A Century of Dishonor/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
THE DELAWARES.
When Hendrik Hudson anchored his ship, the Half Moon, off New York Island in 1609, the Delawares stood in great numbers on the shore to receive him, exclaiming, in their innocence, “Behold! the gods have come to visit us!”
More than a hundred years later, the traditions of this event were still current in the tribe. The aged Moravian missionary, Heckewelder, writing in 1818, says:
“I at one time, in April, 1787, was astonished when I heard one of their orators, a great chief of the Delawares, Pachgantschilias by name, go over this ground, recapitulating the most extraordinary events which had before happened, and concluding in these words: ‘I admit that there are good white men, but they bear no proportion to the bad; the bad must be the strongest, for they rule. They do what they please. They enslave those who are not of their color, although created by the same Great Spirit who created them. ‘They would make slaves of us if they could; but as they cannot do it, they kill us. There is no faith to be placed in their words. They are not like the Indians, who are only enemies while at war, and are friends in peace. They will say to an Indian, “My friend; my brother!” They will take him by the hand, and, at the same moment, destroy him. And so you’ (he was addressing himself to the Christian Indians at Gnadenhütten, Pennsylvania) ‘will also be treated by them before long. Remember that this day I have warned you to beware of such friends as these. I know the Long-knives. They are not to be trusted.’ ”
The original name of the Delawares was Lenni Lenape, or “original people.” They were also called by the Western tribes Wapenachki, “people at the rising of the sun.” When the name “Delawares” was given to them by the whites, they at first resented it; but being told that they, and also one of their rivers, were thus named after a great English brave—Lord De la Warre—they were much pleased, and willingly took the name. Their lands stretched from the Hudson River to the Potomac. They were a noble-spirited but gentle people; much under the control of the arrogant and all-powerful Iroquois, who had put upon them the degradation of being called “women,” and being forced to make war or give up land at the pleasure of their masters.
During William Penn's humane administration of the affairs of Pennsylvania, the Delawares were his most devoted friends. They called him Mignon, or Elder Brother.
“From his first arrival in their country,” says Heckewelder, “a friendship was formed between them, which was to last as long as the sun should shine, and the rivers flow with water. That friendship would undoubtedly have continued to the end of time, had their good brother always remained among them.”
In the French and Indian war of 1755 many of them fought on the side of the French against the English; and in the beginning of our Revolutionary war the majority of them sided with the English against us.
Most of the memorable Indian massacres which happened during this period were the result of either French or English influence. Neither nation was high-minded enough to scorn availing herself of savage allies to do bloody work which she would not have dared to risk national reputation by doing herself. This fact is too much overlooked in the habitual estimates of the barbarous ferocity of the Indian character as shown by those early massacres.[1]
The United States’ first treaty with the Delawares was made in 1778, at Fort Pitt. The parties to it were said to be “the United States and the Delaware Nation.” It stipulates that there shall be peace, and that the troops of the United States may pass “through the country of the Delaware Nation,” upon paying the full value of any supplies they may use. It further says that, “Whereas the enemies of the United States have endeavored by every artifice to possess the Indians with an opinion that it is our design to extirpate them, and take possession of their country; to obviate such false suggestions, the United States guarantee to said nation of Delawares, and their heirs, all their territorial rights in the fullest and most ample manner as bounded by former treaties.”
The treaty also provides that, “should it for the future be found conducive for the mutual interest of both parties to invite any other tribes who have been friends to the interests of the United States to join the present confederation and form a State, whereof the Delaware Nation shall be the head,” it shall be done; and the Delawares shall be entitled to send a representative to Congress.[2]
The Delawares agreed to send all the warriors they could spare to fight for us, and that there should be peace and perpetual friendship.
At this time the rest of the Ohio tribes, most of the New York tribes, and a large part of the Delawares were in arms on the British side. When the war of the Revolution was concluded, they were all foreed to make peace as best they could with us; and in our first treaty we provided for the reinstating in the Delaware Nation of the chiefs and headmen who had made that old alliance with us; they having lost caste in their tribe for having fought on our side.
“It is agreed,” says the final Article of the treaty, “that the Delaware chiefs, Kelelamand, or Lieut.-colonel Henry, Henque Pushees, or the Big Cat, and Wicocalind, or Captain White Eyes, who took up the hatchet for the United States, and their families, shall be received into the Delaware Nation in the same situation and rank as before the war, and enjoy their due portions of the lands given to the Wyandotte and Delaware nations in this treaty, as fully as if they had not taken part with America, or as any other person or persons in the said nations.”
This Captain White Eyes had adhered to our cause in spite of great opposition from the hostile part of the tribe. At one time he was threatened with a violent death if he should dare to say one word for the American cause; but by spirited harangues he succeeded in keeping the enthusiasm of his own party centred around himself, and finally carrying them over to the side of the United States. Some of his speeches are on record, and are worthy to be remembered:
“If you will go out in this war,” he said to them at one time, when the band were inclined to join the British, “you shall not go without me. I have taken peace measures, it is true, with the view of saving my tribe from destruction; but if you think me in the wrong, if you give more credit to runaway vagabonds than to your own friends—to a man, to a warrior, to a Delaware—if you insist on fighting the Americans—go! and I will go with you. And I will not go like the bear-hunter, who sets his dogs on the animal to be beaten about with his paws, while he keeps himself at a safe distance. No; I will lead you on; I will place myself in the front; I will fall with the first of you! You can do as yon choose; but as for me, I will not survive my nation. I will not live to bewail the miserable destruction of a brave people, who deserved, as you do, a better fate.”
Were there many speeches made by commanders to their troops in those revolutionary days with which these words do not compare favorably?
This treaty, by which our faithful ally, Wicocalind, was reinstated in his tribal yank, was made at Fort M‘Intosh in 1785. The Wyandottes, Chippewas, and Ottawas, as well as the Delawares, joined in it. They acknowledged themselves and all their tribes to be “under the protection of the United States, and of no other sovereign whatsoever.” The United States Government reserved “the post of Detroit” and an outlying district around it; also, the post at Michilimackinac, with a surrounding district of twelve miles square, and some other reserves for trading-posts.
