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The Slaveholding Indians
(1) As Slaveholder and Secessionist
(2) As Participants in the Civil War
(3) Under Reconstruction
Vol. I
[Illustration: INDIAN TERRITORY, 1861 [_From General Land Office_]]
The American Indian as
Slaveholder and Secessionist
AN OMITTED CHAPTER IN
THE DIPLOMATIC HISTORY OF THE
SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY
BY ANNIE HELOISE ABEL, PH.D.
THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY
CLEVELAND: 1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
ANNIE HELOISE ABEL
TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER
CONTENTS
PREFACE 13
I GENERAL SITUATION IN THE INDIAN COUNTRY, 1830-1860 17
II INDIAN TERRITORY IN ITS RELATIONS WITH TEXAS AND ARKANSAS 63
III THE CONFEDERACY IN NEGOTIATION WITH THE INDIAN TRIBES 127
IV THE INDIAN NATIONS IN ALLIANCE WITH THE CONFEDERACY 207
APPENDIX A--FORT SMITH PAPERS 285
APPENDIX B--THE LEEPER OR WICHITA AGENCY PAPERS 329
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 359
INDEX 369
ILLUSTRATIONS
INDIAN TERRITORY, 1861 _Frontispiece_
MAP SHOWING FREE NEGRO SETTLEMENTS IN THE CREEK COUNTRY 25
PORTRAIT OF COLONEL DOWNING, CHEROKEE 65
PORTRAIT OF JOHN ROSS, PRINCIPAL CHIEF OF THE CHEROKEES 112
PORTRAIT OF COLONEL ADAIR, CHEROKEE 221
MAP SHOWING THE RETREAT OF THE LOYAL INDIANS 263
FORT MCCULLOCH 281
PREFACE
This volume is the first of a series of three dealing with the
slaveholding Indians as secessionists, as participants in the Civil War,
and as victims under reconstruction. The series deals with a phase of
American Civil War history which has heretofore been almost entirely
neglected or, where dealt with, either misunderstood or misinterpreted.
Perhaps the third and last volume will to many people be the most
interesting because it will show, in great detail, the enormous price that
the unfortunate Indian had to pay for having allowed himself to become a
secessionist and a soldier. Yet the suggestiveness of this first volume is
considerably larger than would appear at first glance. It has been
purposely given a sub-title, in order that the peculiar position of the
Indian, in 1861, may be brought out in strong relief. He was enough inside
the American Union to have something to say about secession and enough
outside of it to be approached diplomatically. It is well to note, indeed,
that Albert Pike negotiated the several Indian treaties that bound the
Indian nations in an alliance with the seceded states, under the authority
of the Confederate State Department, which was a decided advance upon
United States practice--an innovation, in fact, that marked the tremendous
importance that the Confederate government attached to the Indian
friendship. It was something that stood out in marked contrast to the
indifference manifested at the moment by the authorities at Washington;
for, while they were neglecting the Indian even to an extent that
amounted to actual dishonor, the Confederacy was offering him political
integrity and political equality and was establishing over his country,
not simply an empty wardship, but a bona fide protectorate.
Granting then that the negotiations of 1861 with the Indian nations
constitute a phase of southern diplomatic history, it may be well to
consider to what Indian participation in the Civil War amounted. It was a
circumstance that was interesting rather than significant; and the
majority will have to admit that it was a circumstance that could not
possibly have materially affected the ultimate situation. It was the
Indian country, rather than the Indian owner, that the Confederacy wanted
to be sure of possessing; for Indian Territory occupied a position of
strategic importance, from both the economic and the military point of
view. The possession of it was absolutely necessary for the political and
the institutional consolidation of the South. Texas might well think of
going her own way and of forming an independent republic once again, when
between her and Arkansas lay the immense reservations of the great tribes.
They were slaveholding tribes, too, yet were supposed by the United States
government to have no interest whatsoever in a sectional conflict that
involved the very existence of the "peculiar institution." Thus the
federal government left them to themselves at the critical moment and left
them, moreover, at the mercy of the South, and then was indignant that
they betrayed a sectional affiliation.
The author deems it of no slight advantage, in undertaking a work of this
sort, that she is of British birth and antecedents and that her
educational training, so largely American as it is, has been gained
without respect to a particular locality. She belongs to no section of
the Union, has lived, for longer or shorter periods in all sections, and
has developed no local bias. It is her sincere wish that no charge of
prejudice can, in ever so small a degree, be substantiated by the
evidence, presented here or elsewhere.
ANNIE HELOISE ABEL.
