# Colonization and Christianity/Chapter 25

CHAPTER XXV.
TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS BY THE UNITED STATES,—CONTINUED.
The Friends have for many years had schools for the education of the children in different States, and persons employed to engage the Indians in agriculture and manual arts, but they, as well as the missionaries, complain that their efforts have been rendered abortive by the continual removals of the red people by the government.
Scarcely was the war over, and American independence proclaimed, when a great strife began betwixt the Republicans and the Indians, for the Indian lands—a strife which extended from the Canadian lakes to the gulph of Florida, and has continued more or less to this moment. Under the British government, the boundaries of the American states had never been well defined. The Americans appointed commissioners to determine them, and appear to have resolved that all Indian claims within the boundaries of the St. Lawrence, the great chain of lakes, and the Mississippi, should be extinguished. They certainly em​braced a compact and most magnificent expanse of territory. It was true that the Indians, the ancient and rightful possessors of the soil, had yet large tracts within these lines of demarcation; but, then, what was the power of the Indians to that of the United States? They could be compelled to evacuate their lands, and it was resolved that they should. It is totally beyond the limits of my work to follow out the progress of this most unequal and iniquitous strife; whoever wishes to see it fully and very fairly portrayed may do so in a work by an American—"Drake's Book of the North American Indians." I can here only simply state, that a more painful and interesting struggle never went on between the overwhelming numbers of the white men, armed with all the powers of science, but unrestrained by the genuine sentiments of religion, and the sons of the forest in their native simplicity. The Americans tell us that this apparently hard and arbitrary measure will eventually prove the most merciful. That the Indians cannot live by the side of white men; they are always quarrelling with and murdering them; and that is but too true; and the Indians in strains of the most indignant and pathetic eloquence, tell us the reason why. It is because the white invaders are eternally encroaching on their bounds, destroying their deer and their fish, and murdering the Indians too without ceremony. It is this recklessness of law and conscience, and the ever-rolling tide of white population westward, which raised up Tecumsch, and his companions, to combine the northern tribes in resistance. Brant assured the American commissioners, that unless they made the Ohio and the Muskingum their boundaries, there ​could be no peace with the Indians. These are the causes that called forth Black-Hauk from the Ouisconsin, with the Winnebagoes, the Sacs, and Foxes; that roused the Little-Turtle, with his Miamies, and many other chiefs and tribes, to inflict bloody retribution on their oppressors, but finally to be compelled themselves only the sooner to yield up their native lands. These are the causes that, operating to the most southern point of the United States, armed the great nations of the Seninoles, the Creeks, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees; and have made famous the exterminating campaigns of General Jackson, the bloody spots of Fort Mimms, Autossee, Tippecanoe, Talladega, Horse-shoe- bend, and other places of wholesale carnage. At Horse-shoe-bend, General Jackson says—"determined to exterminate them, I detached General Coffee with the mounted and nearly the whole of the Indian force, early in the morning (March 27, 1814), to cross the river about two miles below their encampment, and to surround the Bend, so that none of them should escape by crossing the river."
"At this place," says Drake, "the disconsolate tribes of the South had made a last great stand; and had a tolerably fortified camp. It was said they were 1000 strong." They were attacked on all sides; the fighting was kept up five hours; five hundred and fifty-seven were left dead on the peninsula, and a great number killed by the horsemen, in crossing the river. It is believed that not more than twenty escaped! "We continued," says the brave General Jackson, "to destroy many of them who had concealed themselves under the banks of the river, until we were prevented by the night!"
​And what had these unfortunate tribes done, that they should be exterminated? Simply this:—When the United States remodelled the southern states, reducing the Carolinas and Georgia, and creating the new states of Alabama, Tenessee, and Mississippi, they stipulated, in behalf of Georgia, to extinguish all the Indian titles to lands in that State, "as soon as it could be done on peaceable terms." Georgia, impatient to seize on these lands, immediately employed all means to effect this object. When the Indians, in national council, would not sell their lands, they prevailed on a half-breed chief, M'Intosh, and a few others, of no character, to sell them; and, on this mock title, proceeded to expel the Indians. The Indians resisted; an alarm of rebellion was sounded through the States, and General Jackson sent to put it down. The Indians, as in all other quarters, were compelled to give way before the irresistible American power. We cannot go at length into this bloody history of oppression; but the character of the whole may be seen in that of a part.
