereditary
soil without violence, an act was passed prohibiting any white man from
residing in the Cherokee country without a permit from the governor,
and on the authority of this, soldiers were marched into it, and _the
missionaries carried off_ on a Sunday. An attempt was made to crush
that interesting newspaper press, by forcing away every white man
assisting in the office. Forcible possession was taken of the Indian
gold mines by Georgian laws, and the penal statutes exercised against
the Indians who did not recognize their authority. The Cherokees, on
these outrages, vehemently appealed to Congress. They said—“how far
we have contributed to keep bright the chain of friendship which binds
us to these United States, is within the reach of your knowledge; it
is ours to maintain it, until, perhaps, the plaintive voice of an
Indian from the south shall no more be heard within your walls of
legislation. Our nation and our people may cease to exist, before
another revolving year reassembles this august assembly of great men.
We implore that our people may not be denounced as savages, unfit for
the good neighbourhood guaranteed to them by treaty. We cannot better
express the rights of our nation, than they are developed on the face
of the document we herewith submit; and the desires of our nation, than
to pray a faithful fulfilment of the promises made by its illustrious
author through his secretary. Between the compulsive measures of
Georgia and our destruction, we ask the interposition of your
authority, and remembrance of the bond of perpetual peace pledged for
our safety—the safety of the last fragments of some mighty nations,
that have grazed for a while upon your civilization and prosperity, but
which are now tottering on the brink of angry billows, whose waters
have covered in oblivion other nations that were once happy, but are
now no more.
“The schools where our children learn to read the Word of God; the
churches where our people now sing to his praise, and where they are
taught ‘that of one blood he created all the nations of the earth;’
the fields they have cleared, and the orchards they have planted; the
houses they have built,—are dear to the Cherokees; and there they
expect to live and to die, on the lands inherited from their fathers,
as the firm friends of the people of these United States.”
This is the very language which the simple people of all the new
regions whither Europeans have penetrated, have been passionately
and imploringly addressing for three hundred years, but in vain.
We seem again to hear the supplicating voice of the people of the
Seven Reductions of Paraguay, addressed to the expelling Spaniards
and Portuguese. In each case it was alike unavailing. The Congress
returned them a cool answer, advising the Cherokees to go over the
Mississippi, where “the soil should be theirs while the trees grow,
or the streams run.” But they had heard that language before, and
they knew its value. The State of Georgia had avowed the doctrine of
conquest, which silences all contracts and annuls all promises. It is
to the honour of the Supreme Court of the United States that, on appeal
to it, _it_ annulled the proceedings of Georgia, and recognised the
rightful possession of the country by the Cherokees. But what power
shall restrain all those engines of irritation and oppression, which
white men know how to employ against coloured ones, when they want
their persons or their lands. Nothing will be able to prevent the final
expatriation of these southern tribes: they must pass the Mississippi
till the white population is swelled sufficiently to require them to
cross the Missouri; there will then remain but two barriers between
them and annihilation—the rocky mountains and the Pacific Ocean.
Whenever we hear now of those tribes, it is of some fresh act of
aggression against them—some fresh expulsion of a portion of them—and
of melancholy Indians moving off towards the western wilds.
Such is the condition to which the British and their descendants
have reduced the aboriginal inhabitants of the vast regions of North
America,—the finest race of men that we have ever designated by the
name of savage.
What term we savage? The untutored heart
Of Nature’s child is but a slumbering fire;
Prompt at a breath, or passing touch to start
Into quick flame, as quickly to retire;
Ready alike its pleasance to impart,
Or scorch the hand which rudely wakes its ire:
Demon or child, as impulse may impel,
Warm in its love, but in its vengeance fell.
And these Columbian warriors to their strand
Had welcomed Europe’s sons, and rued it sore:—
Men with smooth tongues, but rudely armed hand;
Fabling of peace, when meditating gore;
Who their foul deeds to veil, ceased not to brand
The Indian name on every Christian shore.
What wonder, on such heads, their fury’s flame
Burst, till its terrors gloomed their fairer fame?
For they were not a brutish race, unknowing
Evil from good; their fervid souls embraced
With virtue’s proudest homage, to o’erflowing,
The mind’s inviolate majesty. The past
To them was not a darkness; but was glowing
With splendour which all time had not o’ercast;
Streaming unbroken from creation’s birth,
When God communed and walked with men on earth.
Stupid idolatry had never dimmed
The Almighty image in their lucid thought.
To Him alone their zealous praise was hymned;
And hoar Tradition from her treasury brought
Glimpses of far-off times, in which were limned,
His awful glory;—and their prophets taught
Precepts sublime,—a solemn ritual given,
In clouds and thunder, to their sires from heaven.[63]
And in the boundless solitude which fills,
Even as a mighty heart, their wild domains;
In caves and glens of the unpeopled hills;
And the deep shadow that for ever reigns
Spirit-like, in their woods; where, roaring, spills
The giant cataract to the astounded plains,—
Nature, in her sublimest moods, had given
Not man’s weak lore,—but a quick flash from heaven.
Roaming in their free lives, by lake and stream;
Beneath the splendour of their gorgeous sky;
Encamping, while shot down night’s starry gleam,
In piny glades, where their forefathers lie;
Voices would come, and breathing whispers seem
To rouse within, the life which may not die;
Begetting valorous deeds, and thoughts intense,
And a wild gush of burning eloquence.
Such appeared to me ten years ago, when writing these stanzas, the
character of the North American Indians; such it appears to me now.
What an eternal disgrace to both British and Americans if this race of
“mighty hunters before the Lord” shall, at the very moment when they
shew themselves ready to lay down the bow and throw all the energies
of their high temperament into civilized life, still be repelled and
driven into the waste, or to annihilation. Their names and deeds
and peculiar character are already become part of the literature of
America; they will hereafter present to the imagination of posterity,
one of the most singular and interesting features of history. Their
government, the only known government of pure intellect; their grave
councils; their singular eloquence; their stern fortitude; their wild
figures in the war-dance; their “fleet foot” in the ancient forest;
and all those customs, and quick keen thoughts which belong to them,
and them alone, will for ever come before the poetic mind of every
civilized people. Shall they remain, to look back to the days in which
the very strength of their intellects and feelings made them repel the
form of civilization, while they triumph in the universal diffusion of
knowledge and Christian hope? or shall it continue to be said,
The vast, the ebbless, the engulphing tide
Of the white population still rolls on!
And quailed has their romantic heart of pride,—
The kingly spirit of the woods is gone.
Farther and farther do they wend to hide
Their wasting strength; to mourn their glory flown;
And sigh to think how soon shall crowds pursue
Down the lone stream where glides the still canoe.