Baltimore, September, 1914
I. THE GENERAL SITUATION IN THE INDIAN COUNTRY, 1830-1860
Veterans of the Confederate service who saw action along the
Missouri-Arkansas frontier have frequently complained, in recent years,
that military operations in and around Virginia during the War between the
States receive historically so much attention that, as a consequence, the
steady, stubborn fighting west of the Mississippi River is either totally
ignored or, at best, cast into dim obscurity. There is much of truth in
the criticism but it applies in fullest measure only when the Indians are
taken into account; for no accredited history of the American Civil War
that has yet appeared has adequately recognized certain rather interesting
facts connected with that period of frontier development; viz., that
Indians fought on both sides in the great sectional struggle, that they
were moved to fight, not by instincts of savagery, but by identically the
same motives and impulses as the white men, and that, in the final
outcome, they suffered even more terribly than did the whites. Moreover,
the Indians fought as solicited allies, some as nations, diplomatically
approached. Treaties were made with them as with foreign powers and not in
the farcical, fraudulent way that had been customary in times past. They
promised alliance and were given in return political position--a fair
exchange. The southern white man, embarrassed, conceded much, far more
than he really believed in, more than he ever could or would have
conceded, had he not himself been so fearfully hard pressed. His own
predicament, the exigencies of the moment, made him give to the Indian a
justice, the like of which neither one of them had dared even to dream. It
was quite otherwise with the northern white man, however; for he,
self-confident and self-reliant, negotiated with the Indian in the
traditional way, took base advantage of the straits in which he found him,
asked him to help him fight his battles, and, in the selfsame moment,
plotted to dispossess him of his lands, the very lands that had, less than
five and twenty years before, been pledged as an Indian possession "as
long as the grass should grow and the waters run."
From what has just been said, it can be easily inferred that two distinct
groups of Indians will have to be dealt with, a northern and a southern;
but, for the present, it will be best to take them all together.
Collectively, they occupied a vast extent of country in the so-called
great American desert. Their situation was peculiar. Their participation
in the war, in some capacity, was absolutely inevitable; but, preparatory
to any right understanding of the reasons, geographical, institutional,
political, financial, and military, that made it so, a rapid survey of
conditions ante-dating the war must be considered.
It will be remembered that for some time prior to 1860 the policy[1] of
the United States government had been to relieve the eastern states of
their Indian inhabitants and that this it had done, since the first years
of Andrew Jackson's presidency, by a more or less compulsory removal to
the country lying immediately west of Arkansas and Missouri. As a result,
the situation there created was as follows: In the territory comprehended
in the present state of Kansas, alongside of indigenous tribes, like the
Kansa and the Osage,[2] had been placed various tribes or portions of
tribes from the old Northwest[3]--the Shawnees and Munsees from Ohio,[4]
the Delawares, Kickapoos, Potawatomies, and Miamies from Indiana, the
Ottawas and Chippewas from Michigan, the Wyandots from Ohio and Michigan,
the Weas, Peorias, Kaskaskias, and Piankashaws from Illinois, and a few
New York Indians from Wisconsin. To the southward of all of those northern
tribal immigrants and chiefly beyond the later Kansas boundary, or in the
present state of Oklahoma, had been similarly placed the great[5] tribes
from the South[6]--the Creeks from Georgia and Alabama, the Cherokees
from Tennessee and Georgia, the Seminoles from Florida, and the Choctaws
and Chickasaws from Alabama and Mississippi.[7] The population of the
whole country thus colonized and, in a sense, reduced to the reservation
system, amounted approximately to seventy-four thousand souls, less than
seven thousand of whom were north of the Missouri-Compromise line. The
others were all south of it and, therefore, within a possible slave belt.
This circumstance is not without significance; for it is the colonized, or
reservation, Indians[8] exclusively that are to figure in these pages and,
since this story is a chapter in the struggle between the North and the
South, the proportion of southerners to northerners among the Indian
immigrants must, in the very nature of things, have weight. The relative
location of northern and southern tribes seems to have been determined
with a very careful regard to the restrictions of the Missouri Compromise
and the interdicted line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was
pretty nearly the boundary between them.[9] That it was so by accident may
or may not be subject for conjecture. Fortunately for the disinterested
motives of politicians but most unfortunately for the defenceless Indians,
the Cherokee land obtruded itself just a little above the thirty-seventh
parallel and formed a "Cherokee Strip" eagerly coveted by Kansans in later
days. One objection, be it remembered, that had been offered to the
original plan of removal was that, unless the slaveholding southern
Indians were moved directly westward along parallel lines of latitude,
northern rights under the Missouri Compromise would be encroached upon.