The Indians' lands were comprised within lines partly indicated by the Cuyahoga, Big Miami, and Ohio rivers and their branches; it fronted on Lake Erie; and if “any citizen of the United States,” or “any other person not an Indian,” attempted to settle on any of the lands allotted to the Delaware and Wyandotte nations in this treaty”—the fifth Article of the treaty said—“the Indians may punish him as they please.”
Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, all are largely made up of the lands which were by this first treaty given to the Indians.
Five years later, by another treaty at Fort Harmar, the provisions of this treaty were reiterated, the boundaries somewhat changed and more accurately defined. The privilege of hunting on all the lands reserved to the United States was promised to the Indians “without hinderance or molestation, so long as they behaved themselves peaceably;” and “that nothing may interrupt the peace and harmony now established between the United States and the aforesaid nations,” it was promised in one of the articles that white men committing offences or murders on Indians should be punished in the same way as Indians committing such offences.
The year before this treaty Congress had resolved that “the sum of $20,000, in addition to the $14,000 already appropriated, be appropriated for defraying the expenses of the treaties which have been ordered, or which may be ordered to be held, in the present year, with the several Indian tribes in the Northern Department; and for extinguishing the Indian claims, the whole of the said $20,000, together with $6000 of the said $14,000, to be applied solely to the purpose of extinguishing Indian claims to the lands they have already ceded to the United States by obtaining regular conveyances for the same, and for extending a purchase beyond the limits hitherto fixed by treaty.”
Here is one of the earliest records of the principle and method on which the United States Government first began its dealings with Indians. “Regular conveyances,” “extinguishing claims” by “extending purchase.” These are all the strictest of legal terms, and admit of no double interpretations.
The Indians had been much dissatisfied ever since the first treaties were made. They claimed that they had been made by a few only, representing a part of the tribe; and, in 1786, they had held a great council on the banks of the Detroit River, and sent a message to Congress, of which the following extracts will show the spirit.
They said: “It is now more than three years since peace was made between the King of Great Britain and you; but we, the Indians, were disappointed, finding ourselves not included in that peace according to our expectations, for we thought that its conclusion would have promoted a friendship between the United States and the Indians, and that we might enjoy that happiness that formerly subsisted between us and our Elder Brethren. We have received two very agreeable messages from the Thirteen United States. We also received a message from the king, whose war we were engaged in, desiring us to remain quiet, which we accordingly complied with. During this time of tranquillity we were deliberating the best method we could to form a lasting reconciliation with the Thirteen United States. * * * We are still of the same opinion as to the means which may tend to reconcile us to each other; and we are sorry to find, although we had the best thoughts in our minds during the before-mentioned period, mischief has nevertheless happened between you and us. We are still anxious of putting our plan of accommodation into execution, and we shall briefly inform you of the means that seem most probable to us of effecting a firm and lasting peace and reconciliation, the first step toward which should, in our opinion, be that all treaties carried on with the United States on our parts should be with the general will of the whole confederacy, and carried on in the most open manner, without any restraint on either side; and especially as landed matters are often the subject of our councils with you—a matter of the greatest importance and of general concern to us—in this case we hold it indisputably necessary that any cession of our lands should be made in the most public manner, and by the united voice of the confederacy, holding all partial treaties as void and of no effect. * * * We say, let us meet half-way, and let us pursue such steps as become upright and honest men. We beg that you will prevent your surveyors and other people from coming upon our side of the Ohio River.”
These are touching words, when we remember that only the year before the United States had expressly told these Indians that if any white citizens attempted to settle on their lands they might “punish them as they pleased.”
“We have told you before we wished to pursue just steps, and we are determined they shall appear just and reasonable in the eyes of the world. This is the determination of all the chiefs of our confederacy now assembled here, notwithstanding the accidents that have happened in our villages, even when in council, where several innocent chiefs were killed when absolutely engaged in promoting a peace with you, the Thirteen United States.”
The next year the President instructed the governor of the territory northwest of the Ohio to “examine carefully into the real temper of the Indian tribes” in his department, and says: “The treaties which have been made may be examined, but must not be departed from, unless a change of boundary beneficial to the United States can be obtained.” He says also: “You will not neglect any opportunity that may offer of extinguishing the Indian rights to the westward, as far as the Mississippi.”
Beyond that river even the wildest dream of greed did not at that time look.
The President adds, moreover: “You may stipulate that any white persons going over the said boundaries without a license from the proper officers of the United States may be treated in such manner as the Indians may see fit.”
I have not yet seen, in any accounts of the Indian hostilities on the North-western frontier during this period, any reference to those repeated permissions given by the United States to the Indians, to defend their lands as they saw fit. Probably the greater number of the pioneer settlers were as ignorant of these provisions in Indian treaties as are the greater number of American citizens to-day, who are honestly unaware—and being unaware, are therefore incredulous—that the Indians had either provocation or right to kill intruders on their lands.
At this time separate treaties were made with the Six Nations, and the governor says that these treaties were made separately because of the jealousy and hostility existing between them and the Delawares, Wyandottes, etc., which he is “not willing to lessen,” because it weakens their power. “Indeed,” he frankly adds, “it would not be very difficult, if circumstances required it, to set them at deadly variance.”
Thus early in our history was the ingenious plan evolved of first maddening the Indians into war, and then falling upon them with exterminating punishment. The gentleman who has left on the official records of his country his claim to the first suggestion and recommendation of this method is “Arthur St. Clair, governor of the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio River, and commissioner plenipotentiary of the United States of America for removing all causes of controversy, regulating trade, and settling boundaries with the Indian nations in the Northern Department.”
Under all these conditions, it is not a matter of wonder that the frontier was a scene of perpetual devastation and bloodshed; and that, year by year, there grew stronger in the minds of the whites a terror and hatred of Indians; and in the minds of the Indians a stronger and stronger distrust and hatred of the whites.
The Delawares were, through the earlier part of these troubled times, friendly. In 1791 we find the Secretary of War recommending the commissioners sent to treat with the hostile Miamis and Wabash Indians to stop by the way with the friendly Delawares, and take some of their leading chiefs with them as allies. He says, “these tribes are our friends,” and, as far as is known, “the treaties have been well observed by them.”
