The Dilemmas That Faced the American Indian in the Nineteenth Century
Farewell, My nation takes an in depth, close up look of the dilemmas that faced the American Indian in the nineteenth century. This book highlights the major events that transcended the culture of the American Indians and provides an outline breaking down the history of these people. With this second edition, consideration is given to colonial and revolutionary eras because these eras provide a foundation in understanding early United States policies towards Indian affairs.
Dr. Weeks starts the novel with the battle at Wounded Knee. Wounded Knee would be the last battle between the Indians and the US Army. War Department annual reports anticipated further outbreaks of violence, but an unwritten cease-fire had occurred. This battle marked the end of a 100-year struggle between the US and Indians that would exemplify the reality that Indians would be forced to accept white dominance over the continent. It also exemplified the numerous failures of the federal Indian policy in devising a mutually accepted plan that would satisfy both parties involved. The “Indian America” had come to a slow, painful end.
The settlement of the frontier proved to be the primary cause of aggravation between the US government and the Indians. The vast locales acquired by settlers were home to various native groups, many unaware of the callous hostility that would be brought against them in the near future. The Indians resistance to this development coupled with the US response produced several periods of hostility. Throughout these periods, the US government advocated three goals of promoting westward expansion, protecting its citizens, and guaranteeing Indian property rights and treaties. However, these goals would not coincide together.
The first Europeans to arrive in the Americas would be landing on a continent already inhabited by over seven million natives. Another 25 million natives lived below the Rio Grande in present day Mexico and Central America, while another thirty million inhabited the islands in the Caribbean Sea and South America. Later on in the Colonial Period, three European powers came to power in North America with Spain, England and France controlling different sections of the territory. Despite ruling a common territory, Indian relation with the French and English varied very differently. The French became partners with the Natives in the fur trade and developed a friendship that their rivals never enjoyed. On the contrary, the English and Indians had a strained, suspicious relationship due mostly to colonial populations acquiring tribal land, holding it, and expanding it for farming and non-agricultural activities.
The outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775 raised the presence of a different anger for these native tribes. They would be threatened with the sweeping away of the British and be put under the authority of the aggressive, land hungry Americans. These fears eventually resulted in almost all tribes engaged in the war fighting for the British. The British relied on Indian troops in the war’s western sector to attack American colonists and to raid farms and settlements. Not all Indians were pro-England, which led to a civil war among the Iroquois League. Many deaths occurred from this civil war, resulting in destruction of the solidarity of the League as well as its power inside the pre-United States.
As soon as the Revolutionary War came to an end, a mass exodus of white settlers began towards the Ohio country. Many of these people were war veterans that had been paid for their military service with land grants in the trans-Appalachian West. In hopes of avoiding warfare with the Indian tribes already present in this region, Congress started two sweeping actions. First, it passed a series of Trade and Intercourse acts regulating white settlement on Indian land, controlled white liquor trade, managed the sale of Indian land, and other issues affecting relations between the whites and Indians. Secondly, Congress ratified formal treaties with Indians to nullify titles to land. The United States government agreed with England that the tribes should be acknowledged as independent nations holding titles to land by right of habitation.
These ambitious measures would encounter many obstacles, with the Indians living in the Ohio country as the major impediment. This was to be the first area to be developed by the US and settled by Americans in the Northwest Territory. Three treaties were the first attempts to obtain Indian land. Indian representatives soon protested the biased treaties, with Indian affairs commissioners responding that right of conquest took the land. The Indians retaliated with force, resulting in a forceful military occupation of Indian land by the US government. A rare defeat of US troops brought the ire of President Washington, who called upon “Mad Anthony” Wayne to rout the Indians. Wayne would rout the Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers near Toledo, which brought on an array of Indian representatives to sign a desperate peace treaty that would relinquish all lands specified in the Fort McIntosh and Finney treaties.
Other extreme measure such as policies of gradualization and removal would be attempted with very little success. The Indians attempted to devise plans to retaliate against these policies only to be pushed further west by settlers and the US government. Some tribes even attempted to alter their lifestyle in the hope of making it more acceptable to white neighbors. Americans that opposed forced removal applauded these advancements, a futile attempt to convince tribes that acculturation was possible. With great opposition from Indian rights activists, the Indian Removal Act was passed. The United States would be legally able to appropriate Indian lands by setting new treaties and exiling Indians to new land. Within two years of the passage of the removal act, over half of the major southern tribes had forfeited their land. The tribes that remained resisted ferociously, often fighting and fleeing to do battle another day.
Despite their fervor, the great tribes of the south would succumb to the US government. With the migration of eastern tribes to the west, they were assured that they would be left alone to prosper as they once did. The US had decided on a policy of separation to answer the Indian question, which would be a series of uprooting and removals that would push these tribes west of the Mississippi. Many Americans supported this policy as a workable and humane solution to the long-standing problems between whites and Indians. The separation decision required that federal officials apportion land for colonization, which would be for exclusive use by Indians. Since many Americans saw the land west of the Mississippi as uninhabitable for agriculture, they were content with the land they already possessed. By removing the tribes from the prime land and moving them west to this great vastness, American society could expand without obstruction.
Within a few years, the tribes occupying this uninhabitable wilderness transformed it into a flourishing and prospering homeland, complete with towns, ranches, plantations, and an education system. “The five civilized tribes” of this southern part of Indian Territory gave Americans an example to prove the wisdom of the Separation policy. They pointed voluntarily to these republics as potential for Indians to adapt\to the ways of the dominant society, especially when unneeded strain from white society was eliminated. Both the American public and the US government hoped the policy of Separation would create a long-standing peace with the Indians. They believed this to be a possibility because of the lack of interest whites had in Indian occupied land. Frustration would settle in with supporters of the policy when confidence was shattered by the concepts of Manifest Destiny and Migratory Fever.
These concepts combined a massive spread of settlers to the west coupled with a strong desire to continue that spread until the American settlers reached the Pacific Ocean. With territorial expansion becoming the major issue in the 1844 election, lands appropriated to the Indians would come under attack once again. Despite these two forces, Americans did not desire Indian land on the Great Plains just yet. They avoided Indian land in excited eagerness of a better life but also out of fear from attack if they ventured into claimed land. The buffalo was another factor that disturbed travelers around the Indian country. These massive, hulking beasts seemed to be everywhere and traveled in enormous herds that astonished onlookers. With these travelers would come disease that would essentially wipe out the Indians in several large, unexpected epidemics.
Disease would kill nearly forty percent of the Indian population, but the introduction of alcohol to Indian society would create an even larger dilemma. Alcohol would nearly destroy a culture that was not accustomed to the effects of this powerful drug. Many efforts were made to curb the use of alcohol by the population with no success. As the 1850s came to an end, western tribes were making every effort to adjust to the problems thrown at them. Federal officials would adopt a policy of Concentration that would hopefully put an end to the Indian question. With the country preparing for a civil war, attention to Indians affairs disappeared, while the problems encountered by Indians only compounded further. With the start of the war in 1861, Confederate Indian Commissioner Albert Pike tried to convince the Five Civilized Tribes to join the confederate cause. Many tribes held deep resentment for the US and Pike hoped to play off of this animosity. The Confederacy pledged to preserve and defend the independence of the Indian republics and promised more liberal treaties than the United States. Despite the obvious advantages to an allegiance with the confederacy, many tribes remained neutral.
