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The Winning of the American West. Theodore Roosevelt
Читать онлайн.Название The Winning of the American West
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isbn 9788027241781
Автор произведения Theodore Roosevelt
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
But the pioneers were speedily drawn into a life-and-death struggle which engrossed their whole attention to the exclusion of all merely civil matters; a struggle in which their land became in truth what the Indians called it—a dark and bloody ground, a land with blood-stained rivers.494
It was impossible long to keep peace on the border between the ever-encroaching whites and their fickle and blood-thirsty foes. The hard, reckless, often brutalized frontiersmen, greedy of land and embittered by the memories of untold injuries, regarded all Indians with sullen enmity, and could not be persuaded to distinguish between the good and the bad.495 The central government was as powerless to restrain as to protect these far-off and unruly citizens. On the other hand, the Indians were as treacherous as they were ferocious; Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots, and all.496 While deceiving the commandants of the posts by peaceful protestations, they would steadily continue their ravages and murders; and while it was easy to persuade a number of the chiefs and warriors of a tribe to enter into a treaty, it was impossible to make the remainder respect it.497 The chiefs might be for peace, but the young braves were always for war, and could not be kept back.498
In July, 1776, the Delawares, Shawnees, and Mingo chiefs assembled at Fort Pitt and declared for neutrality;499 the Iroquois ambassadors, who were likewise present, haughtily announced that their tribes would permit neither the British nor the Americans to march an army through their territory. They disclaimed any responsibility for what might be done by a few wayward young men; and requested the Delawares and Shawnees to do as they had promised, and to distribute the Iroquois "talk" among their people. After the Indian fashion, they emphasized each point which they wished kept in mind by the presentation of a string of wampum.500
Yet at this very time a party of Mingos tried to kill the American Indian agents, and were only prevented by Cornstalk, whose noble and faithful conduct was so soon to be rewarded by his own brutal murder. Moreover, while the Shawnee chief was doing this, some of his warriors journeyed down to the Cherokees and gave them the war belt, assuring them that the Wyandots and Mingos would support them, and that they themselves had been promised ammunition by the French traders of Detroit and the Illinois.501 On their return home this party of Shawnees scalped two men in Kentucky near the Big Bone Lick, and captured a woman; but they were pursued by the Kentucky settlers, two were killed and the woman retaken.502
Throughout the year the outlook continued to grow more and more threatening. Parties of young men kept making inroads on the settlements, especially in Kentucky; not only did the Shawnees, Wyandots, Mingos, and Iroquois503 act thus, but they were even joined by bands of Ottawas, Pottawatomies, and Chippewas from the lakes, who thus attacked the white settlers long ere the latter had either the will or the chance to hurt them.
Until the spring of 1777504 the outbreak was not general, and it was supposed that only some three or four hundred warriors had taken up the tomahawk.505 Yet the outlying settlers were all the time obliged to keep as sharp a look-out as if engaged in open war. Throughout the summer of 1776 the Kentucky settlers were continually harassed. Small parties of Indians were constantly lurking round the forts, to shoot down the men as they hunted or worked in the fields, and to carry off the women. There was a constant and monotonous succession of unimportant forays and skirmishes.
One band of painted marauders carried off Boon's daughter. She was in a canoe with two other girls on the river near Boonsborough when they were pounced on by five Indians.506 As soon as he heard the news Boon went in pursuit with a party of seven men from the fort, including the three lovers of the captured girls. After following the trail all of one day and the greater part of two nights, the pursuers came up with the savages, and, rushing in, scattered or slew them before they could either make resistance or kill their captives. The rescuing party then returned in triumph to the fort.
Thus for two years the pioneers worked in the wilderness, harassed by unending individual warfare, but not threatened by any formidable attempt to oust them from the lands that they had won. During this breathing spell they established civil government, explored the country, planted crops, and built strongholds. Then came the inevitable struggle. When in 1777 the snows began to melt before the lengthening spring days, the riflemen who guarded the log forts were called on to make head against a series of resolute efforts to drive them from Kentucky.
APPENDIX A. TO CHAPTER IV.
It is greatly to be wished that some competent person would write a full and true history of our national dealings with the Indians. Undoubtedly the latter have often suffered terrible injustice at our hands. A number of instances, such as the conduct of the Georgians to the Cherokees in the early part of the present century, or the whole treatment of Chief Joseph and his Nez Percés, might be mentioned, which are indelible blots on our fair fame; and yet, in describing our dealings with the red men as a whole, historians do us much less than justice.
It was wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker race, unless we were willing to see the American continent fall into the hands of some other strong power; and even had we adopted such a ludicrous policy, the Indians themselves would have made war upon us. It cannot be too often insisted that they did not own the land; or, at least, that their ownership was merely such as that claimed often by our own white hunters. If the Indians really owned Kentucky in 1775, then in 1776 it was the property of Boon and his associates; and to dispossess one party was as great a wrong as to dispossess the other. To recognize the Indian ownership of the limitless prairies and forests of this continent—that is, to consider the dozen squalid savages who hunted at long intervals over a territory of a thousand square miles as owning it outright—necessarily implies a similar recognition of the claims of every white hunter, squatter, horse-thief, or wandering cattle-man. Take as an example the country round the Little Missouri. When the cattle-men, the first actual settlers, came into this land in 1882, it was already scantily peopled by a few white hunters and trappers. The latter were extremely jealous of intrusion; they had held their own in spite of the Indians, and, like the Indians, the inrush of settlers and the consequent destruction of the game meant their own undoing; also, again like the Indians, they felt that their having hunted over the soil gave them a vague prescriptive right to its sole occupation, and they did their best to keep actual settlers out. In some cases, to avoid difficulty, their nominal claims were bought up; generally, and rightly, they were disregarded. Yet they certainly had as good a right to the Little Missouri country as the Sioux have to most of the land on their present reservations. In fact, the mere statement of the case is sufficient to show the absurdity of asserting that the land really belonged to the Indians. The different tribes have always been utterly unable to define their own boundaries. Thus the Delawares and Wyandots, in 1785, though entirely separate nations, claimed and, in a certain sense, occupied almost exactly the same territory.
Moreover, it was wholly impossible for our policy to be always consistent. Nowadays we undoubtedly ought to break up the great Indian reservations, disregard the tribal governments, allot the land in severally (with, however, only a limited power of alienation), and treat the Indians as we do other citizens, with certain exceptions, for their sakes as well as ours. But this policy, which it would be wise to follow now, would have been wholly impracticable a century since. Our central government was then too weak either effectively to control its own members or adequately to punish aggressions made upon them; and even if it had been strong, it would probably have proved impossible to keep entire order over such a vast, sparsely-peopled frontier, with such turbulent elements on both sides. The Indians could not be treated as individuals at that time. There was no possible alternative, therefore, to treating their tribes as nations, exactly as the French and English had done before us. Our difficulties were partly inherited from these, our predecessors, were partly caused by our own misdeeds, but were mainly the inevitable