But in 1792 we find them mentioned among the hostile tribes to whom was sent a message from the United States Government, containing the following extraordinary paragraphs:
“Brethren: The President of the United States entertains the opinion that the war which exists is an error and mistake on your parts. That you believe the United States want to deprive you of your lands, and drive you out of the country. Be assured that this is not so; on the contrary, that we should be greatly gratified with the opportunity of imparting to you all the blessings of civilized life; of teaching you to cultivate the earth, and raise corn; to raise oxen, sheep, and other domestic animals; to build comfortable houses; and to educate your children so as ever to dwell upon the land.
“Consult, therefore, upon the great object of peace; call in your parties, and enjoin a cessation of all further depredations; and as many of the principal chiefs as shall choose repair to Philadelphia, the seat of the Great Government, and there make a peace founded on the principles of justice and humanity. Remember that no additional lands will be required of you, or any other tribe, to those that have been ceded by former treaties.”
It was in this same year, also, that General Putnam said to them, in a speech at Post Vincennes: “The United States don’t mean to wrong you out of your lands. They don’t want to take away your lands by force. They want to do you justice.” And the venerable missionary, Heckewelder, who had journeyed all the way from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to try to help bring about peace, said to them, “The great chief who has spoken to you is a good man. He loves you, and will always speak the truth to you. I wish you to listen to his words, and do as he desires you.”
In 1793 a great council was held, to which came the chiefs and headmen of the Delawares, and of twelve other tribes, to meet commissioners of the United States, for one last effort to settle the vexed boundary question. The records of this couceil are profoundly touching. The Indians reiterated over and over the provisions of the old treaties which had established the Ohio River as one of their boundaries. Their words were not the words of ignorant barbarians, clumsily and doggedly holding to a point; they were the words of clear-headed, statesman-like rulers, insisting on the rights of their nations, As the days went on, and it became more and more clear that the United States commissioners would not agree to the establishment of the boundary for which the Indians contended, the speeches of the chiefs grow sadder and sadder. Finally, in desperation, as a last hope, they propose to the commissioners that all the money which the United States offers to pay to them for their lands shall be given to the white settlers to induce them to move away. They say:
“Money to us is of no value, and to most of us unknown; and as no consideration whatever can induce us to sell the lands on which we get sustenance for our women and children, we hope we may be allowed to point out a mode by which your settlers may be easily removed, and peace thereby obtained.
“We know that these settlers are poor, or they would never have ventured to live in a country which has been in continual trouble ever since they crossed the Ohio. Divide, therefore, this large sum of money which you have offered us among these people; give to each, also, a proportion of what you say you would give to us annually, over and above this very large sum of money, and we are persuaded they would most readily accept of it in lien of the lands you sold them. If you add, also, the great sums you must expend in raising and paying armies with a view to force us to yield you our country, you will certainly have more than sufficient for the purpose of repaying these settlers for all their labor and their improvements.
“You have talked to us about concessions. It appears strange that you should expect any from us, who have only been defending our just rights against your invasions. We want peace. Restore to us our country, and we shall be enemies no longer.
“ * * * We desire you to consider, brothers, that our only demand is the peaceable possession of a small part of our once great country. Look back and review the lands from whence we have been driven to this spot. We can retreat no farther, because the country behind hardly affords food for its present inhabitants, and we have therefore resolved to leave our bones in this small space to which we are now confined.”
The commissioners replied that to make the Ohio River the boundary was now impossible; that they sincerely regretted that peace could not be made; but, “knowing the upright and liberal views of the United States,” they trust that “impartial judges will not attribute the continuance of the war to them.”
Notice was sent to the governor that the Indians “refused to make peace;” and General Anthony Wayne, a few weeks later, wrote to the Secretary of War, “The safety of the Western frontiers, the reputation of the legion, the dignity and interest of the nation—all forbid a retrograde manœuvre, or giving up one inch of ground we now possess, till the enemy are compelled to sue for peace.”
The history of the campaigns that followed is to be found in many volumes treating of the pioneer life of Ohio and other North-western States. One letter of General Wayne's to the Secretary of War, in August, 1794, contains a paragraph which is interesting, as showing the habits and method of life of the people whom we at this time, by force of arms, drove out from their homes—homes which we had only a few years before solemnly guaranteed to them, even giving them permission to punish any white intruders there as they saw fit. By a feint of approaching Grand Glaize through the Miami villages, General Wayne surprised the settlement, and the Indians, being warned by a deserter, had barely time to flee for their lives. What General Wayne had intended to do may be inferred from this sentence in his letter: “I have good grounds to conclude that the defection of this villain prevented the enemy from receiving a fatal blow at this place when least expected.”
However, he consoles himself by the fact that he has “gained possession of the grand emporium of the hostile Indians of the West without loss of blood. The very extensive and highly cultivated fields and gardens show the work of many hands. The margins of those beautiful rivers—the Miamis, of the Lake, and Au Glaize—appear like one continued village for a number of miles, both above and below this place; nor have I ever before beheld such immense fields of corn in any part of America, from Canada to Florida.”
All these villages were burnt, and all these cornfields destroyed; the Indians were followed up and defeated in a sharp fight. The British agents did their best to keep them hostile, and no inconsiderable aid was furnished to them from Canada. But after a winter of suffering and hunger, and great vacillations of purpose, they finally decided to yield to the inevitable, and in the summer of 1795 they are to be found once more assembled in council, for the purpose of making a treaty; once more to be told by the representatives of the United States Government that “the heart of General Washington, the Great Chief of America, wishes for nothing so much as peace and brotherly love;” that “such is the justice and liberality of the United States,” that they will now a third time pay for lands; and that they are “acting the part of a tender father to them and their children in thus providing for them not only at present, but forever.”
Eleven hundred and thirty Indians (eleven tribes, besides the Delawares, being represented) were parties to this treaty. By this treaty nearly two-thirds of the present State of Ohio were ceded to the United States; and, in consideration of these “cessions and relinquishments, and to manifest the liberality of the United States as the great means of rendering this peace strong and perpetual,” the United States relinquished all claims to all other Indian lands northward of the River Ohio, eastward of the Mississippi, and westward and southward of the Great Lakes and the waters uniting them, according to the boundary line agreed upon by the United States and the King of Great Britain, in the treaty of peace made between them in the year 1783,” with the exception of four tracts of land. But it was stated to the Indians that these reservations were not made “to annoy or impose the smallest degree of restraint on them in the quiet enjoyment and full possession of their lands,” but simply to “connect the settlements of the people of the United States,” and “to prove convenient and advantageous to the different tribes of Indians residing and hunting in their vicinity.”
