[455] Drennan Papers, Nicoll to Ronan, March 27, 1811; Nicoll to Heald, March 27, 1811; Heitman, Dictionary of the United States Army, I, 844.
[456] Drennan Papers, Kingsbury to Nicoll, April 18, 1811; Nicoll to Kingsbury, May 24, 1811; Kingsbury Papers, Helm to Kingsbury, March 16, 1811.
[457] Van Voorhis, Notes on the Ancestry of Wm. Roe Van Voorhis, 143.
CHAPTER VIII
THE INDIAN UTOPIA
Meanwhile time and the fates were weaving a fatal web about the almost defenseless frontier. The western Indians, awed into submission for a time by the masterful hand of Wayne, were again stirred by a great unrest. There were, among others, three important causes for this condition: the rapid occupation of their hunting-grounds and the deterioration of the natives by contact with civilization; the steadily increasing influence of the British, to secure advantages in trade or help in case of war; and finally, a patriotic movement toward race unity among the Indians themselves, which had for its object a revival of the older and happier existence of their forefathers. This movement was full of danger for the West and of hope for the British.
In the first place, the red and white races were totally different in physical habits and in processes of thought by which perceptions become opinions. The Indian had an incomplete and indefinite notion of a treaty when he signed it, and was utterly unable to comprehend its final effect; the white man exacted to the utmost all possible advantages from these agreements. The ideas of the two races with respect to the ownership and transmission of title to land differed markedly. The white man appeased his omnipresent land hunger by inducing representatives of the tribes to make a cession, usually for a paltry consideration, of the land which was at the moment desired. The usual method of procuring such cessions was to call the leaders of the tribe affected together in solemn conclave, where they were plied with whisky and cajolery, and by alternate threats and appeals to their cupidity the bargain was extorted from them.[458] If the government did not itself directly supply the liquor which befuddled the brain and weakened the will of the red man, it was at least guilty of permitting its subjects to do so.[459] How the transaction appeared to the Indian, when he had had time to reflect upon it, is well shown by an appeal of the Wyandot tribe in 1812 to be allowed to retain possession of the lands they were then cultivating, which had been ceded to the United States by a prior treaty. Their description of the process of obtaining cessions from the tribes can scarcely be improved upon for clarity and succinctness. "When the United States want a particular piece of land, all our natives are assembled; a large sum of money is offered; the land is occupied probably by one nation only; nine-tenths have no actual interest in the land wanted; if the particular nation interested refuses to sell, they are generally threatened by the others, who want the money or goods offered to buy whisky. Fathers, this is the way in which this small spot, which we so much value, has been so often torn from us."[460]
[458] For an excellent description of the scenes attending a typical treaty see Latrobe, Rambler in North America, II, chap. xi.
[459] There is practically no limit to the number of sources which might be cited in support of this statement. See for example Latrobe, op. cit., II, chap. xi. At the second Treaty of Greenville, July, 1814, the government agents seem to have deliberately adopted the policy of intoxicating the Indians in order to bend them to their wishes (Dillon, "The National Decline of the Miami Indians," in Indiana Historical Society, Publications, I, 136-37).
[460] American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 795-96.
Thus the land hunger of the white man and the discord produced by the operation of two totally divergent conceptions of land ownership and alienation furnished the basis for a conflict between the two races which was probably inevitable under any circumstances. To the shame of the more enlightened race, however, it must be said that its relations with its less civilized neighbor were marked by a policy of persistent abuse and a disregard of justice and treaty obligations which operated time and again to goad the red man into impotent warfare, and this, in turn, became the excuse for further spoliation. No government ever entertained more enlightened and benevolent intentions toward a weaker people than did that of the United States toward the Indian, but never in history, probably, has a more striking divergence between intention and performance been witnessed. The failure was due partly to ignorance, but also, in large part at least, to the inability or unwillingness of the government to restrain its lawless subjects, who, filled with an insatiable cupidity and animated by a wanton disregard of justice, hesitated at no means to possess themselves of the land and other property of the Indians.