The Memories of Fifty Years / Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the Southwest

by W. H. Sparks

It had been agreed between the United States and Georgia, and the famous Yazoo Company, in order to settle the difficulties between the two latter, that the United States should purchase, at a proper time, from the Indian proprietors, all the lands east of the Chattahoochee and a line running from the west bank of that stream, starting at a place known as West Point, and terminating at what is known as Nickey Jack, on the Tennessee River. The increase of population, and the constant difficulties growing out of the too close neighborhood of the Indians, induced the completion of this agreement. Commissioners on the part of the Government were appointed to meet commissioners or delegations from the Indians, to treat for the sale of their lands within the limits of the State of Georgia. McIntosh favored the sale, Hopothlayohola opposed it. As a chief, McIntosh was second to his great antagonist in authority, and, in truth, to several other chiefs. But he was a bold man, with strong will, fearless and aggressive, and he assumed the power to sell. In the war of 1812-15, he had sided with the Americans, Hopothlayohola with the English; and leading at least half the tribe, McIntosh felt himself able to sustain his authority. The commissioners met the Indian delegation at the Indian Springs, where negotiations were commenced by a proposition placed before the chiefs, and some days given for their consideration of it. Their talks or consultations among themselves were protracted and angry, and inconclusive. Every effort was made to induce Hopothlayohola to accede to the proposition of McIntosh. The whites united in their efforts to win his consent to sell: persuasions, threats, and finally large bribes were offered, but all availed nothing. Thus distracted and divided, they consumed the time for consultation, and met the white commissioners to renew the strife, in open council with these. Each chief was followed to this council by the members of his band, sub-chiefs, and warriors. McIntosh announced his readiness to sell, and sustained his position with reasons which demonstrated him a statesman, and wise beyond his people.

"Here in the neighborhood of the whites," he said, "we are subject to continual annoyance and wrong. These have continued long, and they have dwarfed our mighty nation to a tribe or two, and our home to one-tenth of its original dimensions. This must go on if we remain in this proximity, until we shall be lost, and there will be none to preserve our traditions. Let us sell our lands, and go to the proffered home beyond the Great River. Our young men have been there: they have seen it, and they say it is good. The game is abundant; the lands are broad, and there is no sickness there." Turning to Hopothlayohola, who stood, with dignified and proud defiance in his manner, listening, he proceeded: "Will you go and live with your people increasing and happy about you: or will you stay and die with them here, and leave no one to follow you, or come to your grave, and weep over their great chief? Beyond the Great River the sun is as bright, and the sky is as blue, and the waters are as clear and as sweet as they are here. Our people will go with us. We will be one, and where we are altogether, there is home. To love the ground is mean; to love our people is noble. We will cling to them—we will do for their good; and the ground where they are will be as dear to us as this, because they will be upon it, and with us.

"The white man is growing. He wants our lands. He will buy them now. By and by he will take them, and the little band of our people left will wander without homes, poor and despised, and be beaten like dogs. We must go to a new home, and learn like the white man to till the earth, grow cattle, and depend on these for food and life. Nohow else can many people live on the earth. This makes the white man like the leaves; the want of it makes the red men weak and few. Let us learn how to make books, how to make ploughs, and how to cultivate the ground, as the white man does, and we will grow again, and again become a great people. We will unite with the Cherokee, the Choctaw, and the Seminole, and be one people. The Great Spirit made us one people. Yes, we are all the children of one family: we are the red men of the Great Spirit, and should be one people for strength and protection. We shall have schools for our children. Each tribe shall have its council, and all shall unite in great council. They will be wise through learning as the white man is, and we shall become a great State, and send our chiefs to Congress as the white man does. We shall all read, and thus talk, as the white man does, with the mighty dead who live in books; and write and make books that our children's children shall read and talk with, and learn the counsels of their great fathers in the spirit-land. This it is which makes the white man increase and spread over the land. In our new home he promises to protect us—to send us schools and books, and teach our children to know them; and he will send us ploughs, and men to make them, and to teach our young men how to make them.

"The plough will make us corn for bread, for the strength of the body; the books will be food for the head, to make us wise and strong in council. Let us sell and go away, and if we suffer for a time, it will be better for our children. You see it so with the white man; shall we not learn from him, and be like him?"