The fifth Article of the treaty is: “To prevent any misunderstanding about the Indian lands now relinquished by the United States, it is explicitly declared that the meaning of that relinquishment is this: that the Indian tribes who have a right to those lands are quietly to enjoy them—hunting, planting, and dwelling thereon so long as they please without any molestation from the United States; but when those tribes, or any of them, shall be disposed to sell their lands, or any part of them, they are to be sold only to the United States; and until such sale the United States will protect all the said Indian tribes in the quiet enjoyment of their lands against all citizens of the United States, and against all other white persons who intrude on the same.”
The sixth Article reiterates the old pledge, proved by the last three years to be so worthless—that, “If any citizen of the United States, or any other white person or persons, shall presume to settle upon the lands now relinquished by the United States, such citizen or other person shall be out of the protection of the United States; and the Indian tribe on whose land the settlement may be made may drive off the settler, or punish him in such manner as they shall think fit.”
The seventh Article gives the Indians the liberty “to hunt within the territory and lands which they have now ceded to the United States, without hinderance or molestation, so long as they demean themselves peaceably.”
The United States agreed to pay to the Indians twenty thousand dollars’ worth of goods at once; and “henceforward, every year, forever, useful goods to the value of nine thousand five hundred dollars.” Peace was declared to be “established” and “perpetual.”
General Wayne told the Indians that they might believe him, for he had never, “in a public capacity, told a lie;” and one of the Indians said, with much more dignity, “The Great Spirit above hears us, and I trust we shall not endeavor to deceive each other.”
In 1813, by a treaty at Vincennes, the bounds of the reservation of the Post of St. Vincennes were defined, and the Indians, “as a mark of their regard and attachment to the United States, relinquished to the United States the great salt spring on the Saline Creek.”
In less than a year we made still another treaty with them for the extinguishment of their title to a tract of land between the Ohio and the Wabash rivers (which they sold to us for a ten years’ annuity of three hundred dollars, which was to be “exclusively appropriated to ameliorating their condition and promoting their civilization”); and in one year more still another treaty, in which a still farther cession of land was made for a permanent annuity of one thousand dollars.
Tn August of this year General Harrison writes to the Secretary of War that there are great dissensions between the Delawares and Miamis in regard to some of the ceded lands, the Miamis claiming that they had never consented to give them up. General Harrison observes the most exact neutrality in this matter, but says, “A knowledge of the value of land is fast gaining ground among the Indians,” and negotiations are becoming in consequence much more difficult. In the course of this controversy, “one of the chiefs has said that he knew a great part of the land was worth six dollars an acre.”
It is only ten years since one of the chiefs of these same tribes had said, “Money is to us of no value.” However, they must be yet very far from having reached any true estimate of real values, as General Harrison adds: “From the best calculation I have been able to make, the tract now ceded contains at east two millions of acres, and embraces some of the finest lands in the Western country.”
Cheap at one thousand dollars a year!—even with the negro man thrown in, which General Harrison tells the Secretary he has ordered Captain Wells to purchase, and present to the chief, The Turtle, and to draw on the United States Treasury for the amount paid for him.
Four years later (1809) General Harrison is instructed by the President “to take advantage of the most favorable moment for extinguishing the Indian title to the lands lying east of the Wabash, and adjoining south;” and the title was extinguished by the treaty of Fort Wayne—a little more moncy paid, and a great deal of land given up.
In 1814 we made a treaty, simply of peace and friendship, with the Delawares and several other tribes: they agreeing to fight faithfully on our side against the English, and we agreeing to “confirm and establish all the bonndaries” as they had existed before the war.
In 1817 it was deemed advisable to make an effort to “extinguish the Indian title to all the lands claimed by them within the limits of the State of Ohio. Two commissioners were appointed, with great discretionary powers; and a treaty was concluded early in the autumn, by which there was ceded to the United States nearly all the land to which the Indians had claim in Ohio, a part of Indiana, and a part of Michigan. This treaty was said by the Secretary of War to be “the most important of any hitherto made with the Indians,” “The extent of the cession far exceeded” his most sanguine expectations, and he had the honesty to admit that “there can be no real or well-founded objection to the amount of the compensation given for it, except that it is not an adequate one.”
The commissioners who negotiated the treaty were apprehensive that they would be accused of having made too liberal terms with the Indians, and in their report to the department they enumerate apologetically the reasons which made it impossible for them to get the land cheaper. Mr. Cass says of the terms: “Under any circumstances, they will fall infinitely short of the pecuniary and political value of the country obtained.”
The Indians, parties to this treaty, surrendered by it almost the last of their hunting-grounds, and would soon be driven to depending wholly upon the cultivation of the soil.
In 1818 the Delawares again ceded land to the United States—ceded all to which they laid claim in the State of Indiana—and the United States promised to provide for them “a country to reside in on the west side of the Mississippi,” and “to guarantee to them the peaceable possession” of the same. They were to have four thousand dollars a year in addition to all the sums promised by previous treaties, and they were to be allowed to remain three years longer by sufferance in their present homes. The Government also agreed to pay them for their improvements on their lands, to give them a hundred and twenty horses, and a “sufficient number of pirogues to aid in transporting them to the west side of the Mississippi;” also provisions for the journey.
In 1829 a supplementary Article was added to this treaty. The United States Government began to show traces of compunction and pity. The Article says, “Whereas the Delaware Nation are now willing to remove,” it is agreed upon that the country in the fork of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, selected for their home, “shall be conveyed and forever secured by the United States to the said Delaware Nation, as their permanent residence; and the United States hereby pledges the faith of the Government to guarantee to the said Delaware Nation, forever, the quiet and peaceable and undisturbed enjoyment of the same against the claims and assaults of all and every other people whatever.”