Yet slavery was not conscientiously excluded from Kansas in the days
antecedent to its organization as a territory. Within the Indian country,
and it was all Indian country then, slavery was allowed, at least on
sufferance, both north and south of the interdicted line. It was even
encouraged by many white men who made their homes or their living there,
by interlopers, licensed traders, and missionaries;[10] but it flourished
as a legitimate institution only among the great tribes planted south of
the line. With them it had been a familiar institution long before the
time of their exile. In their native haunts they had had negro slaves as
had had the whites and removal had made no difference to them in that
particular. Since the beginning of the century refuge to fugitives and
confusion of ownership had been occasions for frequent quarrel between
them and the citizens of the Southern States. Later, when questions came
up touching the status of slavery on strictly federal soil, the Indian
country and the District of Columbia often found themselves listed
together.[11] Moreover, after 1850, it became a matter of serious import
whether or no the Fugitive Slave Law was operative within the Indian
country; and, when influenced apparently by Jefferson Davis,
Attorney-general Cushing gave as his opinion that it was, new
controversies arose. Slaves belonging to the Indians were often enticed
away by the abolitionists[12] and still more often were seized by southern
men under pretense of their being fugitives.[13] In cases of the latter
sort, the Indian owners had little or no redress in the federal courts of
law.[14]
In point of fact, during all the years between the various dates of Indian
removal and the breaking out of the Civil War, the Indian country was
constantly beset by difficulties. Some of the difficulties were
incident to removal or to disturbances within the tribes but most of them
were incident to changes and to political complications in the white man's
country. Scarcely had the removal project been fairly launched and the
first Indian emigrants started upon their journey westward than events
were in train for the overthrow of the whole scheme.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING FREE NEGRO SETTLEMENTS IN THE CREEK COUNTRY
[_From Office of Indian Affairs_]]
When Calhoun mapped out the Indian country in his elaborate report of
1825, the selection of the trans-Missouri region might well have been
regarded as judicious. Had the plan of general removal been adopted then,
before sectional interests had wholly vitiated it, the United States
government might have gained and, in a measure, would have richly deserved
the credit of doing at least one thing for the protection and preservation
of the aborigines from motives, not self-interested, but purely
humanitarian. The moment was opportune. The territory of the United States
was then limited by the confines of the Louisiana Purchase and its
settlements by the great American desert. Traders only had penetrated to
any considerable extent to the base of the Rockies; but experience already
gained might have taught that their presence was portentous and
significant of the need of haste; that is, if Calhoun's selection were to
continue judicious; for traders, as has been amply proved in both British
and American history, have ever been but the advance agents of settlers.
Unfortunately for the cause of pure philanthropy, the United States
government was exceedingly slow in adopting the plan of Indian removal;
but its citizens were by no means equally slow in developing the spirit of
territorial expansion. Their successful seizure of West Florida had fired
their ambition and their cupidity. With Texas annexed and lower Oregon
occupied, the selection of the trans-Missouri region had ceased to be
judicious. How could the Indians expect to be secure in a country that was
the natural highway to a magnificent country beyond, invitingly open to
settlement! But this very pertinent and patent fact the officials at
Washington singularly failed to realize and they went on calmly assuring
the Indians that they should never be disturbed again, that the federal
government would protect them in their rights and against all enemies,
that no white man should be allowed to intrude upon them, that they should
hold their lands undiminished forever, and that no state or territorial
lines should ever again circumscribe them. Such promises were decidedly
fatuous, dead letters long before the ink that recorded them had had time
to dry. The Mexican War followed the annexation of Texas and its conquests
necessitated a further use of the Indian highway. Soldiers that fought in
that war saw the Indian land and straightway coveted it. Forty-niners saw
it and coveted it also. Prospectors and adventurers of all sorts laid
plans for exploiting it. It entered as a determining factor into Benton's
great scheme for building a national road that should connect the Atlantic
and Pacific shores and with the inception of that came a very sudden and a
very real danger; for the same great scheme precipitated, although in an
indirect sort of way, the agitation for the opening up of Kansas and
Nebraska to white settlement, which, of course, meant that the recent
Indian colonists, in spite of all the solemn governmental guaranties that
had been given to them, would have to be ousted, for would not the
"sovereign" people of America demand it? Then, too, the Dred Scott
decision, the result of a dishonorable political collusion as it was,[15]
militated indirectly against Indian interests. It is true that it was only
in its extra-legal aspect that it did this but it did it none the less;
for, if the authority of the federal government was not supreme in the
territories and not supreme in any part of the country not yet organized
into states, then the Indian landed property rights in the West that
rested exclusively upon federal grant, under the Removal Act of 1830, were
virtually nil. It is rather interesting to observe, in this connection,
how inconsistent human nature is when political expediency is the thing at
stake; for it happened that the same people and the same party,
identically, that, in the second and third decades of the nineteenth
century, had tried to convince the Indians, and against their better
judgment too, that the red man would be forever unmolested in the western
country because the federal government owned it absolutely and could give
a title in perpetuity, argued, in the fourth and fifth decades, that the
states were the sole proprietors, that they were, in fact, the joint
owners of everything heretofore considered as national. Inferentially,
therefore, Indians, like negroes, had no rights that white men were bound
to respect.
