4

OF FATHERS AND SONS

John Ross did not look like a storybook Indian: he wore no paint or feathers, and his expressive voice neither whooped nor grunted. Nonetheless, he was chief of the Cherokee, one of the largest and most resourceful tribes in North America. On September 11, 1862, he arrived at the White House, dressed in the fine clothes he enjoyed, a top hat crowning his brow. He was an old hand at this Washington game. For more than thirty years Ross had been parlaying with presidents, Supreme Court justices, and congressmen to uphold his people’s rights against an ever encroaching white tide. Now he had come once more to speak with the “Great Father,” as many Native Americans called the President. Ross was better educated than the man he was about to meet; had been in public office longer; and was more financially secure. As head of a sovereign nation he had important business with Abraham Lincoln, and he was anxious to get to work.¹

Ross’s skill as a leader was honed during a turbulent period in Cherokee history. Born in 1790 to a Scottish father and half-Native mother, he was raised bilingually, studying both sacred Cherokee traditions and Enlightenment principles. Ross—or Guwisguwi (“A rare bird”)—was drawn to politics, and by age thirty his talents were well recognized. In 1827 he was elected president of a convention that drew up the first codified tribal statutes in North America. Modeled after the United States Constitution, it featured three clearly defined branches of government, with a principal chief who was elected every four years. During the same period, the Cherokee established newspapers, a rigorous school system, and profitable businesses. A “syllabary” was developed by the genius named Sequoyah—a rare instance of nonliterate people inventing a system of writing. After its publication, literacy among the Cherokee surpassed that of their white neighbors. In 1828 Ross was elected the first principal chief of this energetic nation.

Ross’s priority was to protect the Cherokees’ fertile territory, which bordered on Georgia and Tennessee. Land lust had begun to squeeze the area’s “Five Civilized Tribes,” and President Andrew Jackson strongly supported white demands for open settlement. Lobbying relentlessly for peaceful relations, Ross hired William Wirt, a noted attorney, to represent his people before the law. John Marshall’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee, defining them in Worcester v. Georgia as a sovereign nation, and guaranteeing them protection on their land. But the iron-willed president and Georgia officials defied the rulings, demanding that the Indians be moved west of the Mississippi. “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” Jackson reportedly exclaimed. “Build a fire under them. When it gets hot enough, they’ll go.”²

Under pressure, the Cherokee themselves began to differ on their best course. Ross, with his faith in the law, could not believe they would be forced to leave. Others, sensing their options would only diminish, advised negotiating an agreement before they were dispossessed altogether. Three prominent men challenged Ross: John Ridge, Major Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, the brilliant editor of the Cherokee Phoenix. Boudinot’s brother, Stand Watie, a lawyer and an entrepreneur, joined them to make a potent opposition. Against Ross’s will, these men signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, which granted the Cherokee a homeland on the southwestern plains, protection, and annuities if they relinquished their ancestral lands. Under the treaty terms, the U.S. Army escorted the tribe on a forced march, thousands of miles, to “Indian Territory” (present-day Oklahoma). This “Trail of Tears” was a logistical and psychological horror that cost a third of the Cherokee their lives. John Ross lost his wife, Quatie, as well as substantial property, in the catastrophe.³

Still chief of the nation, Ross remained resilient, establishing successful businesses and working to unite his exhausted people. Factionalism was his main concern. Tensions with the pro-treaty bloc had heightened after the Ridges and Boudinot were murdered by men loyal to Ross—though apparently without his knowledge. Watie’s rivalry was sharpened by anger over his brother’s death, as well as financial interests in developing the new land. Important differences of opinion also existed about what defined their nation—whether it was bound by traditional kinship relations; or by laws and institutions that would include those of mixed-blood and non-Cherokee backgrounds. In addition, there were frictions with the “Old Settlers”—tribes removed to Indian Territory prior to the Cherokees’ arrival, including the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole.

For two decades Ross struggled to strengthen the national structures he thought underpinned Cherokee success and to renew his people’s vitality. By the outbreak of the Civil War, he had succeeded to a remarkable degree. Jealousies were muted, at least on the surface. Watie and Ross cooperated in council meetings; schools and churches were created; democratic institutions rebounded under the roof of a handsome capitol building; agriculture and husbandry flourished as they had hoped. Progressive in his views, Ross introduced humane prison sentences and built seminaries for girls as well as boys. The chief and his new wife built a large house called Rose Hill, owned fifty slaves, and led a life befitting the head of a proud nation. A Cherokee man described this era of peace and comparable plenty, on the eve of war. He longed “to hear the cows lowing the hogs squealing and see the nice garden and the yard with roses in the waving wheat and stately corn growing,” he told his family, “and be conscious that there was no one in want.”⁴

In 1862 John Ross was a slight, silver-haired septuagenarian, but in attainments and renown he stood as high as Abraham Lincoln. There were many similarities between the two men that might have created a sympathetic bond. Both had been born outside the easy paths of success but had risen through talent, pluck, and opportunism. Both believed fervently in education as a refining influence on society. Ross’s gift for the elegant phrase at times rivaled the President’s, and he shared Lincoln’s understanding of how shrewd words could shape political ends. Each expressed a profound dedication to democratic government and an understanding that compromise and unity were its essential underpinnings. Ross did not consider himself a vassal of the United States, but he admired its institutions, and deftly interwove them with native traditions of negotiation and consensus building—a style that resembled Lincoln’s own way of governing.⁵

As the country splintered over Lincoln’s election, Ross viewed the situation with concern. “If the good people of these United States duly appreciate the blessings of liberty they enjoy,” he told his wife, they “should choose some great & good conservative Patriotic Man . . . under the Banner of the Union and Constitution.” His vote would have been cast for the Constitutional Unionist John Bell, not Lincoln. Ross was wary of the Republicans—wary, as a slaveholder, of their policy against the institution’s expansion; and nervous about William Seward’s claim that the territory south of Kansas should be “vacated” by the Five Nations. Ross was also only too aware of the fragile geographic position of the Cherokee, surrounded as they were by Kansans, who were engaged in a violent internal struggle over slavery, and Texans, who were already blustering about disunion. Hoping to maintain neutrality, he shunned zealous secessionists, as well as “Abolitionism, Freesoilers, and northern Mountebanks.”⁶

Ross admitted that the Cherokees’ Southern roots and slave property fostered greater cultural affinity with the secessionists, but he also recognized he was bound by treaties with the United States that theoretically safeguarded his people. “‘The Stars and Stripes’ though an emblem of superior power, is also the Shield of [Cherokee] protection. They all know that Flag—many of them have fought beneath it,” he wrote defiantly to a newspaperman who had “hissed” about the pro-slavery sympathies of “savages.” “But,” Ross added, “if ambition, passion and prejudice blindly and wickedly destroy it . . . they will go where their institutions and their geographical position place them.” Although he deeply regretted the conflict, Ross made it clear his main concern was to prevent outside interference in Cherokee affairs. A group of Texans, sent to woo the chief, found him “diplomatic and cautious,” and noted he agreed with Lincoln’s refusal to consider the Union dissolved. Declining to join either side, Ross advised the Cherokee to refrain from partisan speeches or provocative activities that might incite a fratricidal war.⁷

But the strategy of neutrality failed. A convergence of events tested Ross’s impartiality and ruptured the tenuous cooperation among tribal members. With the onset of war, Lincoln declined to supply the protection the Cherokee had been promised, instead removing federal troops from the borders of Indian Territory. It proved an unfortunate policy. Not only did the President’s action break treaty obligations, leaving Ross and his fellow chieftains vulnerable to rebel incursions, it closed the Union’s best route for infiltrating Texas, while allowing the Confederates to penetrate toward Kansas. Indian agents in the vicinity—many of them holdovers from the Buchanan era—aided the unrest by openly supporting the South, sometimes causing drunken demonstrations. (Lincoln claimed it was impossible to get new men into place, but the accounts of eager politicians and speculators show they had little trouble moving into the area.)⁸ Factionalism among the Five Nations also played a decisive role in undermining neutrality. The Choctaw and Chickasaw were committed to slavery and unequivocally for the South; the Seminole were fervently antislavery, but comparatively weak; Creeks and Cherokees were divided among themselves. Also opposing Ross’s policy were Stand Watie’s followers, who were largely slave owners and solidly pro-South. They saw opportunity within shaky tribal politics, as well as benefits in doing business with a Confederacy anxious to make concessions. Feeling that Ross’s National Party had for years “had its foot upon our necks,” Watie tried to force a confrontation by attempting to raise the Confederate flag in Tahlequah, the Cherokee capital. Some 150 “armed and painted” neutralists halted the demonstration, but Confederate leaders quickly capitalized on the divisions.⁹

Using an effective carrot-and-stick policy, Jefferson Davis posted the belligerent General Ben McCulloch in the region while sending a smooth-talking envoy, Albert Pike, to negotiate with the tribes. Pike offered the Cherokee a nearly irresistible deal. It included everything they had been trying to obtain from the United States for more than a dozen years, including armed protection; unrestricted title, and perpetual possession of their country; payment of $500,000 for lands bordering Kansas that were destabilized by squatters and outlaws; Confederate assumption of annuities; and a delegate seat in the Confederate House of Representatives. Pike considered Ross a smart, decisive leader, but he was able to shake the chief’s determination by threatening to make a direct agreement with Watie. Correctly surmising that Watie had everything to gain by a tribal split and backed by the strong presence of Confederate soldiers, Pike wedged apart the unity Ross had wrought with so much difficulty.¹⁰

Ross tried to rally the Five Nations, or persuade them to form a coalition, but by the summer of 1861, the other tribes had formed alliances with the South—and Watie was leading a regiment in their support. Surrounded on three sides by hostile forces, abandoned by the federal government, and troubled by a string of Union defeats, including a bloodbath at nearby Wilson’s Creek in Missouri, Ross suspected Confederate leaders were about to forcibly end his neutrality. Federal agents finally impressed Washington with the gravity of the situation, but the administration fumbled arrangements until it was too late. On August 21, 1861, Ross called together four thousand tribesmen and appealed in eloquent language to their long history of honor and cohesion. As he had throughout his career, Ross deferred to what he believed was the best interest of the Cherokee; and, to the surprise of his audience, ended his speech by announcing an alliance with the Confederacy. “We are in the situation of a man standing alone upon a low, naked spot of ground, with the water rising rapidly all around him,” Ross poignantly declared. “If he remains where he is, his only alternative is to be swept away and perish. The tide carries by him, in its mad course, a drifting log. . . . By seizing hold of it he has a chance for his life.” Advising the equally divided Creeks to follow his lead, Ross signed Pike’s treaty on October 7. “The Cherokee People stand upon new ground,” Ross told his nation. “Let us hope that the clouds which overspread the Land will be dispersed and that we shall prosper as we have never before done.”¹¹

It had been the most pragmatic of decisions, born of a need to survive. But Ross’s hope for peace and Indian unity was quickly disappointed. The Cherokee raised two regiments for the Confederate Army, one under Stand Watie and another led by men who had supported Ross. However, Opothle Yohola, the neighboring Creek leader, was strongly pro-Union. Convinced his tribe would be massacred by Southern forces, he took flight to Union lines in Kansas, joined by some of the loyal Cherokee. He was pursued by rebel Colonel Douglas H. Cooper, with an army that included soldiers from all five tribes—a grim realization of the fratricidal war Ross had worked to avoid. After a series of short, but bloody battles, Cooper took hold of Indian Territory. Thousands of Cherokees fled to Kansas, living in desperate conditions and exacerbating tensions in the area. It also soon became evident that Southern leaders were unwilling or unable to uphold their rosy treaty promises. Annuities were rarely forthcoming. Native regiments were undermanned, undersupplied, and unprepared to guard Indian Territory. Confederate agents were scattered or distracted by military matters. Internal quarrels led to inaction in Richmond, as well as the dismissal of Pike, whom the Indians had trusted. Ross urgently reminded Jefferson Davis of his treaty responsibilities, as well as the federal threat on the Kansas border, and asked for means of self-defense. He received no response.¹²

Agents and military officers reported the volatility to Washington, asserting that most Native Americans under Confederate control would prefer to be aligned with the Union. But the cabinet hesitated to intervene, especially after hearing an account of Watie’s exceptional performance at the Battle of Pea Ridge, including some exaggerated rumors involving mutilated prisoners. Lincoln led the vacillation. He was under “hard pressure” from political patrons, but tried to order the creation of a “snug, sober column” to keep peace. He dispatched and recalled men in such confusing fashion, however, that officers such as General James Lane, who simultaneously served as a senator from Kansas, and General David Hunter only quarreled over rank or worked against one another. When Lincoln twice more reversed plans, Hunter refused all cooperation, and Lane openly ignored the commander in chief’s orders, complaining he had been publicly humiliated by that “d—d liar, demagogue, and scoundrel” in the White House. Not until June 1862 was a Union force finally dispatched to the area; and it was July before federal troops were able to reestablish their authority.¹³

Meanwhile the plight of the refugees had become frightful. An army surgeon reported seeing hundreds lying naked in the snow, without blankets or food. According to one report, seven hundred Creeks and Cherokees froze to death in a few days. William Coffin, the superintendent of Indian affairs for Kansas, begged for assistance: the “destitution, misery, and suffering amongst them,” he wrote, “is beyond the power of my pen to portray.” The fate of Ross and his followers became yet more precarious as they fell victim to both armies in the to-and-fro contest. In late summer 1862 Chief Ross was “arrested” and removed to the protection of the Union line, accompanied by his family and the Cherokee archives. Many of his followers also defected, assured by federal officers that they would be given immunity as long as they ceased all guerrilla activities and promoted peace. A large number not only laid down their Confederate arms but joined the Union forces.¹⁴

In Kansas, Ross claimed that most Cherokee had never really abandoned their loyalty to the United States. The treaties signed with the Confederate government, he argued, were only a desperate response to dire circumstances. Most who met him took him at his word. They advised Ross to discuss his case in Washington, arming him with supportive letters of introduction to the president. General James Blunt, appointed commander of the Department of Kansas after the Lane-Hunter debacle, represented Ross as “a man of candor and frankness upon whose representations you can rely.” He also backed Ross’s assertion that he had aligned with the South only after the United States failed to meet its treaty obligations. Mark Delahay, a Republican collaborator, reminded Lincoln that despite their brief flirtation with the rebels, Cherokee warriors would be valuable to the Union cause. Indeed, maintained Delahay, the volatility along the border and the refugee problem could not be solved without their help.¹⁵

But Lincoln already knew about the situation and was unconvinced. When he raised the issue with the cabinet, he advocated a hard policy of invading Indian Territory with a force of white and black soldiers and repossessing it from the tribes. Assistant Secretary of the Interior John P. Usher, whose portfolio included Indian affairs, objected. He proposed that it would be better to deal “indulgently with deluded natives,” win their goodwill, and at the same time impress them with the immense power of the federal government. Most other secretaries concurred, and the President reluctantly dropped his proposed offensive against the Cherokee.¹⁶

