Indian Removal Act

“ Further, the Convention would express grave doubts as to the wisdom of removing Indian tribes to the Indian Territory, or to larger reservations, in cases in which the Indians are in a good measure prepared to abandon their tribal relationship, and to enter on civilized life. They should, at the least, have the option of remaining where they are subject to the conditions of citizenship, before they are compelled to remove to distant places, at the great hardship and suffering, and loss of health and life, which such enforced removal always involves. ”

“ Unscrupulous white men, agents of the invader, would be quickly on hand to foment this tendency. An evacuation by the Indians, and possibly an extensive one, of the very region which is held by the Government against the intruders on the very ground that it is reserved for Indian settlement, would be the consequence, and that just at the moment when the Government has the struggle for the integrity of the Indian Territory on its hands, and it requires the greatest watchfulness and energy to defeat the invasion. ”

“ Never, until the new light burst upon us, that hundreds of Indian treaties, made during a period of half a century, under almost every administration of the government, concluded and ratified with all the solemn forms of the constitution, and containing the most explicit guarantees and obligations of protection to the Indians, and of security to their possessions, were mere nullities, was it supposed competent to effect a compulsory removal of the Indians beyond the Mississippi. It is true, that the policy of removing them has been long entertained ”

“ I can scarcely imagine a man in power in Washington who would deliberately plot against the poor Indian. It is a portion of the people who do it, not the Government. If the Government should resolve that the Indian reservations shall remain forever intact, the stream that is flowing westward in mining enterprises, in agriculture, in railroads, would make such a measure impossible. There would be quarrels, and the Government would soon be mixed up in them. In such a case, extermination stares the Indian in the face. In Canada they have an Indian frontier, which we long ago ceased to have. ”

“ The Secretary of the Interior reports that leading Indians have absorbed great tracts of land to the exclusion of the common people, and government by an Indian aristocracy has been practically established, to the detriment of the people. It has been found impossible for the United States to keep its citizens out of the Territory, and the executory conditions contained in the treaties with these Nations have for the most part become impossible of execution. ”

“ I wish now to consider some of the conditions which will retard this fusion, as well as certain other facts which tend to promote it.
The Indian phase of the problem, so far at least as the United States is concerned, has been practically disposed of in what has already been said. The absorption of the Indians will be delayed so long as the tribal relations continue, and so long as the Indians are treated as wards of the Government, instead of being given their rights once for all, and placed upon the footing of other citizens. ”

“ There are constant attempts to encroach upon it, constant attempts, under various pretexts, to locate upon it, and occasional attempts to exasperate the Indians into the commission of some overt act which will justify, or at least palliate, retaliation, and thus give an excuse for plunging the country into another Indian war, the end of which, they well know, would be the expulsion of the Indians from the coveted tract. ”

“ In matters vitally affecting the American Indian, there has yet to be recorded a single instance where the vote-seeking Government officials have long withstood the demands of the Vociferous Few. The Governor of Oregon made a strong personal appeal to Washington for the expulsion of the Indians; inspired by the delegation from Oregon, Congress refused to appropriate the necessary funds for the reimbursement and removal of settlers, thus blocking the executive order. ”

“ The policy of removal did not benefit the Indian, and has brought but temporary relief to the country, by “the elimination of a troublesome element in society.” It has not been pursued to any great extent during the last twenty-five years, but still the massing of the Indians in two or three great reservations seems to be the ideal of our legislators, an ideal which has not a single support either in reason or experience.
Then the reservations have been such only in name. The Black Hills territory belonged to the Dakotas only a few years ago. ”

“ Among other reasons assigned to justify the measure, it was alleged that these Indians had been among the foremost in massacring our men at the river Raisin, and that the town, if it was spared, would afford a convenient shelter for the British allies during the winter, and from which they could easily pass into the Michigan territory to rob and murder the inhabitants.
I have yet to learn, that it is either good policy or justice, for the American troops, in every instance, to burn the Indian towns that fall into their power. Are the Indians to be reclaimed by fire? ”

“ When a race, which has no title to its lands other than conquest, so mismanages the territories it holds by violence as to deprive the world of an essential contribution to its well-being, the nations have a right—nay, a duty—to intervene in order to restore these devastated areas to civilisation. This same duty constitutes the reason and justification for the white settlers of America overriding the prior claims of the Indian to the prairies and forests of the great West. ”

“ First, fully depriving Indian tribes of their right to self-governance. American Indians had lived in tribal units over the years, and tribes had been their source of strength and spiritual support. The U.S. government forcibly abolished the tribal system and cast individual Indians into a white society with completely different traditions. Unable to find a job or make a living, the Indians became economically destitute, politically deprived and socially discriminated against. ”

“ Third, taking steps to fully impose American citizenship on the Indians. Native Americans who were identified as mixed-race had to give up their tribal status, and others were "de-tribalized", which greatly damaged the Indian identity. ”

