The time to which licenses shall extend.
A view of the Indian character, so far as it is necessary it should be known, for the purposes of governing them, or maintaining a friendly commercial intercourse with them, may be comprised within the limits of a few general remarks.
The love of gain is the Indians’ ruling passion, and the fear of punishment must form the corrective; to this passion we are to ascribe their inordinate thirst for the possession of merchandise, their unwillingness to accede to any terms, or enter into any stipulations, except such as appear to promise them commercial advantages, and the want of good faith, which they always evince by not complying with any regulations, which in practice do not produce to them those expected or promised advantages. The native justice of the Indian mind, will always give way to his impatience for the possession of the goods of the defenceless merchant, and he will plunder him, unless prevented by the fear of punishment; nor can punishment assume a more terrific shape to them, than that of withholding every description of merchandise from them. This species of punishment, while it is one of the most efficient in governing the Indians, is certainly the most humane, as it enforces a compliance with our will, without the necessity of bloodshed. But in order to compass the exercise of this weapon, our government must first provide the means of controlling their traders. No government will be respected by the Indians until they are made to feel the effects of its power, or see it practised on others; and the surest guarantee of savage fidelity to any government, is a thorough conviction in their minds that they do possess the power of punishing promptly, every act of aggression, which they may commit on the persons or property of their citizens. If both traders and Indians throughout Upper Louisiana, were compelled to resort to regulated commercial posts, then the trader would be less liable to be pillaged, and the Indians deterred from practising aggression; for when the Indians once become convinced, that in consequence of their having practised violence upon the persons or property of the traders, that they have been cut off from all intercourse with those posts, and that they cannot resort to any other places to obtain merchandise, then they will make any sacrifice to regain the privilege they had previously enjoyed; and I am confident, that in order to regain our favour in such cases, they would sacrifice any individual who may be the object of our displeasure, even should he be their favourite chief; for their thirst of merchandise is paramount to every other consideration; and the leading individuals among them, well knowing this trait in the character of their own people, will not venture to encourage or excite aggressions on the whites, when they know they are themselves to become the victims of its consequences.
But if, on the other hand, these commercial establishments are not general, and we suffer detached and insulated merchants, either British or American, to exercise their own discretion, in setting down where they may think proper, on the western branches of the Mississippi, for the purposes of trading with the Indians; then, although these commercial establishments may be so extended as to embrace the Missouri, quite to the Mandans, still they will lose a great part of their effects; because the roving bands of Tetons, and the most dissolute of the Siouxs being denied the permission to trade on the Missouri at any rate, would resort to those establishments on the Mississippi, and thus become independent of the trade of the Missouri, as they have hitherto been. To correct this, we have three alternatives: First, to establish two commercial posts in this quarter. Secondly, to prohibit all intercourse with the Sisitons, and other bands of Siouxs, on the river St. Peter’s and the Raven’s-wing river, informing those Indians that such prohibition has been the consequence of the malconduct of the Tetons, and thus leave it to them to correct them; or, Thirdly, to make an appeal to arms in order to correct the Tetons ourselves.
Impressed with a belief unalloyed with doubts, that the ardent wish of our government has ever been to conciliate the esteem, and secure the friendship of all the savage nations within their territory, by the exercise of every consistent and pacific measure in their power, applying those of coertion only in the last resort, I here proceed with a due deference to their better judgment, to develop a scheme which has suggested itself to my mind, as the most expedient that I can devise for the successful consummation of their philanthropic views towards those wretched people of America, as well as to secure to the citizens of the United States, all those advantages, which ought of right exclusively to accrue to them, from the possession of Upper Louisiana.
The situation of the Indian trade on the Missouri and its waters, while under the Spanish government.
The exclusive permission to trade with nations.
The giving by those exclusions, the right to individuals to furnish supplies, which rendered the Indians independent of the government.
The times of sending goods to the Indians, and of returning to St. Louis—the necessity of giving credits; therefore the disadvantages of.
The evils which grew out of the method pursued by the Spaniards, as well to themselves as to the Indians.