The Land of the Miamis: An Account of the Struggle to Secure Possession of the North-West from the End of the Revolution until 1812Barce, Elmore
History
The Land of the Miamis: An Account of the Struggle to Secure Possession of the North-West from the End of the Revolution until 1812
Barce, Elmore
Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1750-1815; Miami Indians; Northwest, Old -- History
Looking at the Potawatomi in the true light, and stripped of all that
false coloring with which he has been painted, and the facts remains
that he was every inch a wild and untamed barbarian. And while we must
admire him for his native strength, his wonderful endurance through the
famine and cold of the northern winters, and his agility and ingenuity
in the chase or on the warpath, it is not any wonder that the children
of that time, as Judge James Hall relates, "learned to hate the Indian
and to speak of him as an enemy. From the cradle they listened
continually to horrid tales of savage violence, and became familiar with
narratives of aboriginal cunning and ferocity." Nor is it any wonder
that when General Harrison crossed the Wabash at Montezuma and gave an
order to the advance guard to shoot every Indian at sight, that the
rough frontiersman, John Tipton, entered in his diary, "Fine News!"
CHAPTER VIII
OUR INDIAN POLICY
_--The Indian right of occupancy recognized through the liberal policy
of Washington and Jefferson._
By the terms of the definitive treaty of 1783, concluding the war of the
revolution the territory northwest of the river Ohio passed forever from
the jurisdiction of the British government, over to the new born states
of the United States. By the first article of that treaty, the thirteen
former colonies were acknowledged to be free, sovereign and independent
powers, and Great Britain not only relinquished all her rights to the
government, but to the "proprietary and territorial rights of the same,
and every part thereof." At the time of that treaty, the northwest
territory was occupied by a number of powerful and warlike tribes of
savages, yet no reservation of any kind was made in their favor by the
English negotiators. The Iroquois confederacy of New York, and more
particularly the Mohawks, had stood out stoutly on the side of the king,
but they were wholly forgotten in the articles of peace. Of this action,
Joseph Brant, the Mohawk leader, in his communications with Lord Sidney,
in 1786, most bitterly complained, expressing his astonishment "that
such firm friends and allies could be so neglected by a nation
remarkable for its honor and glory." Yet if Brant had been better
acquainted with the policy and usage of European nations, he would have
known that England had granted away not only the sovereignty, but the
very soil of the territory itself, subject only to the Indian rights of
occupancy. In all the ancient grants of the crown to the duke of York,
Lord Clarendon and others, there passed "the soil as well as the right
of dominion to the grantee." France, while adopting a liberal policy
toward the savages of the new world, claimed the absolute right of
ownership to the land, based on first discovery. Spain maintained a like
claim. The war for supremacy in the Saint Lawrence, the Mississippi and
the Ohio valleys between Great Britain and France, terminating in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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