Post by Quil on Jan 18, 2015 22:44:28 GMT -8
Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America
Lewis was frustrated by the egalitarian nature of Indian society: “the authority of the Chief being nothing more than mere admonition . . . in fact every man is a chief.” He set out to change that by “making chiefs.” He passed out medals, certificates, and uniforms to give power to chosen men. By weakening traditional authority, he sought to make it easier for the United States to negotiate with the tribes. Lewis told the Otos that they needed these certificates “In order that the commandant at St. Louis . . . may know . . . that you have opened your ears to your great father's voice.”
Certificate of loyalty, ca. 1803. Printed document with wax seal and ribbon. Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from [Indians]. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."
—John Wayne
President Jefferson
Congress passed four Trade and Intercourse Acts pertaining to Indian affairs and commerce between 1790 and 1799. Under the 1790 act, the “Factory System” was established in 1791. The Federal Government attempted to control the Indian fur trade as a means of "civilizing” the Indians in order to acquire Indian hunting grounds. Government officials believed if trade goods were provided at a fair price it would keep the Indian villages close to the factory posts, and would eventually lead to the Indians assimilating into the white man culture.
In 1802, an amendment was added to the Trade and Intercourse Acts outlawing the use of liquor in the Indian fur trade. The Trade and Intercourse Acts did not prevent private traders from competing with the government factory posts, which eventually led to the discontinuance of the Factor System. The factory posts could not compete with traders that illegally, or legally, took alcohol to the Indians...federal trading license allowed the traders to take liquor with them for use by their boatmen. The government operated Factory System was abolished in 1822, but the laws making it illegal to sell alcohol to the Indians remained on the books.
President Jefferson (1801 - 1809) attempted to regulate the Indian trade through the Factory System. Jefferson’s Indian Policy centered around extinction of the savage way of life, assimilating the surviving Indians into the white economy, and the purchase of Indian hunting grounds for white settlements. His policy had three basic steps for acquiring Indian land:
(1) If necessary bribe influential chiefs to sign treaties, and if that failed any chief would do.
(2) Establish posts for protection against other tribes in exchange for land.
(3) Use cessation of trade, and/or declaration of war, to force Indians into giving up their hunting grounds.
President Jefferson had conflicting views on the American Indians. He believed the Indian culture and the American culture were incompatible. But he also believed, Indians had the oratory skills and family values to climb the ladder of cultural evolution. Indians could be incorporated into the young republic but not in the hunter-gather state. As long as Indians had hunting grounds, they could not be civilized. His belief was the tribes not accepting the white man’s civilization should be moved west of the Mississippi. He regarded this as a temporary solution, and eventually, the Indians must adapt to the American way, or be eradicated.
President Jefferson’s new republic with liberty and equality for all did not apply to the American Indians. The creation of the new republic sealed the fate of the Indians as roving hunters (Wallace).
"Unbelievers deserve not only to be separated from the Church, but also... to be exterminated from the World by death." - Thomas Aquinas (1271)
1302 Unam Sanctam ("The One Holy") then "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus" (there is no salvation outside the Church)
1452 Dum diversas (reduce any Muslims, pagans and other unbelievers to perpetual slavery)
1455 Romanus Pontifex ("The Roman pontiff") or for a better term Sanctifies the seizure of non-Christian lands discovered during the "Age of Discovery" and encourages the enslavement of natives.
1493 Inter caetera ("Among the other")
Inter caetera states: "Among other works well pleasing to the Divine Majesty and cherished of our heart, this assuredly ranks highest, that in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.
Sir John A. Macdonald, acting as both prime minister and minister of Indian affairs during the darkest days of the famine, even boasted that the indigenous population was kept on the “verge of actual starvation,” in an attempt to deflect criticism that he was squandering public funds.
George Washington...
In 1779, George Washington instructed Major General John Sullivan to attack Iroquois people. Washington stated, "lay waste all the settlements around...that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed". In the course of the carnage and annihilation of Indian people, Washington also instructed his general not "listen to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected". (Stannard, David E. AMERICAN HOLOCAUST. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. pp. 118-121.)
In 1783, Washington's anti-Indian sentiments were apparent in his comparisons of Indians with wolves: "Both being beast of prey, tho' they differ in shape", he said. George Washington's policies of extermination were realized in his troops behaviors following a defeat. Troops would skin the bodies of Iroquois "from the hips downward to make boot tops or leggings". Indians who survived the attacks later re-named the nation's first president as "Town Destroyer".
In 1807, Thomas Jefferson instructed his War Department that, should any Indians resist against America stealing Indian lands, the Indian resistance must be met with "the hatchet". Jefferson continued, "And...if ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, " he wrote, "we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or is driven beyond the Mississippi."
1813 Thomas Jefferson America must "pursue [the Indians] to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach".
U.S. President Martin Van Buren in 1837
"No state can achieve proper culture, civilization, and progress ... as long as Indians are permitted to remain."
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the execution, by hanging, of 38 Dakota Sioux prisoners in Mankato, Minnesota. Most of those executed were holy men or political leaders of their camps.