An additional permanent annuity of one thousand dollars is promised; forty horses, “and the use of six wagons and ox-teams to assist in removing heavy articles,” provisions for the journey, and one year’s subsistence after they reach their new home; also the erection of a grist and saw mill within two years.
In 1833 the Secretary of War congratulated the country on the fact that “the country north of the Ohio, east of the Mississippi, inclading the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the Territory of Michigan as far as the Fox and Wisconsin rivers,” has been practically “cleared of the embarrassments of Indian relations,” as there are not more than five thousand Indians, all told, left in this whole region.
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the same year says that it is “grateful to notice” how much the Indians’ condition is “ameliorated under the policy of removal.” He says that they, “protected by the strong arm of the Government, and dwelling on lands distinctly and permanently established as their own, enjoying a delightful climate and a fertile soil, turn their attention to the cultivation of the earth, and abandon the chase for the surer supply of domestic animals.”
This commissioner apparently does not remember, perhaps never read, the records of the great fields of corn which the Delawares had on the Miami River in 1795, and how they returned twice that summer and replanted them, after General Wayne had cut down and burnt the young crops. They had “turned their attention to the cultivation of the soil” forty years ago, and that was what came of it. We shall see how much better worth while it may be for them to plant corn in their new “permanent home,” than it was in their last one.
The printed records of Indian Affairs for the first forty years of this century are meagre and unsatisfactory. Had the practice prevailed then, as at the present time, of printing full annual reports for the different tribes, it would be possible to know much which is now forever locked up in the traditions and the memories of the Indians themselves. For ten years after the making of this last quoted treaty, there is little official mention of the Delawares by name, beyond the mention in the fiscal reports of the sums paid to them as annuities and for education. In 1835 the commissioner says, “The agent for the Delawares and Shawnees states that he was shown cloth that was spun and wove, and shirts and other clothing made by the Indian girls.”
In 1838 the Delawares are reported as cultivating one thousand five hundred acres of land in grain and vegetables, and raising a great many hogs, cattle, and horses. “They are a brave, enterprising people,” and “at peace with all neighboring Indians.”
Parties of them frequently make excursions into the Rocky Mountains after beaver, and return with a rich reward, sometimes as munch as one thousand dollars to an individual; but their money is soon spent, chiefly for ardent spirits. The agent says: “The only hinderance now in the way of the Delawares, Shawnees, and Kickapoos is ardent spirits. * * * These whiskey traffickers, who seem void of all conscience, rob and murder many of these Indians; I say rob—they will get them drunk, and then take their horses, guns, or blankets off their backs, regardless of how quick they may freeze to death; I say they murder—if not directly, indirectly, they furnish the weapon—they make them drunk, and, when drunk, they kill their fellow-beings. Some freeze to death when drunk; several drunken Indians have been drowned in the Missouri River this season, aiming to cross when drunk.”
In 1844 the chiefs of the Delawares met together, and prepared a remarkable document, which was forwarded to the Secretary of War. In this paper they requested that all the school funds to which they were entitled by treaty provisions might be paid to the Indian Manual Labor School near the Fort Leavenworth Agency; might be pledged to that school for ten years to come, and that they might therefor be guaranteed the education and subsistence of Delaware children, not exceeding fifty at any one time. It came out, in course of this negotiation, that two thousand dollars were due them on arrearages of their school fund.
The Secretary acceded to this request, but imposed five conditions upon it, of which the fourth seems worth chronicling, as an indication of the helplessness of the Delawares in the matter of the disposition of their own money: “The interest to be paid annually when it may suit the Treasury; and this ratification to be subject to withdrawal, and the agreement itself to rescission, and to be annulled at the pleasure of the Department.”
In 1845 the Delawares “raise a sufficiency to subsist on. The women do a large portion of the work on the farms. In many families, however, the women do not work on the farm. They raise corn, pumpkins, beans, pease, cabbages, potatoes, and many kinds of garden vegetables. Some few raise wheat and oats. They have lately had built, out of their own means, a good saw and grist mill, with two run of stones, one for corn and the other for wheat. There is a constant stream, called the Stranger, in their country that affords excellent water privileges. On this stream their mills are built.”
At this time they are waiting with much anxiety to see if their “Great Father” will punish the Sioux, who have at two different times attacked them, and murdered in all some thirty men. “They say they do not wish to offend and disobey their Great Father, and before they attempt to revenge themselves they will wait and see if their Great Father will compel the Sioux to make reparation.”
In 1848 “almost every family is well supplied with farming-stock; and they have raised abundance of corn, some wheat, potatoes, oats, and garden vegetables; have made butter and cheese; and raised fruit, etc., etc. They dwell in good log-cabins, and some have extremely neat houses, well furnished. They have their outhouses, stables, well-fenced lots, and some have good barns.” There are seventy scholars in one school alone that are taught by the Friends; and the teacher reports: “It is truly astonishing to see the rapidity with which they acquire knowledge. The boys work on the farm part of the time, and soon learn how to do what they are set at. The girls spend a part of their time in doing housework, sewing, etc. Many of them do the sewing of their own, and some of the clothes of the other children.”
In 1853 the Delawares are recorded as being “among the most remarkable of our colonized tribes, By their intrepidity and varied enterprise they are distinguished in a high degree. Besides being industrious farmers and herdsmen, they hunt and trade all over the interior of the continent, carrying their traffic beyond the Great Salt Lake, and exposing themselves to a thousand perils.”