But the most singular feature of the treatment of the Indians by the Americans is, that while they assign their irreclaimable nature as the necessary cause of their expelling or desiring to expel them from all the states east of the Mississippi, their most strenuous and most recent efforts have been directed against those numerous tribes, that were not only extensive but rapidly advancing in civilization. So far from refusing to adopt settled, orderly habits, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees, were fast conforming both to the religion and the habits of the Americans. The Creeks were numbered ​in 1814 at 20,000. The Choctaws had some years ago 4041 warriors, and could not therefore be estimated at less than four times that number in total population, or 16,000. In 1810, the Cherokees consisted of 12,400 persons; in 1824 they had increased to 15,000. The Chickasaws reckoned some years ago 1000 warriors, making the tribe probably 4000.
The Creeks had twenty years ago cultivated lands, flocks, cattle, gardens, and different kinds of domestic manufactures. They were betaking themselves to manual trades and farming. "The Choctaws," Mr. Stuart says, "have both schools and churches. A few books have been published in the Choctaw language. In one part of their territory, where the population amounted to 5627 persons, there were above 11,000 cattle, about 4000 horses, 22,000 hogs, 530 spinning-wheels, 360 ploughs, etc." The missionaries speak in the highest terms of their steadiness and sobriety; and one of their chiefs had actually offered himself as a candidate for Congress. All these tribes are described as rapidly progressing in education and civilization, but the Cherokees present a character which cannot be contemplated without the liveliest admiration. These were the tribes amongst whom Adair spent so many years, about the middle of the last century, and whose customs and ideas as delineated by him, exhibited them as such fine material for cultivation. Since then the missionaries, and especially the Moravians, have been labouring with the most signal success. A school was opened in this tribe by them in 1804, in which vast numbers of Cherokee children have been educated. Such, indeed, have been the effects of cultivation on this fine people, that ​they have assumed all the habits and pursuits of civilized life. Their progress may be noted by observing the amount of their possessions in 1810, and again, fourteen years afterwards, in 1824. In the former year they had 3 schools, in the latter 18; in the former year 13 grist-mills, in the latter 36; in the former year 3 saw-mills, in the latter 13; in the former year 467 looms, in the latter 762; in the former year 1,600 spinning-wheels, in the latter 2,486; in the former year 30 wagons, in the latter 172; in the former year 500 ploughs, in the latter 2,923; in the former year 6,100 horses, in the latter 7,683; in the former year 19,500 head of cattle, in the latter 22,531; in the former year 19,600 swine, in the latter 46,732; in the former year 1,037 sheep, in the latter 2,546, and 430 goats; in the former year 49 smiths, in the latter 62 smiths' shops. Here is a steady and prosperous increase; testifying to no ordinary existence of industry, prudence, and good management amongst them, and bearing every promise of their becoming a most valuable portion of the community. They have, Mr. Stuart tells us, several public roads, fences, and turnpikes. The soil produces maize, cotton, tobacco, wheat, oats, indigo, sweet and Irish potatoes. The natives carry on a considerable trade with the adjoining states, and some of them export cotton to New Orleans. Apple and peach orchards are common, and gardens well cultivated. Butter and cheese are the produce of their dairies. There are many houses of public entertainment kept by the natives. Numerous and flourishing villages are seen in every section of the country. Cotton and woollen cloths and blankets are everywhere. Almost every ​family in the nation produces cotton for its own consumption. Nearly all the nation are native Cherokees.
"A printing-press has been established for several years; and a newspaper, written partly in English, and partly in Cherokee, has been successfully carried on. This paper, called the Cherokee Phœnix, is written entirely by a Cherokee, a young man under thirty. It had been surmised that he was assisted by a white man, on which he put the following notice in the paper:—"No white has anything to do with the management of our paper. No other person, whether white or red, besides the ostensible editor, has written, from the commencement of the Phœnix, half a column of matter which has appeared under the editorial head."
The starting of this Indian newspaper by an Indian, is one of the most interesting facts in the history of civilization. In this language nothing had been written or printed. It had no written alphabet. This young Indian, already instructed by the missionaries in English literature, is inspired with a desire to open the world of knowledge to his countrymen in their vernacular tongue. There is no written character, no types. Those words familiar to all native ears, have no corresponding representation to the eye. These are gigantic difficulties to the young Indian, and as the Christian would call him, savage aspirant and patriot. But he determines to conquer them all. He travels into the eastern states. He invents letters which shall best express the sounds of his native tongue; he has types cut, and commences a newspaper. There is nothing like it in the history of ​nations in their first awakening from the long fixedness of wild life. This mighty engine, the press, once put in motion by native genius in the western wilderness, books are printed suitable to the nascent intelligence of the country. The Gospel of St. Matthew is translated into Cherokee, and printed at the native press. Hymns are also translated and printed. Christianity makes rapid strides. The pupils in the schools advance with admirable rapidity. There is a new and wonderful spirit abroad. Not only do the Indians throng to the churches to listen to the truths of life and immortality, but Indians themselves become diligent ministers, and open places of worship in the more remote and wild parts of the country. Even temperance societies are formed. Political principles develope themselves far in philosophical advance of our proud and learned England. The constitution of the native state contains admirable stamina; trial by jury prevails; and universal suffrage—a right, to this moment distrustfully withheld from the English people, is there freely granted, and judiciously exercised; every male citizen of eighteen years old having a vote in all public elections.