“ To assume that it would be easy, or by any one sudden stroke of legislative policy possible, to undo the mischief and hurt of the long past, set the Indian policy of the country right for the future, and make the Indians at once safe and happy, is the blunder of a hasty and uninformed judgment. The notion which seems to be growing more prevalent, that simply to make all Indians at once citizens of the United States would be a sovereign and instantaneous panacea for all their ills and all the Government’s perplexities, is a very inconsiderate one. ”

“ The United States began by binding the government in the ordinance of 1787 to "observe the utmost good faith towards the Indians." During the first ten years of its existence, treaties were made with half a hundred tribes. It was declared a misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any persons, not acting for the government, to treat with, or purchase lands from an Indian nation—an inhibition meant to prevent trouble with the natives, as well as frauds against the government. But Indian wars were not prevented, and continue to this day. ”

“ I am not at all in sympathy with those benevolent but injudicious people who are constantly insisting that these Indians should be returned to their reservation. Their removal was an absolute necessity if the lives and property of citizens upon the frontier are to be at all regarded by the Government. Their continued restraint at a distance from the scene of their repeated and cruel murders and outrages is still necessary. It is a mistaken philanthropy, every way injurious, which prompts the desire to see these savages returned to their old haunts. ”

“ The policy has been to collect the Indians as rapidly as possible on reservations, and as far as practicable within what is known as the Indian Territory, and to teach them the arts of civilization and self-support. Where found off their reservations, and endangering the peace and safety of the whites, they have been punished, and will continue to be for like offenses. ”

“ I look upon it as the most essential step in the solution of the Indian problem. It will inspire the Indians with a feeling of assurance as to the permanency of their ownership of the lands they occupy and cultivate; it will give them a clear and legal standing as landed proprietors in the courts of law; it will secure to them for the first time fixed homes under the protection of the same law under which white men own theirs; it will eventually open to settlement by white men the large tracts of land now belonging to the reservations, but not used by the Indians. ”

“ The social and political relations that have existed and still continue between the Government of the United States and the several Indian tribes occupying territory within its geographical limits are, in many respects, peculiar.
The unprecedentedly rapid increase and expansion of the white population of the country, bringing into action corresponding necessities for the acquisition and subjection of additional territory, have maintained a constant straggle between civilization and barbarism. Involved as a factor in this social conflict, was the legal title to the land occupied by Indians. ”

“ The Indians of America owe very few obligations to the white people that have settled among them. The latter have endeavoured to exterminate the former, and by violence or fraud, to get possession of their territories. They have slaughtered a great part of the American Aborigines in open war, endeavoured to enslave the rest, and multiplied so rapidly, and spread themselves so regularly over the face of the transatlantic world, as to render the Indian mode of procuring subsistence exceedingly precarious. ”

“ It was determined, after some debate, to be the best way of ensuring that statehood would neither extinguish nor establish claims by Indians against the United States. If lands subject to the claim of Indian rights were transferred to the State, the Indians were not thereby to lose the right to make claims against the United States for damages. ”

“ The line of cases adjudicating Indian rights on American soil leads to the conclusion that Indian occupancy, not specifically recognized as ownership by action authorized by Congress, may be extinguished by the Government without compensation. [21] Every American schoolboy knows that the savage tribes of this continent were deprived of their ancestral ranges by force and that, even when the Indians ceded millions of acres by treaty in return for blankets, food and trinkets, it was not a sale but the conquerors' will that deprived them of their land. ”

“ The effort should be to save these Indians from the consequences of their own mistakes and improvidence and to secure to the real Indian his rights as against intruders and professed friends who profit by his retrogression. ”

“ But, still looking only at the face of the act, and seeing the intent to respect the Indian rights, we cannot read it as preventing the United States from making the change from tribal to several possessions, or dealing with this land in any way deemed most beneficial for those whose rights were treated as paramount. The proviso that the land must become public land shows that a mere change from tribal title was not enough. Taken literally, the grant only applied in case the Indians were removed or bought off the land. ”

“ That it required the United States absolutely and at all hazards to extinguish such titles, and to take from the Indians a strip of land 40 miles in width through the entire territory, and open it to settlement, is not only inconsistent with their treaties and with their agreement with the company, but one which involved a grave disturbance, if not practically the upsetting, of a long-established Indian government. ”

“ It would seem, therefore, clear that there was nothing in the character of the land as an Indian reservation which could prevent the operation of the grant of Congress, subject to the right of occupancy retained by the Indians; so that, when this right should be relinquished, the possession would inure to the grantee.
It is true that the United States, acting in good faith, could only acquire the reliquishment of the Indian right of occupancy by treaty ”

“ In that respect, they were much like the criminal penalties that Congress levied on those who went abroad and enlisted with England or France and thereby threatened the United States’ peace with those nations. See 1 Stat. 383.
The Trade and Intercourse Acts further hammered out the Nation’s diplomatic and territorial stance with respect to the Indian tribes. For example, reflecting the Federal Government’s powers over commerce, territories, and foreign affairs, the Acts forbade U. S. citizens from purchasing, surveying, or settling on Indian lands. ”

“ But if, after manifesting clearly to the Indians the dispositions of the General Government for the preservation of peace and the extension of a just protection to the said Indians, they should continue their incursions, the United States will be constrained to punish them with severity. ”