Their agent gives, in his report for this year, a graphic account of an incident such as has only too often occurred on our frontier. “A small party of Delawares, consisting of a man, his squaw, and a lad about eighteen years of age, recently returning from the mountains, with the avails and profits of a successful hunt and traffic, after they had commenced their journey homeward the second day the man sickened and died. Before he died he directed his squaw and the young man to hasten home with their horses and mules—thirteen in number—their money (four hundred and forty-five dollars), besides many other articles of value. After a few days’ travel, near some of the forts on the Arkansas, they were overtaken by four white men, deserters from the United States Army—three on foot, and one riding a mule. The squaw and young man loaned each of the men on foot a horse or mule to ride, and furnished them with provisions. They all travelled on friendly together for some six or seven days, till they arrived at Cottonwood Creek, thirty-five or forty miles west of Council Grove. One evening, while resting, the young man was killed by these men; and the squaw was also supposed by these wretches to be dead, having had her throat cut badly and her head fractured. The two were then dragged off in the grass, supposed to be dead. The men gathered the mules, horses, money, guns, blankets—all that they supposed of value—and made for Jackson County, Missouri, where they disposed of the stock as best they could, and three of them took steamer for St. Louis. The squaw, on the day after, resuscitated; and soon discovering that her companion had been killed, and everything they possessed had disappeared, she, in her feeble and dangerous condition, took the road to Council Grove. The fifth day, she says, she was overtaken by a Kaw Indian, and brought into Council Grove, where the traders had every attention paid her, and sent a runner to the Delaware traders and myself, and we soon succeeded in capturing one of the men in Liberty, Clay County, Missouri, where he confessed the whole tragedy—the murder, robbing, etc. The three others had left for St. Louis. A telegraphic despatch to St. Louis, however, had the desired effect, and the three men were taken and brought back to Liberty, where, on trial before two justices of the peace, they were committed for trial in the District Court of the United States for the State of Missouri. As feeble as the squaw was, I was under the necessity of having her taken to Liberty as a witness. She readily recognized and pointed out in a large crowd of persons three of the prisoners. I have caused four of the recovered mules and horses to be turned over to the unfortunate squaw. I expect to recover two or three more; the balance, I am of opinion, will never be obtained.”
In the report of the Indian Commissioner for this year there is also a paragraph which should not be omitted from this sketch: “The present seems to be an appropriate occasion for calling the attention of Congress to certain treaty stipulations with various Indian tribes which the Government, for a number of years, has failed to execute. In consideration of the cession of their lands to the United States”—by some nine tribes of the Mississippi and Missouri regions, among whom were the Delawares—“it was stipulated on the part of the Government that certain sums should be paid to said tribes, amounting in the aggregate to $2,396,600, and that the same should be invested in safe and profitable stocks, yielding an interest of not less than five per cent. per annum.
“Owing, however, to the embarrassed condition of the Treasury, it was deemed advisable by Congress, in lieu of making the investments, to appropriate from year to year a sum equal to the annual interest at five per cent. on the several amounts required to be invested. On this amount the Government has already paid from its treasury $1,742,240—a sum which is now equal to two-thirds of the principal, and will in a few years be equal to the whole, if the practice of appropriating the interest be continued. As there is no limitation to the period of these payments, such a policy indefinitely continued would prove a most costly one to the Government. At the end of every twenty years it will have paid from the public treasury by way of interest the full amount of the stipulated investments. * * * The public finances are in a prosperous condition. Instead of fiscal embarrassment, there is now a redundancy of money, and one of the vexed questions of the day is, What shall be done with the surplus in the Treasury? Considering the premises, it seems to be quite clear that so much thereof as may be necessary for the purpose should be promptly applied to the fulfilment of our treaty obligations.”
In 1854 the influx of white settlers into Kansas was so great, it became evident that the Indian reservations there could not be kept intact; and the Delawares made a large cession of their lands back to the United States, to be restored to the public domain. For this they were to receive ten thousand dollars. The sixth Article of this treaty provided for the giving of annuities to their chiefs. “The Delawares feel now, as heretofore, grateful to their old chiefs for their long and faithful services. In former treaties, when their means were scanty, they provided by small life annuities for the wants of the chiefs, some of whom are now receiving them. These chiefs are poor, and the Delawares believe it their duty to keep them from want in their old age.” The sum of ten thousand dollars, therefore, was to be paid to their five chiefs—two hundred and fifty dollars a year each.
Article second provided that the President should cause the land now reserved for their permanent home to be surveyed at any time when they desired it, in the same manner as the ceded country was being surveyed for the white settlers.
In the following year their agent writes thus of the results which have followed the opening of this large tract to white settlers: “The Indians have experienced enough to shake their confidence in the laws which govern the white race. The irruptions of intruders on their trust lands, their bloody dissensions among themselves, outbreaks of party, etc., must necessarily, to these unsophisticated people, have presented our system of government in an unfavorable light.
“Numerous wrongs have been perpetrated on many parts of the reserve; the white men have wasted their most valuable timber with an unsparing hand; the trust lands have been greatly injured in consequence of the settlements made thereon. The Indians have complained, but to no purpose. I have found it useless to threaten legal proceedings.* * * The Government is bound in good faith to protect this people. * * * The agricultural portion of this tribe have done well this season; abundant crops of corn promise them a supply of food for the ensuing year.”
The simple-minded trustingness of these people is astonishing. Even now they assent to an Article in this treaty which says that, as the means arising from the sale of all this land they had given up would be more than they could use, the remainder should be “from time to time invested by the President of the United States in safe and profitable stocks; the principal to remain unimpaired, and the interest to be applied annually for the civilization, education, and religious culture of the Delaware people, and such other objects of a beneficial character as in his judgment are proper and necessary.” Another Article stipulates that, if any of the Delawares are worthless or idle, the President can withhold their share of the moneys.
Article fifteenth says, gravely, “The primary object of this instrument being to advance the interests and welfare of the Delaware people, it is agreed that, if it prove insufficient to effect these ends from causes which cannot now be foreseen, Congress may hereafter make such farther provision, by law not inconsistent herewith, as experience may prove to be necessary to promote the interests, peace, and happiness of the Delaware people.”
In 1860 the United States made its next treaty with the Delawares, in which they consented to give the Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western Railroad Company right of way and certain lands in their reserve. In 1861 another treaty, in which, as the railway company had not paid, and was not able to pay, the $286,742 which it had promised to pay the Delawares, the President authorized the Commissioners of Indian Affairs to take the bonds of said railroad for that amount, and a mortgage on one hundred thousand acres of the land which the Indians had sold to the railway company.
There was another very curious bit of legislation in regard to the Delawares this year, viz.,an Act of Congress authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to enter on his books $423,990 26 to the credit of the Delawares; being the amount of bonds which the United States had invested for the Delawares in State bonds of Missouri, Tennessee, and North Carolina, and which had been stolen while in the custody of Jacob Thompson, late Secretary of the Interior, in whose department they had been deposited for safe-keeping. (At the same time there were stolen $66,735 belonging to the Iowas, and $169,686 75 belonging to the confederated bands of Kaskaskias, Peorias, Piankeshaws, and Keas.)
