Shortly after the ratification of the treaty, Gov. Troup calls the legislature together at an extra session, in order to dispose of these lands. Before the meeting of that body, however, the Creeks put to death M'Intosh and Etomme Tustunnuggee, for violating the law made at Broken Arrow. This execution was magnified by Gov. Troup into an act of hostility to the United States,* and the government was requested to order its troops to chastise the hostile Indians, for merely enforcing an article of internal police. The government very properly declines to interfere with the intestine disputes of the Indians, except to protect the friendly Creeks from indiscriminate massacre, and Gov. Troup called up the states south of the Potomac to STAND TO THEIR ARMS!! His intemperate language has been so universally condemned, that it is scarcely necessary to make it the subject of remark, excepting so far as it shows, in connexion with the measures of the state legislature, the principles upon which the state government has based its claims. The legislature, during the extra session, authorized a survey of the lands described in the treaty, and enacted that they should be divided among certain inhabitants of Georgia by means of a land lottery. By these steps, they have sanctioned the doctrine set up by the governor, that "upon the ratification of the treaty, the title and jurisdiction became absolute in Georgia," and that the United States have now no farther concern in the matter than to furnish troops and funds to carry the treaty into effect. The title of the Indians is regarded as nothing; their claims upon our justice and sympathy nothing. The assumed obligations of the United States are to be despised, because made with savages; and public opinion, and the great principles of moral justice and humanity, are to be set at nought by the American congress, as they were by the Valverdes and Sepulvedas of the sixteenth century. 66 Depend upon it," says Gov. Troup, in his letter of May 3d, 1825, to Joseph Marshall, "my revenge I will have. It will be such as we have reason to believe the Great Spirit would require! Such as our Christ would not think too much"!!! Horrible perversion of language! The names of the God of Mercy, and of the Teacher of pure morality, introduced to sanction this unhallowed call for the extermination of the helpless, unoffending natives of the forest! We cannot adequately express our abhorrence of sentiments like these. * Vide his letter to the President, of May 3, 1825. + Vide law, passed June 9, 1825. Again, in his letter to Gen. Ware, he says, "I sincerely trust, if these infuriated monsters shall have the temerity to set foot within our settled limits, you may have the opportunity to give them the bayonet freely, the instrument which they most dread, and which is most appropriate to the occasion."* Is this the spirit with which these aboriginals should be treated? After we have encouraged them to relinquish their ancient habits, for the customs and arts of civilized life, we seek to despoil them of their lands by a fraudulent treaty, and to drive them again into the forest, with habits unfitted to sustain the hardships of the hunting life, and with a longing wish for that civilization which we have encouraged them to hope, and debarred them from attaining. In such a situation, shall we prohibit them from complaining, or threaten them with the bayonet, because they visit justice upon those violators of their laws, who have been the authors of their distress? We stand in a delicate relation to those Indians. We inhabit the land of their ancestors. We are a powerful people, beyond the reach of their arms, or of the arms of any who may undertake to avenge them. They are weak, and few in number, indebted to our sense of justice for protection upon the soil, which they once owned in absolute right. They have attempted to civilize the rising generation, and have suffered the white men to encompass them in their settlements, in the hope that they might be preserved under the protecting arm of this great republic, until, in the fulness of time, they should be received into the bosom of the American family, and be identified with us, as one people. We still have it in our power to drive them beyond the precincts of civilization, where, half savage and half civilized, they will soon fall victims to the difficulties of their situation; or, in resisting, they may bring upon themselves universal destruction. They may perish, as they have resolved to do, upon the smoking, blood-slaked ruins of their huts, and leave not a soul to tell the tale. Their race may disappear from the earth, and no historian, nor orator, of Indian extraction, exist to narrate their wrongs, or to call down vengeance upon those who have possessed themselves of their fair inheritance. But will public opinion be annihilated? Can we forget our own injustice? Will not the page of our history be indelibly stamped with the extirpation of the aboriginals? Our descendants will read, that in the nineteenth century, the American congress ratified a * Geo. Journal, June 7, 1825. fraudulent treaty, by which an Indian nation was deprived of its territory against its will, and without its consent that this treaty was made with a small party of these ignorant creatures, who were cajoled and bribed to be the instruments of defrauding their countrymen-that the senate was induced, by deception, to ratify it; and that still the national government, in conjunction with the state authorities, proceeded to execute it at the point of the bayonet, by the extermination of the Indians. Shall this last sentence close the record of this disgraceful transaction? Shall our descendants see the bones of these aboriginals whitening the western plains of Georgia, as enduring testimony of our cruelty and injustice? Such a deed would not be entirely without precedents. We may find them in the conquest of Hispaniola, in the subversion of Mexico and Peru, and in the records of the English East India Company. We may find them in the trial of Warren Hastings; and we shall also there find, the almost superhuman denunciations of his avaricious cruelty, by Sheridan, Fox, and Burke, when they vindicated the rights of India on the floor of the British parliament. Shall these Creeks meet in the American congress with no corresponding feeling? Rome listened to the cries of Sicily, and Britain to the complaints of India: