FINAL REMOVAL OF THE INDIANS.
At the commencement of the annual session of 1836-'37, President Jackson had the gratification to make known to Congress the completion of the long-pursued policy of removing all the Indians in the States, and within the organized territories of the Union, to their new homes west of the Mississippi. It was a policy commencing with Jefferson, pursued by all succeeding Presidents, and accomplished by Jackson. The Creeks and Cherokees had withdrawn from Georgia and Alabama; the Chickasaws and Choctaws from Mississippi and Alabama; the Seminoles had stipulated to remove from Florida; Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri had all been relieved of their Indian population; Kentucky and Tennessee, by earlier treaties with the Chickasaws, had received the same advantage. This freed the slave States from an obstacle to their growth and prosperity, and left them free to expand, and to cultivate, to the full measure of their ample boundaries. All the free Atlantic States had long been relieved from their Indian populations, and in this respect the northern and southern States were now upon an equality. The result has been proved to be, what it was then believed it would be, beneficial to both parties; and still more so to the Indians than to the whites. With them it was a question of extinction, the time only the debatable point. They were daily wasting under contact with the whites, and had before their eyes the eventual but certain fate of the hundreds of tribes found by the early colonists on the Roanoke, the James River, the Potomac, the Susquehannah, the Delaware, the Connecticut, the Merrimac, the Kennebec and the Penobscot. The removal saved the southern tribes from that fate; and in giving them new and unmolested homes beyond the verge of the white man's settlement, in a country temperate in climate, fertile in soil, adapted to agriculture and to pasturage, with an outlet for hunting, abounding with salt water and salt springs—it left them to work out in peace the problem of Indian civilization. To all the relieved States the removal of the tribes within their borders was a great benefit—to the slave States transcendently and inappreciably great. The largest tribes were within their limits, and the best of their lands in the hands of the Indians, to the extent, in some of the States, as Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, of a third or a quarter of their whole area. I have heretofore shown, in the case of the Creeks and the Cherokees in Georgia, that the ratification of the treaties for the extinction of Indian claims within her limits, and which removed the tribes which encumbered her, received the cordial support of northern senators; and that, in fact, without that support these great objects could not have been accomplished. I have now to say the same of all the other slave States. They were all relieved in like manner. Chickasaws and Choctaws in Mississippi and Alabama; Chickasaw claims in Tennessee and Kentucky; Seminoles in Florida; Caddos and Quapaws in Louisiana and in Arkansas; Kickapoos, Delawares, Shawnees, Osages, Iowas, Pinkeshaws, Weas, Peorias, in Missouri; all underwent the same process, and with the same support and result. Northern votes, in the Senate, came to the ratification of every treaty, and to the passage of every necessary appropriation act in the House of Representatives. Northern men may be said to have made the treaties, and passed the acts, as without their aid it could not have been done, constituting, as they did, a large majority in the House, and being equal in the Senate, where a vote of two-thirds was wanting. I do not go over these treaties and laws one by one, to show their passage, and by what votes. I did that in the case of the Creek treaty and the Cherokee treaty, for the removal of these tribes from Georgia; and showed that the North was unanimous in one case, and nearly so in the other, while in both treaties there was a southern opposition, and in one of them (the Cherokee), both Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay in the negative: and these instances may stand for an illustration of the whole. And thus the area of slave population has been almost doubled in the slave States, by sending away the Indians to make room for their expansion; and it is unjust and cruel—unjust and cruel in itself, independent of the motive—to charge these Northern States with a design to abolish slavery in the South. If they had harbored such design—if they had been merely unfriendly to the growth and prosperity of these Southern States, there was an easy way to have gratified their feelings, without committing a breach of the constitution, or an aggression or encroachment upon these States: they had only to sit still and vote against the ratification of the treaties, and the enactment of the laws which effected this great removal. They did not do so—did not sit still and vote against their Southern brethren. On the contrary, they stood up and spoke aloud, and gave to these laws and treaties an effective and zealous support. And I, who was the Senate's chairman of the committee of Indian affairs at this time, and know how these things were done, and who was so thankful for northern help at the time; I, who know the truth and love justice, and cherish the harmony and union of the American people, feel it to be my duty and my privilege to note this great act of justice from the North to the South, to stand in history as a perpetual contradiction of all imputed design in the free States to abolish slavery in the slave States. I speak of States, not of individuals or societies.