The crucial point has now been reached in this discussion. From the date
of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the sectional affiliation of the Indian
country became a thing of more than passing moment. Whatever may have been
John C. Calhoun's ulterior and real motive in urging that the
trans-Missouri region be closed to white settlement forever, whether he
did, as some of his abolitionist enemies have charged, plan thus to block
free-state expansion and so frustrate the natural operations of the
Missouri Compromise, certain it is, that southern politicians, after his
time, became the chief advocates of Indian territorial integrity, the ones
that pleaded most often and most noisily that guaranties to Indians be
faithfully respected. They had in mind the northern part of the Indian
country and that alone; but, no doubt, the circumstance was purely
accidental, since at that time, the early fifties, the northern[16] was
the only part likely to be encroached upon.[17] Their interest in the
southern part took an entirely different direction and that also may have
been accidental or occasioned by conditions quite local and present. For
this southern part, by the way, they recommended American citizenship and
the creation of American states[18] in the Union, also a territorial
organization immediately that should look towards that end. Such advice
came as early as 1853, at least, and was more natural than would at first
glance appear; for the southern tribes were huge in population, in land,
and in resources. They were civilized, had governments and laws modelled
upon the American, and more than all else, they were southern in origin,
in characteristics, and in institutions.
The project for organizing[19] the territories of Kansas and Nebraska
caused much excitement, as well it might, among the Indian immigrants,
even though the Wyandots, in 1852, had, in a measure, anticipated it by
initiating a somewhat similar movement in their own restricted
locality.[20] Most of the tribes comprehended to the full the ominous
import of territorial organization; for, obviously, it could not be
undertaken except at a sacrifice of Indian guaranties. At the moment some
of the tribes, notably the Choctaw and Chickasaw,[21] were having domestic
troubles that threatened a neighborhood war and the new fear of the white
man's further aggrandizement threw them into despair. The southern
Indians, generally, were much more exercised and much more alarmed than
were the northern.[22] Being more highly civilized, they were better able
to comprehend the drift of events. Experience had made them unduly
sagacious where their territorial and treaty rights were concerned, and
well they knew that, although the Douglas measure did not in itself
directly affect them or their country, it might easily become the
forerunner of one that would.
The border strife, following upon the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill, disturbed in no slight degree the Indians on the Kansas
reservations, which, by-the-by, had been very greatly reduced in area by
the Manypenny treaties of 1853-1854. Some of the reserves lay right in the
heart of the contested territory, free-state men intrenching themselves
among the Delawares and pro-slavery men among the Shawnees,[23] the former
north and the latter south of the Kansas River. But even remoteness of
situation constituted no safeguard against encroachment. All along the
Missouri line the squatters took possession. The distant Cherokee Neutral
Lands[24] and the Osage and New York Indian reservations[25] were all
invaded.[26] The Territorial Act had expressly excluded Indian land from
local governmental control; but the Kansas authorities of both parties
utterly ignored, in their administration of affairs, this provision. The
first districting of the territory for election purposes comprehended, for
instance, the Indian lands, yet little criticism has ever been passed
upon that grossly illegal act. Needless to say, the controversy between
slavocracy and freedom obscured and obliterated, in those years, all other
considerations.
As the year 1860 approached, appearances assumed an even more serious
aspect. Kansas settlers and would-be settlers demanded that the Indians,
so recently the only legal occupants of the territory, vacate it
altogether. So soon had the policy of granting them peace and undisturbed
repose on diminished reserves proved futile. The only place for the Indian
to go, were he indeed to be driven out of Kansas, was present Oklahoma;
but his going there would, perforce, mean an invasion of the property
rights of the southern tribes, a matter of great moment to them but
seemingly of no moment whatsoever to the white man. Some of the Kansas
Indians saw in removal southward a temporary refuge--they surely could not
have supposed it would be other than temporary--and were glad to go,
making their arrangements accordingly.[27] Some, however, had to be
cajoled into promising to go and some had to be forced. A few held out
determinedly against all thought of going. Among the especially obstinate
ones were the Osages,[28] natives of the soil. The Buchanan government
failed utterly to convince them of the wisdom of going and was, thereupon,
charged by the free-state Kansans with bad faith, with not being sincere
and sufficiently persistent in its endeavors to treat, its secret purpose
being to keep the free-state line as far north as possible. The breaking
out of the Civil War prevented the immediate removal of any of the tribes
but did not put a stop to negotiations looking towards that end.