When John Ross crossed the White House vestibule on September 11, 1862, Lincoln met him coolly. He was still uncertain about the chief’s sincerity, and leery of making concessions to a man who shifted his allegiance under pressure. The President’s skepticism is interesting, for he was himself struggling to steer his ship through a crisis, and relying on practical expedients to keep it afloat. If anyone understood the difficulties of clinging to ideals in the midst of a clamorous civil war (or to the legal instruments that protected them), he did. Just a few weeks before, he had succinctly expressed his belief that absolutist principles were subordinate to the larger good of national survival. If he could save the Union by abolishing slavery, he would do it, Lincoln had told the New York Tribune; but if it could only be saved by retaining the institution he would do that instead—whichever worked best. By the time of Ross’s interview, the President had circumvented the law on issues ranging from increasing the size of the Army to spending unappropriated Treasury funds, and was only days away from reversing his oft repeated pledge not to meddle with slavery in states where it already existed. But the similarity of Ross’s circumstances eluded Lincoln, and he dismissed the chief with a lawyerly request that he put his thoughts in writing.¹⁷

Ross wrote at length, reciting the pressures that had pushed him toward the Confederacy, stressing that at the first opportunity his nation had again “rallied spontaneously” to the Union cause. Complete restoration of U.S.-Cherokee relations had been thwarted only by the untimely withdrawal of federal troops from Indian Territory, he noted, which left his people prey to rebel depredations. He asked for the reinstatement of exiting treaties, as well as the safeguards they promised, and for a proclamation listing assurances he said Lincoln had given during their interview. Lincoln answered noncommittally that he had decided nothing definite, but would look into the matter. If the Cherokee remained loyal, the President would provide “all the protection which can be given them consistently with the duty of the government to the whole country.”¹⁸

In the following weeks, Ross met Lincoln again and talked several times with William P. Dole, the capable commissioner of Indian affairs. Dole was persuaded enough of Ross’s position that he publicly admitted the administration had erred—first by creating uncertainty over slavery’s future, and then by abandoning Indian Territory. He allowed that in the absence of federal support, it was understandable the tribes had “quietly submitted to the condition of affairs by which they were surrounded.” In addition, Ross petitioned Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to make Indian Territory a military district, with sufficient troops to protect life and property, or to allow loyal Cherokee to form a “Home Guard” under Union auspices. Lincoln also followed up, querying Interior Secretary Caleb B. Smith about Cherokee relations and proposing that a unit under the command of General Samuel Curtis be used to guard Indian Territory. But in putting the plan into force, Lincoln was still hesitant, and he requested Curtis’s opinion rather than sending an order. Curtis replied that the troops “available” in the southwest were too scanty to spare; in any case, he doubted that occupying the area would be of much use. Once again, no action was taken to relieve the tribes.¹⁹

Meanwhile, in Ross’s absence from the region, Stand Watie was made principal Cherokee chief, and the territory became a pawn of rival groups. Already “despoiled” by Confederate soldiers (some of them Watie’s men), the tribes now faced equally unscrupulous federals. General Blunt’s intention to return the refugees to their homes seemed well meaning, but, in reality, his own men were robbing them, and the territory was increasingly dangerous. “These Vandals have entered our houses, insulted the weak and unprotected—and stripped them of every last thing they possess,” wrote an eyewitness. Government agents reportedly joined in the plunder, and the plight of the starving refugees became increasingly horrific. By year’s end, wrote an observer, the camps had become “literally a graveyard.” The Cherokee wanted to continue supporting the Union and to return to their self-sufficient ways, a blue-clad soldier observed, but the “cruel and disappointing” lack of assistance was undermining their loyalty.²⁰

II

John Ross was not the first Native American Lincoln met at the White House, nor the last. Chiefs often came to Washington, either on their own volition or at the behest of agents or politicians. Usually one party or other hoped to gain concessions. The government wanted the cessation of hostilities, treaty amendments, or the acquisition of more land, while tribal leaders petitioned for the fulfillment of agreements already in effect, larger annuities, or an end to the epidemic of swindling. Dressed in traditional finery, the chiefs inevitably drew attention, sometimes inspiring artists and writers to record their stories and appearance. Not everyone was pleased with the commotion these visits aroused. Many tribal leaders did not particularly enjoy being gaped at, and whites who felt they had suffered at Native hands thought the notoriety unseemly. “The Red Lake Indians create a sensation here as a deputation of Indians always do,” complained Minnesota editor Jane Swisshelm in 1864. “The popular sympathy of Washington is in favor of Red men and Rebels, and individuals of either class are apt to be feted.”²¹

Native Americans on the steps of the White House, photograph, c. 1861–65

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The Lincolns began receiving Native American representatives just weeks after their first inauguration. Some of these visits seem to have been social—Mary Lincoln invited a Seneca woman to sing at a reception in early April 1861 and accepted invitations to other concerts of indigenous music. The President amused three Potawatomi delegates that same month, when he tried out the few Native words he knew, then addressed them in childlike English. “Where live now? When go back Iowa?” Lincoln awkwardly inquired, apparently oblivious to the Potawatomi spokesman’s “very exceptional” English. Chippewa, Osage, Delaware, Sioux, and Winnebago chiefs entered the Executive Mansion, as well as representatives of western tribes. Some, like John Ross, stayed in Washington for long periods, conducting in-depth negotiations.²²

Southern Plains delegation at the White House, photograph, March 27, 1863. [In the front row left to right: War Bonnet, Standing Water, Lean Bear, and Yellow Buffalo. In the center at the back, J. G. Nicolay, President Lincoln’s private secretary, and on the extreme right, Mary Todd Lincoln.]

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The most heralded White House meeting took place on March 27, 1863. More than a dozen chiefs were present, representing the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapaho, Comanche, and Apache peoples, whose hunting grounds covered vast areas of the southwestern plains. The visit had a formal agenda—to press the chiefs to amend treaties from the early 1850s that had allowed the United States to build roads, depots, and military posts guarding emigrant routes. With the discovery of gold and silver in Colorado and Nevada years later, those routes had become increasingly crowded, and the government wanted more Indian land. But the treaties had already squeezed the tribes onto ever diminishing tracts, a provision that was misunderstood by some chiefs, and unacceptable to others. The Cheyenne and Arapaho, who had already adapted to a buffalo-centered existence after being pushed out of the eastern woodlands, found the idea of living in a constricted space with limited grassland particularly repugnant. Claiming that they had been bribed to sign the original treaties, several chiefs simply refused to honor them, or to sign further documents. Others actively resisted abandoning their hunting culture. As white settlement mounted, Native American frustration also rose, and hostilities increased. Settlers blamed the Indians for loss of livestock and for terrifying attacks on their forts and cabins, while the tribesmen accused the newcomers of stealing ponies, deflowering their women, spreading disease, and encouraging drunkenness. By bringing the chiefs to Washington, the Lincoln administration hoped to win new agreements that would place the Indians on reserves that were smaller and farther from whites, and limit their movements by controlling where they could obtain goods and receive annuities.²³

The business at hand was serious and the tribal leaders took it seriously, arriving in ceremonial attire. Photographs taken at the encounter show them wearing supple garments of buckskin or cloth, the sleeves and trousers intricately embroidered with beads. Several chiefs carried a staff of office, decorated with fur or trophies; a few sported feather headdresses and some wore soft hats, fastened with memorial pins. No bare-breasted “savages” were present, and, despite later reports, their bodies were unpainted. A journalist for the Washington Morning Chronicle saw “hard and cruel lines in their faces,” but noted they were “evidently men of intelligence and force of character.” The solemnity of the occasion was undercut by the presence of a large crowd, invited by the Lincolns to view the proceedings. Diplomats from three continents had been summoned to the East Room, as well as society grandees, cabinet officials, and newspapermen. The First Lady joined the gathering, as did Miss Kate Chase, the treasury secretary’s fashionable daughter. “I am in a tremendous hurry as we are all going to the President’s in ½ an hour to see the wild Indians,” Benjamin French, the commissioner of buildings, wrote excitedly. For many invitees this was a rare moment. Native Americans had been uncommon on the Eastern Seaboard for more than half a century; and some knew of them only through the romantic literature of James Fenimore Cooper. Others had formed their opinions from more lurid tales of marauding bands on the frontier.²⁴

As the chiefs entered the room, the crowd pressed them so tightly that the throng had to be physically held back. Nonetheless, it was reported, the visitors “maintained the dignity or stolidity of aspect characteristic of ‘the stoics of the woods’” and appeared unimpressed by the trappings of the White House. They were seated on the floor along one side of the room, where the guests could better see them. Commissioner Dole introduced the chiefs one by one to the President: Lean Bear, War Bonnet, and Standing Water of the Colorado Cheyenne; Yellow Buffalo, Lone Wolf, Yellow Wolf, White Bull, and Little Heart from the Kiowa tribe; Arapaho chiefs Spotted Wolf and Nevah; Comanche leaders Pricked Forehead and Ten Bears; Poor Bear of the Apaches; and a Caddo principal chief called Jacob. While the crowd jostled rudely for the best view, Lincoln invited the chiefs to speak. Just what they said and how much they understood of the meeting is unclear, for only one interpreter had been provided for men speaking several different dialects. (Indeed, one witness later noted that the translator interpreted every speech identically.) The crowd tittered when Lean Bear, nervous before an audience, had to prop himself against a chair; Lincoln checked their laughter, but himself joined in when another earnest speech was translated as a petition for “many sausages.” One tribal leader candidly remarked that his only request was that the “Great Father” send them home as soon as possible.²⁵

Lincoln then addressed the group, apparently extemporaneously. His speech pointed up the differences between white and red men: the “big wigwams” of the whites; their greater population; their evident prosperity. He advised the chiefs that this was because Europeans cultivated the land, living on agricultural products rather than wild game. The President avoided prescribing a course for the Indians but admitted he saw no viable path for them but to adopt the ways of white men. Lincoln went on to assert that a Euro-American aversion to war aided their success: “we are not so much disposed to fight and kill one another as our red brethren.” This was a rather astonishing statement, coming as it did after decades of foreign and Indian wars, and in the midst of brutal civil strife. There were settlers who broke treaties, or whose actions were reprehensible, continued Lincoln, but the chiefs would understand that “it is not always possible for any father to have his children do precisely as he wishes them to do.” The lecture concluded with a geography lesson from Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution that explained the formation of the American continent, and talked of “canoes shoved by steam” that traveled around the globe. One observer thought Lincoln had admirably adapted “his ideas, his images, and his diction” to those whom he addressed. Others in the crowd found the message patronizing and suggested that “he was blending with the advice a little chaffing.”²⁶

Lincoln ended the ceremony by giving each chief a peace medal to wear on his breast and an American flag. These, he explained, were more than mementos; they were a pledge of federal protection. As he left the room, the President dryly quipped to a reporter that it was the first delegation he had recently met “which did not volunteer some advice about the conduct of the war.” After he left, a photo shoot was held in the conservatory, where guests, including Lincoln’s young secretaries, vied for a spot in the groupings. John Nicolay later had his photograph made into a stereopticon show, and John Hay dined out on witty stories of the visit. The Indians observed it all “with becoming gravity.”²⁷

It was the most succinct statement of cultural values and Indian policy that Lincoln would ever make, and an ominous one for the Native Americans. But the sobering message was lost in the White House spectacle, smacking as it did of Phineas T. Barnum’s circus—indeed, literally so. The great showman heard of the visit, and paid “a pretty liberal outlay of money” to bring the chiefs to New York. Such excursions were not unheard of—chiefs were often taken to major cities to see and be seen, as well as to be impressed with the scale of the white man’s empire. When an Indian agent told Barnum the chiefs would go to his American Museum only if visitors appeared to be paying homage, Barnum set up an elaborate ruse to convince them that the customers were not there to gawk, but to honor them. Barnum was a longtime Indian hater who felt no hesitation about exhibiting Native American leaders alongside armless women and two-headed monkeys, but he gave his display a further twist. While the chiefs sat onstage, without benefit of translation, Barnum described their characteristics in sensational terms. Patting them familiarly and smiling unctuously, he led them to believe he was singing their praises. He had a particular dislike for the Kiowa chieftain Yellow Buffalo, who he believed was responsible for the death of a white family. “This little Indian, ladies and gentlemen is Yellow Bear,” Barnum began his deprecating monologue, starting with a misnomer, who “has tortured to death poor, unprotected women, murdered their husbands, brained their helpless little ones; and he would gladly do the same to you.” Giving Yellow Buffalo a stroke on the hand, he had the chief bow to the audience, as if to admit the ringmaster’s words were just. At length the chiefs discovered the game and, highly offended that people had been charged money to insult them, refused to appear again. Their “wild, flashing eyes were anything but agreeable,” Barnum later recalled. “Indeed, I hardly felt safe in their presence.”²⁸

The Native American spectacles continued throughout the Lincoln years, to the embarrassment of some invitees. But most viewed the display as P. T. Barnum did: a kind of freak show, blending “barbarian” Indian ways and picturesque artifacts. Despite their disdain and fear, Euro-Americans were fascinated by the tribes. At the White House, Nicolay collected Indian lore and studied the “simplicity & superstition” of Native spiritual beliefs, all the while publishing articles that criticized “their idleness, their filth, their savage instincts and traditions.” His conclusion was that indigenous peoples possessed “none of the beauty which the refining emotions of love, generosity, pity, or moral courage lend to . . . civilized man and woman.” Renowned scientist Louis Agassiz hoped to study this “natural man,” soliciting the War Department for the bodies of “one or two handsome fellows” who had died in federal prisons, as well as the severed heads of several others. He included a recipe for embalming fluid with his request. Hay was also eager to collect artifacts. When his compatriot Nicolay was on a western assignment, he asked for a pair of beaded slippers—if, he joked, Nicolay’s hide had not already been made into a “festive tomtom.” Lincoln too liked the feathers and the finery: he was sent a handsome pair of quillwork moccasins and slipped them on with a grin. Observing the scene, Hay asked Nicolay whether he thought the exquisite craftsmanship might persuade their boss against appointing a “peculating” man as the tribe’s agent. “I fear not, my boy,” Hay concluded. “I fear not.”²⁹

Exactly what Lincoln’s intentions were toward Native Americans is not entirely clear. As in so many instances, his writings show ambivalence and his words do not always match his actions. Certainly, his remarks to the Plains delegation reflected the standard platitudes and paternalistic tone of the day. As the Great Father, he did not hesitate to expound the Euro-American worldview, as if to ignorant children. Nor did he envision a future when different races might respectfully share the land. “That portion of the earth’s surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States, is well adapted to the home of one national family; and it is not well adapted for two or more,” the President had told Congress just a few months earlier. Yet the idea of educating, Christianizing, and settling the Indians on agricultural lands was considered enlightened at the time. Many believed that obliterating the ancient ways would not only remove the threat to white advancement but benefit Native peoples. In hoping to acculturate the Indians there was at least a small recognition of their humanity—though they were easily reduced to subhuman stereotypes when it became morally or economically convenient to do so. Some of Lincoln’s fellow Whigs had sympathized with the plight of Native Americans—notably, John Quincy Adams, who avowed that Indian policies were “among the heinous sins of this nation”—but many did so only when it was useful as a partisan tool. Lincoln’s political model, Henry Clay, for example, liked to thump Andrew Jackson for his callous removal policies, even though a few years earlier Clay had declared that the “Indians’ disappearance from the human family will be no great loss to the world.” Only rarely did whites spend enough time in Native communities to respect the cultures. Sam Houston, George Thomas, General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, and a handful of missionaries were among the very few, and, in the end, even they acquiesced to policies that corralled the tribes. The rest of the country simply thought the Indians should be exterminated.³⁰

Lincoln’s lecture to the chiefs expressed several of his strongest convictions. He had long believed that tilling the soil was an indispensable route to economic independence, for poor whites as well as people of color. He enthusiastically supported the Homestead Act, which he thought would give “every man . . . the means and opportunity of benefitting his condition.” He also believed in the redeeming value of work—a pointed message for Native peoples, whose hunting culture was widely considered a lazy man’s life. “Useless labour” was the same as idleness, Lincoln once commented; and “idleness would speedily result in universal ruin.” Upward mobility, self-definition, and the value of a helping governmental hand were themes Lincoln reiterated many times. He saw successful citizens as “miners” who exploited resources for public benefit and criticized the “indians and Mexican greasers” who had “trodden upon and overlooked” the continent’s mineral riches. To Lincoln’s mind, using technological knowledge to tame the daunting expanse of North America meant progress and prosperity.

