The Wild Frontier (30 page)
Authors: William M. Osborn
Around 1827, trappers found sport in shooting defenseless Gosiute and Paiute Indians who lived along their routes in the Great Basin. Although there is no indication anyone was killed, the practice does show the low regard in which the trappers held the Indians.
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The trappers who hunted Indians for sport were not alone. John M. Coward noted that many Western correspondents “happily fired at Indians whenever they had a chance.”
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King George assumed the throne in 1760 at age 22. The king, who was not bright, “could neither understand the American colonies nor grasp the need to try; he knew only that he wanted to keep them subject to Britain.”
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General Sullivan had practiced law in New Hampshire and was a delegate to the First Continental Congress. As a major general, he took part in Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey. After the war, he was a governor, congressman, and federal judge.
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Dearborn was a physician from New Hampshire. He fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 and was later captured by the British. After his release, he was promoted to major, fought at Ticonderoga and Saratoga, and wintered with Washington at Valley Forge.
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McKee was the son of an Irish trader and a woman thought to have been white raised by the Shawnee. He married a Shawnee woman. When the Revolution began, because McKee was a Tory, he and Simon Girty fled to Detroit. He became a British captain, and his troops, among other campaigns, took Rundle’s Station in Kentucky, killing about 200 men, women, and children.
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Tecumseh fought in all the battles of Little Turtle’s War. Thereafter, he traveled widely, unsuccessfully advancing the idea of one Indian nation from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Tecumseh joined the British in the War of 1812 and became a brigadier general.
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Little Turtle formed an alliance of Miamis, Shawnee, Delaware, and Hurons against the American soldiers led by Harmar, then against those of General Arthur St. Clair. He then counseled peace, but his warriors disagreed, and he turned command over to the Shawnee Blue Jacket, whose forces were defeated by General “Mad Anthony” Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.
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After their defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the Miamis by treaty ceded all of Ohio and much of Indiana to the government and went to live in Kansas and Oklahoma.
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Kickapoos have lived in many different places. Originally from Wisconsin, they helped other tribes defeat the Illinois and divide their territory. They moved to Illinois and ceded their land there to the government in 1819. For a time, they lived in Mexico.
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St. Clair became territorial governor of Ohio. When he retired to private life, he lost most of his fortune in land speculation and lived in relative poverty until his death.
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When the British invaded his area during the Revolution, Jackson joined the state militia and at age 13 took part in the Battle of Hanging Rock. The next year he was captured by the British and was taken to a military prison, where he contracted smallpox. After the Creek Indians attacked Fort Mims in 1813, Jackson as a major general in the Tennessee militia defeated the Creek Red Sticks after several battles. Jackson attacked Pensacola, Florida, even though he had dysentery, then fought the Battle of New Orleans.
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Pawnees were peaceful with their white neighbors, but they fought against the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche.
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CHAPTER 7
Atrocities from the Trails of Tears to the Civil War
T
he idea of removing the Indians to someplace where they would not be in contact with the settlers causing friction had been around for a long time. As early as 1776, Jefferson recommended that the Cherokee and all other tribes that supported the British should be driven beyond the Mississippi. “This then is the season for driving them off,” he said.
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The purchase of the Louisiana Territory by Jefferson in 1803 made removal a feasible matter.
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There was now plenty of American territory west of the Mississippi. Voluntary removal was tried. Edward H. Spicer pointed out, however, that “tribes reluctant to move west were subjected to heavy pressures to do so.”
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The westward removal of Indians—which resulted in many deaths—came to be called the Trails of Tears.
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The genesis of this migration between 1831 and 1842 was the Removal Act of 1830. That legislation authorized the president to grant federal land west of the Mississippi to any tribe of Indians “as may choose to exchange if the land claimed by the Indians was owned by the United States.”
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The act permitted removal only of Indians who agreed to go.
Five southern tribes then signed treaties of removal with the government. The first treaty (and the pattern for the rest) was the Choctaw Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek signed September 27, 1830, in Noxubee
County, Mississippi.
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Under the treaty, numerous things of value were to be given to the tribe. Each chief got 2,560 acres plus $250 each year for life. Lesser tribal officials got smaller sums ranging down to $50 per year. Each head of a family got 640 acres, each unmarried child over 10 living with him 320 acres, and each child under 10 160 acres. Forty Indian children were to be educated at government expense for 20 years.
The government agreed to remove the Indians at its expense in wagons and with steamboats as might be found necessary and with ample corn, beef, and pork until 12 months after removal. Finally, the treaty stated, “Each Choctaw head of a family being desirous to remain and become a citizen of the States, shall be permitted to do so.”
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Up to half of those who wanted to go had to go by the falls of 1831 and 1832, and the remainer by the fall of 1833. The treaty stated these staggered departures were so that “a better opportunity will be afforded the Government, to extend to them [the Choctaw] the facilities and comforts which it is desirable should be extended in conveying them to their new homes.”
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The Choctaw did not leave within the time required by their treaty, and this caused problems. By November 1831, only 4,000 had gone. The main body of the tribe had moved by 1833, but some remained after that date. The Choctaw
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removed to Oklahoma from 1831 to 1834, the Seminoles
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from 1835 to 1842, the Creeks
†
beginning in 1836, the Chickasaw
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beginning in 1837, and the Cherokee
¶
in 1838 and 1839.
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Substantially all of those Indians who were removed went to Oklahoma, escorted by the United States Army. Chicago attorney Grant Foreman read the “vast accumulation”
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of government papers and wrote the removal’s history.
