Annie Heloise Abel
The American Indian Under Reconstruction
The Slaveholding Indians Series
Madison & Adams Press, 2021.
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EAN: 4064066383169
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Table of Contents
I. Overtures of Peace and Reconciliation
II. The Return of the Refugees
III. Cattle-driving in the Indian Country
IV. The Muster Out of the Indian Home Guards
V. The Surrender of the Secessionist Indians
VI. The Peace Council at Fort Smith, September, 1865
VIII. The Freedmen of Indian Territory
IX. The Earlier of the Reconstruction Treaties of 1866
X. Negotiations with the Cherokees
PREFACE
The present is the concluding volume of the Slaveholding Indians series. Its title may be thought somewhat misleading since the time limits of the period covered by no means coincide with those commonly understood as signifying the Reconstruction Period of United States History. In that history, the word, reconstruction, which ought, etymologically, to imply the process of re-building and restoring, has attained, most unfortunately, a meaning all its own, a meaning now technical, nothing more nor less, in fact, than political re-adjustment. It is in the light of that meaning, definite and technical, that the limits of this book have been determined.
The treaties made with the great southern tribes in 1866 were reconstruction treaties pure and simple and this volume, therefore, finds its conclusion in their negotiation. They marked the establishment of a new relationship with the United States government; but their serious and far-reaching effects would constitute too long and too painful a story for narration here. Its chapters would include an account of tribal dissensions without number or cessation, of the pitiful racial deterioration of the Creeks due to unchecked mixture with the negroes, of the influx of a white population outnumbering and over-reaching the red, and, finally, of great tragedies that had for their theme the compulsory removal of such tribes as the inoffensive Nez Perces, the aggressive Poncas, and the noble Cheyennes.
In recent years, an increasing interest has been aroused in the course of the westward movement socalled and, little by little, the full significance of American expansion is being appreciated. In less than a century of time, the United States has extended itself over the vast reaches of this continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific and its territorial growth has necessarily involved the displacement of the aborigines. Its treatment of them is bound to concern very greatly the historian of the future, whose mental grasp will be immeasurably greater than is that of the men, who now write and teach American history in the old conventional way with a halo around New England and the garb of aristocracy enveloping Virginia. It is in American History rightly proportioned that the present study will have its place.
ANNIE HELOISE ABEL
Washington, D.C., March, 1920
I. OVERTURES OF PEACE AND RECONCILIATION
The failure of the United States government to afford to the southern Indians the protection solemnly guaranteed by treaty stipulations had been the great cause of their entering into an alliance with the Confederacy and it was also the primary cause of their persisting in their adherence to its fortunes. From first to last military conditions and events determined political and it is certainly no exaggeration to say that had a time ever come after the opening twelvemonth of war when the Federals could have shown themselves in unquestioned possession of the Indian country the treaties with the South would, one and all, have been immediately abrogated even by such initial and arch offenders as the Choctaws and Chickasaws who, alone of all the slaveholding tribes, had attached themselves, originally and in a national way, to the Secessionists because of a frankly avowed sympathy with the "peculiar institution." Success wins support everywhere, at all times and under all circumstances. Occasionally a very little of it is necessary, the glamor of the mere name being all-sufficient. It had taken next to nothing to call back the Cherokees to their allegiance to the North, the embodiment of the power with which all their other treaties had been made, and, just as the Confederate victory of Wilson's Creek, or Oak Hills, had terminated the neutrality that they had hoped, Kentuckylike, to maintain, so the penetration of their country by a Union force in the summer of sixty-two saw the last of their inclusion as a tribe within the southern league.
During 1863 the example set by the Cherokees was frequently followed, never by tribes, it is true, but by groups of Indians only, large or small. Individuals, families, clans could pass with impunity within the Federal territory whenever such passing appeared to promise a fair degree of personal security. It was contrariwise with nations, the Unionist fortunes of war being as yet too fluctuating for nations to care to take additional risks. None the less the time seemed reasonably opportune for friendly advances to be made to repentant tribes and so thought several of the generals in the field, among them Schofield and McNeil. In November, the former emphatically asserted that terms of peace might with propriety now be offered and the latter, having already reached the same conclusion, proposed the appointment of a special agent, clothed with plenary power to treat. For reasons difficult to enumerate at this juncture no really serious attention was given to the matter by Washington officials until a new year had dawned. Confessedly, the main reason was, the continued inability of the Federals to prove military occupancy of the Indian country. Without military occupancy it was worse than useless to make promises of protection. So firmly convinced of this was Commissioner Dole that, in January, he quite scouted the idea of its being feasible to do much towards reorganization before something more than forts and posts was in Federal possession.
While taking this stand, as caution dictated it was only right he should, Dole was willing to admit that the facts as alleged by Schofield