In addition, the power of education was almost a credo with him: a sacred obligation to harness the wisdom of the past and apply it to the future. His personal story was a testament to America’s promise of a fluid society: if he believed in anything, it was the ability to rise through individual will and the application of knowledge. “Degraded” was the word he used to describe cultures that did not possess written records or depended on oral tradition to transmit knowledge—an intriguing statement from a man who made many of his most salient points as a raconteur. Adaptability was another of Lincoln’s keys to success on the ever expanding geographical and intellectual frontiers of American society. Indian adoption of white ways was simply one more sign of social mobility. For Native American culture to remain static was to resist the dynamic nature of the time; it was contrary not only to enterprise and advancement but to the moral worth they embodied.³¹

Many of these assertions stemmed from Whig and Republican ideas about the nature of “progress” and the unstoppable trajectory of the country’s development. Americans’ abiding belief in the perfectibility of man was also at play here. Lincoln’s call for Indians to “adapt or die” reflected his faith in the power of opportunity—a power he believed was embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln focused attention on this revered document in the years leading to his presidential election, reinterpreting it in many ways. In the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he saw freedom of movement, the latitude to invent and reinvent oneself, and the chance to rise through ambition and energy. It was this that led him to defend the slave’s right to “eat the bread without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns,” and to admit (at least tacitly) that the guarantees expressed in the Declaration should be extended beyond the realm of white males. “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes,’” he told his friend Joshua Speed, adding that he feared the nativist Know-Nothing party would like it to read “‘all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and catholics.’” Lincoln never specifically included Native Americans in mankind’s inalienable rights, but he hinted at it when Stephen Douglas goaded him on citizenship for “negroes, Indians and other inferior races” during the last of their famous debates. The leaders of the American Revolution, Lincoln retorted, “intended to include all men. . . . They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society . . . [for] all people, of all colors, everywhere.”³²

Yet, significantly, he never grappled with the contradiction between his ethnocentric vision of the Indians’ future and the right of self-determination. For Lincoln, there was no reason Native Americans should not flourish, as long as they did so on white men’s terms. The liberty to pursue a destiny different from the invaders of their continent, and to fashion a way of life unique to themselves, was not the bargain that was offered. What was offered was that they abandon any habit that seemed offensive or strange to whites, that they accept limitations on their movements, and that the value of land be viewed from the settlers’ perspective. But the Indians were reluctant to abandon their traditions and worldview, which were fundamentally at odds with Lincoln’s scenario. It is difficult to generalize, for nearly six hundred distinct cultures existed among Native peoples, but much of their belief embraced a concept of inhabiting, but not disrupting the land; a delicate balance between harvesting Earth’s resources and leaving them undisturbed; and a commitment to ensuring bounty for the next generation. Although they could, and did, manipulate nature, they were not convinced that bending the landscape to man’s will was either ethical or profitable.

For many tribes, the land itself was sacred, imbued with spiritual qualities. As the home and resting place of their ancestors, it was filled with a power that was to be respected in its own right. Acquisition was not the route to status or well-being in these societies, nor did they prize individual gain over collective good. Lincoln’s concept of civilization as a community of diligent miners, exploiting nature for personal benefit, was fundamentally at odds with Native credos, as was his belief in the value of private land ownership and settled communities. In fact, farming was considered an inferior profession by many Native Americans, and toiling at any hard labor was thought demeaning. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the early 1830s that Indians compared “the farmer to the cow who plows a furrow, and in each of our arts he perceives nothing but the work of slaves.” That Indians lived on far rawer terms than many of their white counterparts is clear. That they could be ruthless is also evident: brutalities committed by Native Americans rivaled all the atrocities visited in return by whites. But their resistance to European ways, overcome in most cases only by violence against them, also bespoke pride, as well as contentment with their heritage and lifestyle. “We do not own this,” the Lakota said of the grand American expanses, “we only borrow it from our children.”³³

The cultural friction was intensified by a sliding scale of expectations on the part of the whites. Whatever their loftily stated goals, that scale was pegged to self-interest. The original idea of “removing” tribes from European settlements had foreseen them as permanent residents west of the Mississippi River, but by the time Lincoln entered office, whites coveted that land too and intended to cajole, chase, or cheat the Indians to obtain it. This included the rich territory owned by John Ross’s tribe, which had—strikingly—lived up to every expectation of “civilization” set out in Lincoln’s culturally bound dictums, including conversion to Christianity and the establishment of a written language. None of this exempted them from the insatiable hunger of industrialists, railroad speculators, and ambitious farmers, and much of the tension that led to Cherokee defection in 1861 centered around encroachments on their property. Ownership of Indian Territory was supposedly guaranteed by treaty, but Americans of all persuasions had already dismissed the idea of Indian entitlements. The word “enough” did not exist in the vocabulary of ambition.

Republicans as well as Democrats were complicit in this—as they were in placing the blame squarely on Native Americans. Indians were frequently referred to as demons who undermined development—“Satans of the forest,” “devils in the path,” “evil forces that pollute the ways of the righteous.” Yet Indians were not the worm in the democratic apple. The worm in the apple was the cankerous American tendency toward avarice, which turned opportunity into opportunism and allowed greed to be rationalized under the guise of progress. That complication—that the other side of Liberty’s coin was etched with License—riddled the whole national saga, but was particularly true in regard to Native Americans. The entire white relation to indigenous peoples was based on the presumption that might—political, financial, or firepower—made right. Lincoln cleverly reversed this in his 1860 address at the Cooper Institute (now known as The Cooper Union), avowing that “right makes might”—but with the Indians he either could not determine what was right or subordinated it to political expedient. It was telling that Native Americans, who were disbarred from legal representation, unleashed much of their violence defending themselves against encroachments on their property. Their issues were the very ones Lincoln the lawyer had fought to protect for his clients: the right not to be swindled, rightful recognition of established boundaries and legally protected lands, and freedom of movement. The similarity between American values and Indian interests never registered with the sixteenth president, or with most other white people. In the end, Lincoln’s defense of American opportunity would be distorted by the sham nobility of “progress.” But for those hungrily eyeing Indian holdings, it reflected little more than appetite.³⁴

III

Prior to taking office, the President had had few personal encounters with Native Americans. Indians were a legendary part of the pioneer experience, but by the time of Lincoln’s birth, in 1809, most had been driven from the Ohio River Valley. The southern part of Indiana, where he spent his youth, had been home to the Iroquois, who kept it as a hunting preserve, leaving it relatively empty. The last organized Indian resistance against white encroachment in the area ended with Tecumseh’s defeat in 1813. By the time the Lincolns moved to Spencer County five years later, the local Delaware and Miami peoples had ceded their lands and moved westward.³⁵

Although he had little direct experience with Indians, young Abraham was influenced by the vivid tales he heard from his family. Most impressive was a grisly story of his grandfather’s death at the hand of an Indian, and the near kidnapping of his father. Accounts differ, but many sources indicate that shortly after moving to Kentucky the elder Lincoln—also named Abraham—was killed while working in the fields, and six-year-old Thomas, playing nearby, was snatched up by the assailant. The eldest son, Mordecai, watching the scene from their house, shot the murderer, who dropped Thomas. In recounting the story, Lincoln emphasized that his grandfather’s death had not been in a battle or fair fight but was the result of Native American “stealth.” There were other tales as well. One involved his mother’s dearest girlhood friend, who was taken captive when a raiding party killed her father but was later miraculously released. Another story told how a family living near the Lincolns in Spencer County, Indiana, had been heartlessly butchered by the last few Shawnees in the area—and vividly described the rough justice a vigilante group meted out to the Native men afterward. Both accounts were true. Later in life Lincoln would also hear his wife’s fund of Indian lore, including the killing of Mary Todd’s great-uncle during a battle with Miami and Chickasaw warriors, and how another relative was forced to run a Shawnee gauntlet and nearly lost his scalp.³⁶

Such stories fed the sharp nighttime fear of the wilderness. Lincoln remembered the warnings of Indian treachery as vividly as he recalled the scream of the panther. Exaggerated or not, the tales instilled an understanding of the high stakes of survival on the frontier, and the need to subdue “wild” men if civilization was to triumph. It was also the way myth and mistrust were spread. Herman Melville, who so often had his finger on the quixotic American pulse, expressed the power of such oral traditions in The Confidence-Man. On the frontier, Melville wrote, a father thought it best

not to mince matters . . . but to tell the boy pretty plainly what an Indian is, and what he must expect from him . . . histories of Indian lying, Indian theft, Indian double-dealing, Indian fraud and perfidy, Indian want of conscience, Indian bloodthirstiness, Indian diabolism. . . . The instinct of antipathy against an Indian grows in the backwoodsman with the sense of good and bad, right and wrong.³⁷

The elder Abraham Lincoln’s death was, in fact, more than just an adventure story: his relatives believed it had signaled a downward spiral in the fortunes of the Lincoln clan. The family typified the restless pioneers of the late eighteenth century, migrating over the years from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, and then settling for a time in Virginia before making the trek into Kentucky around 1782. They seem to have been scrappy fortune seekers, eager to improve their lot, and willing to take on the wilderness challenge of wild beasts and violent men. (As a presidential candidate, Lincoln stated his family included some peace-loving Quakers, but, if so, they were ties by marriage.) In all their settlements the Lincolns owned substantial acreage and held positions of responsibility. There is also considerable evidence that some family members were slaveholders. Abraham senior possessed several thousand acres of fine Kentucky bluegrass and was instrumental in building the fort near which he was killed. He died intestate, and under Kentucky law the property was inherited by his eldest son, who built a handsome house with a Palladian window and fine woodwork, which still stands in Washington County.³⁸

Court records indicate that that heir, Mordecai Lincoln, provided his younger brother Thomas with the opportunity to learn a trade—cabinetmaking and carpentry—and the education needed to practice it. Mordecai probably also helped his brother acquire his first property, for which Thomas paid cash. Official documents suggest that Thomas, like other Lincolns, was a respected member of the community: a landowner and stock raiser, with enough income to hold a memorable wedding, pay his debts, and make loans to his neighbors. His son, however, grew up with the impression that Thomas had been disadvantaged, becoming a “wandering, laboring boy” who attained no more education than to “bungling sign his name.” Thomas’s signature in court records and other documents belies this, showing a clear, practiced hand, until late in life. Neighbors noted that Thomas Lincoln’s cabinetry was “sound as a trout,” and the pieces left to us are marked by carvings, inlays, and fine proportions, indicating mathematical expertise and an appreciation of artistic trends. By Lincoln’s boyhood, his father may have already suffered the eye injury that would undermine his ambition, and which perhaps accounts for the “bungled” writing. The sixteenth president’s knowledge of family history was not perfect—the date he gives for his grandfather’s murder is in error, as is the Quaker lineage. Perhaps he was simply misinformed. But Lincoln showed a consistent tendency to overstate the level of his father’s poverty, and at times seems even to have scorned his own background. It may have been a matter of good politics—grassroots origins appealed to his audiences, as they do to contemporary voters. In his earliest known political address, Lincoln described himself as being from the “most humble walks of life,” just as he later attached a fictional impoverished background to Henry Clay for the benefit of a Whig audience.³⁹

Still, despite exaggeration, there is no question that Abraham Lincoln was raised on the frontier, in log houses that seem impossibly cramped to present-day eyes, and that as a boy he wore hide breeches, which shrank to his calves as they met sun and rain and his own phenomenal growth. Lincoln’s aspirations also outgrew his environment. Southern Indiana was not a place noted for its ambition. Had settlers followed the Iroquois example, they would have shunned its poor soil, unhealthy situation, and limited potential. Lincoln’s father believed he was bettering himself by moving across the Ohio to an area free from the competition of skilled slaves, and surveyed in a more regulated manner. (In Kentucky he had lost a series of property suits because of the archaic landowning patterns inherited from Virginia law.) But Thomas seems also to have made some poor decisions in Indiana—for example, following the advice of his kin to settle in a dense forest, difficult to cultivate, rather than in a town that could support his trade. There were good decisions as well, notably marrying two supportive women and establishing a community reputation for decency, generosity, and side-splitting storytelling. Thomas Lincoln was the man called on to settle disputes at the Little Pigeon Creek Baptist Church, chosen to serve on the school committee, and always willing to take out-of-luck relatives into his modest home. He was certainly not “shiftless” or “poor white trash,” as some have claimed. He was a landholder and possessed the qualities necessary for success on the frontier: optimism, physical strength, and resilience.⁴⁰

But the neighborhood Thomas Lincoln chose was far from markets or cultural centers and offered little inspiration for betterment. Those studying the region have found it was a highly egalitarian society, where landownership was the sole measure of status. There was no strong impetus to acquire worldly goods or compete with neighbors. The settlers were not lazy or improvident, but neither were they drawn by the lure of high wages or opportunities for profit. A cousin who came to live with the Lincolns remarked that the family was “like the other people in that country. None of them worked to get ahead. They wasn’t no market for nothing unless you took it across two or three states.” Another relative reinforced the image of Thomas Lincoln as a “man who took the world Easy—did not possess much Envy. He never thought that gold was God.” When in 1830 Thomas Lincoln left Indiana for Illinois, he was evidently able to sell off hundreds of bushels of corn and scores of hogs—a far cry from subsistence farming. Still, his land dealings lost him money, and he was never able to retrieve the promise of his more prosperous ancestors. To his mind, the trouble had all started with the Indians.⁴¹