All this time there was another influence within the Indian country, north
and south, that boded good or ill as the case might be. This influence
emanated from the religious denominations represented on the various
reserves. Nowhere in the United States, perhaps, was the rivalry among
churches that had divided along sectional lines in the forties and fifties
stronger than within the Indian country. There the churches contended with
each other at close range. The Indian country was free and open to all
faiths, while, in the states, the different churches kept strictly to
their own sections, the southern contingent of each denomination staying
close to the institution it supported. Of course the United States
government, through its civilization fund, was in a position to show very
pointedly its sectional predilections. It will probably never be known,
because so difficult of determination, just how much the churches aided or
retarded the spread of slavery.[29]
Among the tribes of Kansas, denominational strength was distributed as
follows: The Kickapoos[30] and Wyandots[31] were Methodists; but, while
the former were a unit in their adherence to the Methodist Episcopal
Church South, the latter were divided and among them the older church
continued strong. The American Baptist Missionary Union had a school on
the Delaware reservation and, previous to 1855, had had one also on the
Shawnee, which the political uproar in Kansas had obliged to close its
doors. These same Northern Baptists were established also among the
Ottawas, as the Moravians were among the Munsees and the Roman
Catholics[32] among the Osages and the Potawatomies. The Southern Baptists
were likewise to be found among the Potawatomies[33] and the Southern
Methodists among the Shawnees. The Shawnee Manual Labor School, under the
Southern Methodists, was, however, only very grudgingly patronized by the
Indians. Its situation near the Missouri border was partly accountable for
this as it was for the selection of the school as the meeting-place of the
pro-slavery legislature in 1855. The management of the institution was
from time to time severely criticized and the superintendent, the
Reverend Thomas Johnson, an intense pro-slavery agitator,[34] was strongly
suspected of malfeasance,[35] of enriching himself, forsooth, at the
expense of the Indians. The school found a formidable rival, from this and
many another cause, in a Quaker establishment, which likewise existed on
the Shawnee Reserve but independently of either tribal or governmental
aid.
If church influences and church quarrels were discernible among the
northern tribes, they were certainly very much more so among the southern.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Congregational)
that had labored so zealously for the Cherokees, when they were east of
the Mississippi, extended its interest to them undiminished in the west;
and, in the period just before the Civil War,[36] was the strongest
religious force in their country. There it had no less than four mission
stations[37] and a flourishing school in connection with each. The same
organization was similarly influential among the Choctaws[38] or, in the
light of what eventually happened, it might better be said its
missionaries were. Both Southern and Northern Baptists and Southern
Methodists likewise were to be found among the Cherokees;[39]
Presbyterians[40] and Southern Methodists among the Chickasaws and
Choctaws; and Presbyterians only among the Creeks and Seminoles. In every
Indian nation south, except the Creek and Seminole,[41] the work of
denominational schools was supplemented, or maybe neutralized, by that of
public and neighborhood schools.
True to the traditions and to the practices of the old Puritans and of the
Plymouth church, the missionaries of the American Board,[42] so strongly
installed among the Choctaws and the Cherokees, took an active interest in
passing political affairs, particularly in connection with the slavery
agitation. On that question, they early divided themselves into two camps;
those among the Choctaws, led by the Reverend Cyrus Kingsbury,[43]
supporting slavery; and those among the Cherokees, led by the Reverend S.
A. Worcester,[44] opposing it. The actions of the former led to a
controversy with the American Board and, in 1855, the malcontents, or
pro-slavery sympathizers, expressed a desire to separate themselves and
their charges from its patronage.[45] When, eventually, this separation
did occur, 1859-1860, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions (Old
School) stepped into the breach.[46]
The rebellious conduct of the Congregational missionaries met with the
undisguised approval of the Choctaw agent, Douglas H. Cooper,[47] formerly
of Mississippi. It was he who had already voiced a nervous apprehension,
as exhibited in the following document,[48] that the Indian country was in
grave danger of being abolitionized:
If things go on as they are now doing, in 5 years slavery will be
abolished in the whole of your superintendency.
(_Private_) I am convinced that something must be done speedily to
arrest the systematic efforts of the Missionaries to abolitionize the
Indian Country.
Otherwise we shall have a great run-away harbor, a sort of
Canada--with "underground rail-roads" leading to & through
it--adjoining Arkansas and Texas.
It is of no use to look to the General Government--its arm is
paralized by the abolition strength of the North.
I see no way except secretly to induce the Choctaws & Cherokees &
Creeks to allow slave-holders to settle among their people & control
the movement now going on to abolish slavery among them.
C--
Cooper sent this note, in 1854, as a private memorandum to the southern
superintendent, who at the time was Charles W. Dean. In 1859, it was
possible for him to write to Dean's successor, Elias Rector, in a very
different tone. The missionaries had then taken the stand he himself
advocated and there was reason for congratulation. Under such
circumstances, Cooper wrote,
I cannot close this report without calling your attention to the
admirable tone and feeling pervading the reports of superintendents of
schools and missionaries among the Choctaws, and particularly to that
of the Rev. Ebenezer Hotchkin, one of the oldest missionaries among
the Choctaws, who, in referring to past political disturbances, says:
"We have looked upon our rulers as the 'powers that be, are ordained
of God,' and have respected them for this reason. 'Whomsoever,
therefore, resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God'
(Romans, xiii, 2). This has been our rule of action during the
political excitement. We believe that the Bible is the best guide for
us to follow. Our best citizens are those most influenced by Bible
truth."