Theodore Roosevelt. This Indian fighter firmly grasped the notion of Manifest Destiny saying that America's extermination of the Indians and thefts our their lands "was ultimately beneficial as it was inevitable". Roosevelt once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth". (Stannard, Op.Cit.)
"Treaties were never made to be kept, but to serve a present purpose, to settle a present difficulty in the easiest manner possible, to acquire a desired good with the least possible compensation, and then to be disregarded as soon as this purpose was tainted and we were strong enough to enforce a new and more profitable arrangement." “The more Indians we kill this year, the fewer we will need to kill the next.”
General William Tecumseh Sherman
General William Tecumseh Sherman you are rushing into a war with one of the most powerful indigenously mechanical people on earth- right at your doors. you are bound to fail make treaties we are not bound by them......
“I intend if possible to keep up a good correspondence with the Saint John's Indians, a warlike people, tho' Treaties with Indians are nothing, nothing but force will prevail.” Governor Edward Cornwallis - British Governor of Nova Scotia, 1749 - 1752
“[The Indian] must be imbued with the exalting egotism of American civilization so that he will say ‘I’ instead of ‘We’, and ‘This is mine’ instead of ‘This is ours.’” John Oberly U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs
”The United States has unequivocally agreed…that discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy.” U.S. Supreme Court Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh.
“Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians. I have come to kill Indians and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s Heaven to kill them.” Colonel John Milton Chivington U.S. Army
“It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromise can be made.” General John Pope U.S. Army
“The civilization of the Indians is impossible while the buffalo remain upon the plains.” Columbus Delano U.S. Secretary of the Interior
James Monroe, in a letter to Andrew Jackson, October 5, 1817
“The hunter or savage state requires a greater extent of territory to sustain it, than is compatible with the progress and just claims of civilized life, and must yield to it. Nothing is more certain, than, if the Indian tribes do not abandon that state, and become civilized, that they will decline, and become extinct. The hunter state, tho maintain’d by warlike spirits, presents but a feeble resistance to the more dense, compact, and powerful population of civilized man.”
President Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, December 29, 1813
“This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.”
John Quincy Adams, 1802, when rationalizing territorial imperatives as God’s will
“What is the right of the huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? Shall the fields and vallies, which a beneficent God has formed to teem with the life of innumerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting barrenness?”
Governor William Henry Harrison, of the Indiana Territory (1800-1812) while defending displacement of the Indians
“Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give support to a large population and to be the seat of civilization?”
Orders of George Washington to General John Sullivan, May 31, 1779
“The immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more.
Benjamin Franklin, from his autobiography, 1750s
“If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means.”
Lewis was frustrated by the egalitarian nature of Indian society: “the authority of the Chief being nothing more than mere admonition . . . in fact every man is a chief.” He set out to change that by “making chiefs.” He passed out medals, certificates, and uniforms to give power to chosen men. By weakening traditional authority, he sought to make it easier for the United States to negotiate with the tribes. Lewis told the Otos that they needed these certificates “In order that the commandant at St. Louis . . . may know . . . that you have opened your ears to your great father's voice.”
Certificate of loyalty, ca. 1803. Printed document with wax seal and ribbon. Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from [Indians]. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."
—John Wayne
President Jefferson
Congress passed four Trade and Intercourse Acts pertaining to Indian affairs and commerce between 1790 and 1799. Under the 1790 act, the “Factory System” was established in 1791. The Federal Government attempted to control the Indian fur trade as a means of "civilizing” the Indians in order to acquire Indian hunting grounds. Government officials believed if trade goods were provided at a fair price it would keep the Indian villages close to the factory posts, and would eventually lead to the Indians assimilating into the white man culture.
In 1802, an amendment was added to the Trade and Intercourse Acts outlawing the use of liquor in the Indian fur trade. The Trade and Intercourse Acts did not prevent private traders from competing with the government factory posts, which eventually led to the discontinuance of the Factor System. The factory posts could not compete with traders that illegally, or legally, took alcohol to the Indians...federal trading license allowed the traders to take liquor with them for use by their boatmen. The government operated Factory System was abolished in 1822, but the laws making it illegal to sell alcohol to the Indians remained on the books.
President Jefferson (1801 - 1809) attempted to regulate the Indian trade through the Factory System. Jefferson’s Indian Policy centered around extinction of the savage way of life, assimilating the surviving Indians into the white economy, and the purchase of Indian hunting grounds for white settlements. His policy had three basic steps for acquiring Indian land:
(1) If necessary bribe influential chiefs to sign treaties, and if that failed any chief would do.
(2) Establish posts for protection against other tribes in exchange for land.
(3) Use cessation of trade, and/or declaration of war, to force Indians into giving up their hunting grounds.
President Jefferson had conflicting views on the American Indians. He believed the Indian culture and the American culture were incompatible. But he also believed, Indians had the oratory skills and family values to climb the ladder of cultural evolution. Indians could be incorporated into the young republic but not in the hunter-gather state. As long as Indians had hunting grounds, they could not be civilized. His belief was the tribes not accepting the white man’s civilization should be moved west of the Mississippi. He regarded this as a temporary solution, and eventually, the Indians must adapt to the American way, or be eradicated.