Some have portrayed Thomas Lincoln as a petty household tyrant, lording over his talented son like a slave driver, and a few reminiscences do paint him in that fashion. The majority, however, speak of him as did cousin John Hanks: “he was a good quiet citizen, moral habits, had a good sound judgement, a kind Husband and Father Even and good disposition was lively and cherfull.” Thomas seems to have been a typical father of the era, schooled in eighteenth-century notions of the patriarchal family. Life on the frontier was difficult, and most men believed their role was to ensure survival and instill habits that would enable their children to face hardship. Sons and daughters were expected to bow to their parents’ wishes and contribute to the economic welfare of the family. This was serious business, and strong words and occasional whippings would have been normal in that rough-and-ready society. The idea of the household head as a companionable guide through life’s vicissitudes, or as the indulgent spoiler of a child-centered family—the “spare the rod” style favored by Abraham Lincoln with his own unruly boys—would not come into vogue for several decades, when middle-class ease allowed such indulgence. Lincoln himself denied feeling he was in bondage—but neither did he want to duplicate his father’s life. This too seems normal: that a sixteen-year-old chafed under parental authority and longed to pocket his own earnings is hardly revelatory. From Thomas Lincoln’s perspective, his son, no matter how talented, was not shaping up to be of much assistance on the farm, or to help him in old age—important sociological considerations in that time and place. Abe was apt to drop chores to study a book; and he was also something of a smart aleck, correcting his less educated father in front of others and even contradicting visitors. One kinsman recalled that “the worst trouble with Abe was when people was talking if they said something that wasn’t right Abe would up & tell them so. Uncle Tom had a hard time to break him of this.” There may have also been competition between father and son, both of whom were powerfully built and relished an appreciative audience. It is easy to imagine Thomas’s annoyance when he “was telling how any thing happened and if he didnt get it just right or left out anything, Abe would but[t] in right there and correct it.” According to several stories, Abe also challenged his teachers, and finally dropped out of his catch-as-catch-can schooling because he felt he had surpassed the master—which he may have done. Thomas still pushed him to learn “cipherin”—which his son later ridiculed—because he hoped to set the boy up in his own craft of cabinetmaking. Evidently Abe showed no interest in the trade; though there are two surviving pieces of furniture said to have been made by him.⁴²

Later in life, Abraham showed Thomas little of the respect generally considered due the older generation. He did not assist on the farm, though his father was lame and blind, and offered only meager financial assistance, even with his law practice flourishing. As an older man, Thomas Lincoln expressed modest pride and affection for his son, despite their spotty interaction. Stories of Lincoln’s refusal to visit his father’s deathbed in 1851 are exaggerated, however. He had come quickly the previous year, at some expense and difficulty, when he received a letter advising that Thomas was dying and crying for his son in a manner “truly Heart Rendering.” But his father recovered. At the time of Thomas’s final illness, Mary Todd Lincoln was also unwell; in addition, it may have seemed just another false alarm. Unfortunately, the farewell letter penned by Abraham is quite callously worded. There is little to indicate whether Lincoln resented his parents or was embarrassed by them, or whether he only wanted to retreat to his self-created world. One thing, however, was certain: he did not want to continue the downward slide that had begun with an Indian attack on his namesake.⁴³

Lincoln’s most direct Indian experience came in his early twenties, when he joined the militia to fight against Black Hawk (Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak), the Sauk leader. The Black Hawk War was the culmination of a decades-long misunderstanding between the tribes and ambitious frontiersmen in the Old Northwest. The Sauk and Fox, along with their neighbors the Winnebago and Miami, had been pushed ever westward, ultimately agreeing in 1804 to cede their homeland east of the Mississippi and move across the river. They had been residents of the area for some eight thousand years, subsisting much as the Lincolns and their neighbors did, by a combination of corn farming and hunting. According to some accounts, in the early 1800s they were so successful in the fur trade that they sold up to $60,000 worth of pelts annually. Sauk and Fox territory also included a productive lead mine, which Indians as well as whites valued. The treaty negotiation was tense and murky, with the usual difficulties of translation and cultural interpretation, which contributed to misunderstanding about boundaries, as well as the land’s use after its transfer. Article 7 stated that as long as the tracts remained property of the United States “the said tribes shall enjoy the privilege of living and hunting upon them.” Chiefs who agreed to the sale believed this meant that they would have perpetual use of the land, which included their ancestral burying grounds and other hallowed places.⁴⁴

The concept of selling land itself was foreign to the Sauk and Fox culture. Black Hawk stated this clearly the following year: “My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate . . . and so long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have the right to the soil. . . . Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away.” Moreover, the documents had little meaning for the chiefs. They were unable to read them to start with; but, in any case, paper agreements were not part of the Sauk tradition of honor. When Edmund P. Gaines, the general in charge of Indian relations for that region, spoke with Quash-ma-quilly (Jumping Fish) about the treaty, the Sauk spokesman said he was told his people had been released from the arrangement. Asked for legal proof of this, he replied: “I am a red skin & do not use paper at a talk, but my words are in my heart, & I do not forget what has been said.”⁴⁵

The federal government saw it differently. Under pressure from settlers who coveted the mines and fertile river lands, they began selling the property in 1829. For a time the tribes coexisted with whites in uneasy proximity. The pioneers became increasingly anxious, however, as frictions between the Sauk and Fox and their rivals, the Sioux, filled the night air with war cries, making movement dangerous. One local scout overheard Black Hawk warning against the loss of ancestral forests, as well as complaining that costly government goods were being shipped to the Sioux. “Shall the treasures of the pale-faces reach their destination?” the scout heard Black Hawk cry. (“A fierce and thrilling shout” was the only answer to his question.) In 1831 a settler remarked that tensions were not just setting nerves on edge, but retarding emigration. Rumors of an Indian war, he noted, excited “as much dread among the frontier settlers, as does the howling of wolves among sheep.”⁴⁶

Over the next year the unrest grew, as Black Hawk moved many hundreds of Native families to an area around Rock River, not far from the lead mines. The sixty-five-year-old warrior was not strictly a chief—indeed, many of his own tribe saw him as a chronic malcontent and troublemaker. Keokuk, head of the Sauk, a shrewd and pragmatic man, was among those who tried to dissuade Black Hawk. But the Hawk and his followers were heavily influenced by a spiritual leader called The Prophet, who believed that the purity of native traditions needed to be revived. Under his influence, the clan determined to plant corn annually on their ancient territory. Black Hawk’s motive was in many ways idealistic: even the army men sent to restrain him were impressed by his sincerity. When Black Hawk spoke of “the tie he held most dear on earth,” recorded one officer, “on . . . his fine face there was a deep-seated grief and humiliation that no one could witness unmoved.” The Sauk leader ignored official warnings to leave. Complaints from farmers began to escalate—including some from men who were themselves illegal squatters. “You cannot imagine the anoyance,” wrote one. “The citizens of some of the counties made no crops last year, & can make none this year. Business of every kind is che[cked]. . . . Horses & cattle &c &c are every day stolen and the whole country is kept in a constant state of alarm.” Black Hawk refuted the charges, vowing he had done nothing beyond peacefully growing corn on inherited lands. But when he crossed the river again in April 1832, Illinois governor John Reynolds declared it an “invasion” and called out the militia.⁴⁷

Abraham Lincoln joined several thousand young men in answering the governor’s call. His motivation remains uncertain. He was an itinerant worker at the time, living far from Rock River, without property to protect. Perhaps he felt some latent vengeance for his grandfather’s death; perhaps, as a friend suggested, he was stirred to action by the local “Patriock Boys,” who had signed up to “Defend the frontier settlers . . . from the Savages tomihock and Skelping Knife.” Another acquaintance said Lincoln left the impression the campaign was largely a “holiday affair and chicken-stealing expedition.” He was mustered into the Fourth Volunteer Regiment in late April 1832.⁴⁸

Lincoln’s company consisted of sixty-nine local men, a rough lot by all accounts. A traveler who saw the volunteers described them as “unkempt and unshaved, wearing shirts of dark calico”; and a fellow militiaman called the band “the hardest set of men he ever saw.” Like the others, Lincoln had no arms of his own and was issued a smoothbore flintlock rifle. Emotions ran high. Many had given up their spring plowing and hopes for a good crop to wage the war. Few had sympathy with Native concerns. “I wish some of your Presyters folks was here that was so troubled about the Indians being hurt,” one wrote, alluding to the Presbyterian reputation for compassion toward Native Americans, “they wood sing another song.” All were ready for a fight, Lincoln included. A comrade recalled that he “often expressed a desire to get into an engagement” and wondered how the hardscrabble boys would “meet Powder & Lead.”⁴⁹

Lincoln was elected captain of the company, something he later remembered with pride. His selection may have been due to his physical prowess—he could beat almost everyone at racing, jumping, or wrestling, and he took on any bully who threatened his crowd. Some of the men claimed the volunteers idolized their captain and would follow him anywhere. The circumstances of the election, however, were questionable and recollections vary. The men all spoke of Lincoln without rancor, but some suggested he was “indolent and vulgar” and had been chosen to spite another candidate, or because of his reputation for laxity. Discipline was, in fact, a serious problem with all the volunteer companies. Crisp commands and orderly camps were rare. Captain Lincoln’s authority followed this pattern. Reportedly, his men responded to commands by saying “Go to the devil, sir!” or broke into whiskey barrels and drank until they were unfit to march. At times they were so rowdy that they could not be directed even to cross a fence. Lincoln was punished for his laxity, as he was for excitedly shooting off his gun without authorization. But he was far from alone in his want of authority. Another officer in the battalion reported there was no effort to drill troops, that they obeyed or disobeyed as they pleased, and sarcastically concluded: “this way men may grow grey in service without becoming soldiers.” The problems mirrored the disorganization of the campaign as a whole, which included a chronic lack of coordination between the untrained volunteers and regular troops. Colonel Zachary Taylor, one of the senior officers, described it as simply “a tissue of blunders, miserably managed from start to finish.”⁵⁰

Lincoln’s tenure as captain was short. After thirty days the conflict was largely contained and his regiment was disbanded. He apparently told his law partner that he reenlisted because he was out of work and had nothing better to do. He was again mustered in, this time by Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who would later gain fame as Fort Sumter’s commanding officer. (Anderson was one of several latter-day luminaries who took part in the 1832 war. Others included Albert Sidney Johnston, Jefferson Davis, and Winfield Scott.) In his two subsequent tours Lincoln was not reelected captain and joined the units as a private. He was initially part of Elijah Iles’s Mounted Rangers, which was formed in response to a call for horse troops that could chase the elusive Indians more effectively. When that unit also disbanded, Lincoln was attached to Captain Jacob Early’s Free Spy Company. Formed for reconnaissance work, the unit was elite and autonomous, taking orders directly from the commanding general, drawing no guard or other duties, and receiving a larger allowance of rations.⁵¹

In all this, Lincoln saw few hostile Indians and virtually no action. The campaign consisted largely of pursuing Black Hawk’s warriors around the northwest corner of Illinois, trying to block their raids on forts and settlements. At this they succeeded badly. In one instance they passed through an area where two hundred Fox lay in wait, without suspecting them; two days later they discovered to their horror that local white settlements had been burned and the terrified survivors were huddled in a stockade. Time and again they were outmaneuvered by their Native opponents, arriving too late to assist local residents. As Lincoln would later write, it was not a war “calculated to make great heroes of men engaged in it.” Due to mismanagement, the green volunteers were futilely marched long distances on the double-quick, while supply trains lagged far behind. Lincoln later recalled the absurdity of the organization, as well as the hardships, admitting that he was often hungry. It was “the quintessence of folly,” one of Lincoln’s compatriots in the Fourth Regiment reported. “No doubt Gen. Black Hawk was much amused and not a little edified in the arts military by his civilized and scientific enemies.”⁵²

Participants remarked that it was fortunate the full chaos of their organization was not known to the Indians, or the militia might easily have been slaughtered. Lincoln was present in the aftermath of one disorderly disaster, an engagement known as Stillman’s Run, which appears to have made a lasting impression. In mid-May, Black Hawk, believing he was outnumbered and despairing of hoped-for support from the outside, apparently sent a group of three men under a white flag to negotiate with the state troops. Either missing the flag—or mistrusting its sincerity—the militia imprisoned the braves and fired on another group that approached. Outraged, Black Hawk then attacked the camp at dusk and, to his surprise, routed the much larger force with a small band. The militia had been drinking, and virtually no discipline had been maintained in the battle. It was a “disgraceful affair,” Taylor reported, with settlers fleeing in terror, and the army missing a perfect chance to force Black Hawk back across the river “without there being a gun fired.” The Sauk and Fox warriors suffered few casualties, but twelve militiamen were killed. The Fourth Regiment arrived the next morning, finding the mutilated bodies still on the field. Lincoln later gave a vivid description of the scene to a reporter, recalling the revulsion of seeing hacked and scalped men, and how the reddish early morning sun bathed everything in a bloody light. Others verified the grisly scene, describing headless corpses, and shallow graves dug with hatchets and hands, in the absence of proper equipment. Lincoln was part of that burial detail. It was, as he said, “frightful.”⁵³

Finally, in midsummer, Black Hawk’s braves were cornered on the Wisconsin border at the Battle of Bad Axe. From start to finish the campaign had been a debacle. Begun as a protest against the duplicity of the treaty process, it ended with death and defeat for the Sauk and Fox. For the white settlers it devolved into a panic, fostering fear, economic loss, and the spread of cholera, which was brought to the area by the regular troops. Lewis Cass, the secretary of war, vowed to make an example of Black Hawk and his followers. He advocated humane treatment for the leaders—they were more valuable as hostages than dead. But the tribes had now lost their bargaining power and they were swiftly banished so far to the west that another attempt to return could never be made. The full tragedy was that the Sauk and Fox, although beset by intertribal rivalries, had made their peace with white expansion, feeling it was better to adapt than engage in endless confrontation. “I cannot be persuaded that the Indians crossed our border with any hostile intention beyond that of raising corn for their subsistence,” wrote one of the more circumspect members of the Fourth Regiment, “and whilst I freely grant that this was an infraction of the treaty of Rock Island . . . the manner in which we have attempted to repel it was as unwise and injudicious as the result has proved disastrous and inglorious.” Ironically, in many ways the shady practices and inflationary ways of the land speculators posed a greater threat to settlers than did the impoverished Indians. But the presumption of the whites, with their open disdain of Native American ways, and their insatiable taste for resources, provoked a deadly conflict where one need not have occurred.⁵⁴