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Foreman’s book,
Indian Removal
, is the most detailed work on the subject and is relied upon very heavily here. He was indignant about what happened on the Trails of Tears, but his indignation did not extend to the army. Foreman wrote,
A conspicuous saving grace of this sorrowful story is the fidelity and skill with which the regular army officers and soldiers in the field discharged their unwelcome duties in connection with the removal.
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This is consistent with General Winfield Scott telling the soldiers before the Cherokee were removed that “every possible kindness must be shown by the troops” toward the Indians, but some claim they raped, robbed, and murdered their charges.
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Serious crimes were committed against the Cherokee by soldiers, according to Alan Axelrod.
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Grant Foreman himself, however, reported no crimes at all by the military against the Indians.
Immediately after the Choctaw signed the treaty, they sent exploring parties to Oklahoma who reported favorably on their new home. They found “good land,” “streams,” “plenty of game,” and that “the timber is very good.”
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“The exploring Indians were very much pleased with the country.”
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George Catlin, who was there in the 1830s (and in other removed land as well), confirmed that it was “a large and rich tract of country.”
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A half-breed Choctaw chief named Greenwood Leflore induced many Indians to remove at once, independently from the government. Leflore sent many families west the month after the treaty was signed, but of the first 1,000 he sent, only 88 arrived, and they were nearly starved.
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The removal was commenced, but it was a bad start. Foreman outlined the problem:
The government was launched without compass or rudder into the uncharted sea of Indian removal; for the first time it was about to engage on a large scale in the removal of its aborigines from their homes in which it was bound to collect and feed them, transport them across the great Mississippi River, carry them part way by steamboats and then overland through swamps and across streams, build roads and bridges, cut banks down to the streams, and finally locate these expatriates, men and women, the aged and decrepit, little children, and babes in arms, in their new country.
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Disease became the major difficulty. Cholera infested all the steamboats coming down the Mississippi. Lieutenant Gabriel J. Rains estimated the disease killed “one-fifth of the whole number.”
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Major Francis W. Armstrong and other soldiers also contracted the disease. Armstrong said from Nashville that “he and his wife had just recovered from it [cholera], and that business in the entire state [of Tennessee] had been entirely suspended in consequence of it.”
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Smallpox, dysentery, and measles were also prevalent.
Water, either too little or too bad or too much, created serious problems. Steamboats could not move when there was low water. Because of contaminated water, many Indians suffered from dysentery.
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(Earlier, almost all American Revolutionary War soldiers got dysentery. Captain Lewis, for instance, suffered from it on the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805.)
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In June 1833, the greatest flood in the history of the Arkansas River swept away Indian houses and government corn cribs. “Nearly all the people who lived upon the river,” said Foreman, “have been ruined.”
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Captain William Armstrong reported that a swamp impeded progress. Many died from cholera.
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Cold weather also plagued the Indians. The Choctaw had left home in comparatively warm weather, were thinly clad, and only a few wore moccasins. Captain Jacob Brown wrote that many were “quite naked, and without much shelter.”
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For a week the temperature averaged only 12 degrees, there was snow, and on the tenth day the temperature was 0. For a time the river was impassable because of ice.
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Government bureaucracy aggravated almost every problem. Congress had appropriated large sums of money for government agents to buy supplies, horses, oxen, and the like for the Choctaw, but “no money was given them for months after they were in need of it.”
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Disbursing agent Lieutenant Rains wrote that the government was trying to get the Choctaw to eat pork rejected by Fort Gibson in Oklahoma because it was spoiled and unfit for consumption by soldiers. Rains scraped and re-brined 178 barrels, issued some of it, and hoped to furnish more.
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Starvation too was widespread. Joseph Kerr lived 68 miles from Vicksburg along the road over which the Choctaw passed. He wrote the secretary of war “a bitter arraignment of the inadequate provisions for caring for the Indians.”
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He added that there should be a blanket for each Indian, not just one for each family, and that they should be given shoes or moccasins or something with which to make footwear. General Gibson replied to Kerr, “The fall and winter were unparalleledly severe; the Indians poorly provided.”
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An officer led starving Choctaw to Kerr’s small field of pumpkins, and “these they ate raw with avidity.”
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An almost starving party of Indians camped in Arkansas near the Posey farm. Mr. Posey gave them permission to help themselves to his turnip patch; they did, and left absolutely nothing.
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Government agents were frustrated in dealing with those who sold supplies for the Indians. Dealers frequently conspired to force government agents to pay inflated prices. Captain Jacob Brown denounced “the whole sordid and avaricious combination against the Government.”
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Indians hostile to the Choctaw often harassed them. The Choctaw petitioned the secretary of war:
It is our wish that you would have troops stationed on the frontier immediately, as our people are settling up the Red river some distance; and unless we have troops stationed on the frontier immediately, our people will be in great danger of these hostile Indians.
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Three months later, some Choctaw seen traveling fast said they had been “run in by a band of Pawnee Indians.”
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Even witchcraft caused problems. Shawnee living on Choctaw land executed a Choctaw woman as a witch, then the Choctaw executed 2 Choctaw for the same reason. Francis Armstrong gathered the chiefs and threatened death for anyone executing a witch and the lash for someone who made a charge of witchcraft in the future.
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As might be expected, Armstrong’s words badly aggravated the situation.
Lieutenant William S. Colquhoun reported that “drunkenness prevails to an extent beyond anything ever before experienced.”
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Lieutenant Jefferson Van Home, disbursing agent for the Choctaw removal, stated that Indians of both sexes were drunk, and that one night “most of the Indians were drunk.”
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