I have shown that this policy of the universal removal of the Indians from the East to the West of the Mississippi originated with Mr. Jefferson, and from the most humane motives, and after having seen the extinction of more than forty tribes in his own State of Virginia; and had been followed up under all subsequent administrations. With General Jackson it was nothing but the continuation of an established policy, but one in which he heartily concurred, and of which his local position and his experience made him one of the safest of judges; but, like every other act of his administration, it was destined to obloquy and opposition, and to misrepresentations, which have survived the object of their creation, and gone into history. He was charged with injustice to the Indians, in not protecting them against the laws and jurisdiction of the States; with cruelty, in driving them away from the bones of their fathers; with robbery, in taking their lands for paltry considerations. Parts of the tribes were excited to resist the execution of the treaties, and it even became necessary to send troops and distinguished generals—Scott to the Cherokees, Jesup to the Creeks—to effect their removal; which, by the mildness and steadiness of these generals, and according to the humane spirit of their orders, was eventually accomplished without the aid of force. The outcry raised against General Jackson, on account of these measures, reached the ears of the French traveller and writer on American democracy (De Tocqueville), then sojourning among us and collecting materials for his work, and induced him to write thus in his chapter 18:
"The ejectment of the Indians very often takes place, at the present day, in a regular, and, as it were, legal manner. When the white population begins to approach the limit of a desert inhabited by a savage tribe, the government of the United States usually dispatches envoys to them, who assemble the Indians in a large plain, and having first eaten and drunk with them, accost them in the following manner: 'What have you to do in the land of your fathers? Before long you must dig up their bones in order to live. In what respect is the country you inhabit better than another? Are there no woods, marshes or prairies, except where you dwell? and can you live nowhere but under your own sun? Beyond those mountains, which you see at the horizon—beyond the lake which bounds your territory on the west—there lie vast countries where beasts of chase are found in great abundance. Sell your lands to us, and go and live happily in those solitudes.'
"After holding this language, they spread before the eyes of the Indians fire-arms, woollen garments, kegs of brandy, glass necklaces, bracelets of tinsel, ear-rings, and looking-glasses. If, when they have beheld all these riches, they still hesitate, it is insinuated that they have not the means of refusing their required consent, and that the government itself will not long have the power of protecting them in their rights. What are they to do? Half convinced, half compelled, they go to inhabit new deserts, where the importunate whites will not permit them to remain ten years in tranquillity. In this manner do the Americans obtain, at a very low price, whole provinces, which the richest sovereigns in Europe could not purchase."
The Grecian Plutarch deemed it necessary to reside forty years in Rome, to qualify himself to write the lives of some Roman citizens; and then made mistakes. European writers do not deem it necessary to reside in our country at all in order to write our history. A sojourn of some months in the principal towns—a rapid flight along some great roads—the gossip of the steamboat, the steam-car, the stage-coach, and the hotel—the whispers of some earwigs—with the reading of the daily papers and the periodicals, all more or less engaged in partisan warfare—and the view of some debates, or scene, in Congress, which may be an exception to its ordinary decorum and intelligence: these constitute a modern European traveller's qualifications to write American history. No wonder that they commit mistakes, even where the intent is honest. And no wonder that Mons. de Tocqueville, with admitted good intentions, but with no "forty years" residence among us, should be no exception to the rule which condemns the travelling European writer of American history to the compilation of facts manufactured for partisan effect, and to the invention of reasons supplied from his own fancy. I have already had occasion, several times, to correct the errors of Mons. de Tocqueville. It is a compliment to him, implicative of respect, and by no means extended to others, who err more largely, and of purpose, but less harmfully. His error in all that he has here written is profound! and is injurious, not merely to General Jackson, to whom his mistakes apply, but to the national character, made up as it is of the acts of individuals; and which character it is the duty of every American to cherish and exalt in all that is worthy, and to protect and defend from all unjust imputation. It was in this sense that I marked this passage in De Tocqueville for refutation as soon as his book appeared, and took steps to make the contradiction (so far as the alleged robbery and cheating of the Indians was concerned) authentic and complete and as public and durable as the archives of the government itself. In this sense I had a call made for a full, numerical, chronological and official statement of all our Indian purchases, from the beginning of the federal government in 1789 to that day, 1840—tribe by tribe, cession by cession, year by year—for the fifty years which the government had existed; with the number of acres acquired at each cession, and the amount paid for each.
The call was made in the Senate of the United States, and answered by document No. 616, 1st session, 26th Congress, in a document of thirteen printed tabular pages, and authenticated by the signatures of Mr. Van Buren, President; Mr. Poinsett, Secretary at War; and Mr. Hartley Crawford, Commissioner of Indian Affairs. From this document it appeared, that the United States had paid to the Indians eighty-five millions of dollars for land purchases up to the year 1840! to which five or six millions may be added for purchases since—say ninety millions. This is near six times as much as the United States gave the great Napoleon for Louisiana, the whole of it, soil and jurisdiction; and nearly three times as much as all three of the great foreign purchases—Louisiana, Florida and California—cost us! and that for soil alone, and for so much as would only be a fragment of Louisiana or California. Impressive as this statement is in the gross, it becomes more so in the detail, and when applied to the particular tribes whose imputed sufferings have drawn so mournful a picture from Mons. de Tocqueville. These are the four great southern tribes—Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws. Applied to them, and the table of purchases and payments stands thus: To the Creek Indians twenty-two millions of dollars for twenty-five millions of acres; which is seven millions more than was paid France for Louisiana, and seventeen millions more than was paid Spain for Florida. To the Choctaws, twenty-three millions of dollars (besides reserved tracts), for twenty millions of acres, being three millions more than was paid for Louisiana and Florida. To the Cherokees, for eleven millions of acres, was paid about fifteen millions of dollars, the exact price of Louisiana or California. To the Chickasaws, the whole net amount for which this country sold under the land system of the United States, and by the United States land officers, three millions of dollars for six and three-quarter millions of acres, being the way the nation chose to dispose of it. Here are fifty-six millions to four tribes, leaving thirty millions to go to the small tribes whose names are unknown to history, and which it is probable the writer on American democracy had never heard of when sketching the picture of their fancied oppressions.
I will attend to the case of these small remote tribes, and say that, besides their proportion of the remaining thirty-six millions of dollars, they received a kind of compensation suited to their condition, and intended to induct them into the comforts of civilized life. Of these I will give one example, drawn from a treaty with the Osages, in 1839; and which was only in addition to similar benefits to the same tribe, in previous treaties, and which were extended to all the tribes which were in the hunting state. These benefits were, to these Osages, two blacksmith's shops, with four blacksmiths, with five hundred pounds of iron and sixty pounds of steel annually; a grist and a saw mill, with millers for the same; 1,000 cows and calves; two thousand breeding swine; 1,000 ploughs; 1,000 sets of horse-gear; 1,000 axes; 1,000 hoes; a house each for ten chiefs, costing two hundred dollars apiece; to furnish these chiefs with six good wagons, sixteen carts, twenty-eight yokes of oxen, with yokes and log-chain; to pay all claims for injuries committed by the tribe on the white people, or on other Indians, to the amount of thirty thousand dollars; to purchase their reserved lands at two dollars per acre; three thousand dollars to reimburse that sum for so much deducted from their annuity, in 1825, for property taken from the whites, and since returned; and, finally, three thousand dollars more for an imputed wrongful withholding of that amount, for the same reason, in the annuity payment of the year 1829. In previous treaties, had been given seed grains, and seed vegetables, with fruit seeds and fruit trees; domestic fowls; laborers to plough up their ground and to make their fences, to raise crops and to save them, and teach the Indians how to farm; with spinning, weaving, and sewing implements, and persons to show their use. Now, all this was in one single treaty, with an inconsiderable tribe, which had been largely provided for in the same way in six different previous treaties! And all the rude tribes—those in the hunting state, or just emerging from it—were provided for in the same manner, the object of the United States being to train them to agriculture and pasturage—to conduct them from the hunting to the pastoral and agricultural state; and for that purpose, and in addition to all other benefits, are to be added the support of schools, the encouragement of missionaries, and a small annual contribution to religious societies who take charge of their civilization.
