Volume IV Part 7 (2/2)

Business Versatility of the Frontiersman

One of the characteristics of all the leading frontiersmen was not only the way in which they combined business enterprises with their work as Government officials and as Indian fighters, but the readiness with which they turned from one business enterprise to another. One of Blount's Kentucky correspondents, Thomas Hart, the grandfather of Benton, in his letter to Blount shows these traits in typical fas.h.i.+on.

He was engaged in various land speculations with Blount, [Footnote: Clay MSS., Blount to Hart, Knoxville, February 9, 1794. This was just as Hart was moving to Kentucky.] and was always writing to him about locating land warrants, advertising the same as required by law, and the like. He and Blount held some tens of thousands of acres of the Henderson claim, and Hart proposed that they should lay it out in five-hundred-acre tracts, to be rented to farmers, with the idea that each farmer should receive ten cows and calves to start with; a proposition which was of course hopeless, as the pioneers would not lease lands when it was so easy to obtain freeholds. In his letters, Hart mentioned cheerfully that though he was sixty-three years old he was just as well able to carry on his manufacturing business, and, on occasion, to leave it, and play pioneer, as he ever had been, remarking that he ”never would be satisfied in the world while new countries could be found,” and that his intention, now that he had moved to Kentucky, was to push the mercantile business as long as the Indian war continued and money was plenty, and when that failed, to turn his attention to farming and to divide up those of his lands he could not till himself, to be rented by others.

[Footnote: Blount MSS., Thomas Hart to Blount, Dec. 23, 1793.]

This letter to Blount shows, by the way, as was shown by Madison's correspondent from Kentucky, that the Indian war, scourge though it was to the frontiersmen as a whole, brought some attendant benefits in its wake by putting a stimulus on the trade of the merchants and bringing ready money into the country. It must not be forgotten, however, that men like Hart and Blount, though in some ways they were benefited by the war, were in other ways very much injured, and that, moreover, they consistently strove to do justice to the Indians and to put a stop to hostilities.

In his letters Colonel Hart betrays a hearty, healthy love of life, and capacity to enjoy it, and make the best of it, which fortunately exist in many Kentucky and Tennessee families to this day. He wanted money, but the reason he wanted it was to use it in having a good time for himself and his friends, writing: ”I feel all the ardor and spirit for business I did forty years ago, and see myself more capable to conduct it. Oh, if my old friend Uncle Jacob was but living and in this country, what pleasure we should have in raking up money and spending it with our friends!” and he closed by earnestly entreating Blount and his family to come to Kentucky, which he a.s.sured him was the finest country in the world, with moreover, ”a very pleasant society, for,” said he, ”I can say with truth that the society of this place is equal, if not superior, to any that can be found in any inland town in the United States, for there is not a day that pa.s.ses over our heads but I can have half a dozen strange gentlemen to dine with us, and they are from all parts of the Union.” [Footnote: Blount MSS., Hart to Blount, Lexington, Feb. 15, 1795.]

The Neverending Indian Warfare.

Incessant Violation of the Treaties by Both the Red Men and the White.

The one overshadowing fact in the history of Tennessee during Blount's term as governor was the Indian warfare. Hostilities with the Indians were never ceasing, and, so far as Tennessee was concerned, during these six years it was the Indians, and not the whites who were habitually the aggressors and wrongdoers. The Indian warfare in the Territory during these years deserves some study because it was typical of what occurred elsewhere. It ill.u.s.trates forcibly the fact that under the actual conditions of settlement wars were inevitable; for if it is admitted that the land of the Indians had to be taken and that the continent had to be settled by white men, it must be further admitted that the settlement could not have taken place save after war. The whites might be to blame in some cases, and the Indians in others; but under no combination of circ.u.mstances was it possible to obtain possession of the country save as the result of war, or of a peace obtained by the fear of war. Any peace which did not surrender the land was sure in the end to be broken by the whites; and a peace which did surrender the land would be broken by the Indians. The history of Tennessee during the dozen years from 1785 to 1796 offers an admirable case in point. In 1785 the United States Commissioners concluded the treaty of Hopewell with the Indians, and solemnly guaranteed them certain lands. The whites contemptuously disregarded this treaty and seized the lands which it guaranteed to the Indians, being themselves the aggressors, and paying no heed to the plighted word of the Government, while the Government itself was too weak to make the frontiersmen keep faith. The treaties of New York and of Holston with the Creeks and Cherokees in 1790 and 1791 were fairly entered into by fully authorized representatives of the tribes.