When he had concluded his talk, it was greeted in their own peculiar manner by his followers as good. Hopothlayohola, the great red chief, turning from McIntosh as if disdaining him, addressed the commissioners of the Government:

"Our great father, your head chief at Washington, sent us a talk by you, which is pleasant to hear, because it promises the red man much—his friendship, his protection, and his help; but in return for this he asks of us much more than we are willing to give even for all his promises. The white man's promises, like him, are white, and bring hope to the red man; but they always end in darkness and death to him.

"The Great Spirit has not given to the red man, as He has to the white man, the power to look into the dark, and see what to-morrow has in its hand; but He has given him the sense to know what experience teaches him. Look around, and remember! Away when time was young, all this broad land was the red man's, and there was none to make him afraid. The woods were wide and wild, and the red deer, and the bear, and the wild turkey were everywhere, and all were his. He was great, and, with abundance, was happy. From the salt sea to the Great River the land was his: the Great Spirit had given it to him. He made the woods for the red man, the deer, the bear, and the turkey; and for these He made the red man. He made the white man for the fields, and taught him how to make ploughs, to have cattle and horses, and how to make books, because the white man needed these. He did not make these a necessity to the red man.

"Away beyond the mighty waters of the dreary sea, He gave the white man a home, with everything he wanted, and He gave him a mind which was for him, and only him. The red man is satisfied with the gifts to him of the Great Spirit; and he did not know there was a white man who had other gifts for his different nature, until he came in his winged canoes across the great water, and our fathers met him at Yamacrow. The Great Spirit gave him a country, and He gave the red man a country. Why did he leave his own and come to take the red man's? Did the Great Spirit tell him to do this? He gave him His word in a book: do you find it there? Then read it for us, that we may hear. If He did, then He is not just. We see Him in the sun, and moon, and stars. We hear Him in the thunder, and feel Him in the mighty winds; but He made no book for the red man to tell Him his will, but we see in all His works justice. The sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the ground keep their places, and never leave them to crowd upon one another. They stay where He placed them, and come not to trouble or to take from one another what He had given. Only the white man does this. A few—a little handful—came in their canoe to the land of the red man, as spirits come out of the water. The red man gave them his hand. He gave them meat, and corn, and a home, and welcomed them to come and live with him. And the flying canoes came again and again, and many came in them, and at last they brought their great chief, with his long knife by his side, and his red coat, and he asked for more land. Our chiefs and warriors met him, and sold him another portion of our lands; and his white squaws came with him, and they made houses and homes near our people. They made fields, and had horses and herds, and grew faster than our people, and drove away the deer and the turkeys deeper into the woods. And then they wanted more land, and our chiefs and warriors sold them more land, and now again another piece, until now we have but a little of our all. And you come again with the same story on your forked tongues, and wish to buy the last we have of all we had, and offer us a home away beyond the Great River, and money, and tell us we shall there have a home forever, free from the white man's claims, and in which we shall dwell in peace, with no one to make us afraid.

"Our traditions tell us that our fathers fled before the powerful red men who dwell beyond the Great River, and who robbed us of our homes and made them their own, as you, the white men, have done. Have you bought the home of our fathers from these red men? or have you taken it? that you bid us take it from you, and go back, and make a new home where the fathers of our fathers sleep in death? If you have not, will they not hunt us away again, as you have? How shall we know you will not come and make us sell to you, for the white man, the homes you promise shall always be ours and a home for our children's children?

"We love the land where we were born and where we have buried our fathers and our kindred. It is the Great Spirit which teaches us to love the land, the wigwam, the stream, the trees where we hunted and played from our childhood, where we have buried out of sight our ancestors for generations. Who says it is mean to love the land, to keep in our hearts these graves, as we keep the Great Spirit? It is noble to love the land, where the corn grows, and which was given to us by the Great Spirit. We will sell no more; we know we are passing away; the leaves fall from the trees, and we fall like these; some will stay to be the last. The snow melts from the hills, but there is some left for the last; we are left for the last, like the withered leaf and little spot of snow. Leave to us the little we have, let us die where our fathers have died, and let us sleep where our kindred sleep; and when the last is gone, then take our lands, and with your plough tear up the mould upon our graves, and plant your corn above us. There will be none to weep at the deed, none to tell the traditions of our people, or sing the death-song above their graves—none to listen to the wrongs and oppressions the red man bore from his white brother, who came from the home the Great Spirit gave him, to take from the red man the home the Great Spirit gave him. We are few and weak, you are many and strong, and you can kill us and take our homes; but the Great Spirit has given us courage to fight for our homes, if we may not live in them—and we will do it—and this is our talk, our last talk."