I rejoice to believe the above sentiments are entertained by most, if
not all, the missionaries now among the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and
that they entirely repudiate the higher-law doctrine[49] of northern
and religious fanatics. It is but lately, as I learn, that the Choctaw
mission, for many years under the control of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions (whose headquarters are at Boston)
has been cut off, because they preferred to follow the teachings of
the Bible, as understood by them, rather than obey the dogmas
contained in Dr. Treat's letter and the edicts of the parent board.
It is a matter of congratulation among the friends of the old Choctaw
missionaries, who have labored for thirty years among them, and intend
to die with armor on, that all connection with the Boston board has
been dissolved. If it had been done years ago, when their freedom of
conscience and of missionary action was attempted to be controlled by
the parent board, much of suspicion, of ill-feeling, and diminished
usefulness, which attached to the Choctaw missionaries in consequence
of their connection with and sustenance by a board avowedly and openly
hostile to southern institutions, would have been prevented.[50]
In the next year, 1860, Cooper was still sanguine as to affairs among the
Indians of his agency and he could report to Rector, unhesitatingly, as
if confident of official endorsement both at Forth Smith and at
Washington,[51]
Great excitement has prevailed along the Texas border, in consequence
of the incendiary course pursued in that State by horse thieves and
religious fanatics; but I am glad to say, as yet, so far as I am
informed, no necessity has existed in this agency for the organization
of "vigilance committees" ... No doubt we have among us
_free-soilers_; perhaps abolitionists in sentiment; but, so far as I
am informed, persons from the North, residing among the Choctaws and
Chickasaws, who entertain opinions unfriendly to our system of
domestic slavery, keep their opinions to themselves and attend to
their legitimate business.[52]
George Butler, the United States agent for the Cherokees, seems to have
been, no less than Cooper, an adherent of the State Rights Party and an
upholder of the institution of slavery. In 1859, he ascribed the very
great material progress of the Cherokees to the fact that they were
slaveholders.[53] Slavery, in Butler's opinion, had operated as an
incentive to all industrial pursuits. To an extent this may have been
true, since all Indians, no matter how high their type, have an aversion
for work. As Professor Shaler once said, they are the truest aristocrats
the world has ever known. But the slaveholders among the great tribes of
the South were, for the most part, the half-breeds, the cleverest and
often, much as we may regret to have to admit it, the most unscrupulous
men of the community.
Butler's commission as Indian agent expired in March, 1860, and he was not
reappointed, Robert J. Cowart of Georgia[54] being preferred. This man,
illiterate and unprincipled, immediately set to work to perform a task to
which his predecessor had proved unequal. The task was the removal of
white intruders from the Cherokee country. For some time past, the
southern superintendent and the agents under him, to say nothing of
Commissioner Greenwood and Secretary Thompson, the one a citizen of
Arkansas and the other of Mississippi, had resented most bitterly the
invasion of the Cherokee Neutral Lands by Kansas free-soilers and the
division of it into counties by the unlawfully assumed authority of the
Kansas legislature. The resentment was thoroughly justifiable; for the
whole proceeding of the legislature was contrary to the express enactment
of Congress; but no doubt, enthusiasm for the strict enforcement of the
federal law came largely from political predilections, precisely as the
Kansan's outrageous defiance of it came from a deep-rooted distrust of
the Buchanan administration.
There were, however, other intruders that Cowart and Rector and Greenwood
designed to remove and they wanted to remove them on the ground that they
were making mischief within the tribe and interfering with its
institutions, or, more specifically, with slavery. The intruders meant
were principally the missionaries against whom Greenwood had even the
audacity to lay the charge of inciting to murder. Newspapers of bordering
slave states were full of criticism,[55] just before the war, of these
same men and, notably, of the Reverend Evan[56] and John Jones, the
reputed ringleaders. The official excuse for removing them is rather
interesting because it is so similar to that given, some thirty years
earlier, in connection with the removal from Georgia. Ulterior motives can
so easily be hidden under cold official phrase.
That the cause of slavery within the Cherokee country was in jeopardy in
the spring and summer of 1860 can not well be denied. To the men of the
time the evidence was easily obtainable. Almost as if by magic, a "search
organization" started up among the full-bloods, an organization profoundly
secret in its membership and in its purposes, but believed to be for no
other object than the overthrow of the "peculiar institution." Its
existence was promptly reported to the United States government and, as
was to be expected, the missionaries were held responsible for both its
inception and its continuance. It was then that Greenwood made[57] his
most serious charge against these men and prepared, under color of law, to
have them removed. Later, in this same year of 1860, Quantrill, the
Hagerstown, Maryland man of Pennsylvania Dutch origin, who afterwards
became such a notorious frontier guerrilla in the interests of the
Confederate cause, leagued himself with some abolitionists for the sake
of making an expedition to the Cherokee country and rescuing negroes,
there held in bondage.[58] The timely distrust of Quantrill, however,
caused the enterprise to be abandoned even before its preliminaries had
been thoroughly well arranged; yet, had the rescue been carried to
completion, it would not have been entirely without precedent[59] and its
very contrivance indicated an uncertainty and a precariousness of
situation south of the Kansas line.
