"The ejectment of the Indians very often takes place, at the present day, in a regular, and, as it were, legal manner. When the white population begins to approach the limit of a desert inhabited by a savage tribe, the government of the United States usually dispatches envoys to them, who assemble the Indians in a large plain, and having first eaten and drunk with them, accost them in the following manner: 'What have you to do in the land of your fathers? Before long you must dig up their bones in order to live. In what respect is the country you inhabit better than another? Are there no woods, marshes or prairies, except where you dwell? and can you live nowhere but under your own sun? Beyond those mountains, which you see at the horizon—beyond the lake which bounds your territory on the west—there lie vast countries where beasts of chase are found in great abundance. Sell your lands to us, and go and live happily in those solitudes.'
"After holding this language, they spread before the eyes of the Indians fire-arms, woollen garments, kegs of brandy, glass necklaces, bracelets of tinsel, ear-rings, and looking-glasses. If, when they have beheld all these riches, they still hesitate, it is insinuated that they have not the means of refusing their required consent, and that the government itself will not long have the power of protecting them in their rights. What are they to do? Half convinced, half compelled, they go to inhabit new deserts, where the importunate whites will not permit them to remain ten years in tranquillity. In this manner do the Americans obtain, at a very low price, whole provinces, which the richest sovereigns in Europe could not purchase."
The Grecian Plutarch deemed it necessary to reside forty years in Rome, to qualify himself to write the lives of some Roman citizens; and then made mistakes. European writers do not deem it necessary to reside in our country at all in order to write our history. A sojourn of some months in the principal towns—a rapid flight along some great roads—the gossip of the steamboat, the steam-car, the stage-coach, and the hotel—the whispers of some earwigs—with the reading of the daily papers and the periodicals, all more or less engaged in partisan warfare—and the view of some debates, or scene, in Congress, which may be an exception to its ordinary decorum and intelligence: these constitute a modern European traveller's qualifications to write American history. No wonder that they commit mistakes, even where the intent is honest. And no wonder that Mons. de Tocqueville, with admitted good intentions, but with no "forty years" residence among us, should be no exception to the rule which condemns the travelling European writer of American history to the compilation of facts manufactured for partisan effect, and to the invention of reasons supplied from his own fancy. I have already had occasion, several times, to correct the errors of Mons. de Tocqueville. It is a compliment to him, implicative of respect, and by no means extended to others, who err more largely, and of purpose, but less harmfully. His error in all that he has here written is profound! and is injurious, not merely to General Jackson, to whom his mistakes apply, but to the national character, made up as it is of the acts of individuals; and which character it is the duty of every American to cherish and exalt in all that is worthy, and to protect and defend from all unjust imputation. It was in this sense that I marked this passage in De Tocqueville for refutation as soon as his book appeared, and took steps to make the contradiction (so far as the alleged robbery and cheating of the Indians was concerned) authentic and complete and as public and durable as the archives of the government itself. In this sense I had a call made for a full, numerical, chronological and official statement of all our Indian purchases, from the beginning of the federal government in 1789 to that day, 1840—tribe by tribe, cession by cession, year by year—for the fifty years which the government had existed; with the number of acres acquired at each cession, and the amount paid for each.
The call was made in the Senate of the United States, and answered by document No. 616, 1st session, 26th Congress, in a document of thirteen printed tabular pages, and authenticated by the signatures of Mr. Van Buren, President; Mr. Poinsett, Secretary at War; and Mr. Hartley Crawford, Commissioner of Indian Affairs. From this document it appeared, that the United States had paid to the Indians eighty-five millions of dollars for land purchases up to the year 1840! to which five or six millions may be added for purchases since—say ninety millions. This is near six times as much as the United States gave the great Napoleon for Louisiana, the whole of it, soil and jurisdiction; and nearly three times as much as all three of the great foreign purchases—Louisiana, Florida and California—cost us! and that for soil alone, and for so much as would only be a fragment of Louisiana or California. Impressive as this statement is in the gross, it becomes more so in the detail, and when applied to the particular tribes whose imputed sufferings have drawn so mournful a picture from Mons. de Tocqueville. These are the four great southern tribes—Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws. Applied to them, and the table of purchases and payments stands thus: To the Creek Indians twenty-two millions of dollars for twenty-five millions of acres; which is seven millions more than was paid France for Louisiana, and seventeen millions more than was paid Spain for Florida. To the Choctaws, twenty-three millions of dollars (besides reserved tracts), for twenty millions of acres, being three millions more than was paid for Louisiana and Florida. To the Cherokees, for eleven millions of acres, was paid about fifteen millions of dollars, the exact price of Louisiana or California. To the Chickasaws, the whole net amount for which this country sold under the land system of the United States, and by the United States land officers, three millions of dollars for six and three-quarter millions of acres, being the way the nation chose to dispose of it. Here are fifty-six millions to four tribes, leaving thirty millions to go to the small tribes whose names are unknown to history, and which it is probable the writer on American democracy had never heard of when sketching the picture of their fancied oppressions.