To the end Black Hawk believed that the land of his ancestors was worth holding and his tribe’s honor worth defending. In a dignified speech, he told his jailers he was proud to have fought those who despised him and would rest in peace for having attempted to save his nation. After a few months he was released, and, in a curious reversal of fortune, was sent on a mission to the Eastern Seaboard, along with his eldest son and The Prophet. Journalists interviewed the warrior; he sat for portraits and was paraded before “Great Father” Andrew Jackson, in much the same manner as the Plains chiefs during Lincoln’s time. Assessing the huge cities and the government’s power, Black Hawk had the last, apocalyptic word. “I see the strength of the white man,” he told a reporter. “They are many, very many. The Indians are but few. They are not cowards, they are brave. But they are few.”⁵⁵

Wabokieshiek (known as The Prophet), Black Hawk in European dress, and his son Nasheaskuk, oil on canvas, by James Westhall Ford, 1833

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IV

How much Abraham Lincoln reflected on his Black Hawk War experience is not known—generally he deprecated the conflict and his role in it. But the same tragic cycle of fraud, displacement, and retribution continued to spin uncontrollably during his presidency. He certainly had a similar conflict in mind when John Ross walked into his office in September 1862. An eruption of violence by the Dakota and Ojibway peoples of Minnesota a few days earlier had created panic, and a demand for government action. Ross protested that the Cherokee had nothing to do with the Minnesota crisis and that relations should be based solely on the provisions of his own treaty. Nonetheless, pressures created by the Dakota may well have influenced Lincoln’s ambivalence about the situation in Indian Territory.⁵⁶

The Dakota, particularly the group known as the Santee Sioux, were a people of decided personality. Missionaries described a lively culture with a sophisticated calendar of ceremonial games, music, and dancing. The Sioux were “naturally reverent,” wrote one minister, with a language that contained no profane words. They lived a stable, semiagricultural life, growing crops and hunting buffalo and other game. They were also known for their tall, merciless braves, who were feared by other Indians as well as by whites. The common frontier sign for the tribe was a hand drawn sharply across the throat. The Dakota’s ferocious fighting ability had allowed them to dominate the upper plains for centuries, but they were rivaled by their bitter enemies the Ojibway (or Chippewa), a distinctive linguistic and cultural group. In 1851 the Dakota agreed to cede some 24 million acres of land to the United States, for the usual consideration of annuities, gifts, and protection. The new treaty confined the tribe to a narrow, 150-mile-long strip on the Minnesota River. In 1858 this treaty was amended—a hard bargain that allowed government roads and forts on the property; penalized the Dakota for destructive acts; and forbade alcohol. Neither side strictly upheld its provisions.⁵⁷

With the rush of settlers to the area came increased efforts to acculturate Native Americans to white ways. Attempts to develop settled agricultural communities and instill habits of European dress and religion had some success. However, despite the efforts of sympathetic missionaries such as Episcopal bishop Henry Whipple, many Sioux felt the superimposed values were at odds both spiritually and materially with their way of life. The “civilizing” process created significant tensions between those who became farmers and leaned toward white society, and the majority of tribespeople, who wished to retain their traditional culture. As Sioux chief Big Eagle (Waŋbdí Tháŋka) explained, farming was considered women’s work, beneath the dignity of a brave; and the “cut-hairs”— those who adopted the ways of the settlers—were mistrusted. Nor were the motives of the missionaries and federal agents benign. There was obvious arrogance in assuming white ways were superior, but the government also meant to undermine traditional social structures and diminish native cohesion. “The theory, in substance, was to break up the community system among the Sioux; weaken and destroy their tribal relations; individualize them by giving each a separate home and having them subsist by industry,” admitted Thomas J. Galbraith, an inexperienced businessman whom Lincoln appointed as the Dakota agent. Internal tribal conflict grew, and several antiwhite leaders were selected for chiefdom a few months before the uprising. Control over their increasingly restless people collapsed. Attacks on farmer Indians increased, and war drums were heard in the night.⁵⁸

Yet the most immediate reason for the violence was the Dakota’s chronic mistreatment by government agents and traders. The habit of appointing officials with few qualifications—save ambition and political connections—had long been established, but it reached a crescendo under Lincoln’s administration. Situated in remote locations and holding large quantities of cash, the agencies had many opportunities for malfeasance. Agents misrepresented available funds, colluded with traders, and absconded with gold sent for tribal annuities. Some openly solicited the aid of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to do so. Galbraith cynically remarked that “the biggest swindle” pleased the bureau best, “if they but have a share in [it].” A few weeks later five thousand dollars was found missing from his agency. In the months preceding the outbreak, Chippewa chief Hole-in-the-Day (Bug-o-na-ghe-zhisk), an educated man and accomplished leader, conducted his own investigation into fraudulent behavior against his tribe. He found records that stated he had been given twice the monies he actually received, and he traced the corruption to senior Republicans. Traders also exploited the Indians’ different understanding of loans and property by advancing large amounts of food, clothing, and other goods against annuities, which many chiefs believed was a generous gift. When they called in the debts, the Indians, who kept no books, and could not go to court, were unable to dispute them. “There was always trouble over the credit,” Big Eagle stated. In addition, traders encouraged the Native American thirst for whiskey, despite its express prohibition in the 1858 treaty. Seven months before hostilities began, George E. Day, a commissioner sent by Dole to look into corruption, wrote Lincoln personally to report that the situation was reaching a breaking point. The Sioux and other chiefs requested their “Great Father” be told “of many wrongs they had suffered from the Gov Agents and especially Traders the greatest Curse of the Indians and the Curse of the nation,” he declared. When Day traced the fraud to congressmen and Lincoln appointees, he was recalled.⁵⁹

Bishop Whipple chimed in two months later, pleading with the President to address conditions before a tragedy occurred. “The United States has virtually left the Indian without protection,” he wrote. “Thefts, murders and rapes are common and no one pays more attention to them than if they were swine.” Rape was a particular source of anger for the Dakota. Their own culture prized sexual fidelity: as one observer wrote, the “women are so chaste, that . . . certain death follows any breach of the marriage tie.” Officials, merchants, and soldiers had an ugly history of abusing tribal women, either through brutal violation, or by “marrying” them, then abandoning the “wives” when they became inconvenient. In addition to the psychological and physical cruelty involved, the production of so many mixed-race children destroyed the kinship lines that were the basis of Dakota society. Henry Sibley and Alexander Ramsey, both governors of Minnesota, as well as Henry M. Rice, a trader turned senator, were among those believed to have illegitimate children of Dakota blood. James Lynd, an agency clerk, deserted his Indian wife and child in late 1862; his murder was one of the actions that triggered the Minnesota conflict. Even John Hay bantered to Nicolay with sly vulgarity about having a dalliance in the bushes with an Indian maiden for “two bits.”⁶⁰

The government had decades of experience with the Indian system’s corruption, yet its excesses only seemed to multiply. Lincoln passed over the warnings, referring the matter to subordinates. In early 1862 he approved the appointment of another callous politico, Clark Thompson, to serve with Galbraith as agent to the Santee Sioux. Both men proved unpopular, as well as unequal to the sensitive conditions. By that summer, when thousands of Dakota arrived at the Yellow Medicine Agency to collect their annuities, the atmosphere was volatile. Crops had failed the previous season, and some Dakota were subsisting on little but roots and acorns. The annuities were delayed, partly because of a debate over whether they should be paid in gold, as stipulated in the treaty, or in new, war-driven greenbacks, and partly to give agents time to “riddle” the books and take their cut. Tempers flared. The Dakota were nervous and needy, an Indian Bureau inspector told Lincoln, and outraged at the “insulting taunts of the Agents,” one of whom told them if they were hungry they must eat grass or “‘their own—excrement’ (I soften the word).” By mid-August, when four Sioux teenagers killed a white family, in what was evidently an isolated incident, the atmosphere was primed for an explosion.⁶¹

Little Crow, Sioux chief and leader of the Indian massacre in Minnesota, photograph, 1862

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The Dakota were divided on whether to escalate the violence, and their newly elected chief, Little Crow (Čhetáŋ Wakhúwa Máni), was especially skeptical about the wisdom of a war party. But his braves were exasperated, and, fearing revenge for the murders in any case, Little Crow acquiesced. The next day he led a surprise attack on the Lower Sioux Agency. Among those killed was Andrew Myrick, the agent who had rudely counseled the Indians on their dietary possibilities: he was found with grass and excrement stuffed in his mouth. White inhabitants panicked, fearing a massacre while so many men were absent in the Union Army. Unprepared for the conflict, the settlers nonetheless staged a valiant defense, sometimes with improvised weapons. At undermanned Fort Ridgely the Dakota were pushed back, as they were in New Ulm, where a good deal of burning and looting took place. Governor Ramsey telegraphed Washington that widespread slaughter was under way; others reported that half the settlers had flown. There were rumors that Confederates had fueled the unrest to harass the North with a “fire in the rear,” though no proof was ever found. Nevertheless, popular cartoons depicted Jefferson Davis swearing in Indians as part of his “Scalping Bureau” and there was a widespread fear that there might be a coordinated uprising by all the Plains tribes.⁶²

“The Terrible Chief ‘Hole-in-the Day’; Taking the oath of office from President Davis, as Head of the Scalping Bureau,” wood engraving, Vanity Fair, September 13, 1862

Accounts of Indian savagery filled newspaper columns and officials’ ears. Governor Ramsey reported lurid stories of “Infants hewn into bloody strips of flesh, or nailed alive to door posts to linger out their little life in mortal agony . . . young girls . . . outraged by their brutal ravishers, till death ended their shame.” John Nicolay, dispatched by Lincoln to assess the situation, could not refrain from describing nights made “hideous with fiendish yells and horrid music of their war dances.” Most of these stories were exaggerated, but the reality was grim enough. Many frontiersmen and -women who had nothing to do with swindling the tribes were murdered, including some who had worked to coexist peaceably. Atrocities did take place, particularly at the hands of Red Middle Voice and his followers, who specialized in hacking off the limbs of their victims and leaving them to bleed to death. Settlers in isolated communities were especially vulnerable, and much of the violence took place outside pitched battles. Most Native American leaders, including Little Crow, did not approve of such behavior—killing legitimate enemies in combat was considered a noble obligation, but slaughtering civilians was thought cowardly. Some tribal members refused to fight at all, and others guarded and protected whites with whom they had associated. With his followers fragmented, and the war’s momentum spoiling his advantage of stealth and surprise, Little Crow was defeated at the Battle of Wood Lake in late September. By Lincoln’s estimate, eight hundred whites had been killed, though this figure is now believed to be an overstatement.⁶³

A volley of complaints arrived in the President’s office from terrorized Minnesotans who wanted the tribes eradicated or removed completely from their state. “Exterminate the wild beasts and make peace with the devil and all his host sooner than with these red-jawed tigers whose fangs are dripping with the blood of the innocent!” thundered Jane Swisshelm, editor of the St. Cloud [Minn.] Democrat. “Get ready . . . and be sure they are shot dead, dead, DEAD, DEAD!” Survivors warned Lincoln that leniency would only allow the Indians to “dance around their war fires” boasting that “we dared not punish them.” State legislators pressed the cabinet for revenge, pushing so hard that Navy Secretary Gideon Welles thought they “were but slightly removed from the barbarians they would execute.” Religious groups and some scrupulous officials also wrote to the White House, arguing for a radical remake of the system that had launched this disaster. Bishop Whipple traveled to Washington, an official Episcopal condemnation of Lincoln’s actions in hand, as well as a six-point plan for reform. Like others, he blamed federal policies for “dragging the savage down to a brutishness unknown to his fathers, it has brought a harvest of blood to our own door.” When he met with cavalier treatment by officials, Whipple publicly railed against the “lack of statesmen,” and called for some wisdom, beyond small-minded politicians who could only “talk and bluster.”⁶⁴

Caught in the crossfire, Lincoln sent Dole and Nicolay, as well as Assistant Secretary of the Interior John Usher, to assess the situation. They helped deflect tensions with Hole-in-the-Day, whose complaints had never been addressed, and reported that although a genuine tragedy had occurred, local accounts of the carnage were exaggerated. Usher wrote a balanced assessment, criticizing the Sioux for recklessness and barbarity, but laying equal blame on the malicious actions of agents, and a pitiless system that had made tribes dependent, then left them with “the impression they had been abandoned.” The President chose to respond more to white fears than calls for reform. He approved a significant militarization of Indian affairs, one that would come to define the government’s future interaction with Native peoples. At its head, Lincoln placed General John Pope, an avowed foe of the red man, who had disappointed the nation at Second Bull Run and needed reassignment. Pope heightened tensions, peppering the War Department with excited messages (“Universal panic prevails along the whole frontier”), and requesting men, supplies, and approval for a prolonged campaign to exterminate all Plains tribes, whether or not they had participated in the violence.⁶⁵

The tug-of-war between retribution and reform reached a straining point with the popular clamor to execute those thought to have led the uprising. A military commission condemned some three hundred to be hanged, and Pope and General Henry Sibley, who were charged with keeping peace, requested authorization to carry out the punishment. The “trials” had been little more than a sham, averaging only a few minutes per case, and lacking in solid evidence. Objections arose from whites who claimed to have been saved by friendly Dakota, some of whom were on the execution list, but Pope warned that if the sentences were not fulfilled, a posse of Minnesota citizens would rise up and slaughter the prisoners. Lincoln tried to duck the decision, asking Judge Advocate Joseph Holt whether he could delegate the responsibility to a subordinate. When the judge replied that clemency could only be granted by the President, Lincoln followed Dole’s recommendation to study the accusations seriously—and then execute only key leaders. Dole and his office did a careful assessment and Lincoln again bowed to their judgment, ordering a stay of execution for all but thirty-nine men, who were believed to be the ringleaders. Included on the death list were those who had led massacres, as opposed to fighting battles, and Indians thought to have raped white women—though only two cases of this could be credibly proved. There was also a question whether the Native Americans should be treated as prisoners of war, rather than criminals, under the laws of military justice. It was a fine line, as Lincoln noted, between acting “with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on the one hand” and avoiding “real cruelty on the other.” Many Minnesotans were outraged at the pardons and vowed to take private revenge. Nonetheless, when thirty-nine Dakota were hanged on December 26, 1862, it was the largest mass execution in American history.⁶⁶

Dole had wanted to steer a course toward justice, and Lincoln, despite the outcry against him, also believed the administration’s decision was fair. “I could not hang men for votes,” he told Governor Ramsey, who protested the decision. However, the President had made a bargain on the executions, and it was not a lenient one. In return for clemency, he agreed to dispossess the Dakota of lands, annuities, self-governance, and freedom of movement. The cost of the fracas was paid by the Treasury, but those warriors who had not been hanged remained in captivity, without specific charges. Among them were several who were praised for their aid to the whites, and forty-nine who had been acquitted but never released. Lincoln’s comment to the governor’s query about their fate was that it was an “unpleasant subject” that he would deal with later. During the next few years, sixty-seven Dakota would die in prison under unspeakable conditions. Big Eagle, who had been singled out for his role in saving white lives, was incarcerated for years, and even when Lincoln finally ordered his release, the request was ignored for some time. Had he imagined his treatment in that penitentiary, the chief later stated, he would never have given up. “I had surrendered in good faith, knowing that many of the whites were acquainted with me and that I had not been a murderer,” he protested.⁶⁷