Besides all this, the government keeps up a large establishment for the special care of the Indians, and the management of their affairs; a special bureau, presided over by a commissioner at Washington City; superintendents in different districts; agents, sub-agents, and interpreters, resident with the tribe; and all charged with seeing to their rights and interests—seeing that the laws are observed towards them; that no injuries are done them by the whites; that none but licensed traders go among them; that nothing shall be bought from them which is necessary for their comfort, nor any thing sold to them which may be to their detriment. Among the prohibited articles are spirits of all kinds; and so severe are the penalties on this head, that forfeiture of the license, forfeiture of the whole cargo of goods, forfeiture of the penalty of the bond, and immediate suit in the nearest federal court for its recovery, expulsion from the Indian country, and disability for ever to acquire another license, immediately follow every breach of the laws for the introduction of the smallest quantity of any kind of spirits. How unfortunate, then, in M. de Tocqueville to write, that kegs of brandy are spread before the Indians to induce them to sell their lands! How unfortunate in representing these purchases to be made in exchange for woollen garments, glass necklaces, tinsel bracelets, ear-rings, and looking-glasses! What a picture this assertion of his makes by the side of the eighty-five millions of dollars at that time actually paid to those Indians for their lands, and the long and large list of agricultural articles and implements—long and large list of domestic animals and fowls—the ample supply of mills and shops, with mechanics to work them and teach their use—the provisions for schools and missionaries, for building fences and houses—which are found in the Osage treaty quoted, and which are to be found, more or less, in every treaty with every tribe emerging from the hunter state. The fact is, that the government of the United States has made it a fixed policy to cherish and protect the Indians, to improve their condition, and turn them to the habits of civilized life; and great is the wrong and injury which the mistake of this writer has done to our national character abroad, in representing the United States as cheating and robbing these children of the forest.
But Mons. de Tocqueville has quoted names and documents, and particular instances of imposition upon Indians, to justify his picture; and in doing so has committed the mistakes into which a stranger and sojourner may easily fall. He cites the report of Messrs. Clark and Cass, and makes a wrong application—an inverted application—of what they reported. They were speaking of the practices of disorderly persons in trading with the Indians for their skins and furs. They were reporting to the government an abuse, for correction and punishment. They were not speaking of United States commissioners, treating for the purchase of lands, but of individual traders, violating the laws. They were themselves those commissioners and superintendents of Indian affairs, and governors of Territories, one for the northwest, in Michigan, the other for the far west, in Missouri; and both noted for their justice and humanity to the Indians, and for their long and careful administration of their affairs within their respective superintendencies. Mons. de Tocqueville has quoted their words correctly, but with the comical blunder of reversing their application, and applying to the commissioners themselves, in their land negotiations for the government, the cheateries which they were denouncing to the government, in the illicit traffic of lawless traders. This was the comic blunder of a stranger: yet this is to appear as American history in Europe, and to be translated into our own language at home, and commended in a preface and notes.