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American Indian Policy in Crisis
Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1865-1900
By Francis Paul Prucha UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 1976 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4642-3
CHAPTER 1
BEGINNINGS OF REFORM
During the first half century after the formation of the Government the flow of population on our continent was confined to a movement from the Atlantic coast westwardly, and the process of displacement of the aboriginal race was comparatively simple; the Indian receded as the white man advanced. Latterly, however, new tides of population have set in from the shores of the Pacific, and the two mighty currents are now commingling their waters amid the gold-bearing ranges of the interior. The emigrant from Minnesota meets in the fields of Montana the miner from Oregon and California. With the termination of our great war, now near its close, a migration will spring up of which the world has as yet known no parallel; and in a few short years every tract capable of settlement and cultivation will pass into the occupancy of the white man.
What is to become of the Indians as the races of the world thus draw together from the opposite shores of the continent? Caught between the upper and the nether millstones—now so remorselessly approaching each other—what is to be his fate?
—IGNATIUS DONNELLY, in the House of Representatives, February 7, 1865
* * *
Indian affairs in the United States were at a crisis when the Civil War ended in 1865. Ignatius Donnelly, Congressman from Minnesota, in an eloquent plea for the Indians in February of that year spoke of the problem in terms of vast tides of migration of the whites from east and west, crushing the Indians between them. General William Tecumseh Sherman saw the destruction of the Indians following upon the "construction of two parallel railroads right through their country" which would "prove destructive to the game on which they subsisted, and consequently fatal to themselves." The signs were there for all to read, and the plight of the Indians and the threat of their imminent destruction did not escape the attention of Christian men and women, whose humanitarian impulses made them cry out for the unfortunate red men.
Even during the great holocaust of the Civil War, attention had not been diverted from the Indians completely. In some respects, indeed, the period furnished fertile soil for the seeds of reform to sprout. The weakened control in the West that came with the withdrawal of regular army troops fostered a restlessness among the western tribesmen, and ineffective and fraudulent operations in the Indian service became the rule. Nor did white pressures upon the Indians cease with the conflict between the North and the South, since westward movement of population continued in spite of the war. The concern for the Negroes that was amplified by the war was to some extent reflected in new concern for the other oppressed and wronged racial minority, the Indians, and President Lincoln's deep sympathy made him a sincere listener to pleas made on behalf of the Indians.
There was no concentrated movement for Indian reform during the war years, but private individuals kept the issue alive. Two of these persons were especially insistent: John Beeson, an Oregonian who already had a long history of agitation on behalf of the Indians to his credit, and the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, Henry Benjamin Whipple.
Beeson was an Englishman who came to America in 1830 and settled in Illinois in 1834. Two decades later he was struck by the "Oregon fever" and moved to the western territory in 1853. When the Rogue River war broke out between the Indians and the white settlers, Beeson's deep religious convictions led him to defend the Indians and to charge that the war was the result of white aggression. Such nonconformity with frontier attitudes made Beeson's life in Oregon impossible, and he returned to the East, where he devoted much of his time to promotion of Indian causes. He published in New York in 1857 A Plea for the Indians, in which he gave a history of the Oregon war and condemned the white savages for destroying the Indians, and in 1859 he spoke at Fanueil Hall in Boston, where he shared the platform with Edward Everett, Wendell Phillips, and other reformers in an appeal for Indian rights. In the following year, he began publication of The Calumet, meant to be a vehicle for promoting reform in Indian affairs. Only one issue of the journal came from the presses, however, for the secession crisis turned attention away from Indian matters.
The Civil War did not curb all of Beeson's activities. Firmly convinced that the war was not caused by slavery but was "an extension of the unneighborly, unChristian, and destructive practice which for generations had been operating against the Aborigines," he insisted that redress of Indian wrongs was "the first step in the order of national reform and self preservation." The reformer was received sympathetically by Lincoln, and in a meeting in 1864 the President told him: "My aged Friend. I have heard your arguments time and again. I have said little but thought much, and you may rest assured that as soon as the pressing matter of this war is settled the Indians shall have my first care and I will not rest untill Justice is done to their and your Sattisfaction." Beeson interviewed other national leaders, memorialized Congress, and organized public meetings in the cities in the East. When his funds ran out, he returned to Oregon in 1865, but his interest in Indian reform flared up periodically as he joined his voice to others who took up the cause of the Indians.
