The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War Part 30

[Footnote 636: Robinson, _Kansas Conflict_, 358.]

[Footnote 637:--Ibid., 370. For other facts touching Wattles and his earlier career, see Villard, _John Brown_, index; Wilson, _John Brown: Soldier of Fortune_, index.]

[Footnote 638; On the entire subject of negotiations with the Indians of Kansas, see Abel, _Indian Reservations in Kansas and the Extinguishment of Their t.i.tles_. The house-building project is fully narrated there.]

[Footnote 639: For additional information about Stevens, see _Daily Conservative_, February 11, 12, 13, 28, 1862. Senator Lane denounced him as a defaulter to the government in the house-building project. See _Lane_ to Dole, April 22, 1862; Smith to Dole, May 13 1862; Dole to Lane, May 5, 1862, _Daily Conservative_, May 21, 1862. In July, Lane, hearing that certificates of indebtedness were about to be issued to Stevens on his building contract for the Sacs and Foxes, entered a "solemn protest against such action" and requested that the Department would let the matter lie over until the a.s.sembling of Congress [Interior Department, _Register of Letters Received_, January 2, 1862 to December 27, 1865, "Indians," no. 4].

Governor Robinson's enemies regarded him as the partner of Stevens [_Daily Conservative_, November 22, 1861] in the matter of some other affairs, and that fact may help to explain Senator Lane's bitter animosity. The names of Robinson and Stevens were connected in the bond difficulty, which lay at the bottom of Robinson's impeachment.]

[Footnote 640: d.i.c.key's interest in the house-building is seen in the following: d.i.c.key to Greenwood, February 26, 1861, Indian Office General Files, _Kansas_, 1855-1862, D250; same to same, March 1, 1861, Ibid., D 251.]

[Footnote 641: Stevens to Mix, August 24, 1861, Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, _Sac and Fox_, S439 of 1861.]

policy. His conclusions were right, his premises, necessarily unrevealed, were false. Wattles became involved in the emigration movement, if he did not initiate it, and, subsequent to making his report upon the house-building, received a private communication from Dole, asking his opinion "of a plan for confederating the various Indian tribes, in Kansas and Nebraska, into one, and giving them a Territory and a Territorial Government with political privileges."[642] This was in 1861, long before any scheme that Lane or Pomeroy had devised would have matured. Wattles started upon a tour of observation and inquiry among the Kansas tribes and discovered that, with few exceptions, they were all willing and even anxious to exchange their present homes for homes in Indian Territory. Some had already discussed the matter tentatively and on their own account with the Creeks and Cherokees. On his way east, after completing his investigations, Wattles stopped in New York and "consulted with our political friends" there "concerning this movement, and they not only gave it their approbation, but were anxious that this administration should have the credit of originating and carrying out so wise and so n.o.ble a scheme for civilizing and perpetuating the Indian race."

Would Wattles and his friends have said the same had they been fully cognizant of the conditions under which the emigrant tribes had been placed in the West?

In February of 1862, the House of Representatives called[643] for the papers relating to the Wattles mission[644] and, in March, Wattles expatiated upon the

[Footnote 642: Wattles to Dole, January 10, 1862, Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, _Central Superintendency_, W 528 of 1862.]

[Footnote 643: Department of the Interior, _Register of Letters Received_, "Indians," no. 4, p. 439.]

[Footnote 644: The papers relating to the mission are collected in Indian Office Special Files, no. 201.]

emigration and consolidation scheme in a report to Secretary Smith.[645] Then, yet in advance of congressional authorization, began a systematic course of Indian negotiation, all having in view the relieving of Kansas from her aboriginal enc.u.mbrance. No means were too underhand, too far-fetched, too villainous to be resorted to. Every advantage was taken of the Indian's predicament, of his pitiful weakness, political and moral. The reputed treason of the southern tribes was made the most of. Reconstruction measures had begun for the Indians before the war was over and while its issue was very far from being determined in favor of the North.

As if urged thereto by some influence malign or fate sinister, the loyal portion of two of the southern tribes, the Creeks and the Seminoles, took in April, 1862, a certain action that, all unbeknown to them, expedited the northern schemes for Indian undoing. The action referred to was tribal reorganization. Each of the two groups of refugees elected chiefs and headmen and notified the United States government that it was prepared to do business as a nation.[646] The business in mind had to do with annuity payments[647] and other dues but the Indian Office soon extended it to include treaty-making.

[Footnote 645: Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Central Superintendency_, W 528 of 1862; Department of the Interior, _Register of Letters Received_, "Indians," no. 4, p. 517.]