In this year the Commissioner of Indian Affairs visited the Delawares, and reported them well advanced in civilization, in possession of comfortable dwellings and farms, with personal property averaging one thousand dollars to an individual. Many of them were traders, and travelled even to the boundaries of California.
In 1862 two regiments of Delawares and Osages enlisted as soldiers in an expedition to the Indian Territory, under Colonel Weer, who says of them: “The Indian soldiers have far exceeded the most sanguine expectations. They bore the brunt of the fighting done by the expedition, and, had they been properly sustained, would have effectually ended the sway of the rebels in the Indian Territory.”
There was during this year a terrible condition of affairs in Kansas and the Indian Territory. The Indians were largely on the side of the rebels; yet, as the Indian Commissioner said in his report for this year—a paragraph which is certainly a species of Irish bull—“While the rebelling of a large portion of most of the tribes abrogates treaty obligations, and places them at our mercy, the very important fact should not be forgotten that the Government first wholly failed to keep its treaty stipulations with them in protecting them.” “By withdrawing all the troops from the forts in the Indian Territory,” it left them “at the mercy of the rebels.” That is, we first broke the treaty; and then their subsequent failure to observe it “placed them at our mercy!"
“It is,” he says, “a well-known fact that in many instances self-preservation compelled them to make the best terms they could with the rebels; and that this is the case has been proved by a large number of them joining our army as soon as a sufficient force had penetrated their country to make it safe for them to do so.”
The Delawares enlisted, in 1862, one hundred and seventy men in the Union army, and this out of a population of only two hundred males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. There was probably no instance in the whole country of such a ratio of volunteers as this. They were reported as being in the army “tractable, sober, watchful, and obedient to the commands of their superiors.” They officered their own companies, and the use of spirituous liquors was strictly prohibited among them—a fact the more remarkable, as drunkenness was one of their chief vices at home.
Already, however, the “interests” of the white settlers in Kansas were beginning to be clearly in opposition to the interests of the Indians. “Circumsecribed as they are, and closely surrounded by white settlements, I can see nothing in the future for them but destruction,” says the commissioner. “I think it is for the interest of the Indians that they be removed to some other locality as soon as possible.”
“Several of them have from fifty to one hundred acres of land in cultivation, with comfortable dwellings, barns, and outhouses. * * * All the families are domiciled in houses. * * * Their crops of corn will yield largely. Nearly every family will have a sufficiency for their own consumption, and many of the larger farmers a surplus. * * * There are but few Delaware children of the age of twelve or fourteen that cannot read.”
There is a community of a thousand people, larger than many of the farming villages in New England, for instance, “the average of personal property amounting to one thousand dollars;” all living in their own houses, cultivating from fifty to one hundred acres of land, nearly all the children in schools, and yet it is for their “interest to be moved!” The last sentence of the following paragraph tells the story:
“When peace is restored to our country, a removal of all the Indians in Kansas will certainly be advantageous to them as well as to the State.”
In 1863 their agent writes: “Since the question of the removal of the Indians from Kansas has been agitated, improvements have been much retarded among the Delawares and other Indians in Kansas.
“T think they are sufficiently prepared to make new treaties with the Government, * * * having in view settlement in the Southern country of those who elect to emigrate, compensation for the homes they relinquish, and a permission to remain in their present homes for all who are opposed to leaving Kansas.”
At this time, “one-half the adult population are in the volunteer service of the United States. They make the best of soldiers, and are highly valued by their officers. * * * No State in the Union has furnished so many men for our armies, from the same ratio of population, as has the Delaware tribe. * * * The tribe has 3900 acres of land under cultivation, in corn, wheat, oats, and potatoes.” (And yet one-half the adult men are away!)
In this year the Delawares, being “sufficiently prepared” to make new treaties looking to their removal out of the way of the white settlers in Kansas, petitioned the United States Government to permit them to take eight hundred dollars of their annuity funds to pay the expense of sending a delegation of their chiefs to the Rocky Mountains, to see if they could find there a country which would answer for their new home. The commissioner advises that they should not be allowed to go there, but to the Indian Territory, of which he says, “The geographical situation is such that its occupation by lawless whites can be more easily prevented than any other portion of the country.” “By common consent, this appears to be recognized as the Indian country, and I have strong hopes that it will eventually prove for them a prosperous and happy home.”
In 1864 their agent writes that the greater part of the personal property owned by the Delawares is in stock, “which is constantly being preyed upon by the whites, until it has become so reduced that it is difficult to obtain a good animal in the nation.” He says he is unable, for the want of proper information, to determine what amount they had at the beginning of the year, but believes, from observation, “that it has undergone a depletion to the extent of twenty thousand dollars in the past year.”
What a picture of a distressed community! The men away at war, old men, women, and children working the farms, and twenty thousand dollars of stock stolen from them in one year!
In 1865 a large proportion of those who had enlisted in the United States Army were mustered out, and returned home. The agent says: “It affords me great pleasure to chronicle the continued loyalty of this tribe during the past four years; and, as events tend westward, they evince every disposition to aid the Government by contributing their knowledge of the country to the officers of the army, and rendering such services thereto as they are qualified to perform.”
They “have distinguished themselves in many instances in the conflicts on the borders;” nevertheless, in this same year, these discharged soldiers were prohibited by the Government from carrying revolvers. When the commissioner instructed the agent to disarm them, the agent very properly replied, stating the difficulties in the case: “Firstly, what disposition is to be made of weapons taken forcibly from these Indians? Secondly, many of these Indians are intelligent, only using weapons when any well-disposed white person would have done so; and if one class is disarmed, all must be;” on which the commissioner so modified his order as to say that “peaceably disposed Indians” might keep the usual weapons used by them in hunting; but whenever they visited agencies or towns they must deliver up all weapons to the agent, who would receipt for them, and return them “at proper times.” This order is to be enforced, if possible, by an “appeal to their better judgment.”