is this republic alone to be insensible to the voice of supplicating man? To congress only can these poor children of nature look for relief. Their lands appear by our statute-book to be vested in the United States. They feel unable to resist the power of our arms; but they have resolved never to leave their native land, and though they cannot resist, they know how to die. Their savage education has taught them to despise death, both approaching and present, and they have resolved to die upon their lands in preference to removing. There is wisdom and mental greatness in this resolution. They know what they have been-they feel what they are. When they reflect upon the power and independence of their ancestors, and contrast their state with the dependent and uncertain condition of their descendants-tantalized with hopes of civilization, which we forbid them to realize-protracting a miserable existence, rendered wretched by repeated and compulsory removals farther into the wilderness, as the white man approaches them; they may well demand, in the shades of death, a refuge from the persecution and heartless contempt of the more powerful race which occupies the country. When they find the fire of civilization (for to them VOL. I. 25 it has been a scorching and consuming flame) encircling their settlements, and daily narrowing their limits, and obstacles thrown in the way of their improvement, which they had been taught not to expect; what wonder is it, that in their despair, like the scorpion, they seek in death, relief from pangs, from which they can see no other means of escaping? Let us shun, as we would the blackest dishonor, all agency in bringing upon them this fate. This self-devotion of a whole people will not be without its effect. The Indian huts, it is true, cannot be compared with the Roman senate house; and a Creek chieftain and his tribe, falling under American bayonets, will not have the imposing appearance of conscript fathers in their ivory chairs, submitting with dignity to the rage of the barbarians of Gaul; but the moral effect of a whole people offering up their lives with silent resignation upon the altar of patriotism, will be the same in Georgia as in Italy, and will place the Indian upon an equality with the Roman soul. Will congress consent to suffer this tragedy to be performed, with the sanction of the national government, and despoil the Creeks of their land, to distribute it among the inhabitants of Georgia by a land lottery? Such is the object of this treaty-such is the manner in which it must be executed; and the state legislature has provided for the immediate survey and distribution in this shape, no doubt with the view of preventing the interference of congress, by setting up the doctrine of vested rights, as an obstacle to nullifying the treaty. Whether this plea shall prevail, congress must decide. It is a most grave and important question, deeply affecting our national character, and the success of free institutions. What an argument would it put in the mouths of the absolute party in the old world, to have these proceedings sanctioned by the representatives of the American people. We might then prate of our regard for justice, of our respect for human rights; and we should prate in vain. They would answer our tirade against the ambition and cruelty of the monarchs of Europe, by pointing to the expulsion and extirpation of the Creeks, and challenge us to find a parallel in the blackest page of European history. Even the Turkish Divan might reply to our Greek resolutions and our Greek subscriptions, by expressing its infidel abhorrence at the unnecessary, perfidious, and dastardly inhumanity of Christian republicans towards defenceless Indians. "We," they might retort, "meet men in arms, who rebel against their ancient masters; but you massacre women and children, and defenceless savages, to whom you have pledged your national faith for their safety and protection." From such a stain, may congress, acting with prudence; but with vigour, deliver the republic. It now has it in its power to manifest a strict adherence to principle, that will do more honor to the United States, than hundreds of victories achieved by sea and by land. Such an instance of self-denial, will prove us to be sincere in our professions, and exalt our national character beyond the reach of scepticism. men. These Indians, too, will contribute to our honor in after ages. They have already succeeded in the work of civilization, beyond the sanguine hopes of their most ardent friends. They have relinquished hunting, and become farmers and herdsThe forest begins to disappear from around them, and vast fields, rich with grain, smiling orchards, and meadows covered with flocks and herds, are found in the midst of the wilderness, as monuments of the philanthropic and humane policy of the national government, and of the ability of the aboriginals to preserve their name, and to take their station among the civilized nations of the earth. Neither is it upon the soil alone that the hand of civilization is seen. Their manners are softened, their minds improved, by education. The useful arts are introduced among them: The shuttle and the loom, the hammer and anvil, are heard in their huts, and school houses and churches seen in their villages. The blood-stained hatchet is buried, it is to be hoped, for ever; and Christianity and civilization, aided by the enlightened policy of our government, are gradually raising these tribes from a state of ignorance and barbarity. With this happy prospect on one side, and impending ruin and extirpation on the other, these helpless children of the forest appeal to the representatives of the American people, and call upon them to rescue them from degradation, exile, and death. They have a right to a kind and attentive audience. They are men like ourselves-more ignorant, less civilized and powerful, but still men. To their present state they have been reduced or advanced, according to the decision of this question, by the arrival of the Europeans. The few comforts, hopes, and pleasures they have, they highly value. Their apparent insensibility is the result of education, and not of apathy. It does not prove the absence of passion, but the power of self-control. It is the frozen surface of a volcano, under which the fire burns more fiercely, because suppressed. With their natural passions unsubdued, they love and hate more |