3d. To provide for a general council of delegates, chosen by and from the tribes, with legislative powers; their enactments not to be valid till they have been approved by the President of the United States.
4th. To have a delegate, always a native, remain at Washington, during the sessions of Congress, to attend to the affairs of the territory, who shall be allowed the pay and emoluments of a member of Congress.
5th. To encourage, by liberal annual payments of money provided for in treaties, the establishment of schools and colleges; in which competent native teachers are always to be preferred when they can be had.
The power and influence of the United States are to be directed in protecting them from the whites; in preserving peace among the different tribes, and in stimulating them, by rewards and emoluments, in acquiring the habits of civilized life. The efforts of the benevolent to carry christianity among them, if made in conformity with the regulations of the territory, are to be cherished. These are the leading features of the new system of Indian regulations, established by government for the civilization of the Indians. The territory set apart for this object, lies west of the states of Arkansas and Missouri, running north from the Red river about six hundred miles, and west from the western boundaries of these states about two hundred miles. The number of Indians within the territory of the United States is estimated to approach to near half a million of souls.
It must be obvious to every one familiar with the Indian character, and with the history of our past relations with this people, that the success of this plan, will depend, in a very great degree, upon the manner in which its details shall be executed by the government. A failure will inevitably ensue, if white men are permitted to come in contact with the Indians. The strong arm of the military power of the United States, will be requisite to stay the encroachments of our people, whose love of adventure and whose thirst for gain, will carry them among the Indians, unless arrested by more cogent considerations than a sense of duty, or the prohibitions of the statute book.
Instead of attempting to supply them with goods by licensing traders to reside among them, they should be encouraged to sell their furs and peltries and to make their purchases in the United States. On the former system they are liable to constant imposition, and the very articles which the traders carry among them, are worthless in kind and poor in quality; but if the Indians traded with us, within the limits of the United States, they would have the competition arising from a number of buyers and sellers, they would obtain better prices for their furs and procure more valuable articles, upon fairer terms, in exchange. They would also be benefitted by observing our manners and customs, adopting our style of dress, learning the value of property, and gaining some knowledge of agriculture and the use of mechanical tools, and implements of husbandry. But the most important advantage to be gained by their trading within the United States, would be in their protection from imposition. It has been truly and forcibly remarked,
"Humanity shudders at the recital of the nefarious acts practised by the white traders upon the Indians. Yet not half of them are known or dreamed of by the American people. We refer again, to Mr. Tanner's Narrative, which every man who has a vote on this subject ought to read. Here we find the traders sometimes taking by force, from an Indian, the produce of a whole year's hunt, without making him any return, sometimes pilfering a portion while buying the remainder, and still oftener wresting from the poor wretches, while in a state of intoxication, a valuable property, for an inadequate remuneration. In one place, our author tells of an Indian woman, his adopted mother, who, "in the course of a single day, sold one hundred and twenty beaver skins, with a large quantity of buffalo robes, dressed and smoked skins, and other articles, for rum." He pathetically adds, "of all our large load of peltries, the produce of so many days of toil, so many long and difficult journeys, one blanket and three kegs of rum, only remained, besides the poor and almost worn out clothing on our bodies." The sending of missionaries, to labor by the side of the miscreants who thus swindle and debauch the ignorant savage, is a mockery of the office, and a waste of the time of these valuable men. If the Indians traded within our states, with our regular traders, the same laws and the same public sentiment which protects us, would protect them."
This is no exaggerated picture. Fraud, oppression and violence, have characterized our intercourse with the Indians, and it is in vain to hope for any amelioration of their savage condition, so long as an intercourse of this kind is permitted. In the very nature of things, the plan of civilizing the Indians, by forming a confederacy of them, beyond the limits of the United States, will prove unsuccessful, unless they are surrounded by a cordon of military posts, and the whites are stayed, by physical force, from entering their territories for any purpose whatever.
It is to this intercourse that the Indian wars, which have so frequently caused the blood of the white and the red man to flow in torrents, upon our frontier, are mainly to be attributed. It has been asserted, even by those who claim to be the grave historians of this unfortunate people, that these wars are almost without exception, the result of that cruelty and insatiable thirst for blood which belong to the Indian character. One of these writers, the Rev. Timothy Flint, in his "Indian Wars of the West," says, "We affirm an undoubting belief, from no unfrequent, nor inconsiderable means of observation, that aggression has commenced, in the account current of mutual crime, as a hundred to one, on the part of the Indians." We do not question the sincerity of this belief, but we do question, entirely, the correctness of the conclusion to which the writer brings his mind: we affirm without hesitation, that it is a conclusion that cannot be sustained by testimony. If the individual making it, had looked less superficially at the case, and had gone to the primary causes that have produced the bloody collisions between his countrymen and the Indians, he could never have made so great a mistake as the one he has committed in the paragraph quoted above. If kindness, good faith and honesty of dealing, had marked our social, political and commercial intercourse with the Indians, few, if any of these bloody wars would have occurred; and these people, instead of being debased by our intercourse with them, would have been improved and elevated in the scale of civilization. The history of the early settlement of Pennsylvania and its illustrious founder, affords the strongest testimony on this point. The justice, benevolence and kindness which marked the conduct of Penn towards the Indians, shielded his infant colony from aggression, and won for him personally, a generous affection, that would have been creditable to any race of people.
Upon this point it has been well and forcibly remarked by a philanthropic writer,[17] of our country, that,