[Footnote 646: Ok-ta-ha-ras Harjo and others to Dole, April 5, 1862, Indian Office General Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869, O 45; Coffin to Dole, April 15, 1862, transmitting communication of Billy Bowlegs and others, April 14, 1862 ibid., _Seminole_, 1858-1869, C1594; _Letters Registered_, vol. 58.]

[Footnote 647: On the outside of the Seminole pet.i.tion, the office instruction for its answer of May 7, 1862, reads as follows: "Say that by resolution of Congress the annuities were authorized to be used to prevent starvation and suffering amongst them and that being the only fund in our hands must not be diverted from that purpose at present."]

Negotiations with the Osages had been going on intermittently all this time. No opportunity to press the point of a land cession had ever been neglected and much had been made, in connection with the project for territorial organization, of the fact that the Osages had memorialized Congress for a civil government, they thinking by means of it to prevent further frauds and impositions being practiced upon them.[648] Coffin and Elder, suspicious of each other, jealously watched every avenue of approach to Osage confidence. On the ninth of March, Elder inquired if Coffin had been regularly commissioned to open up negotiations anew and asked to be a.s.sociated with him if he had.[649] A treaty was started but not finished for Elder received a private letter from Dole that seemed to confine the negotiations to a mere ascertaining of views.[650] Then the Indians grown weary of uncertainty took matters into their own hands and appointed several prominent tribesmen for the express purpose of negotiating a treaty that would end the "suspense as to their future destiny."[651] From the treaty of cession that Coffin drafted, he having taken a miserably unfair advantage of Osage isolation and dest.i.tution, the Osages turned away in disgust.[652] In November, some of their leading men journeyed up to Leroy to invite the dissatisfied Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la to winter with them.[653] Coffin seized the occasion to reopen the subject of a cession and the Indians manifested

[Footnote 648: Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Neosho_, A 476 of 1862. See also Indian Office report to the Secretary of the Interior, May 6, 1862. The Commissioner's letter and the memorial were sent to Aldrich, May 9, 1862.]

[Footnote 649: Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Neosho_, E 94.

of 1862.]

[Footnote 650: Coffin to Dole, April 5, 1862, Ibid., C 1583.]

[Footnote 651: Communication of April 10, 1862, transmitted by Chapman to Dole, Ibid., C 1640.]

[Footnote 652: Elder to Coffin, July 9, 1862, Ibid., E 114.]

[Footnote 653: Coffin to Dole, November 16, 1862, Ibid., C 1904.]

a willingness to sell a part of their Reserve; but again Coffin was too grasping and another season of waiting intervened.

With slightly better success the Kickapoos were approached. Their lands were coveted by the Atchison and Pike's Peak Railway Company and Agent O.B. Keith used his good offices in the interest of that corporation.[654] Good offices they were, from the standpoint of benefit to the grantees, but most disreputable from that of the grantors. He bribed the chiefs outrageously and the lesser men among the Kickapoos indignantly protested.[655] Rival political and capitalistic concerns, emanating from St. Joseph, Missouri, and from the northern tier of counties in Kansas,[656] took up the quarrel and never rested until they had forced a hearing from the government. The treaty was arrested after it had reached the presidential proclamation stage and was in serious danger of complete invalidation.[657] It pa.s.sed muster only when a Senate amendment had rendered it reasonably acceptable to the Kickapoos.

Not much headway was made with Indian treaty-making in 1862.[658] In March, 1863, an element

[Footnote 654: Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Kickapoo_, I 655 of 1862 and I 361 of 1864.]

[Footnote 655:--Ibid., B 355 of 1863 and I 361 of 1864.]

[Footnote 656: Albert W. Horton to Pomeroy, June 20, 1863 and O.B.

Keith to Pomeroy, June 20, 1863, Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Kickapoo_, G 59 and P 64 of 1863.]

[Footnote 657: Lane and A.C. Wilder requested the Interior Department, September 1, 1863, "that no rights be permitted to attach to R.R.

Co. until charges of fraud in connection with Kickapoo Treaty are settled." Their request was replied to, September 12, 1863 [Interior Department, _Register of Letters Received_, January 2, 1862 to December 27, 1865, "Indians," no. 4, 361].]

[Footnote 658: Dole, however, seems to have become thoroughly reconciled to the idea. He submitted his views upon the subject once more in connection with a memorial that Pomeroy referred to the Secretary of the Interior "for the concentration of the Indian tribes of the West and especially those of Kansas, in the Indian country ...

