THE INDIAN QUESTION.
BY
FRANCIS A. WALKER,
LATE U. S. COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
(Late Ticknor and Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.)
1874.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874 by
F. A. WALKER,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
BOSTON
Rand, Avery, & Co., Stereotypers and Printers.
CONTENTS.
THE INDIAN QUESTION.[A]
On the 3d of March, 1871, Congress declared that "hereafter no Indiannation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall beacknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power,with whom the United States may contract by treaty."
Brave words these would have seemed to good William Penn, treating withthe Lenni Lenape, under the elm at Kensington; or even to doughty MilesStandish, ready as that worthy ever was to march against the heathen whotroubled his Israel. Heathen they were in the eyes of the good people ofPlymouth Colony, but nations of heathen, without question, as truly aswere the Amalekites, the Jebusites, or the Hittites to the infant colonyat Shiloh. It would have been deemed the tallest kind of "tall talk," inthe councils of Jamestown, Providence, and Annapolis, to express[Pg 6]disdain for the proffered hand of Indian friendship, or even to objectto payment of some small tribute, in beads or powder, to these nativelords of the continent. In 1637, when Capt. John Mason marched againstSassacus, at the head of ninety men, he had with him half the fightingforce of the Connecticut Colony. In 1653 a wall was built acrossManhattan Island to keep out the savages; though, when we say that theline of defence just covered the present course of Wall Street (whichderives its name from that circumstance), our readers may not fail towonder whether the savages were not the rather kept in by it. In 1675,when the New-England Colonies had grown comparatively strong, theymustered for their war against Philip one thousand men, of whomMassachusetts furnished five hundred and