I will attend to the case of these small remote tribes, and say that, besides their proportion of the remaining thirty-six millions of dollars, they received a kind of compensation suited to their condition, and intended to induct them into the comforts of civilized life. Of these I will give one example, drawn from a treaty with the Osages, in 1839; and which was only in addition to similar benefits to the same tribe, in previous treaties, and which were extended to all the tribes which were in the hunting state. These benefits were, to these Osages, two blacksmith's shops, with four blacksmiths, with five hundred pounds of iron and sixty pounds of steel annually; a grist and a saw mill, with millers for the same; 1,000 cows and calves; two thousand breeding swine; 1,000 ploughs; 1,000 sets of horse-gear; 1,000 axes; 1,000 hoes; a house each for ten chiefs, costing two hundred dollars apiece; to furnish these chiefs with six good wagons, sixteen carts, twenty-eight yokes of oxen, with yokes and log-chain; to pay all claims for injuries committed by the tribe on the white people, or on other Indians, to the amount of thirty thousand dollars; to purchase their reserved lands at two dollars per acre; three thousand dollars to reimburse that sum for so much deducted from their annuity, in 1825, for property taken from the whites, and since returned; and, finally, three thousand dollars more for an imputed wrongful withholding of that amount, for the same reason, in the annuity payment of the year 1829. In previous treaties, had been given seed grains, and seed vegetables, with fruit seeds and fruit trees; domestic fowls; laborers to plough up their ground and to make their fences, to raise crops and to save them, and teach the Indians how to farm; with spinning, weaving, and sewing implements, and persons to show their use. Now, all this was in one single treaty, with an inconsiderable tribe, which had been largely provided for in the same way in six different previous treaties! And all the rude tribes—those in the hunting state, or just emerging from it—were provided for in the same manner, the object of the United States being to train them to agriculture and pasturage—to conduct them from the hunting to the pastoral and agricultural state; and for that purpose, and in addition to all other benefits, are to be added the support of schools, the encouragement of missionaries, and a small annual contribution to religious societies who take charge of their civilization.
Besides all this, the government keeps up a large establishment for the special care of the Indians, and the management of their affairs; a special bureau, presided over by a commissioner at Washington City; superintendents in different districts; agents, sub-agents, and interpreters, resident with the tribe; and all charged with seeing to their rights and interests—seeing that the laws are observed towards them; that no injuries are done them by the whites; that none but licensed traders go among them; that nothing shall be bought from them which is necessary for their comfort, nor any thing sold to them which may be to their detriment. Among the prohibited articles are spirits of all kinds; and so severe are the penalties on this head, that forfeiture of the license, forfeiture of the whole cargo of goods, forfeiture of the penalty of the bond, and immediate suit in the nearest federal court for its recovery, expulsion from the Indian country, and disability for ever to acquire another license, immediately follow every breach of the laws for the introduction of the smallest quantity of any kind of spirits. How unfortunate, then, in M. de Tocqueville to write, that kegs of brandy are spread before the Indians to induce them to sell their lands! How unfortunate in representing these purchases to be made in exchange for woollen garments, glass necklaces, tinsel bracelets, ear-rings, and looking-glasses! What a picture this assertion of his makes by the side of the eighty-five millions of dollars at that time actually paid to those Indians for their lands, and the long and large list of agricultural articles and implements—long and large list of domestic animals and fowls—the ample supply of mills and shops, with mechanics to work them and teach their use—the provisions for schools and missionaries, for building fences and houses—which are found in the Osage treaty quoted, and which are to be found, more or less, in every treaty with every tribe emerging from the hunter state. The fact is, that the government of the United States has made it a fixed policy to cherish and protect the Indians, to improve their condition, and turn them to the habits of civilized life; and great is the wrong and injury which the mistake of this writer has done to our national character abroad, in representing the United States as cheating and robbing these children of the forest.
But Mons. de Tocqueville has quoted names and documents, and particular instances of imposition upon Indians, to justify his picture; and in doing so has committed the mistakes into which a stranger and sojourner may easily fall. He cites the report of Messrs. Clark and Cass, and makes a wrong application—an inverted application—of what they reported. They were speaking of the practices of disorderly persons in trading with the Indians for their skins and furs. They were reporting to the government an abuse, for correction and punishment. They were not speaking of United States commissioners, treating for the purchase of lands, but of individual traders, violating the laws. They were themselves those commissioners and superintendents of Indian affairs, and governors of Territories, one for the northwest, in Michigan, the other for the far west, in Missouri; and both noted for their justice and humanity to the Indians, and for their long and careful administration of their affairs within their respective superintendencies. Mons. de Tocqueville has quoted their words correctly, but with the comical blunder of reversing their application, and applying to the commissioners themselves, in their land negotiations for the government, the cheateries which they were denouncing to the government, in the illicit traffic of lawless traders. This was the comic blunder of a stranger: yet this is to appear as American history in Europe, and to be translated into our own language at home, and commended in a preface and notes.
CHAPTER CLV.
RECISION OF THE TREASURY CIRCULAR.
Immediately upon the opening of the Senate and the organization of the body, Mr. Ewing, of Ohio, gave notice of his intention to move a joint resolution to rescind the treasury circular; and on hearing the notice, Mr. Benton made it known that he would oppose the resolution at the second reading—a step seldom resorted to, except when the measure to be so opposed is deemed too flagrantly wrong to be entitled to the honor of rejection in the usual forms of legislation. The debate came on promptly, and upon the lead of the mover of the resolution, in a prepared and well-considered speech, in which he said: