Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existingCatlin, George
History
Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existing
Catlin, George
Indians of North America
The Sacs and Foxes are already drawing an annuity of 27,000 dollars,
for thirty years to come, in cash; and by the present Treaty just
concluded, that amount will be enlarged to 37,000 dollars per annum.
This Treaty with the Sacs and Foxes, held at Rock Island, was for
the purchase of a tract of land of 256,000 acres, lying on the Ioway
river, West of the Mississippi, a reserve which was made in the tract
of land conveyed to the Government by Treaty after the Sac war, and
known as the “Black Hawk purchase.” The Treaty has been completed by
Governor Dodge, by stipulating on the part of Government to pay them
seventy-five cents per acre for the reserve, (amounting to 192,000
dollars), in the manner and form following:—
Thirty thousand dollars to be paid in specie in June next, at the
Treaty-ground; and ten thousand dollars annually, for ten years to
come, at the same place, and in the same manner; and the remaining
sixty-two thousand, in the payment of their debts, and some little
donations to widows and half-breed children. The American Fur Company
was their principal creditor, whose account for goods advanced
on credit, they admitted, to the amount of nearly fifty thousand
dollars. It was stipulated by an article in the Treaty that one half
of these demands should be paid in cash as soon as the Treaty should
be ratified—and that five thousand dollars should be appropriated
annually, for their liquidation, until they were paid off.
It was proposed by Kee-o-kuk in his speech (and it is a fact worthy of
being known, for such has been the proposition in every Indian Treaty
that I ever attended), that the first preparatory stipulation on the
part of Government, should be to pay the requisite sum of money to
satisfy all their creditors, who were then present, and whose accounts
were handed in, acknowledged and admitted.
The price paid for this tract of land is a liberal one, comparatively
speaking, for the usual price heretofore paid for Indian lands, has
been one and a half or three quarter cents, (instead of seventy-five
cents) per acre, for land which Government has since sold out for ten
shillings.
Even one dollar per acre would not have been too much to have paid
for this tract, for every acre of it can be sold in one year, for ten
shillings per acre, to actual settlers, so desirable and so fertile is
the tract of country purchased. These very people sold to Government
a great part of the rich states of Illinois and Missouri, at the low
rates above-mentioned; and this small tract being the last that they
can ever part with, without throwing themselves back upon their natural
enemies, it was no more than right that Government should deal with
them, as they have done, liberally.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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