Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850Benton, Thomas Hart
History
Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850
Benton, Thomas Hart
United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
Thus, sir, it is clearly and fully proved that there was no fraud
practised upon these Indians; that they themselves never pretended
such a thing; and that the accusation is wholly a charge of recent
origin sprung up among ourselves. Having shown that there was no
fraud, this might be sufficient for the occasion, but having been
forced into the inquiry, it may be as well to complete it by showing
what were the causes of this war. To understand these causes, it
is necessary to recur to dates, to see the extreme moderation with
which the United States acted, the long time which they tolerated
the delays of the Indians, and the treachery and murder with which
their indulgence and forbearance was requited. The emigration was to
commence in 1833, and be completed in the years 1834 and 1835. The
last days of the last month of this last year had arrived, and the
emigration had not yet commenced. Wholly intent on their peaceable
removal, the administration had despatched a disbursing agent,
Lieutenant Harris of the army, to take charge of the expenditures
for the subsistence of these people. He arrived at Fort King on the
afternoon of the 28th of December, 1835; and as he entered the fort,
he became almost an eye-witness of a horrid scene which was the
subject of his first despatch to his government. He describes it in
these words:
"I regret that it becomes my first duty after my arrival here
to be the narrator of a story, which it will be, I am sure, as
painful for you to hear, as it is for me, who was almost an eye
witness to the bloody deed, to relate to you. Our excellent
superintendent, General Wiley Thompson, has been most cruelly
murdered by a party of the hostile Indians, and with him
Lieutenant Constant Smith, of the 2d regiment of artillery,
Erastus Rogers, the suttler to the post, with his two clerks,
a Mr. Kitzler, and a boy called Robert. This occurred on the
afternoon of the 28th instant (December), between three and
four o'clock. On the day of the massacre, Lieutenant Smith had
dined with the General, and after dinner invited him to take a
short stroll with him. They had not proceeded more than three
hundred yards beyond the agency office, when they were fired
upon by a party of Indians, who rose from ambush in the hammock,
within sight of the fort, and on which the suttler's house
borders. The reports of the rifles fired, the war-whoop twice
repeated, and after a brief space, several other volleys more
remote, and in the quarter of Mr. Rogers's house, were heard,
and the smoke of the firing seen from the fort. Mr. Rogers and
his clerks were surprised at dinner. Three escaped: the rest
murdered. The bodies of General Thompson, Lieutenant Smith, and
Mr. Kitzler, were soon found and brought in. Those of the others
were not found until this morning. That of General Thompson
was perforated with fourteen bullets. Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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