Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ for their residence. The delegation declare themselves well satisfied with the country assigned them, and agree that the removal should commence as soon as the United States could make the necessary arrangements for the removal of the people.

      This brings down the proof to the conclusion of all questions beyond the Mississippi; it brings it down to the conclusion of the treaty at Fort Gibson – that treaty in which the senator from New Jersey [Mr. Southard] has located the charge of fraud, after withdrawing the same charge from the Payne's Landing treaty. It brings us to the end of the negotiations at the point selected for the charge; and now how stands the accusation? How stands the charge of fraud? Is there a shadow, an atom, a speck, of foundation on which to rest it? No, sir: Nothing – nothing – nothing! Every thing was done that was stipulated for; done by the persons who were to do it; and done in the exact manner agreed upon. In fact, the nature of the things to be done west of the Mississippi was such as not to admit of fraud. Two things were to be done, one to be seen with the eyes, and the other to be heard with the ears. The deputation was to see their new country, and say whether they liked it. This was a question to their own senses – to their own eyes – and was not susceptible of fraud. They were to hear whether the Creeks would receive them back as a part of their confederacy; this was a question to their own ears, and was also unsusceptible of fraud. Their own eyes could not deceive them in looking at land; their own ears could not deceive them in listening to their own language from the Creeks. No, sir: there was no physical capacity, or moral means, for the perpetration of fraud; and none has ever been pretended by the Indians from that day to this. The Indians themselves have never thought of such a thing. There is no assumption of a deceived party among them. It is not a deceived party that is at war – a party deceived by the delegation which went to the West – but that very delegation itself, with the exception of Charley Emarthla, are the hostile leaders at home! This is reducing the accusation to an absurdity. It is making the delegation the dupes of their own eyes and of their own ears, and then going to war with the United States, because their own eyes deceived them in looking at land on the Canadian River, and their own ears deceived them in listening to their own language from the Creeks; and then charging these frauds upon the United States. All this is absurd; and it is due to these absent savages to say that they never committed any such absurdity – that they never placed their objection to remove upon any plea of deception practised upon them beyond the Mississippi, but on frivolous pretexts invented long after the return of the delegation; which pretexts covered the real grounds growing out of the influence of runaway slaves, and some evilly disposed chiefs, and that thirst for blood and plunder, in which they expected a long course of enjoyment and impunity in their swamps, believed to be impenetrable to the whites.

      Thus, sir, it is clearly and fully proved that there was no fraud practised upon these Indians; that they themselves never pretended such a thing; and that the accusation is wholly a charge of recent origin sprung up among ourselves. Having shown that there was no fraud, this might be sufficient for the occasion, but having been forced into the inquiry, it may be as well to complete it by showing what were the causes of this war. To understand these causes, it is necessary to recur to dates, to see the extreme moderation with which the United States acted, the long time which they tolerated the delays of the Indians, and the treachery and murder with which their indulgence and forbearance was requited. The emigration was to commence in 1833, and be completed in the years 1834 and 1835. The last days of the last month of this last year had arrived, and the emigration had not yet commenced. Wholly intent on their peaceable removal, the administration had despatched a disbursing agent, Lieutenant Harris of the army, to take charge of the expenditures for the subsistence of these people. He arrived at Fort King on the afternoon of the 28th of December, 1835; and as he entered the fort, he became almost an eye-witness of a horrid scene which was the subject of his first despatch to his government. He describes it in these words:

      "I regret that it becomes my first duty after my arrival here to be the narrator of a story, which it will be, I am sure, as painful for you to hear, as it is for me, who was almost an eye witness to the bloody deed, to relate to you. Our excellent superintendent, General Wiley Thompson, has been most cruelly murdered by a party of the hostile Indians, and with him Lieutenant Constant Smith, of the 2d regiment of artillery, Erastus Rogers, the suttler to the post, with his two clerks, a Mr. Kitzler, and a boy called Robert. This occurred on the afternoon of the 28th instant (December), between three and four o'clock. On the day of the massacre, Lieutenant Smith had dined with the General, and after dinner invited him to take a short stroll with him. They had not proceeded more than three hundred yards beyond the agency office, when they were fired upon by a party of Indians, who rose from ambush in the hammock, within sight of the fort, and on which the suttler's house borders. The reports of the rifles fired, the war-whoop twice repeated, and after a brief space, several other volleys more remote, and in the quarter of Mr. Rogers's house, were heard, and the smoke of the firing seen from the fort. Mr. Rogers and his clerks were surprised at dinner. Three escaped: the rest murdered. The bodies of General Thompson, Lieutenant Smith, and Mr. Kitzler, were soon found and brought in. Those of the others were not found until this morning. That of General Thompson was perforated with fourteen bullets. Mr. Rogers had received seventeen. All were scalped, except the boy. The cowardly murderers are supposed to be a party of Micasookees, 40 or 50 strong, under the traitor Powell (Osceola), whose shrill, peculiar war-whoop, was recognized by our interpreters, and the one or two friendly Indians we have in the fort, and who knew it well. Two expresses (soldiers) were despatched upon fresh horses on the evening of this horrid tragedy, with tidings of it to General Clinch; but not hearing from him or them, we conclude they were cut off. We are also exceedingly anxious for the fate of the two companies (under Major Dade) which had been ordered up from Fort Brooke, and of whom we learn nothing."

      Sir, this is the first letter of the disbursing agent, specially detached to furnish the supplies to the emigrating Indians. He arrives in the midst of treachery and murder; and his first letter is to announce to the government the assassination of their agent, an officer of artillery, and five citizens; the assassination of two expresses, for they were both waylaid and murdered; and the massacre of one hundred and twelve men and officers under Major Dade. All this took place at once; and this was the beginning of the war. Up to that moment the government of the United States were wholly employed in preparing the Indians for removal, recommending them to go, and using no force or violence upon them. This is the way the war was brought on; this is the way it began; and was there ever a case in which a government was so loudly called upon to avenge the dead, to protect the living, and to cause itself to be respected by punishing the contemners of its power? The murder of the agent was a double offence, a peculiar outrage to the government whose representative he was, and a violation even of the national law of savages. Agents are seldom murdered even by savages; and bound as every government is to protect all its citizens, it is doubly bound to protect its agents and representatives abroad. Here, then, is a government agent, and a military officer, five citizens, two expresses, and a detachment of one hundred and twelve men, in all one hundred and twenty-one persons, treacherously and inhumanly massacred in one day! and because General Jackson's administration did not submit to this horrid outrage, he is charged with the guilt of a war founded in fraud upon innocent and unoffending Indians! Such is the spirit of opposition to our own government! such the love of Indians and contempt of whites! and such the mawkish sentimentality of the day in which we live – a sentimentality which goes moping and sorrowing about in behalf of imaginary wrongs to Indians and negroes, while the whites themselves are the subject of murder, robbery and defamation.

      The prime mover in all this mischief, and the leading agent in the most atrocious scene of it, was a half-blooded Indian of little note before this time, and of no consequence in the councils of his tribe; for his name is not to be seen in the treaty either of Payne's Landing or Fort Gibson. We call him Powell; by his tribe he was called Osceola. He led the attack in the massacre of the agent, and of those who were killed with him, in the afternoon of the 28th of December. The disbursing agent, whose letter has been read, in his account of that massacre, applies the epithet traitor to the name of this Powell. Well might he apply that epithet to that assassin; for he had just been fed and caressed by the very person whom he waylaid and murdered. He had come into the agency shortly before that time with seventy of his followers, professed СКАЧАТЬ