The Government Ultimately supports the Frontiersmen.
At first the authorities at the national capital would blame the whites, and try to temporize and make new treaties, or even threaten to drive back the settlers with a strong hand; but when the ravages of the Indians had become serious, when the bloody details were sent to homes in every part of the Union by letter after letter from the border, when the little newspapers began to publish accounts of the worst atrocities, when the county lieutenants of the frontier counties were clamoring for help, when the Congressmen from the frontier districts were appealing to Congress, and the governors of the States whose frontiers were molested were appealing to the President—then the feeling of race and national kinship rose, and the Government no longer hesitated to support in every way the hard-pressed wilderness vanguard of the American people.
The Situation in 1791.
The situation had reached this point by the year 1791. For seven years the Federal authorities had been vainly endeavoring to make some final settlement of the question by entering into treaties with the Northwestern and Southwestern tribes. In the earlier treaties the delegates from the Continental Congress asserted that the United States were invested with the fee of all the land claimed by the Indians. In the later treaties the Indian proprietorship of the lands was conceded. [Footnote: American State Papers, Vol. IV., Indian Affairs, I., p. 13. Letter of H. Knox, June 15, 1789. This is the lettering on the back of the volume, and for convenience it will be used in referring to it.] This concession at the time seemed important to the whites; but the Indians probably never understood that there had been any change of attitude; nor did it make any practical difference, for, whatever the theory might be, the lands had eventually to be won, partly by whipping the savages in fight, partly by making it better worth their while to remain at peace than to go to war.
Knox and the Treaties.
The Federal officials under whose authority these treaties were made had no idea of the complexity of the problem. In 1789 the Secretary of War, the New Englander Knox, solemnly reported to the President that, if the treaties were only observed and the Indians conciliated, they would become attached to the United States, and the expense of managing them, for the next half-century, would be only some fifteen thousand dollars a year. [Footnote: American State Papers, Vol. IV., Indian Affairs, I., p. 13.] He probably represented, not unfairly, the ordinary Eastern view of the matter. He had not the slightest idea of the rate at which the settlements were increasing, though he expected that tracts of Indian territory would from time to time be acquired. He made no allowance for a growth so rapid that within the half-century six or eight populous States were to stand within the Indian-owned wilderness of his day. He utterly failed to grasp the central features of the situation, which were that the settlers needed the land, and were bound to have it, within a few years; and that the Indians would not give it up, under no matter what treaty, without an appeal to arms.
Treaties with the Southern Indians.
In the South the United States Commissioners, in endeavoring to conclude treaties with the Creeks and Cherokees, had been continually hampered by the attitude of Georgia and the Franklin frontiersmen. The Franklin men made war and peace with the Cherokees just as they chose, and utterly refused to be bound by the treaties concluded on behalf of the United States. Georgia played the same part with regard to the Creeks. The Georgian authorities paid no heed whatever to the desires of Congress, and negotiated on their own account a series of treaties with the Creeks at Augusta, Galphinton, and Shoulder-bone, in 1783, 1785, and 1786. But these treaties amounted to nothing, for nobody could tell exactly which towns or tribes owned a given tract of land, or what individuals were competent to speak for the Indians as a whole; the Creeks and Cherokees went through the form of surrendering the same territory on the Oconee. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., 15. Letter of Knox, July 6, 1789.] The Georgians knew that the Indians with whom they treated had no power to surrender the lands; but all they wished was some shadowy color of title, that might serve as an excuse for their seizing the coveted territory. On the other hand the Creeks, loudly though they declaimed against the methods of the Georgian treaty-makers, themselves shamelessly disregarded the solemn engagements which their authorized representatives made with the United States. Moreover their murderous forays on the Georgian settlers were often as unprovoked as were the aggressions of the brutal Georgia borderers.
Mutual Wrongs of the Creeks and the Borderers.
The Creeks were prompt to seize every advantage given by the impossibility of defining the rights of the various component parts of their loosely knit confederacy. They claimed or disclaimed responsibility as best suited their plans for the moment. When at Galphinton two of the Creek towns signed away a large tract of territory, McGillivray, the famous half-breed, and the other chiefs, loudly protested that the land belonged to the whole confederacy, and that the separate towns could do nothing save by consent of all. But in May, 1787, a party of Creeks from the upper towns made an unprovoked foray into Georgia, killed two settlers, and carried off a negro and fourteen horses; the militia who followed them attacked the first Indians they fell in with, who happened to be from the lower towns, and killed twelve; whereupon the same chiefs disavowed all responsibility for the deeds of the Upper Town warriors, and demanded the immediate surrender of the militia who had killed the Lower Town people—to the huge indignation of the Governor of Georgia. [Footnote: American State Papers, Vol. IV., 31, 32, 33. Letter of Governor Matthews, August 4, 1787, etc.]