President Jefferson’s new republic with liberty and equality for all did not apply to the American Indians. The creation of the new republic sealed the fate of the Indians as roving hunters (Wallace).
"Unbelievers deserve not only to be separated from the Church, but also... to be exterminated from the World by death." - Thomas Aquinas (1271)
1302 Unam Sanctam ("The One Holy") then "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus" (there is no salvation outside the Church)
1452 Dum diversas (reduce any Muslims, pagans and other unbelievers to perpetual slavery)
1455 Romanus Pontifex ("The Roman pontiff") or for a better term Sanctifies the seizure of non-Christian lands discovered during the "Age of Discovery" and encourages the enslavement of natives.
1493 Inter caetera ("Among the other")
Inter caetera states: "Among other works well pleasing to the Divine Majesty and cherished of our heart, this assuredly ranks highest, that in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.
Sir John A. Macdonald, acting as both prime minister and minister of Indian affairs during the darkest days of the famine, even boasted that the indigenous population was kept on the “verge of actual starvation,” in an attempt to deflect criticism that he was squandering public funds.
George Washington...
In 1779, George Washington instructed Major General John Sullivan to attack Iroquois people. Washington stated, "lay waste all the settlements around...that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed". In the course of the carnage and annihilation of Indian people, Washington also instructed his general not "listen to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected". (Stannard, David E. AMERICAN HOLOCAUST. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. pp. 118-121.)
In 1783, Washington's anti-Indian sentiments were apparent in his comparisons of Indians with wolves: "Both being beast of prey, tho' they differ in shape", he said. George Washington's policies of extermination were realized in his troops behaviors following a defeat. Troops would skin the bodies of Iroquois "from the hips downward to make boot tops or leggings". Indians who survived the attacks later re-named the nation's first president as "Town Destroyer".
In 1807, Thomas Jefferson instructed his War Department that, should any Indians resist against America stealing Indian lands, the Indian resistance must be met with "the hatchet". Jefferson continued, "And...if ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, " he wrote, "we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or is driven beyond the Mississippi."
1813 Thomas Jefferson America must "pursue [the Indians] to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach".
U.S. President Martin Van Buren in 1837
"No state can achieve proper culture, civilization, and progress ... as long as Indians are permitted to remain."
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the execution, by hanging, of 38 Dakota Sioux prisoners in Mankato, Minnesota. Most of those executed were holy men or political leaders of their camps.
Theodore Roosevelt. This Indian fighter firmly grasped the notion of Manifest Destiny saying that America's extermination of the Indians and thefts our their lands "was ultimately beneficial as it was inevitable". Roosevelt once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth". (Stannard, Op.Cit.)
"Treaties were never made to be kept, but to serve a present purpose, to settle a present difficulty in the easiest manner possible, to acquire a desired good with the least possible compensation, and then to be disregarded as soon as this purpose was tainted and we were strong enough to enforce a new and more profitable arrangement." “The more Indians we kill this year, the fewer we will need to kill the next.”
General William Tecumseh Sherman
General William Tecumseh Sherman you are rushing into a war with one of the most powerful indigenously mechanical people on earth- right at your doors. you are bound to fail make treaties we are not bound by them......
“I intend if possible to keep up a good correspondence with the Saint John's Indians, a warlike people, tho' Treaties with Indians are nothing, nothing but force will prevail.” Governor Edward Cornwallis - British Governor of Nova Scotia, 1749 - 1752
“[The Indian] must be imbued with the exalting egotism of American civilization so that he will say ‘I’ instead of ‘We’, and ‘This is mine’ instead of ‘This is ours.’” John Oberly U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs
”The United States has unequivocally agreed…that discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy.” U.S. Supreme Court Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh.
“Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians. I have come to kill Indians and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s Heaven to kill them.” Colonel John Milton Chivington U.S. Army
“It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromise can be made.” General John Pope U.S. Army
“The civilization of the Indians is impossible while the buffalo remain upon the plains.” Columbus Delano U.S. Secretary of the Interior
James Monroe, in a letter to Andrew Jackson, October 5, 1817
“The hunter or savage state requires a greater extent of territory to sustain it, than is compatible with the progress and just claims of civilized life, and must yield to it. Nothing is more certain, than, if the Indian tribes do not abandon that state, and become civilized, that they will decline, and become extinct. The hunter state, tho maintain’d by warlike spirits, presents but a feeble resistance to the more dense, compact, and powerful population of civilized man.”
President Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, December 29, 1813
“This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.”
John Quincy Adams, 1802, when rationalizing territorial imperatives as God’s will
“What is the right of the huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? Shall the fields and vallies, which a beneficent God has formed to teem with the life of innumerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting barrenness?”
Governor William Henry Harrison, of the Indiana Territory (1800-1812) while defending displacement of the Indians
“Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give support to a large population and to be the seat of civilization?”
Orders of George Washington to General John Sullivan, May 31, 1779
“The immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more.
Benjamin Franklin, from his autobiography, 1750s
“If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means.”