The Wild Frontier (46 page)
Authors: William M. Osborn
If the words
race war
simply mean a war between people of different races, the war was a race war because red people were at war with white people. If those words are taken in their normal sense, however, to mean a racially motivated war, it was not, because for the most part the white people were fighting for the land of the red people and would have done so regardless of the color of the defenders’ skins, just as the defenders would have resisted regardless of the color of the attackers’ skins. No one apparently contends that this was a racially motivated conflict in the sense of one where a belligerent tries to exterminate all the opponent’s race. Waldman concluded that “the Indians’ tribal identity was stronger than racial, just as for the whites national or religious identity took precedence over shared race.”
69
Most people of Jefferson’s day did not consider that there were racial differences between whites and Indians. Sheehan observed that “divisions there were between white and Indian, but in the Jeffersonian age,
they were not racial.”
70
Jefferson himself wrote in 1785 that “I believe the Indian then to be in body and mind equal to the white man.”
71
Clark Wissler argued in
Indians of the United States
that the war was economic and political, not racial:
There was neither racial nor social incompatibility between Indian and white. On the frontier white men married Indian women, and we have seen that white captives married to Indian men were reluctant to leave them. In Europe the early tendency of scholars was to consider the Indians as belonging to the white race. The tragic struggle between the two was economic and political.
72
Alan Axelrod put it like this:
Contrary to the claims of some Indian as well as white activists in the twentieth century, it was never the federal government’s official policy to practice genocide against the Native peoples of the West—though there was no shortage of individual racists and fanatics who advocated just that.
73
The few who argue that this was a racially motivated war would no doubt be surprised to learn that 10 Indian army scouts were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by the United States government. Surely it is unlikely that a government in a racially motivated war would confer its highest medal on no fewer than 10 members of the other race in one war.
Unfortunately, as James Wilson noted, “the issue of race has become an ugly and painful running sore in some tribes” in that full-blooded Indians claim superiority over mixed bloods.
74
T
HE INDIANS
were conquered, but they continued to resist beyond heroism. A theory concerning why they resisted when all was lost can be based on a comparison between the many invasions of England and the settler invasion of America. People from Spain and France settled in England between 8000 and 3000 B
.C.
There were 8 more invasions.
75
The invaded English peoples repeatedly accepted the invaders to a large extent, and the invaders and the invaded even exchanged some of their culture.
In each of these invasions, the law of the invader governed when it conflicted with the law of the conquered. This is a fundamental principle
of international law and should come as no surprise when given any thought at all. Some Indian advocates contend that Indian rights before the settler invasion should prevail after the invasion. They obviously did not, no more than our rights would have survived had we been invaded by the Germans or the Japanese in World War II or by the Russians or the Chinese in the Cold War.
CHAPTER 10
Government Indian Policy
I
nitially every English colony was responsible for dealing with the Indians as it saw fit.
1
The policy of the Jamestown colony could be and was different from that of the Plymouth colony. After the Powhatan attack of 1622, Governor Wyatt urged extermination,
2
but that was not true of Plymouth. Jamestown set up the first Indian reservations in 1653. A reservation was established for the Pamunkey Indians and the Chickahominy. Justices of the peace were required to remove whites who had settled in these reservations. The Massachusetts Bay Colony also created reservations for “praying Indians.” These reservations were not available to hostile Indians who were not controlled by the colonists.
3
Finally, in 1754, in order to have a consistent Indian policy, the Albany Congress brought together Indian affairs under the royal government.
4
The Continental Congress followed the British system of dealing with the Indians and in 1778 made its first treaty with the Delaware.
5
Esarey rather forthrightly concluded that after the Revolution, “by the laws of warfare they [the Indians] had forfeited all their rights to their land and almost to their lives; yet Congress had no idea of punishing them.”
6
Indians in the territory allotted to the states by the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolution, were regarded, said Alan Axelrod, as “a conquered people without civil rights,” yet the federal government did attempt
“to regulate white settlement … and did offer to buy—albeit cheaply—territory rather than simply appropriate it.”
7
The government of the United States of America began in 1789. Once American Indian policy had been determined, the administration of that policy created many difficulties. One of the first arose out of the fact that territorial governors were also superintendents of Indian affairs for their territories. The governor reported to the secretary of state in his capacity as governor, but to the secretary of war in his capacity as superintendent of Indian affairs. Not only did this cause confusion, but in addition there were jurisdictional disputes between civilians and the military when it was necessary to bring in the army. This remained a frequent problem until almost the 1890s.
8
The settlers themselves created a serious and continuing problem. The government was close to bankruptcy. Selling the western lands was the only way of raising revenue quickly. Bil Gilbert said,
In this regard the Indians presented obvious difficulties, but the behavior of frontier whites was almost as vexing to federal officials. From their standpoint the thousands of unruly pioneers who took choice properties simply by squatting on them were stealing government property in such quantities as to threaten the solvency and therefore existence of the nation.
9
The government’s response was the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which federalized most of the land in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota, wiped out previous colonial and state claims to the land, and set up a form of government. Land was sold to the Ohio Company for 9 cents an acre and to other land companies for even less. For the next several years federal troops tried to keep squatting settlers off the unsold land, without much success.
10
Despite its need for revenue, the government was not too anxious for the frontier to move west rapidly because the price of the land could be kept higher if there was not too much of it available. Peace commissioner Timothy Pickering instructed General Wayne that in treating with the Indians at the conclusion of Little Turtle’s War, “peace and not increase of territory has been the object of this expensive War.”
