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Historical Background
The Oregon country, its ownership disputed between
Great Britain and the United States, attracted some; Mexican California
others. Then in the Mexican War (1846-48) the United States seized
California and the Southwest from Mexico and extended its dominion to
the Pacific. Texas, independent of Mexico since 1836, joined the Union
in 1845. Settlement of the Oregon controversy in 1846 added the Pacific
Northwest.
Territorial expansion stimulated emigration. The
dramatic discovery of gold in California in 1848 opened the floodgates.
Bound for the new possessions, few emigrants stopped to make their homes
in the Indian country, but they pierced it from north to south with a
tier of overland highwaysthe Oregon-California Trail, the Santa Fe
Trail, the Gila Trail, the Smoky Hill Trail, and a multitude of
alternate and feeder trails.
The overland trails destroyed a dream cherished by
statesmen since the 1820's. They hoped to solve the Indian problem by
erecting a "Permanent Indian Frontier," beyond which all tribes could
enjoy security from invasion. To define the frontier, the Army laid out
a chain of posts, running from Fort Snelling, Minn. (1819), on the
north, to Fort Jesup, La. (1822), on the south. Roughly paralleling the
eastern boundary of the second tier of States west of the Mississippi,
it eventually extended through Forts Atkinson (1819), Leavenworth
(1827), Scott (1842), Gibson (1824), Smith (1817), Towson (1824), and
Washita (1842). Most of the eastern Indians were moved to new lands west
of the frontier. Congress enacted a comprehensive body of legislation,
the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834, to regulate relations with
both immigrant and resident tribes. In 1838 Indian
Territoryroughly modern Oklahomawas established as a
permanent home for the dispossessed easterners.
But in the 1840's the western trails breached the
"permanent frontier" and bore streams of travelers across it. They
demanded protection. By 1850 the "permanent frontier" had vanished and
the Federal Government had moved west to confront the Indian. Along the
trails and among the settlements at trail's end, the Army built forts.
The Indians met new types of mensoldiers, agents, peace
commissionerswho turned out to be not nearly so agreeable as the
trappers and traders.
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The "Permanent Indian Frontier"
(1817-circa 1848) (click on image for an enlargement in a new
window) |
The agents and peace commissioners represented the
Government Agency charged with Indian relations: the Indian Bureau,
transferred in 1849 from the War Department to the newly created
Department of the Interior. They negotiated treaties, disbursed annuity
goods according to treaty obligations, mediated between Indians and
whites, and tried to influence the tribes to accommodate themselves to
Government policies. Some of the officials, such as Tom Fitzpatrick and
"Kit" Carson, were men of ability and dedication. Many, however,
appointed as a reward for political services, were not only innocent of
knowledge and understanding of Indians but frequently incompetent and
dishonest as well.
Only dimly did the Indians perceive the implications
of the first, seemingly harmless, requests of the Government's
emissaries. The latter asked the guarantee of safe passage to emigrants
and withdrawal from the trails. In return, once a year the Great Father
in Washington would send generous presents. Most tribes, still regarded
under U.S. law as "domestic dependent nations," signed treaties
committing the exchange of promises to paper, and they came at specified
times to centrally located agencies to receive presents from an agent
appointed for the purpose. The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), with the
Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, and other tribes of the northern Plains,
and the Treaty of Fort Atkinson (1853), with the Kiowas and Comanches of
the southern Plains, set the pattern for others that followed. The Upper
Platte and Upper Arkansas Agencies represented the tentative and rather
informal beginnings of management institutions that in four decades
would bend the western tribes to the Government's will.
The treaty system contained serious flaws that doomed
it as an instrument for regulating relations between the two races. The
signatory chiefs seldom represented all the groups whose interests were
affected and could not enforce compliance by those they did represent.
The white emissaries did represent the United States, but no less than
the chiefs could they compel emigrants and settlers to respect the
pacts. Moreover, because of cultural and language barriers, the two
sides usually had sharply different under standings of what had been
agreed upon. Sometimes, one or both sides lacked any serious intention
to abide by a compact anyway.
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Buffalo were vital to the way of
life of the Plains indians. After white hunters slaughtered the animals,
troops forced the Indians onto reservations. "Indians Hunting the
Bison," Charles Vogel lithograph from Karl Bodmer sketch.
(Library of Congress) |
And even the best of faith yielded to tensions. The
Indian saw his buffalo and other game slaughtered, his timber cut, his
patterns of seasonal migration disturbed, and in places ranges that had
been held and cherished for generations appropriatedall by
interlopers who also offered tempting targets to a people who set high
value on distinction in warfare. The whites, on the other hand, saw the
Indian as the possessor of an empire rich in natural resources that he
had no means or ability of exploiting and that "natural law" commanded
the "higher" civilization to exploit. Many whites saw him, too, as a
savage who slaughtered their fellow citizens for mere plunder and the
gratification of blood-lust.
Inevitably, friction occurredalong the Oregon,
Santa Fe, and Southern Transcontinental Trails; on the expanding Texas
frontier and the static New Mexico frontier; and in California and
Oregon, where miners and settlers dispossessed the aboriginal occupants
of lands coveted for mining or agriculture. For many of the tribes, the
decade of the 1850's brought intermittent warfare with the soldiers,
whose forts spread in increasing numbers.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/intro1.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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