[8] Other Indians made trouble during the progress of the Civil War, as, for instance, the Sioux in the summer of 1862. The Sioux, however, were not fighting for or against the issues of the white man’s war. They were simply taking advantage of a favorable occasion, when the United States government was preoccupied, to avenge their own wrongs.
[9] The existence of the “Cherokee Neutral Land” out of which the southeastern counties of Kansas were illegitimately formed was not exactly an exception to this. The Neutral Land, eight hundred thousand acres in extent, was an independent purchase, made by the Cherokees, and was not included in the exchange or in the original scheme that forced their removal from Georgia. It was a subsequent concession to outraged justice.
[10] By far the best instance of missionary activity in behalf of slavery among the northern Indian immigrants is to be found in the case of the Reverend Thomas Johnson’s work at the Shawnee Mission [Ray’s Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, footnote 207]. Johnson, like William Walker, head chief of the Wyandots, was an ardent pro-slavery advocate [ibid., footnote 205] and took a rather disgracefully prominent part in the notorious election frauds of early Kansas territorial days [House Report, 34th congress, first session, no. 200, pp. 14, 18, 94, 425].
[11] Buchanan’s Works, vol. iii, 348, 350, 353.
[12] Siebert’s Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, 284.
[13] The most interesting case that came up in this connection was that of the so-called Beams’ Negroes, resident in the Choctaw country and illegally claimed as refugees by John B. Davis of Mississippi [Indian Office, Special Files, no. 277]. The Reverend S. A. Worcester interested himself in their behalf [Jefferson Davis to Worcester, October 7, 1854] and a decision was finally rendered in their favor. Another interesting case of similar nature was, “In re negroes taken from Overton Love and David Wall of the Chickasaw Nation by Citizens of Texas, 1848-’57” [ibid., no. 278].
[14] Under the Intercourse Law of 1834, the Indian Territory had been annexed for judicial purposes to the western district of Arkansas. The Indians were much dissatisfied. They felt themselves entitled to a federal court of their own, a privilege the United States government persistently denied to them but one that the Confederate government readily granted. As matters stood, prior to the Civil War, the red men seemed always at the mercy of the white man’s distorted conception of justice and were, perforce, quite beyond the reach of the boasted guaranties of theoretical Anglo-Saxon justice since the very location of the court precluded a trial by their peers of the vicinage. The journey to Arkansas, in those early days, was long and tiresome and expensive. Complications frequently arose and matters, difficult of adjustment, even under the best of circumstance. Among the Creeks and Seminoles, the status of the free negro was exceptionally high, partly due, with respect to the latter, to conditions growing out of the Second Seminole War. As already intimated, the Creeks had no aversion whatsoever to race mixtures and intermarriage between negroes and Indians was rather common. The half-breeds resulting from such unions were accepted as bona fide members of the tribe by the Indians in the distribution of annuities, but not by the United States courts—another source of difficulty and a very instructive one as well, particularly from the standpoint of reconstructionist exactions.
Occasionally the presence of the free negro within the Indian country was a source of grave danger. The accompanying letters outline a case in point:
Head Quarters 7th. Mil: Dept. Fort Smith, March 5th. 1852.
Sir: By direction of the Colonel commanding the Department I transmit herewith copies of a communication from George Folsom, Chief of the Pushmataha District, to Colonel Wilson Choctaw Agent and one from Colonel William Wilson Choctaw Agent to Brevet Major Holmes commanding Fort Washita asking aid from the Military force.