The whole growth and being, however, of this young Indian civilization is one of the most delightful and animating subjects of contemplation that ever came before the eye of the lover of his race. Here were these Indian savages, who had been two hundred years termed irreclaimable; whom it had been the custom only to use as the demons of carnage, as creatures fit only to carry the tomahawk and the bloody scalping-knife through Cherry-Valley, Gnadenhuetten, or Wyoming; and whom, that work done, it was ​declared, must be cast out from the face of civilized man, as the reproach of the past and the incubus of the future,—here were they gloriously vindicating themselves from those calumnies and wrongs, and assuming in the social system a most beautiful and novel position. It was a spectacle on which one would have thought the United States would hang with a proud delight, and point to as one of the most noble features of their vast and noble country. What did they do? They chose rather to give the lie to all their assertions, that they drove out the Indians because they were irreclaimable and unamalgamable, and to shew to the world that they expelled them solely and simply because they scorned that one spot of the copper hue of the aborigines should mar the whiteness of their population. They compel us to exclaim with the indignant Abbé Raynal, "And are these the men whom both French and English have been conspiring to extirpate for a century past?" and suggest to us his identical answer,—"But perhaps they would be ashamed to live amongst such models of heroism and magnanimity!"
However, everything which irritation, contempt, political chicanery, and political power can effect, have been long zealously at work to drive these fine Nations out of their delightful country, and beyond the Mississippi; the boundary which American cupidity at present sets between itself and Indian extirpation. Spite of all those solemn declarations, by the venerable Washington and other great statesmen already quoted; spite of the most grave treaties, and especially one of July 2d, 1791, which says, "The United States solemnly guarantee to the Cherokee ​nation all their lands not hereby ceded," by a juggle betwixt the State of Georgia and Congress, the Cherokees have been virtually dispossessed of their country. From the period of the American independence to 1802, there had been a continual pressure on the Cherokees for their lands, and they had been induced by one means or another to cede to the States more than two hundred millions of acres. How reluctantly may be imagined, by the decided stand made by them in 1819, when they peremptorily protested that they would not sell another foot. That they needed all they had, for that they were becoming more and more agricultural, and progressing in civilization. One would have thought this not only a sufficient but a most satisfactory plea to a great nation by its people; but no, Georgia ceded to Congress territories for the formation of two new states, Alabama and Mississippi, and Georgia in part of payment receives the much desired lands of the Cherokees. Georgia, therefore, assumes the avowed language of despotism, and decrees by its senate, in the very face of the clear recognitions of Indian independence already quoted, that the right of discovery and conquest was the title of the Europeans; that every foot of land in the United States was held by that title; that the right of the Indians was merely temporary; that they were tenants at will, removable at any moment, either by negotiation or force. "It may be contended," says the Report of 1827, "with much plausibility, that there is in these claims more of force than of justice; but they are claims which have been recognized and admitted by the whole civilized world, and it is unquestionably true, that, under such circumstances, force becomes right!"
​This language once adopted there needed no further argument about right or justice. Georgia took its stand upon Rob Roy's law,
That he shall take who has the power, And he shall keep who can;
and it forthwith proceeded to act upon it. It decreed in 1828, that the territories of the Cherokees should be divided amongst the different counties of Georgia; that after June 1st, 1830, the Cherokees should become the subjects of Georgia; that all Cherokee laws should be abolished, and all Cherokees should be cut off from any benefit of the laws of the State—that is, that no Indian, or descendent of one, should be capable to act as a witness, or to be a party in any suit against a white man. The Cherokees refusing to abandon their hereditary soil without violence, an act was passed prohibiting any white man from residing in the Cherokee country without a permit from the governor, and on the authority of this, soldiers were marched into it, and the missionaries carried off on a Sunday. An attempt was made to crush that interesting newspaper press, by forcing away every white man assisting in the office. Forcible possession was taken of the Indian gold mines by Georgian laws, and the penal statutes exercised against the Indians who did not recognize their authority. The Cherokees, on these outrages, vehemently appealed to Congress. They said—"how far we have contributed to keep bright the chain of friendship which binds us to these United States, is within the reach of your knowledge; it is ours to maintain it, until, perhaps, the plaintive voice of an Indian from the south shall no more be heard within your walls of legislation. Our nation and our ​people may cease to exist, before another revolving year reassembles this august assembly of great men. We implore that our people may not be denounced as savages, unfit for the good neighbourhood guaranteed to them by treaty. We cannot better express the rights of our nation, than they are developed on the face of the document we herewith submit; and the desires of our nation, than to pray a faithful fulfilment of the promises made by its illustrious author through his secretary. Between the compulsive measures of Georgia and our destruction, we ask the interposition of your authority, and remembrance of the bond of perpetual peace pledged for our safety—the safety of the last fragments of some mighty nations, that have grazed for a while upon your civilization and prosperity, but which are now tottering on the brink of angry billows, whose waters have covered in oblivion other nations that were once happy, but are now no more.
