The Last American FrontierPaxson, Frederic L. (Frederic Logan)
History
The Last American Frontier
Paxson, Frederic L. (Frederic Logan)
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.); West (U.S.) -- History
As the frontier moved down the Ohio, individual wars were fought and
individual treaties were made as occasion offered. At times the tribes
yielded readily to white occupation; occasionally they struggled
bitterly to save their lands; but the result was always the same. The
right bank of the river, long known as the Indian Shore, was contested
in a series of wars lasting nearly until 1800, and became available for
white colonization only after John Jay had, through his treaty of 1794,
removed the British encouragement to the Indians, and General Wayne had
administered to them a decisive defeat. Isolated attacks were frequent,
but Tecumseh's war of 1811 was the next serious conflict, while, after
General Harrison brought this war to an end at Tippecanoe, there was
comparative peace along the northwest frontier until the time of Black
Hawk and his uprising of 1832.
The left bank of the river was opened with less formal resistance,
admitting Kentucky and Tennessee before the Indian Shore was a safe
habitation for whites. South of Tennessee lay the great southern
confederacies, somewhat out of the line of early western progress, and
hence not plunged into struggles until the War of 1812 was over. But
as Wayne and Harrison had opened the Northwest, so Jackson cleared
the way for white advance into Alabama and Mississippi. By 1821 new
states touched the Mississippi River along its whole course between New
Orleans and the lead mines of upper Illinois.
In the advance of the frontier to the bend of the Missouri some of the
tribes were pushed back, while others were passed and swallowed up by
the invading population. Experience showed that the two races could
not well live in adjacent lands. The conditions which made for Indian
welfare could not be kept up in the neighborhood of white settlements,
for the more lawless of the whites were ever ready, through illicit
trade, deceit, and worse, to provoke the most dangerous excesses of
the savage. The Indian was demoralized, the white became steadily more
intolerant.
Although the ingenious Jefferson had anticipated him in the idea,
the first positive policy which looked toward giving to the Indian
a permanent home and the sort of guardianship which he needed until
he could become reconciled to civilized life was the suggestion of
President Monroe. At the end of his presidency, Georgia was angrily
demanding the removal of the Cherokee from her limits, and was ready to
violate law and the Constitution in her desire to accomplish her end.
Monroe was prepared to meet the demand. He submitted to Congress, on
January 27, 1825, a report from Calhoun, then Secretary of War, upon
the numbers of the tribes, the area of their lands, and the area of
available destinations for them. He recommended that as rapidly as
agreements could be made with them they be removed to country lying
westward and northwestward,--to the further limits of the Louisiana
Purchase, which lay beyond the line of the western frontier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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