In March 1863 a removal bill was passed by Congress that exiled the Dakota outside the boundaries of any state. Most of the dispossessed were farmer Indians who had helped white captives during the uprising. The Winnebago, who had taken no part in the conflict, were also deported. Some cabinet members saw through the elaborate justification for this, questioning Pope’s actions. “The Winnebagoes have good land which white men want and mean to have,” Welles remarked in his diary. After weeks of deprivation and forced transport, the Native Americans were deposited on the Crow Creek reservation, a harsh spot known to be inhospitable for agriculture. Lacking water, food, and even the most basic shelter, and left without guns and horses that would allow them to hunt, the Dakota faced “a desert as to location, starvation as to condition.” For a while the federal troops fed them a concoction of gruel, offal, and dead mules, but by spring, the Indians were dying in large numbers. The following winter it was reported that they were “now [at] midwinter so universally naked, that one half of them positively cannot get out of their tents . . . the young and old and feeble, are actually freezing to death.” The women were particularly vulnerable. Sibley’s diary speaks of soldiers “wild as deer,” and how he had “the greatest difficulty keeping the men from the Indian women when the camps are close together.” He expressed hope that their intercourse was consensual, but that was unlikely, given the circumstances. An inhabitant at Crow Creek recorded that the reservation girls were pressed to attend dances “gotten up by white men” that were “a disgrace to humanity.” There was testimony of similar behavior at Davenport, Iowa, where the prisoners were being held. There the squaws were systematically sexually assaulted, sometimes by gangs. Reportedly, some were used for target practice. Lincoln, who had made such a nicety of searching for violators of white women, took no action to control his own men’s predilection for rape.⁶⁸

As conditions worsened at Crow Creek, some of the tribesmen were allowed to wander in search of food, and others were again relocated, to somewhat better lands on the Omaha reservation. But further deprivation came about as a result of hostility between the Winnebago and other tribes. The War Department’s rivalry with the Indian Bureau, as well as Pope’s belief that the Native peoples should be under strict military control, caused more hardship. Under the severe regime, Indians were forbidden activities that “whites do without censure,” including playing sports, holding hunts, and enjoying traditional festivals. At the same time, agents, traders, and soldiers continued to promote the use of alcohol, harass the women, and make “general trouble.” A proposal made by Dole in early 1865, that “friendly” Dakota be allotted tillable eighty-acre plots, was turned down as being unacceptable to white Minnesotans. A local missionary wrote the epilogue on Lincoln administration policy for the Dakota: “Exhorted to abandon hunting, and with no means or encouragement to open farms, no education to any trade, merely subsisted and played with by the Government, hundreds of Indians are fast becoming mere beggars, and their children growing up without knowledge of any honest or manly way of obtaining a livelihood.” When several chiefs begged assistance to change the situation, he remarked: “They are like men praying for life.”⁶⁹

V

One reason Hole-in-the-Day was outraged was that several attempts had been made to impress Chippewa men into the Union Army. There were rumors that whites had enlisted a group of mixed-bloods after plying them with drink, and Hole-in-the-Day swore there would be trouble if any more braves were taken. At the Crow Creek reservation, the Winnebago were also told their “useless” men might be drafted. This was not official policy—Dole had, in fact, resisted conscripting Indians, who were generally not American citizens and thus ineligible. But Lincoln had just called for 600,000 more men, substitutes were needed for those avoiding service, and there were bounties to be had. The tribes were well aware of the white man’s war and found it somewhat duplicitous that United States representatives should counsel them to avoid intertribal fighting while they themselves were engaged in a deadly fratricidal conflict. Sioux agent Galbraith reported to Washington that “when I have upbraided them for going to war with their hereditary enemies, the Chippewas, have they replied to me thus: Our Great Father, we know, has always told us it was wrong to make war; now he is making war and killing a great many; how is this?”⁷⁰

Nonetheless, some twenty thousand Native Americans did participate in the war, often with distinction. The Union was initially reluctant to take on Indian fighters, despite their reputation as fine warriors. Iroquois leaders met resistance when they began to recruit, and there was particular reluctance for the idea of commissioning Indian officers. Ely S. Parker (Hasanoanda, later known as Donehogawa), who as a lieutenant colonel served as adjutant to General Ulysses S. Grant, was initially rebuffed when he tried to sign up in his native New York. He was finally forced to move to Pennsylvania to be accepted in the Army. Ultimately he was brevetted brigadier general in 1867. John Ross’s offer to form a cavalry unit from his expert horsemen was also lukewarmly received by Lincoln, who continued to view Cherokee loyalty with skepticism. When General James Blunt, on the remote western flank of the war, suggested enlisting the help of friendly tribesmen to counter Confederate incursions, he was curtly told that “it was not the policy of our government to fight high-toned southern gentlemen, with Indians.” The Detroit Free Press also scorned the idea of such recruits, saying a move by the state legislature to arm and equip a regiment of Native Americans “cannot be too strongly reprobated.” After the Dakota outbreak, there were rumors that tribesmen in Wisconsin were looking for excuses to arm themselves and infiltrate settled areas. Others feared that white soldiers would balk at serving alongside Native men or would be sabotaged by them. For many, the “wild men of the forest” seemed dangerous enough without handing them government weapons.⁷¹

General Ulysses S. Grant and his staff, with Ely S. Parker seated on the left, carte de visite by John Adams Whipple, c. 1865–74

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By early 1862, however, the demands of war were severely testing the Union, and prejudice took a backseat to augmenting the army. In March of that year, Dole finally wrote Parker to say that although he would not draft Native Americans, he was grateful for volunteers, paving the way for Parker to raise a Seneca regiment. Indian outfits became increasingly common as the war went on. The units participated in some of the fiercest engagements of the war, including at Fair Oaks, on the Chattanooga campaign, in the worst fighting at Spotsylvania, and with Sherman on his March to the Sea. Pamunkey Indians in Virginia volunteered as scouts and gunboat pilots on the tricky Chesapeake river ways. A Cherokee and Creek “Union Brigade” was formed that took over much of the defense needed in Indian Territory, participating in significant engagements at Locust Grove and Honey Springs. Ross’s son James was a member of this brigade; he was captured by the Confederates and died in prison. Particularly notable was Company K of the First Michigan Sharpshooters, made up of elite marksmen from the Ojibway tribe. Rallying under their mascot—a large, live eagle—they were at the front of the action, taking punishing casualties and inflicting them as well. During the desperate fighting in the Wilderness, one of the company, Daniel Mwa-ke-we-naw, single-handedly killed thirty-two rebels, a number of them officers. At the Petersburg Crater, the unit was praised for its “great coolness,” despite its many casualties. “Some of them were mortally wounded,” reported an onlooker, “and clustering together, covered their heads with their blouses, chanted a death song—and died.” Fifteen members of Company K were captured and sent to Andersonville Prison, where at least seven perished. Native Americans also joined the Navy. Iroquois sailor William Jones, for example, worked on the USS Rhode Island during the assault on Fort Fisher, and made journal notes about his struggle to adapt to the language and culture of his white comrades.⁷²

For the most part, the performance of Native American troops earned praise. In Kansas, General Blunt thought the Cherokee and Creek men performed “excellent service for the Union cause.” William Dole officially commended the role of Wisconsin’s Menominee tribe, reporting that they made “brave and enduring soldiers, coming easily under discipline.” A member of Company K was recommended for the Medal of Honor for his valor at Petersburg. Some soldiers remarked on differences in fighting style. “Indians were good skirmishers, but didn’t like the open country or pitched battle,” wrote one, seeming to imply that they preferred silent tracking or irregular action. However, the actions of the Company K seem to belie that idea, as do tactical manuals of the day, which gave skirmishers a formidable role, one in the forefront of the killing field. Yet, despite noteworthy participation under fire, resentments about Indian forces smoldered on both sides. The color prejudice that plagued black troops also affected Native American soldiers, who suffered taunts and ostracism from their Union comrades, along with lower pay. Confederate soldiers felt insulted facing Native troops, just as they disliked fighting against African Americans. In some instances, such as at the Crater, Indian soldiers were purposely slaughtered when captured by the rebels. Many men were also suspicious of what they saw as “sly” habits of stalking or subterfuge. Elisha Stockwell Jr., a white volunteer in the Fourteenth Wisconsin, wrote at Kennesaw Mountain of the way Indians of Company F could sneak up on the enemy without being seen or heard, and how one captured rebel protested the “unfairness” of this ploy. From the Indian point of view, the white style of warfare—with men exposed, in gigantic, fruitless struggles—was laughably unproductive. Chief Hole-in-the-Day personally advised Lincoln of this. “All no good,” he said, according to Nicolay’s transcription; “give me fifty thousand men, I fix ’em.” He would hunt rebels as he hunted Sioux, he told the President, in ambush or with sudden, swift surprise. “Somebody,” the chief concluded, “would have been hurt.”⁷³

Clearly, Native Americans performed well in combat, but what inspired them to volunteer? Whatever the merits of the Union cause, this was not a country that had shown them either generosity or respect. At bottom, most tribes wanted to protect themselves, and sometimes this influenced their actions. The Cherokee, for example, had briefly aligned with the Confederacy because of concern about their status as an independent nation. Treaty obligations also came into play: the Cherokee, as well as the Menominee and other tribes, were bound by agreements to aid the United States, something John Ross took seriously. Some Indian leaders hoped to parlay wartime participation into a better position in treaty negotiations, or to use it as leverage to have white squatters removed from their land. Others were sincerely antislavery. “To be driven to the man-market for sale is, we think, a rank offense before the Great Spirit, and a foul blot on the Grand Republic,” an Odawa man wrote in 1862. Despite the fact that many Cherokee, including Ross, were slaveholders, that tribe also formally abolished the practice after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. In some instances, there was a financial motivation. The need to support families was an issue for the Ottawa men of Company K, who, after being forced to cede land to the government, became increasingly desperate when drought and insects spoiled their crops. The tribal destitution is startlingly clear in a remarkable photo of Mohicans of the Stockbridge-Munsee band, which shows them being sworn into the Union Army dressed, literally, in rags. For men such as these, enlistment bounties were a tangible incentive. Native American traditions also played a role in mobilizing soldiers. Indian braves had a long history of battlefield courage, and in many tribal societies manhood could only be truly proven in war.⁷⁴

Mohican Indians of the Stockbridge-Munsee band being sworn into the Union Army, photograph by Thomas Bigford, 1861

WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The rationale was clearer for those who allied themselves with the South. Indeed, nearly four times as many Native Americans fought with the Confederacy as joined Union forces. For some, the proximity of Southern white communities made them natural allies, particularly among those who defended slavery. Six chiefs in the Wichita Agency wrote early in the conflict that they were of “one heart” with Texans and their institutions and pledged to join their fight against “the cold weather people.” In South Carolina, the Catawba had been forced to vacate most of their land by 1861, and were dependent on local white society for work, goods, and liquor. Facing necessity, and attracted by adventure and potential glory, they joined the Confederates, becoming one of the most committed of the Indian contingents. In addition, Native Americans and Southern whites frequently shared the belief that nationhood was based on kinship and racial identification rather than legal or administrative structures. The Confederate government sweetened the deal with advantageous treaties and the promise of respect. Among the Five Nations, internal political motives also influenced alliances with the South. Stand Watie, while sympathizing with Confederate aspirations and views on slavery, created a platform for his “Southern Rights” Party that was far different from the official Confederate line; for him, fighting against the Union was largely a pretext for the larger goal of undermining John Ross. In the disarray following Ross’s flight to Washington, when Watie was made chief, he was, for a time, successful in his bid for power. But he was unable to maintain unity within his nation, and as the war progressed, Cherokee commitment to a coalition with the South wavered.⁷⁵

Jefferson Davis had begun with a good game plan for Native American relations, but as time went on trust was eroded by Confederate malfeasance and neglect. Although Watie and others volunteered to fight with the rebel army, for example, some Indians were dragooned into the service. Many were sent to coastal fortifications around the Cape Fear River, where they were essentially treated as slaves, working in deep water even in winter, without proper food or clothing. Some eastern Choctaw were forced against their will to fight—until they deserted en masse during the Vicksburg campaign. The more enthusiastic troops faced suspicion from ranking officers, particularly after reports of scalping—largely disproved—came from some battlefields. After this, Watie and his regiment were confined to protecting Indian Territory. Unprofessional practices created additional mistrust between Native American forces and Richmond officials. Albert Pike, who had so successfully brokered treaties with the Five Nations, continued to favor Indian units but was frustrated by the confiscation of arms, rations, and supplies designated for them. He protested vigorously to Davis, stating that arbitrarily changing policies—always to the detriment of the Native men—left them “weary, disheartened, disgusted, plundered at every turn,” and unable to fight with a will. Other officers complained of antiquated or defective armaments, arguing that the Indian regiments would have been quite effective if properly supplied. Habitually late pay—or no pay at all—was another complication. By summer 1863 Creek chief Moty Kanard was pleading with the white “Father” in Richmond to “aid and effectually assist his distressed and sinking children,” who had been left “with few exceptions, unarmed, most of the time without ammunition; bareheaded, barefooted, without bread, and body in rags.” Watie also wrote to Confederate officials, in elegant language, protesting the “lethargy and procrastination” of officers in the West, whose “lack of spirit, inactivity, and apparent cowardice” kept them from defeating Union forces. Davis and General Edmund Kirby Smith responded with soothing words, but their policies essentially did not change.⁷⁶

The Confederate government thus created a kind of circular dilemma for itself, since Indian absenteeism increased in proportion to the army’s malfeasance. This was particularly true after battles such as the July 1863 confrontation at Honey Springs, where Confederate forces were defeated as much by inadequate equipment as by Union prowess. The “general Spirit of dissatisfaction and desertion became contagious,” wrote a Cherokee participant, “and . . . what could we do against an enemy three times our number better armed and equipped than we were? I suppose we could have made a sacrifice of ourselves . . . but I don’t Think the occasion required it.” After such scenes, some regular officers scorned the dependability and effectiveness of Native American troops. “The Indians come and go at will, or nearly so. Their whims and caprices have been pandered to until it is impossible to put any reliance in them,” General William Steele advised Richmond. Concerned that he might be blamed for the setback, Steele asserted that “the policy of raising brigades of Indian troops will only result in an increased expenditure of public money without an adequate increase of the fighting strength.”⁷⁷