Paralleling Beeson's activities was the more influential agitation of Bishop Whipple, whose stature as an Indian friend eventually made him a correspondent and confidant of important national leaders and whose powerful voice condemning wrongs could not be ignored as could the more fanatical utterances of Beeson. Whipple, after serving in a parish in Rome, New York, and for two years among the poor on the south side of Chicago, was elected first Bishop of Minnesota in 1859. In 1860 he took up residence at Faribault, which was to be his home for the rest of his life. Having thus been thrust into contact with both the Chippewas and the Sioux on this still primitive frontier, the new bishop investigated the condition of the Indians and became painfully aware of the injustices in the government's Indian system. He began an active crusade to right the wrongs the Indians suffered, bombarding with letters and memorials government officials all the way up to the President himself. Notable was his letter to President Lincoln of March 6, 1862, asking "only justice for a wronged and neglected race." He pointed to the rapid deterioration that had taken place among the tribes since they had signed away much of their land in treaties with the United States, and he especially excoriated the Indian agents, who were selected to uphold the honor and faith of the government without any attention to their fitness. "The Congressional delegation desires to reward John Doe for party work," the bishop charged, "and John Doe desires the place because there is a tradition on the border that an Indian Agent with fifteen hundred dollars a year can retire upon an ample fortune in four years." He asked for simple honesty, for agency employees who were men "of purity, temperance, industry, and unquestioned integrity" rather than "so many drudges fed at the public crib." He wanted the Indian to be treated as a ward of the government, with aid in building a house and opening a farm and with adequate schools for his children. And he insisted that law be provided for the Indians as it was for the whites. Whipple was not ready to submit a detailed plan for a new Indian system, but he urged instead that a commission of three men be appointed to investigate Indian affairs and propose a new plan to remedy the evils, a commission composed of men "of inflexible integrity, of large heart, of clear head, of strong will, who fear God and love man" and who would be "so high in character that they are above the reach of political demogogues."
Lincoln graciously acknowledged the communication and passed the matter on to the Secretary of the Interior, Caleb Smith, who indicated his agreement with Whipple and in turn sent the bishop's letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate committees on Indian affairs. Whipple worked hard, too, with Minnesota's two senators, Henry M. Rice and Martin S. Wilkinson, and with Congressman Cyrus Aldrich. Rice was sympathetic and promised to do whatever he could, although he confessed he feared "the demagogue, the politician, & those pecuniarally interested." But Wilkinson and Aldrich openly expressed their doubt that the Indians would profit much from any attention.
Whipple's premonitions of serious trouble if the Indian system were not reformed were tragically fulfilled by the Sioux outbreak in Minnesota in August, 1862. By treaties signed in 1851 at Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, these Indians had been located on narrow reservations along the upper Minnesota River, and white settlers rushed into the twenty-four million acres of rich land vacated by the Sioux. The Indians had many grievances arising out of the treaties. They disliked the new reservations, complained that they had been tricked into providing for traders' claims in the treaties, and often were forced to wait unduly long for the annuity payments that had been promised. Crop failures led to near-starvation conditions in the winter of 1861–1862, and the specially tardy arrival of the annuities in 1862 and the niggardliness of the agent and the traders in distributing supplies aggravated the misery. Nor were the Sioux unaware that the regular army troops had been withdrawn to fight the Confederacy and had been replaced by inexperienced volunteers. Under such conditions, an unplanned killing of white settlers by a handful of Indians on August 17, 1862, turned into a major uprising. The Sioux attacked the agencies, murdered unprotected settlers, mounted an attack on Fort Ridgely a few miles below the Lower Agency, and laid siege to the settlement at New Ulm. In the end, at least 450 whites were dead; some estimates claimed as many as 800.
The State of Minnesota and the federal government quickly mobilized against the Indians. Governor Alexander Ramsey gave a colonel's commission to Henry H. Sibley, who gathered volunteer infantry and cavalry to put down the uprising. A fur trader of long experience among the Sioux, although without previous military experience, Sibley moved effectively against the hostiles. He decisively defeated them at Wood Lake, and friendly Indians were emboldened to bring in white captives taken during the outbreak. Little by little the hostile Sioux laid down their arms, some two thousand Indians in all. A hastily assembled military commission tried the Indians who had participated in the war. Working routinely and often without sufficient evidence, the commission tried 392 prisoners, of whom sixteen were given prison terms and 307 were sentenced to death. Sibley and General John Pope, commander of the Department of the Northwest, wanted the immediate execution of the condemned Indians.
Bishop Whipple's zeal for the rights and welfare of the Indians was not cooled by the war. He went immediately to the scene of the disaster, taking care of the wounded and comforting the bereaved, and then took a courageous stand in support of the Indians by publishing in the St. Paul newspapers a plea to his fellow citizens not to wreak vengeance on the Indians, whose uprising had been the result of intolerable evils worked upon them by the Indian system. He went personally to Washington to plead with Lincoln for clemency for the Indians condemned to death by the military commission, arguing that they should be treated as prisoners of war, not as murderers. His plea was not completely in vain, for the President, against cries for vengeance from many Minnesotans, approved death sentences for only thirty-nine, one of whom was reprieved at the last moment.