Ever since their compulsory removal from Georgia under circumstances truly
tragic, the Cherokees had been much given to factional strife. This was
largely in consequence of the underhand means taken by the state and
federal authorities to accomplish removal. The Cherokees had, under the
necessities of the situation, divided themselves into the Ross, or
Anti-removal Party, and the Ridge, or Treaty Party.[60] Removal took place
in spite of the steady opposition of the Rossites and the Cherokees went
west, piloted by the United States army. Once in the west a new division
arose in their ranks; for, as newcomers, they came into jealous contact
with members of their tribe who had emigrated many years previously and
who came to figure, in subsequent Cherokee history, as the Old Settlers'
Party.[61] In 1846, the United States government attempted to assume the
role of mediator in a settlement of Cherokee tribal differences but
without much success.[62] The old wrongs were unredressed, so the old
divisions remained and formed nuclei for new disintegrating issues. Thus,
in 1857, there were no less than three factions created in consequence of
a project for selling the Cherokee Neutral Lands[63]. Each faction had its
own opinion how best to dispose of the proceeds, should a sale take place.
In 1860, there were two factions, the selling and the non-selling[64].
This tendency of the Cherokees perpetually to quarrel among themselves and
to bear long-standing grudges against each other is most important;
inasmuch as that marked peculiarity of internal politics very largely
determined the unique position of the tribe with reference to the Civil
War.
The other great tribes had also occasions for quarrel in these same
critical years. The disgraceful circumstances of their removal had widened
the gulf, once simply geographical, between the Upper and the Lower
Creeks. They were now almost two distinct political entities, in each of
which there were a principal and a second chief. In 1833, provision had
been made for the accommodation of the Seminoles within a certain definite
part of the Creek country[65]--just such an arrangement, forsooth, as
worked so ill when applied to the Choctaws and Chickasaws; but it took
several years for the Seminoles to be suited. At length, when their
numbers had been considerably augmented by the coming of the new
immigrants from Florida, they took up their position, for good and all,
in the southwestern corner of the Creek Reserve, a politically distinct
community. By that time, the Creeks seem to have repented of their
generosity,[66] so, perhaps, it was well that the United States government
had not yielded to their importunity and consented to a like settlement of
the southern Comanches.[67] It had taken the Chickasaws a long time to
reconstruct their government after the political separation from the
Choctaws; but now they had a constitution,[68] all their own, a
legislature, and a governor. The Choctaws had attempted a constitution,
likewise, first the Scullyville, then the Doaksville, set up by a minority
party; but they had retained some semblance of the old order of things in
the persons of their chiefs.[69]
There were other Indians within the southern division of the Indian
country that were to have their part in the Civil War and in events
leading up to it or resulting from it. In the extreme northeastern corner,
were the Quapaws, the Senecas, and the confederated Senecas and Shawnees,
all members, with the Osages and the New York Indians of Kansas, of the
Neosho River Agency which was under the care of Andrew J. Dorn. In the far
western part, at the base of the Wichita Mountains, were the Indians of
the Leased District, Wichitas, Tonkawas,[70] Euchees, and others,
collectively called the "Reserve Indians." Most of them had been brought
from Texas,[71] because of Texan intolerance of their presence, and placed
within the Leased District, a tract of land west of the ninety-eighth
meridian, which, under the treaty of 1855, the United States had rented
from the Choctaws and Chickasaws. It was a part of the old Chickasaw
District of the Choctaw Nation. Outside of the Wichita Reserve and still
wandering at large over the plains were the hostile Kiowas and Comanches,
against whom and the inoffensive Reserve Indians, the Texans nourished a
bitter, undying hatred. They charged them with crimes that were never
committed and with some crimes that white men, disguised as Indians, had
committed. They were also suspected of manufacturing evidence that would
incriminate the red men and of plotting, in regularly-organized meetings,
their overthrow.[72]
Although the plan for colonizing some of the Texas Indians had been
completed in 1855, the Indian Office found it impossible to execute it
until the summer of 1859. This was principally because the War Department
could not be induced to make the necessary military arrangements.[73] In
point of fact, the southern Indian country was, at the time, practically
without a force of United States troops, quite regardless of the promise
that had been made to all the tribes upon the occasion of their removal
that they should _always be protected_ in their new quarters and,
inferentially, by the regular army. Even Fort Gibson had been virtually
abandoned as a military post on the plea that its site was unhealthful;
and all of Superintendent Rector's recommendations that Frozen Rock, on
the south side of the Arkansas a few miles away, be substituted[74] had
been ignored, not so much by the Interior Department, as by the War.