Despite widespread nervousness about their constancy, many Native American outfits gave valuable service to the South. Watie was among the disenchanted after Honey Springs, calling the Confederate coalition a “useless and expensive pageant; an object for the success of our enemies and the shame of our friends.” Still, he did not want to give up—and indeed, he did not. He had unusual soldierly ability, which he harnessed in a series of guerrilla campaigns that destabilized Union forces. Northern opponents saw Watie as unpredictable and ruthless, particularly after reports that his horsemen systematically slaughtered African American forces, including wounded men. But he was heralded by Confederates for “the brilliancy and completeness” of actions such as the capture of major Union supply trains at Cabin Creek in late 1864. Promoted to brigadier a few months later, Watie was the last Southern general to lay down arms, not leaving the field until June 23, 1865. As it happened, the final Confederate legion to surrender east of the Mississippi was also led by a Cherokee. William Holland Thomas (Wil-Usdi) had put together a formidable force of several hundred warriors, who served as spies and sentinels in high country, blocking Union incursions into the mountains. They continued to stymie their foes for six weeks after the defeat of Robert E. Lee.⁷⁸

VI

While Stand Watie was threatening Ross’s authority and Cherokees were suffering devastation by two armies, the chief faced yet another challenge. This was the proposed removal of an unrelated tribe—the Delaware—into Indian Territory. The crisis resulted from the frantic competition for land that followed Kansan statehood in 1860. After Kansas was opened to white settlement in 1854, it had become a hotly contested area. None of its five million acres were public—all were tied to intricate treaties that forbade the sale of property or its use for industrial development. Squatters as well as speculators chafed at this. They smelled opportunity when the 1860 Republican platform called for construction of a transcontinental railroad to the Pacific coast and a homesteading policy that encouraged white landholding. A New York firm was one of many that lobbied Lincoln to support railroad growth, avowing it would bring “the productive wealth of free labor [and] . . . the riches & fruits of mineral and pastoral enterprise.” Lincoln endorsed these policies enthusiastically. By the time of his inauguration, the lust to exploit western riches had grown into a freewheeling grab after acreage and railroad rights and a scramble to position men for power and profit. In the case of the Delaware, the President was personally involved in a murky affair that led to their displacement.⁷⁹

Among those betting on expansion was a group of prominent Republicans in eastern Kansas. The consortium included Thomas Ewing Jr., a well-known politician and General Sherman’s brother-in-law; James Lane, who would later serve as one of Kansas’s first senators; and Governor Charles Robinson. In 1857 they contracted surveys for the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad (LP&W), which proposed linking Leavenworth with Fort Riley to the west. The obstacle in their path was a rich tract owned by the Delaware. By the 1850s a good many schemes had been devised to dupe Native Americans, but the backers of the LP&W developed a new ruse. The terms of the Delaware’s treaty with the federal government stated that all tribal interactions should be conducted by Washington, which theoretically would protect Indian rights. The LP&W, however, began to negotiate directly with the chiefs, giving federal watchdogs promises or paybacks to remain silent. In 1860 they made a bold move by concluding an unofficial agreement to buy several hundred thousand acres of prime land, which they hoped to incorporate into an amended treaty. Their goal was something more than merely acquiring a right of way for the new railroad—they also wanted surplus acreage that could be sold to finance the construction of the tracks, and used as collateral to raise more capital. Samuel Pomeroy, a Republican who would become one of Kansas’s senators upon statehood, was against the sale, saying it defrauded the tribe; but the real reason was that he was heavily invested in a rival rail line. Nonetheless, Ewing’s group quietly slid the amended treaty through Congress, and President Buchanan signed it in August 1860.⁸⁰

By the time Lincoln took office, an opposition had formed, with lawyers and interpreters claiming that tribal leaders had been willfully misled, plied with liquor, or threatened with a loss of annuities if they did not sign the amendment. In May 1861 the LP&W was close to a dream deal: acquisition of nearly 224,000 acres at $1.25 per acre, paid for by a mortgage on the excess land they expected to sell. This was a rock-bottom rate, based on a large-parcel sale under closed bid, and the Delaware, who had been advised that at a public auction their best property could fetch up to $50 an acre, were wary. Had the treaty been enforced as written, it did contain guarantees for the Delaware, including designated tracts for tribespeople, a provision that they would retain title until the line was built, royalties for valuable timberland, and an understanding that they would remain on the land. Both opponents and supporters of the treaty lobbied Lincoln hard as the complicated transaction was completed. In the early summer of 1861 Ewing traveled to Washington to try to seal the deal.⁸¹

Lincoln was brought in to mediate the disagreement. He told one investor that he was against swindling the Indians, which may have been the case. But others recounted—only hours after the meetings—that his real concerns were negative publicity and alienating the powerful congressional lobby that opposed the new treaty. Nonetheless, he finally acquiesced, optimistically stating that the agreement would benefit the country, as well as protect the Delaware, because the government would hold their land rights in bonds. Yet Lincoln also personally agreed to let the LP&W execute the bonds for $286,742—secured by the huge tract they were allowed to keep in reserve—without laying out a penny. In so doing, the President tacitly admitted that the Delaware’s holdings had been undervalued, and that the 123,000 acres which the company was now free to sell or mortgage to other parties were worth at least the amount placed by appraisers on the original 223,996 acres. Lincoln thought the arrangement would be square if the new provisions could be incorporated in a revised treaty, which the tribe could approve or reject before it was sent to the Senate. He selected Commissioner Dole to carry out the mission, and by late summer Dole had succeeded in gaining the chiefs’ consent. Tribal leaders trustingly declared they were signing the new treaty because “they believed their Great Father to be a good man, and would do justice by his red children.”⁸²

The chiefs’ concurrence gave a veneer of legitimacy to a one-sided bargain. Yet, it was here, under the veil of “consent,” that the real fraud was revealed. For in implementing the agreement, the discrepancy between stated policy and actual intention became crystal clear. As a former railroad lawyer, familiar with property values and legal instruments, Lincoln understood this. Months later, he admitted he was uncomfortable about the arrangement, saying he was “down on all such matters, that there had been so much said about cheating the Poor Indians &c &c.” But he agreed to see it through on the basis of “personal considerations” with his political crony Mark Delahay, who was also a Kansan. Thomas Ewing Jr. exposed the true situation in the elation of his letters home. “I am on the high road to fortune,” he announced to his sister; and to his father he gloated that they had paid nothing, guaranteed only $1.25 an acre, and felt “assured of being able to sell 15.000 to 20.000 of the best land this fall at about $7.00.”⁸³ Corruption continued as administration officials got kickbacks from the arrangement. Interior Assistant Secretary John Usher, who had initially represented the Delaware, switched sides when Indian pickings began to look slim. He then gave legal counsel to the LP&W, undermining the integrity of his office. He also handed notes for land to lobbyists, as well as to the comptroller of the currency, General James Blunt, and John Nicolay. In the long, muddy debate over treaty ratification, Pomeroy, Delahay, Governor Robinson, and a double-dealing translator named Charles Johnnycake all received positions, stock, or parcels of land—sometimes comprising thousands of acres. ⁸⁴

The LP&W never sent any money to the Delaware. When the first payment came due, the road was not yet begun, so the company was not obliged to forward any cash. Construction was hindered by difficulties of wartime financing, endless lawsuits over prime routes, and Lincoln’s decision to designate Omaha, rather than eastern Kansas, as the eastern starting point for the transcontinental road. In the end, only a few miles of the LP&W were ever built. Although the 1861 treaty stated that ceded land would be forfeited if the railroad was not completed “in reasonable time,” the Delaware never regained their property. Before the treaty was even ratified, the LP&W began selling the land, poaching on Delaware timber reserves, and expelling tribespeople. Rather than enforce the provision for restoring ceded land, Lincoln proposed deporting the Delaware to Indian Territory. The removal ignored cultural and kinship differences between the tribes, as well as treaty assurances to both the Delaware and the Cherokee pertaining to sole and perpetual possession of their tracts. Ross, ever the statesman, offered a generous deal, by which the Delaware would share educational institutions, have use—though not ownership—of communal land, and enjoy all the protections of the Cherokee constitution. But settlement of another tribe among his people was the beginning of Ross’s worst nightmare. This was not just a legal violation, or the theft of land, but the loss of identity: an ominous erosion of the proud and distinct Cherokee heritage.⁸⁵

Corruption created conflict and weakened the government’s hand in dealing with complex Indian matters. It also undermined the very goals Republicans were trying to promote. In his 1864 report to Congress, Lincoln spoke of his concern for Indian welfare, but it was framed within a call to close the territorial gap between the Atlantic and Pacific states and to secure western riches for white entrepreneurs. In actuality, insider deals worked against the populist principles of the Homestead Act. Lincoln had supported that act as a kind of safety valve “so that every poor man may have a home,” but, as passed, it applied only to public property—that already held by the government. Private agreements like the one brokered by the LP&W allowed prime land to become the booty of corporations and speculators. Settlers, both legitimate and squatting, were ineligible to start homesteads on the property and unable to compete at auction with the inflated land prices. The government was also outbid. Lincoln believed—or at least stated—that encouraging railway development and the access it provided would advance emigration. But speculators, and the complicated transfer of titles, so tied up the land that it could not be settled. In the end, railroads themselves proved a mixed economic blessing. Despite the justification of wartime necessity, few lines were constructed during the conflict, yet the companies received vast tracts and important mineral rights for the routes they proposed. This culminated in the Pacific Railway Act of 1864, which granted a whopping 12,800 acres for each projected mile of track—offering far more incentive to plan lines than to build them. The railroads that were proposed often did not link together, because the more mileage a circuitous route took, the more profitable it was to the investors. With virtually no governmental regulation and a shaky loan structure, the game became one of personal profit, masquerading as public advantage.⁸⁶

By December 1862 even Lincoln was fed up with the nefarious doings of the system, telling a Republican backer he was “greatly mortified at the manner that Indian affairs has been conducted in Minnesota and Kansas,” and hinting there was to be a clean sweep of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But the broom was never applied, and the pattern of questionable deal making and corrupt administration continued. As with the Delaware, disadvantageous treaties with the Ottawa, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and others were negotiated directly with holding companies under coercive circumstances—and then “railroaded” through the Senate ratification process. Lincoln’s mailbag was filled with complaints about the agents appointed by his government, a record of such incessant chicanery it could be taken for slapstick, if the consequences had not been so terrible. Some Indian superintendents literally begged to be sent representatives with “clean hands and pure hearts,” but most agents continued to be appointed because of political connections or personal favoritism. Old friends from the Black Hawk War, unemployed cronies from New Salem, the Illinois town where Lincoln had lived in his twenties, and the President’s personal doctor all made the grade, though he drew the line at commissioning his nearly illiterate stepbrother. From Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah came stories of agents paying annuities in worthless scrip, abusing Native women, or working Native Americans as slaves.⁸⁷ Both contemporary observers and careful scholars have concluded that corruption and politicization of the Indian system reached its zenith during Lincoln’s presidency. The result, complained frontier folk, was that hostilities had actually escalated, making their life “intolerable” under his administration. One missionary calculated that tribal antipathy to whites increased tenfold in the 1860s. It was, wrote another, “a blunder and a crime.”⁸⁸

William Dole was only too aware of the system’s shortcomings and sincerely hoped to reform it. A friend of the president from their days on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, Dole had little experience, but he had a zest for learning, and was more honest than most. His purposefulness compensated in part for the inertia of Caleb B. Smith, the administration’s initial secretary of the interior, and Assistant Secretary Usher’s compromised activities. Moreover, he had a concrete Indian policy. Like Lincoln, Dole believed the Native Americans’ best hope for survival was to adopt a settled agricultural existence. He was optimistic about the prospects for this, citing in an early report that it was “a demonstrated fact that Indians are capable of attaining a high degree of civilization.” He was also candid about the responsibility for bloodshed, pointing the finger straight at whites. In many cases, Dole noted, reservations were entirely surrounded by settlers, and Native Americans were subjected to constant swindling and encroachments. “If a white man does them an injury, redress is often beyond their reach,” Dole reported to Congress. “If one of their number commits a crime, punishment is sure and swift, and oftentimes is visited upon the whole tribe.” His remedy was the establishment of smaller, more easily protected reservations, with better educational facilities, amalgamated tribes, and restrictions on white entry. In Dole’s eyes this would mark clear boundaries between the worlds of red and white men. Ultimately the plan would rob Native peoples of yet more territory, autonomy, and identity, but Dole was convinced it was both practical and humane. He persuaded the President, who endorsed it in his annual message to Congress in 1862.⁸⁹

VII

Not everyone agreed with this comparatively benign program. The Army was among the factions that sympathized with more radical views. For decades military men had been responsible for frontier security, and some officers had spent their entire careers fighting Indians. Many thought the military should be handling Native American affairs, and a rivalry between the War and Interior Departments arose over the issue. Most soldiers believed that only raw power would compel the Indians to give up their “savage” ways. When Robert E. Lee was sent to patrol the Comanche in the late 1850s, for example, he justified his punishing raids as “the only corrective they understand, & the only way in which they can be taught to keep within their own limits.” General Samuel Curtis, commanding the Department of Kansas, agreed that this was the most effective method of bringing the Indians “to terms.” “I abhor the style,” he wrote, but admitted that “the popular cry of settlers and soldiers on the frontier favors an indiscriminate slaughter, which is very difficult to restrain.” John Pope sent a group of searing letters to the War Department, proposing the tribes be forced to abandon their way of life by putting them under strict martial control. Pope was no supporter of the system as it stood, which he believed goaded the Indians into retribution. But he also believed that, like “maniacs or wild beasts,” they could be “tamed” only by force. He advocated moving the tribes far from white areas and restraining their movement by prohibiting horses and other trappings of nomadic life. Under Pope’s plan there would be no treaties, no annuities, and no firearms: the Indians would have to labor on white terms to survive.⁹⁰

In 1863 an amalgam of Dole’s and Pope’s theories was implemented in New Mexico Territory by General James H. “Jimmy” Carleton. Historically the area’s trail routes had been troubled by periodic ambushes, but by the time Carleton arrived these had greatly diminished. Destitute Apaches still lived by plunder, but their neighbors, the Navajo, had developed an economy based on herding and trade in their finely woven blankets. “They are said to be intelligent and industrious, and their manufactures . . . in their neatness and finish, go far to prove this,” reported a military man in 1850. Nonetheless, the Army thought that “forbearance exercised towards the Navajos would be mistaken humanity; and the blood of our own citizens would be the fruits of it.” Carleton, who ruled his department with near dictatorial force, imposed a harsh removal policy on the Apache, Navajo, and other regional tribes. “The purpose now is never to relax the application of force with a people that can no more be trusted than you can trust the wolves that run through their mountains,” he reported to Washington. Theoretically the campaign was meant to separate peaceful from warring factions, but the real goal was to capture the tribes’ rich livestock holdings and orchard lands, as well as to open the area to prospecting. Carleton employed a reluctant Kit Carson to break up the Indian communities, ordering the murder of all male tribesmen, a scorched-earth policy, and no negotiation. Under instruction, Carson seized or destroyed stock, crops, and homes, leaving the starving tribes with little will to resist, especially as winter set in. In January 1864, in a final act of self-defense the Navajo faced Carson at Canyon de Chelly, where they were beaten back, largely by the use of howitzers. The eight thousand destitute and demoralized survivors were forced on a three-hundred-mile march to a remote reservation called Bosque Redondo, already populated by Mescalero Apache, who had been their sworn enemy for centuries.⁹¹