Working through Senator Rice, Whipple continued to urge the President to bring about a wholesale reform in Indian affairs. Lincoln heard the appeal and in his state of the union address of December 1, 1862, told Congress: "I submit for your especial consideration whether our Indian system shall not be remodeled. Many wise and good men have impressed me with the belief that this can be profitably done." This favorable reaction encouraged Whipple, who kept hammering on the idea that a commission should be appointed to set up the reforms. Lincoln continued to recommend reform and his Commissioner of Indian Affairs, William P. Dole, pushed for a carefully managed reservation system, but Congress, too busy with the war and much concerned about vested interests in the current Indian system, took no action. Senator Rice reported ruefully in February, 1863: "I have no hope of anything being done to improve the condition of the Indians by this Administration." And Senator Wilkinson justified postponement of action on the basis that he was "greatly perplexed as to the details of the system to be adopted" and that any new system would take long and careful thought. The new Congressman from Minnesota, Ignatius Donnelly, took up Whipple's cause, but he expected to get nothing but hostility from those whose frauds he uncovered, and he urged the bishop to keep up his fight to arouse public opinion.
Whipple continued to propagate his accusations against the agency system and against the lack of adequate law to govern and protect the Indians. When the Civil War ended, other voices were added to his and Beeson's in support of a new day in Indian affairs. By then new horrors on the frontier had added support to their charges of the whites' inhumanity to the Indians.
Not all the Sioux involved in the Minnesota uprising surrendered. A considerable number, perhaps 4,400 from the two agencies, fled into Dakota, where it was rumored they were joined by Yankton and Yanktoni bands. General Pope feared that the Indians would attack the Minnesota frontier in the summer, and early in 1863 he sent a punitive expedition into Dakota. One column under Sibley moved northwest from Fort Ridgely toward Devils Lake; a second column under General Alfred Sully moved up the Missouri from Fort Randall. Although the columns did not meet as planned, encounters with the Sioux left large numbers of the Indians dead and much of their property destroyed. Yet the expedition had failed to end the fighting power of the bands, and in 1864 General Sully led another expedition up the Missouri, which successfully dispersed the Sioux.
While Pope was seeking to control the Indians in his Department of the Northwest, war hit the central plains between the Platte and the Arkansas, as Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux bands, taking advantage of the engagement of the United States in the Civil War, attacked the encroaching whites in scattered raids. Depredations over a wide area made it difficult to separate hostile Indians from peaceful ones, and white officials feared a confederacy or conspiracy among the tribes to wipe out the white settlements. It was enough to alarm the Colorado settlements to the point of panic. Governor John Evans of Colorado Territory and Colonel John M. Chivington, Methodist minister turned soldier and politician, who commanded the Colorado Military District, reacted strongly; they urged military action to crush the offending Indians and restore security to the territory.
One group of Cheyennes under Black Kettle and White Antelope, joined by a small number of Arapahos, sought peace with the whites. The Indian leaders met with Governor Evans and Colonel Chivington at Camp Weld near Denver on September 28, 1864. The whites sought only to determine the attitude of the Indians and made no formal peace arrangements, but their remarks were interpreted by the chiefs to mean peace, and the Indians turned in their arms at Fort Lyon and moved northward to a camp along Sand Creek. Here, on the morning of November 29, they were attacked without warning by Colonel Chivington with troops of the First Colorado Cavalry and one-hundred-day enlistees of the Third Colorado Cavalry. Black Kettle raised an American flag and a white flag before his tent to indicate the peaceful nature of the camp, and White Antelope stood with his arms folded in a peaceful gesture as the whites advanced. To no avail. The soldiers slaughtered the defenseless Indians in the most brutal manner, killing men, women, and children indiscriminately and mutilating in revolting fashion the bodies of those who fell. Black Kettle and others escaped, but about one hundred and fifty Indians, including White Antelope, were killed in this Sand Creek Massacre.
The inhabitants of Denver considered it a stunning victory and hailed the troops as heroes, but when the details of the massacre reached the East, disgust and indignation soon reverberated across the land. There was no dearth of information, for three formal investigations of the event collected extensive testimony and spread it before the public in official reports. On January 10, 1865, the House of Representatives directed the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to investigate the attack. In March the committee heard testimony in Washington, gathered affidavits, correspondence, and official reports, and added testimony from Chivington in Denver. The report, signed by Senator Benjamin F. Wade, was a devastating condemnation. Its description of the massacre was lurid and its criticism harsh. The soldiers, it said, "indulged in acts of barbarity of the most revolting character; such, it is to be hoped, as never before disgraced the acts of men claiming to be civilized." It spoke of the "fiendish malignity and cruelty of the officers who had so sedulously and carefully plotted the massacre," and accused Chivington of deliberately planning and executing "a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the veriest savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from American Indian Policy in Crisis by Francis Paul Prucha. Copyright © 1976 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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