" [Dole to Smith, November 22, 1862, Indian Office _Report Book_, no. 12, pp. 505-506; Department of the Interior, _Register of Letters Received_, vol. D, November 22, 1862]. (cont.)]

conditioning a greater degree of success was introduced into the government policy.[659] That was by the Indian appropriation act, which, in addition to continuing the practice of applying tribal annuities to the relief of refugees, authorized the president to negotiate with Kansas tribes for their removal from Kansas and with the loyal portion of Indian Territory tribes for cessions of land on which to accommodate them.[660] As Dole pertinently remarked to Secretary Usher, the measure was all very well as a policy in prospect but it was one that most certainly could not be carried out until Indian Territory was in Federal possession. Blunt was still striving after possession or re-possession but his force was not "sufficient to insure beyond peradventure his success."[661]

Scarcely had the law been enacted when John Ross and other Cherokees, living in exile and in affluence, offered to consider proposals for a retrocession to the United States public domain of their Neutral Lands. The Indian Office was not yet prepared to treat and not until November did Ross and his a.s.sociates[662] get any

[Footnote 658: (cont.) December 26, 1862, Dole wrote to Smith thus: "... It being in contemplation to extinguish the Indian t.i.tle to lands ... in Kansas and provide them with homes in the Indian Territory ...

I would recommend that a commissioner should be appointed to negotiate ... I would accordingly suggest that Robt. S. Corwin be appointed ..."

[Indian Office _Report Book_, no. 13, pp. 12-13]. Now Corwin's reputation was not such as would warrant his selection for the post.

He was not a man of strict integrity. His name is connected with many shady transactions in the early history of Kansas.]

[Footnote 659: Presumably, Lane was the chief promoter of it. See Baptiste Peoria to Dole, February 9, 1863, Indian Office General Files, _Osage River_, 1863-1867.]

[Footnote 660: _U.S. Statutes at Large_, vol. xii, 793.]

[Footnote 661: Dole to Usher, July 29, 1863, Indian Office _Report Book_, no. 13, p. 211.]

[Footnote 662: His a.s.sociates were then the three men, Lewis Downing, James McDaniel, and Evan Jones, who had been appointed delegates with him, (cont.)]

real encouragement[663] to renew their offer, yet the Cherokees had as early as February repudiated their alliance with the southern Confederacy. That the United States government was only awaiting a time most propitious for itself is evident from the fact that, when, in the spring following, refugees from the Neutral Lands were given an opportunity to begin their backward trek, they were told that they would not be permitted to linger at their old homes but would have to go on all the way to Fort Gibson, one hundred twenty miles farther south.[664] That was one way of ridding Kansas of her Indians and a way not very creditable to a professed and powerful guardian.

Almost simultaneously with Ross's first application came an offer from the oppressed Delawares to look for a new home in the far west, in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory. The majority preferred to go to the Cherokee country.[665] Some of the tribe had already lived there and wanted to return. Had the minority gained their point, the Delawares would have traversed the whole continent within the s.p.a.ce of about two and a half centuries. They would have wandered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Susquehanna River to the Willamette, in a desperate effort to escape the avaricious pioneer, and, to their own chagrin, they would have found him on the western coast also. Never again would there be any place for them free from his influence.

In the summer of 1863, negotiations were undertaken

[Footnote 662: (cont.) by the newly-constructed national council, for doing business with the United States government [Commissioner of Indian Affairs, _Report_, 1863, p. 23].]

[Footnote 663: See Office letter of November 19, 1863.]

[Footnote 664: David M. Harlan to Dole, December 20, 1864, Indian Office General Files, Cherokee 1859-1865, H 1033.]

[Footnote 665: Johnson to Dole, May 24, 1863, ibid., _Delaware_, 1862-1866.]

in deadly earnest. A commencement was made with the Creeks in May, Agent Cutler calling the chiefs in council and laying before them the draft of a treaty that had been prepared, upon the advice of Coffin,[666] in Was.h.i.+ngton and that had been entrusted for transmission to the unscrupulous ex-agent, Perry Fuller.[667] The Creek chiefs consented to sell a tract of land for locating other Indians upon, but declared themselves opposed to any plan for "sectionizing" their country and asked that they might be consulted as to the Indians who were to share it with them. The month before they had prayed to be allowed to go back home. Well fed and clothed though they were, and quite satisfied with their agent, they were terribly homesick.[668] Might they not go down and clean out their country for themselves? It seemed impossible for the army to do it.[669]