11
The Louisiana Purchase was made in 1803. The land east of the Mississippi filled up, and by 1830 the frontier was west of the Mississippi to about 100 miles north of St. Louis. It then crossed northern Illinois, northern Indiana, and southern Michigan.
12
There was more room for the settlers, but there were new Indians to resist them.
Government policy from the Washington administration to the Jackson administration, said Bernard W. Sheehan, “persisted in trying to civilize the tribes,” along with efforts to keep the settlers off Indian land. Secretary of War Knox instructed that the Indians should be treated with “entire justice and humanity.” His successor, William H. Crawford, announced that the appearance of force or menace should be avoided and the government should “lean in favor of the Indians.”
13
Continued attempts to protect the Indians from the settlers failed. The Trade and Intercourse Act, which largely restated earlier laws, provided that anyone going onto Indian land without a passport was subject to fine and imprisonment, anyone committing a crime against the person or property of a friendly Indian should also be subject to fine and imprisonment, and anyone murdering a peaceful Indian should suffer death.
14
By the time Jefferson became president, however, it was evident that the frontier could not be controlled.
15
In 1806, a new law created a superintendent of Indian trade, but as Logan Esarey commented, he was in the main powerless:
The government factors were forbidden to sell whiskey to the natives, but unprincipled traders, most of them criminal outcasts from the east, swarmed into the Indian country, furnishing liquor to all who had anything to give in return, denouncing the government agents as robbers, and inciting the Indians to all kinds of deeds of violence on one another or to depredations on the settlers.
16
Government Indian policy was not only inadequate but conflicting from the military point of view. Wilcomb E. Washburn reported that army generals “complained that the reservations were often regarded as sanctuaries from which Indians could issue forth to raid the settlements and to which they could return to avoid the risk of retaliation by settlers or soldiers.”
17
For example, the Kiowa raided from the Kiowa-Comanche Reservation, then after the raid returned to the reservation (where they drew government rations), knowing the army could not follow them there.
18
There was also disagreement between the War Department and the Interior Department. The
Times
said, “The Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Interior are constantly working at cross purposes, so far as the Indians are concerned.”
19
This conflict was described by Edward Lazarus “as a heated and frequently vicious battle between the Departments of War and Interior for control of Indian policy. During the next decade, each would frustrate the other’s policies and trade endless accusations and recriminations. “
20
When the eastern Indians were first taken west of the Mississippi under the Indian Removal Act in the 1830s and 1840s, they were allowed to go pretty much where they wanted to hunt or to farm. In the 1860s, however, the Indian Peace Commission negotiated separate treaties with each removed tribe. Those treaties required each to settle on a reservation, normally the land on which the tribe hunted or had already settled.
21
The system made all those Indians wards of the government. They no longer had to provide for their own food, clothing, and shelter. The leaders of the tribes were bypassed and made ineffective. The tribes were not allowed to become economically independent, and there was a forced breakdown of tribal traditions and religious practices.
22
Reservations got the Indians off the lands the settlers wanted.
23
The more the Indians were insulated, the less likely they were to raid the settlers.
The reservations even had some advantages for the Indians. In addition to furnishing them food, clothing, and shelter, Wilcomb E. Washburn observed that
whatever else the reservation system may represent it does mark an acceptance of the Indians’ right to live and to retain land and resources for their support. While such a concession may not seem exceptional, on balance it ran against a persistent current of thought—not solely in America—that cared little whether aborigines disappeared from the face of the earth.
24
Nevertheless, as Robert M. Utley and Washburn wrote in
Indian Wars
, “every big Indian conflict since 1870 had been essentially a war not of concentration but of rebellion—of Indians rebelling against reservations they had already accepted in theory if not in fact.”
25
A week before his inauguration in 1869, President-elect Grant said he planned a fresh and fair Indian policy. The general acclaim for that policy drowned out his statement that he would also have a sharp and severe war policy toward the Indians. The Indians were dissatisfied with reservation life, however, and by 1874 there were hostilities approaching a full-scale war on the southern Plains. The army had been stopping at the boundaries of the reservations, but that year Sheridan was authorized to make war on hostile Indians wherever they were found.
26
The Peace Policy collapsed. Inconsistency of policy characterized government-Indian relations for many years. And it was “at its worst,” Alan Axelrod noted, “during the period of the Peace Policy as military and civilian authorities fitfully vied for control.”
27
——
T
HE GENERAL
Allotment Act, or Dawes Act, of
1887
marked a major change in American policy. By that time most religious denominations had developed some experience dealing with Indians and had some ideas about policy. Their thoughts were the substance of the Dawes Act, which made the following provisions:
(1)
Each Indian head of family would be given
160
acres of reservation land as his own,
80
acres for each single person over
18
, and
80
acres for each orphan under
18; (2)
the land would be held in trust by the secretary of the interior for
25
years;
(3)
any land left over after these “allotments” were made could be sold (if the tribe and the government agreed on a price) to the government for resale to “actual and bona fide settlers”; and
(4)
every Indian who had been allotted land or who had resided apart from any allotted land was declared to be a citizen of the United States if the Indian “had adopted the habits of civilized life.” Some of the land of
11
tribes was exempted.
28
The act had the effect of substantially decreasing the amount of land owned by the Indians. They owned over
136,000,000
acres in
1887
when the act became effective. By
1934
, when the allotment policy was finally abandoned, the Indians owned less than
50,000,000
acres, a decrease of more than
63
percent.
29