There are no records of the practical working of this order. . Very possibly it fell at once, by its own weight, into the already large category of dead-letter laws in regard to Indians. It is impossible to imagine an Indian who had served four years as an officer in the army (for the Delawares officered their own companies) submitting to be disarmed by an agent on any day when he might need to go to Atchison on business, Probably even that “appeal to his better judgment” which the commissioner recommends, would only draw from him a very forcible statement to the effect that any man who went about in Kansas at that time unarmed was a fool.
In 1866 the Indian Commissioner reports that “the State of Kansas is fast being filled by an energetic population who appreciate good land; and as the Indian reservations were selected as being the best in the State, but one result can be expected to follow.
“Most of the Indians are anxious to move to the Indian country south of Kansas, where white settlers cannot interfere with them.
“Intermingled as the Kansas reservations are with the public lands, and surrounded in most cases by white settlers who too often act on the principle that an Indian has no rights that a white man is bound to respect, they are injured and annoyed in many ways. Their stock are stolen, their fences broken down, their timber destroyed, their young men plied with whiskey, their women debauched; so that, while the uncivilized are kept in a worse than savage state, having the crimes of civilization forced upon them, those farther advanced, and disposed to honest industry, are discouraged beyond endurance.”
In spite of all this the Delawares raised, in 1866, 72,000 bushels of grain, 13,000 bushels of potatoes, and owned 5000 head of cattle.
In July of this year a treaty was made with them, providing for the removal to the Indian Territory of all who should not decide to become citizens of Kansas, and the sale of their lands. The superintendent of the Fort Leavenworth Agency writes at this time: “The running of the Union Pacific Railroad through the Delawares’ diminished reserve has been a source of grievous annoyance and damage to the Delawares, as has also an organization styled the Delaware Lumber Company. Out of these two companies grew much complaint and investigation, resulting in the appointment of a special agent to sell to the railroad the timber required for the construction of the road, and no more. The Delaware Lumber Company being thus restricted” (i. e., being prevented from helping themselves to the Indians’ timber), immediately “gave up their business, and stopped their mills,” but not before they had damaged the Indians’ property to the amount of twenty-eight thousand dollars.
Twenty thousand dollars’ worth of stock and twenty-eight thousand dollars’ worth of timber having been stolen in two years from this little village of farmers, no wonder they are “sufficiently prepared to move.” Other causes have conspired also to render them in haste to be gone. The perpetual expectation of being obliged to remove had unsettled the whole community, and made them indifferent to effort and improvement. The return of their young men from the war had also had a demoralizing effect, Drunken frays were not uncommon, in which deadly weapons were used, spite of the Department's regulations for disarming all Indians.
In July of this year the Delaware chiefs, distressed by this state of affairs, drew up for their nation a code of laws which compare favorably with the laws of so-called civilized States.[3]
In 1867 the Delawares are said to be “very impatient to be gone from their reserve, in order to build houses this autumn for winter use, and to be fencing fields for the ensuing year at their new reserve.” The annuities due them in April of this year have not been paid till autumn, and this has delayed their movements. Many of the young men are still away, acting as scouts and guides in the army. In the course of this year and the next the whole tribe moved by detachments to their new home. “Those who removed during the winter went to work in a laudable manner, and made their improvements—many building comfortable houses and raising respectable crops” the first season. They are said to be now in a fair way to be better off than ever before. They have “given up their tribal organization and become Cherokee citizens. They report that they are well pleased with their new homes; and, being separated from the many temptations by which they were surrounded in their old reservation, are learning to appreciate the many benefits to be derived from leading a temperate, industrious, and consequently a prosperous and happy life.”
In 1869 it is said that, “as soon as the final arrangement relative to their funds is perfected, they will lose their nationality and become identified with the Cherokees.”
In 1870 we find nearly all the Delawares in Indian Territory; but it seems that, owing to a carelessly surveyed boundary, some three hundred of them had settled down on lands which were outside the Cherokee Reservation, and had been assigned by the Government to the Osages. This unfortunate three hundred, therefore, are removed again; this time to the lands of the Peorias, where they ask permission to establish themselves. But in the mean time, as they had made previous arrangements with the Cherokees, and all their funds had been transferred to the Cherokee Nation, it is thought to be “very unfortunate that they should be thus obliged to seek a new home;” and it is said to be “quite desirable that the parties in interest should reconcile their unsettled affairs to mutual advantage.”
We are too much inclined to read these records carelessly, without trying to picture to ourselves the condition of affairs which they represent. It has come to be such an accepted thing in the history and fate of the Indian that he is to be always pushed on, always in advance of what is called the march of civilization, that to the average mind statements of these repeated removals come with no startling force, and suggest no vivid picture of details, only a sort of reassertion of an abstract general principle. But pausing to consider for a moment what such statements actually mean and involve; imagining such processes applied to some particular town or village that we happen to be intimately acquainted with, we can soon come to a new realization of the full bearing and import of them; such uprooting, such perplexity, such loss, such confusion and uncertainty, inflicted once on any community of white people anywhere in our land, would be considered quite enough to destroy its energies and blight its prospects for years. It may very well be questioned whether any of our small communities would have recovered from such successive shocks, changes, and forced migrations, as soon and as well as have many of these Indian tribes. It is very certain that they would not have submitted to them as patiently.
After this we find in the Official Reports no distinctive mention of the Delawares by name, except of a few who had been for some time living in the Indian Territory, and were not included in the treaty provisions at the time of the removal from Kansas. This little handful—eighty-one in number—is all that now remain to bear the name of that strong and friendly people to whom, a little more than one hundred years ago, we promised that they should be our brothers forever, and be entitled to a representation in our Congress.
This band of Delawares is associated with six other dwindled remnants of tribes—the Caddoes, Ionies, Wichitas, Towaconies, Wacoes, Keechies, and Comanches—on the Wichita Agency, in Indian Territory.
They are all reported as being “peaceable, well disposed,” and “actively engaged in agricultural pursuits.”
Of the Delawares it is said, in 1878, that they were not able to cultivate so much land as they had intended to during that year, “on account of loss of stock by horse-thieves.”
Even here, it seems, in that “Indian country south of Kansas, where” (as they were told) “white settlers could not interfere with them,” enemies lie in wait for them, as of old, to rob and destroy; even here the Government is, as before, unable to protect them; and in all probability, the tragedies of 1866 and 1867 will before long be re-enacted with still sadder results.