Secretary Thompson thought that enough troops should be at his disposal to
enable him to carry out the United States Indian policy, but Secretary
Floyd demurred. He was rather disposed to dismantle such forts as there
were and to withdraw all troops from the Indian frontier,[75] a course of
action that would leave it exposed, so the dissenting Thompson
prognosticated, to "the most unhappy results."[76]
It happened thus that, when the United States surveyors started in 1858 to
establish the line of the ninety-eighth meridian west longitude and to run
other boundary lines under the treaty of 1855,[77] they found the country
entirely unpatrolled. Troops had been ordered from Texas to protect the
surveyors; but, pending their arrival, Agent Cooper, who had gone out to
witness the determination of the initial point on the line between his
agency and the Leased District, himself took post at Fort Arbuckle and
called upon the Indians for patrol and garrison duty.[78] It would seem
that Secretary Thompson had verbally authorized[79] Cooper to make this
use of the Indians; but they proved in the sequel very inefficient as
garrison troops. On the thirtieth of June, Lieutenant Powell, commanding
Company E, First United States Infantry, arrived at Fort Arbuckle from
Texas and relieved Cooper of his self-imposed task. The day following,
Cooper set out upon a sixteen day scout of the Washita country, taking
with him his Indian volunteers, Chickasaws[80] and a few Cherokees;[81]
and for this act of using Indian after the arrival of white troops, he was
severely criticized by the department. One thing he accomplished: he
selected a site for the prospective Wichita Agency with the recommendation
that it be also made the site[82] of the much-needed military post on the
Leased District. The site had originally been occupied by a Kechie village
and was admirably well adapted for the double purpose Cooper intended. It
lay near the center of the Leased District and near the sources of Cache
and Beaver Creeks. It was also, so reported Cooper, "not very distant from
the Washita, & Canadian" (and commanded) "the Mountain passes through the
Wichita Mountains to the Antelope Hills--to the North branch of Red River
and also the road on the South side of the Wichita Mountains up Red
River."
The colonization of the Wichitas and other Indians took place in the
summer of 1859 under the excitement of new disputes with Texas, largely
growing out of an unwarranted and brutal attack[83] by white men upon
Indians of the Brazos Agency. That event following so closely upon the
heels of Van Dorn's[84] equally brutal attack upon a defenceless Comanche
camp brought matters to a crisis and the government was forced to be
expeditious where it had previously been dilatory. The Comanches had come
in, under a flag of truce, to confer in a friendly way with the Wichitas.
Van Dorn, ignorant of their purpose but supposing it hostile, made a
forced march, surprised them, and mercilessly took summary vengeance for
all the Comanches had been charged with, whether justly or unjustly, for
some time past. After it was all over, the Comanches, with about sixty of
their number slain, accused the Wichitas of having betrayed them.
Frightened, yet innocent, the Wichitas begged that there be no further
delay in their removal, so the order was given and arrangements made.
Unfortunately, by the time everything was ready, the season was pretty far
advanced and the Indians reached their new home to find it too late to put
in crops for that year's harvest. Subsistence rations had, therefore, to
be doled out to them, the occasion affording, as always, a rare
opportunity for graft. Instead of calling for bids, as was customary,
Superintendent Rector entered into a private contract[85] with a friend
and relative of his own, the consequence being that the government was
charged an exorbitant price for the rations. Soon other troubles[86] came.
The Leased District proved to be already occupied by some northern Indian
refugees[87] and became, as time went on, a handy rendezvous for free
negroes; but, as soon as Matthew Leeper[88] of Texas became agent, the
stay of such was extremely short.[89]
Such were the conditions obtaining among the Indians west of Missouri and
Arkansas in the years immediately antedating the American Civil War; and,
from such conditions, it may readily be inferred that the Indians were
anything but satisfied with the treatment that had been and was being
accorded them. They owed no great debt of gratitude to anybody. They were
restless and unhappy among themselves. Their old way of living had been
completely disorganized. They had nothing to go upon, so far as their
relations with the white men were concerned, to make them hopeful of
anything better in the future, rather the reverse. Indeed at the very
opening of the year 1860, a year so full of distress to them because of
the great drouth[90] that ravaged Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, the
worst that had been known in thirty years, there came occasion for a new
distrust. Proposals were made to the Creeks,[91] to the Choctaws,[92] and
to the Chickasaws to allot their lands in severalty, notwithstanding the
fact that one of the inducements offered by President Jackson to get them
originally to remove had been, that they should be permitted to hold their
land, as they had always held it, in common, forever. The Creeks now
replied to the proposals of the Indian Office that they had had experience
with individual reservations in their old eastern homes and had good
reason to be prejudiced against them. The Indians, one and all, met the
proposals with a downright refusal but they did not forget that they had
been made, particularly when there came additional cause for apprehension.