"The schools where our children learn to read the Word of God; the churches where our people now sing to his praise, and where they are taught 'that of one blood he created all the nations of the earth;' the fields they have cleared, and the orchards they have planted; the houses they have built,—are dear to the Cherokees; and there they expect to live and to die, on the lands inherited from their fathers, as the firm friends of the people of these United States."
This is the very language which the simple people of all the new regions whither Europeans have penetrated, have been passionately and imploringly addressing for three hundred years, but in vain. We seem again to hear the supplicating voice of the people of ​the Seven Reductions of Paraguay, addressed to the expelling Spaniards and Portuguese. In each case it was alike unavailing. The Congress returned them a cool answer, advising the Cherokees to go over the Mississippi, where "the soil should be theirs while the trees grow, or the streams run." But they had heard that language before, and they knew its value. The State of Georgia had avowed the doctrine of conquest, which silences all contracts and annuls all promises. It is to the honour of the Supreme Court of the United States that, on appeal to it, it annulled the proceedings of Georgia, and recognised the rightful possession of the country by the Cherokees. But what power shall restrain all those engines of irritation and oppression, which white men know how to employ against coloured ones, when they want their persons or their lands. Nothing will be able to prevent the final expatriation of these southern tribes: they must pass the Mississippi till the white population is swelled sufficiently to require them to cross the Missouri; there will then remain but two barriers between them and annihilation—the rocky mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Whenever we hear now of those tribes, it is of some fresh act of aggression against them—some fresh expulsion of a portion of them—and of melancholy Indians moving off towards the western wilds.
Such is the condition to which the British and their descendants have reduced the aboriginal inhabitants of the vast regions of North America,—the finest race of men that we have ever designated by the name of savage.
What term we savage? The untutored heart Of Nature's child is but a slumbering fire; Prompt at a breath, or passing touch to start Into quick flame, as quickly to retire;
Ready alike its pleasance to impart, Or scorch the hand which rudely wakes its ire: Demon or child, as impulse may impel, Warm in its love, but in its vengeance fell.
And these Columbian warriors to their strand Had welcomed Europe's sons, and rued it sore:— Men with smooth tongues, but rudely armed hand; Fabling of peace, when meditating gore; Who their foul deeds to veil, ceased not to brand The Indian name on every Christian shore. What wonder, on such heads, their fury's flame Burst, till its terrors gloomed their fairer fame?
For they were not a brutish race, unknowing Evil from good; their fervid souls embraced With virtue's proudest homage, to o'erflowing, The mind's inviolate majesty. The past To them was not a darkness; but was glowing With splendour which all time had not o'ercast; Streaming unbroken from creation's birth, When God communed and walked with men on earth.
Stupid idolatry had never dimmed The Almighty image in their lucid thought. To Him alone their zealous praise was hymned; And hoar Tradition from her treasury brought Glimpses of far-off times, in which were limned, His awful glory;—and their prophets taught Precepts sublime,—a solemn ritual given, In clouds and thunder, to their sires from heaven.
And in the boundless solitude which fills, Even as a mighty heart, their wild domains; In caves and glens of the unpeopled hills; And the deep shadow that for ever reigns Spirit-like, in their woods; where, roaring, spills The giant cataract to the astounded plains,— Nature, in her sublimest moods, had given Not man's weak lore,—but a quick flash from heaven.
Roaming in their free lives, by lake and stream; Beneath the splendour of their gorgeous sky; Encamping, while shot down night's starry gleam, In piny glades, where their forefathers lie; Voices would come, and breathing whispers seem To rouse within, the life which may not die; Begetting valorous deeds, and thoughts intense, And a wild gush of burning eloquence.
The vast, the ebbless, the engulphing tide Of the white population still rolls on! And quailed has their romantic heart of pride,— The kingly spirit of the woods is gone. Farther and farther do they wend to hide Their wasting strength; to mourn their glory flown; And sigh to think how soon shall crowds pursue Down the lone stream where glides the still canoe.
* ↑ Stuart's Three Years in North America, ii. 177.
* ↑ Stuart, ii. 173.
* ↑ See Adair's History of the American Indians.
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