Carleton optimistically predicted the Navajo would become a “happy and contented people,” and that under the sympathetic direction of missionaries a successful agricultural society would be developed at the reservation. It was not to be. The experiment was thwarted by drought, destructive insects, and the broken spirit of the tribes. Navajo agent Michael Steck protested to Washington, but Dole would not overrule the military and the removals continued. The cruelty of the “Long Walk” became a point of harrowing memory to the Navajo, but in official eyes Carleton’s ruthlessness had paid off. Harassment diminished along routes like the Santa Fe Trail, and with nearly three-quarters of the tribal population displaced, the Indians were kept from menacing white development. New Mexicans hailed Carleton as a hero.⁹²

Thus the pattern continued through the Civil War years. Anxious to maintain tenuous telegraphic and postal links to Pacific states, and concerned that western resources be kept firmly under Union control, the Lincoln administration instructed the Army to maintain order in the West, giving it a great deal of latitude in doing so. In places like Bear River in Washington Territory, provocations on both sides ended in full-scale operations by federal forces. At Bear River, the Shoshone, whose land was being invaded and food supply destroyed by settlers, were nearly reduced to beggary. A series of raids by Indian teenagers triggered retaliatory action in January 1863, during which the underarmed Shoshones were killed by the hundreds. In the frenzy of battle, army men apparently lost control, and appalling atrocities followed. It was the largest mass killing in the long, sad chronicle of white-Indian relations, yet the incident went largely unnoticed. But soon, in November 1864, this relentless cycle of raid and reprisal reached such an extreme that lawmakers were finally forced to take note.⁹³

In Colorado Territory, disgruntlement over treaty amendments—which had brought the Plains chiefs to see Lincoln in 1863—heightened as the full impact of the arrangements was felt. John Nicolay, sent to assess the situation, gazed at the small, scruffy tracts assigned to hunting tribes and forecast trouble. Some Indian groups were refusing to recognize the new boundaries, now less than a twelfth of their former holdings. A group of Cheyenne and Lakota braves, known as “Dog Soldiers,” considered its members openly at war. They were stealing livestock, attacking supply trains, and sometimes murdering pioneer families. Tempers flared, particularly when the victims’ scalped bodies were put on public display. But other leaders, such as Lean Bear and Black Kettle of the Northern Cheyenne, and Nevah of the Arapaho, had come to believe that conflict with the white man was unproductive and signaled their desire to cooperate. The new territorial governor, John Evans, took a hard line against the marauders, doubting the chiefs’ profession of peace. Governor Evans’s policy, as he succinctly noted, was “to exterminate the Indians . . . and that seemed to be quite a popular notion too.” His request for permission to call out the militia was endorsed by Lincoln, and, in the spring of 1864, soldiers began destroying Indian settlements. During one raid, Lean Bear emerged from his tipi signaling friendly intentions and was shot dead—with President Lincoln’s protective medal around his neck. Fearing coordinated retaliation by several tribes, or an uprising instigated by the Confederacy, Evans declared all-out war on the Indians. With War Secretary Stanton’s blessing, he authorized vigilante groups to attack Native camps and keep the plunder. His actions were backed by General Samuel Curtis, who was similarly determined to rid the plains of Indian “mischief.”⁹⁴

Among those leading the militia forces was Colonel John Chivington of the Union Volunteers. A Methodist minister by profession, he had taken an extremist view of frontier conflicts, famously stating: “I have come to kill Indians, and I believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians.” Evans agreed, adding that “the only way to fight Indians is to fight them as they fight us; if they scalp and mutilate the bodies we must do the same.” With land disputes becoming increasingly problematic, prices rising, and settlers nervous, Evans felt under pressure to act. The upcoming fall elections also influenced him. As a founder of the Republican Party in Illinois and a longtime Lincoln crony, Evans was eager to secure the territory solidly for his faction, and he had his eye on a potential Senate seat. Chivington, too, had political ambitions, along with dreams of frontier fame. In a final effort to offer protection to friendly tribes, Evans directed them to take refuge near U.S. forts. But the orders were miscarried, and Black Kettle was told to return to a distant winter camp near Sand Creek. With most braves away on the annual buffalo hunt, the settlement was left largely defenseless—populated by women, elderly men, and children.⁹⁵

With the term of his troops about to expire, and his own commission exhausted, Chivington took a parting shot at the Indians. He marched 675 men several hundred miles to Sand Creek, mountain howitzers in tow. Ignoring the Dog Soldiers and other hostile bands, Chivington instead surprised Black Kettle’s peaceful camp at sunrise on November 29. Believing there had been a mistake, the chief is said to have hoisted the American flag over his tipi, along with a white banner. The militia, fired by Chivington’s vengeful Old Testament language, nonetheless launched a full-scale attack. The few braves present were poorly armed, and Chivington’s men had cut loose their horses, so they were forced to wage a “running fight” against a line of rifle and artillery fire. One soldier noted in his diary that the Indians “were peppered with gun ball and grape most effectually, slaying them by the hundred.” Most of the Cheyenne fled in terror; others were slaughtered as they huddled under the Stars and Stripes. Statistics vary, but 135 to 200 were killed, two-thirds of them women and children. The atrocities that took place in the wake of battle became notorious. Even allowing for exaggeration, testified one officer, “the recital is sickening.” Children’s heads were dashed against rocks; fingers and ears amputated for their jewelry; both male and female bodies grossly mutilated. Eyewitnesses reported that women’s genitals were cut off and worn as trophies; another soldier spoke of scrotums being made into tobacco pouches. The local press lauded the raid, boasting that “Colorado soldiers have again covered themselves with glory.” Chivington claimed he had faced twice his number and killed 800 bloodthirsty heathens. “Posterity will speak of me as the great Indian fighter,” he bragged. “I have eclipsed Kit Carson.” He dismissed the tales of savagery as lies told by jealous rivals. Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs, who had heard Great Father Lincoln’s vow of protection, could only express dismay. How could it be, asked one, that a man they thought so powerful “was unable to constrain his white people as well as control red people.”⁹⁶

Chivington’s actions were popular in Colorado, but elsewhere reports of the massacre were met with horror. A few weeks later, Congress called for an investigation. Over the next months representatives interviewed dozens of witnesses, sent a delegation to examine Indian conditions in both New Mexico and Colorado, and published their findings in a five-hundred-page report. They did not mince words when describing Chivington’s excesses. “Wearing the uniform of the United States, which should be the emblem of justice and humanity,” sputtered Senator Benjamin Wade, “he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the veriest savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty.” The War Department, hoping to justify its soldiers’ actions, also sent a representative to assess the campaign. General Alexander McCook, a veteran of Indian wars in the Southwest, traveled to Colorado, confident that he was unburdened by any “mawkish sentimentality” toward Native Americans. He found the hostilities at Sand Creek “the most cold-blooded, revolting, diabolical atrocity ever conceived by man or devil.” Chivington’s attack on peaceful tribes and his failure to chase rogue bands, reported McCook, added poltroonery to his barbarity. Some of those who testified before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War were murdered in Colorado streets, yet when newspapers began carrying the salacious details, there was a public cry for reform.⁹⁷

Abraham Lincoln did not respond to the Sand Creek massacre. The congressional investigation was still ongoing when he was assassinated, and he had been loath to withdraw Evans, Dole, or Curtis from power. He told his doctor, Anson Henry, that he did not want to chastise allies. “The thing that troubles me most,” Lincoln said, was not the gross injustice done to Indians, but that he disliked “the idea of removing Mr Dole who has been a faithful and devoted personal & political friend.” (Andrew Johnson would quickly dismiss Dole and Evans, collapsing their national ambitions, though Evans retained influence in Colorado.) As for Black Kettle, he was one of the few who escaped Chivington’s slaughter, but he was left profoundly disillusioned. “I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man,” he said in August 1865. “My shame is as big as the earth.”⁹⁸

VIII

On several occasions during his term, Lincoln called for “remodeling” the Indian system. Acknowledging its woeful state, he noted that “our imperative duty to these wards of the government demand our anxious and constant attention to their material well-being.” Henry Whipple found the President an attentive listener when he called at the White House in 1864 to describe the desperate condition of the Dakota and Winnebago. The bishop was disappointed, however, when Lincoln made no promises and ushered him out with a story about a plantation owner who had a monkey capable of picking cotton faster than a slave. The problem was that it took two overseers to watch the monkey, said the chief executive, concluding: “This Indian business needs ten honest men to watch one Indian Agent.” According to a thirdhand account, Lincoln reportedly also said the “rascality” of the agents affected him “until I felt it to my boots,” and vowed he would make sure the Indian system was restructured. But, if the account is true, he was never shaken into action. Public antipathy to the Indians also influenced Lincoln, who was particularly concerned with popular opinion. Editor Jane Swisshelm found people so bored and frustrated by “the hopeless medley of Indian perplexities” that everyone just passed on the responsibility to someone else, “Congress throwing it on the President and the President waiting for the people.” Secretary Stanton spoke candidly on this point when Whipple tried to enlist his help. He refused to see the bishop, instead sending him a message saying: “the government never redresses a wrong until the people demand it. When he reaches the heart of the people, the Indians will be saved.” Lincoln’s lack of administrative skill also contributed to the impasse; he never got the habit of effectively juggling the multiple concerns that make up the portfolio of every president. Those apologizing for his failure to curb inhumane practices have contended he could not be expected to deal with extraneous issues under the heavy pressure of war. But this argument would be more persuasive if Lincoln had not spent such a remarkable amount of time in his anteroom, focusing on people and policies of little consequence, or at the War Department, worrying over issues that would have been better delegated.⁹⁹

There is little reason to doubt the sincerity of Lincoln’s belief that he was promoting Indian welfare by pressing them to adopt white ways. Yet for all the well-meaning pronouncements about “civilizing” Native Americans, there was little relish for incorporating acculturated red men into American society. The Lincoln administration continually allowed hostile actions against tribes that had clearly moved toward its vision of a settled existence. The Delaware, victims of the LP&W scandal, were described by Dole as “much further advanced in civilization than I had been led to suppose,” dressing like Europeans and living on well-cultivated farms. The Santee Sioux had also largely accommodated to whites before the 1862 swindle at their agency. The Navajo, as well as Black Kettle and Lean Bear, had reluctantly acquiesced to a nearly complete forfeiture of their property, and were promoting peace when their people were slaughtered. The successful amalgamation of white and traditional culture by the Cherokee was neither recognized nor protected, and they too were dispossessed for white advantage. Far from welcoming educated Native Americans, most people preferred to keep them in malleable ignorance. A missionary commented that nobody in the country “cares one straw” for assimilating the Native population, “and very few would care to have them different or better than they now are.” As John Ross was tragically to find, clothes and customs were not the problem, for white attitudes were shaped by something cruder: those twin incubi of American idealism—race and greed. As a congressman succinctly noted, “the vineyard was coveted and the vineyard was to be had.”¹⁰⁰

Ross was disappointed when he left Lincoln’s office for the last time. Dismay turned to despair as his people—so proud of their accomplishments, so sure of their path—were forced into a chattel relationship with the United States. Suspicion of the Cherokees’ Confederate connections had grown with Stand Watie’s aggressive warfare, and Ross did not help his case by lobbying Dole for a large government expense account. The administration increasingly saw Indian Territory as a necessary outlet for the troubles in Kansas, and it soon became convenient to ignore treaty agreements altogether. Ross, understanding exactly what opening his territory to whites and other tribes would mean, began bargaining for a new treaty, designed to end the long practice of official abuse. He demanded a onetime settlement on price and boundaries, the right to grant trading licenses and approve entry onto Cherokee lands, and a congressional delegation equal to that of other territories. That he did so with a high degree of professionalism was not appreciated—an Indian who understood his rights and could legally defend them was not what most whites wanted to see. When a new treaty was forthcoming, it read very differently from Ross’s proposal. Instead of rectifying the litany of wrongs, it punished the Cherokee for their support of the South by diminishing their lands and undercutting their institutions. A year after war’s end, they too had become desperate and dependent; physically and emotionally starved. With nothing left of his life’s work, within a few months John Ross died, brokenhearted.¹⁰¹

By almost any measure, the Lincoln administration was catastrophic for Native Americans. The Civil War caused tribal divisions and destruction of their holdings. The advance of the railroad and the voracious quest for land and minerals decimated hunting grounds, squeezing tribes into ever more restricted circumstances. Militarization of Indian policy laid the groundwork for the armed defeat of Native peoples in the coming decades. The miserable reservations onto which they were herded became places of physical deprivation and spiritual death. In his zeal for the advance of white culture, Lincoln would scarcely have named destruction of the Indians as a hidden political goal. Yet it was not a case of good intentions leading to unexpected consequences. The consequence Lincoln desired was to clear these people from the pathway to what he considered “progress” for his own tribe. Native Americans had no real place in his plan. There are indications that the sixteenth president wanted to be fair—his clemency in the Dakota execution, for example, was followed by the pardon of Shoshone chief Pocatello after the Bear River massacre. But it was “fairness” based on unfair assumptions. This was recognized in his own day, in debates that flourished around him. One need only look at congressional discussions about broken treaties, corrupt agents, and the ethics of forcing tribes into starvation to see that the morality play was unfolding before Lincoln’s eyes. John Nicolay’s on-the-ground reports, observations from his close friends in Indian agencies, Whipple’s imploring remarks, and the continued pleas of his frustrated commissioner of Indian affairs make it hard to believe the sixteenth president was unaware his nation was moving inexorably toward the destruction of a people.¹⁰²

The tragedy of Lincoln’s policies is most poignant when placed within the lustrous framework of his reputation as a defender of human rights. To speak as eloquently as he did of values embodied in the Declaration of Independence is to be accountable to those values: they cannot be donned and discarded for convenience. Yet one of the defining paradoxes of Lincoln’s term as president is the gap between his nobly expressed intent and his failure to take robust action to sustain those ideals. On one occasion he rhetorically included Indians in the grand principles of self-definition and security from tyranny, but in practice Lincoln never applied these “inalienable rights” to Native peoples. The power of self-determination was not extended to them, nor was the liberty of self-expression. He maintained that “if there is any one thing that can be proved to be the will of God” it was “the proposition that whatever any one man earns with his hands and by the sweat of his brow, he shall enjoy in peace”; but the Indians’ right to hunt and thrive unmolested on their ancient lands was never practically upheld. Instead, the policies of his administration rolled over the prairie like tumbleweeds, depositing seeds of avarice and exclusion and choking out conscience, until the country was at the brink of genocide. Lincoln claimed to revere universal truths, but acting on white self-interest, Lincoln’s relation to Native Americans reminds us that a finely turned phrase and a ready laugh do not a humanitarian make.¹⁰³