Under them, for a valuable consideration, and of their own motion, the Creeks and Cherokees solemnly surrendered all t.i.tle to what is now the territory of Tennessee, save to a few tracts mostly in the west and southeast; and much of the land which was thus ceded they had ceded before. Nevertheless, the peace thus solemnly made was immediately violated by the Indians themselves. The whites were not the aggressors in any way, and, on the contrary, thanks to the wish of the United States authorities for peace, and to the care with which Blount strove to carry out the will of the Federal Government, they for a long time refrained even from retaliating when injured; yet the Indians robbed and plundered them even more freely than when the whites themselves had been the aggressors and had broken the treaty.

Confusion of the Treaties.

Before making the treaty of Holston Blount had been in correspondence with Benjamin Hawkins, a man who had always been greatly interested in Indian affairs. He was a prominent politician in North Carolina, and afterwards for many years agent among the Southern Indians. He had been concerned in several of the treaties. He warned Blount that since the treaty of Hopewell the whites, and not the Indians, had been the aggressors; and also warned him not to try to get too much land from the Indians, or to take away too great an extent of their hunting grounds, which would only help the great land companies, but to be content with the thirty-fifth parallel for a southern boundary. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Hawkins to Blount, March 10, 1791.] Blount paid much heed to this advice, and by the treaty of Holston he obtained from the Indians little more than what the tribes had previously granted; except that they confirmed to the whites the country upon which the pioneers were already settled. The c.u.mberland district had already been granted over and over again by the Indians in special treaties, to Henderson, to the North Carolinians and to the United States. The Creeks in particular never had had any claim to this c.u.mberland country, which was a hundred miles and over from any of their towns. All the use they had ever made of it was to visit it with their hunting parties, as did the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Shawnees, Delawares, and many others. Yet the Creeks and other Indians had the effrontery afterwards to a.s.sert that the c.u.mberland Country had never been ceded at all, and that as the settlers in it were thus outside of the territory properly belonging to the United States, they were not ent.i.tled to protection under the treaty entered into with the latter.

Blount's Good Faith with the Indians.

Blount was vigilant and active in seeing that none of the frontiersmen trespa.s.sed on the Indian lands, and when a party of men, claiming authority under Georgia, started to settle at the Muscle Shoals, he co-operated actively with the Indians in having them brought back, and did his best, though in vain, to persuade the Grand Jury to indict the offenders. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Sept. 3, 1791.] He was explicit in his orders to Sevier, to Robertson, and to District Attorney Jackson that they should promptly punish any white man who violated the provisions of the treaty; and over a year after it had been entered into he was able to write in explicit terms that ”not a single settler had built a house, or made a settlement of any kind, on the Cherokee lands, and that no Indians had been killed by the whites excepting in defence of their lives and property.” [Footnote: _Do_., Blount to Robertson, Jan. 2, 1792; to b.l.o.o.d.y Fellow, Sept. 13, 1792.]

Robertson heartily co-operated with Blount, as did Sevier, in the effort to keep peace, Robertson showing much good sense and self-control, and acquiescing in Blount's desire that nothing should be done ”inconsistent with the good of the nation as a whole,” and that ”the faith of the nation should be kept.” [Footnote: Blount MSS., Robertson to Blount, Jan. 17, 1793.]

Bad Faith of the Indians.

The Indians as a body showed no appreciation whatever of these efforts to keep the peace, and plundered and murdered quite as freely as before the treaties, or as when the whites themselves were the aggressors. The Creek Confederacy was in a condition of utter disorganization, McGillivray's authority was repudiated, and most of the towns scornfully refused to obey the treaty into which their representatives had entered at New York. A tory adventurer named Bowles, who claimed to have the backing of the English Government, landed in the nation and set himself in opposition to McGillivray. The latter, who was no fighter, and whose tools were treachery and craft, fled to the protection of the Spaniards.

Bowles, among other feats, plundered the stores of Panton, a white trader in the Spanish interest, and for a moment his authority seemed supreme; but the Spaniards, by a trick, got possession of him and put him in prison.

Intrigues of the Spaniards.

The Spaniards still claimed as their own the Southwestern country, and were untiring in their efforts to keep the Indians united among themselves and hostile to the Americans. They concluded a formal treaty of friends.h.i.+p and of reciprocal guarantee with the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees at Nogales, in the Choctaw country, on May 14, 1792. [Footnote: Draper MSS., Spanish Doc.u.ments; Letter of Carondelet to Duke of Alcudia, Nov. 24, 1794.] The Indians entered into this treaty at the very time they had concluded wholly inconsistent treaties with the Americans. On the place of the treaty the Spaniards built a fort, which they named Fort Confederation, to perpetuate, as they hoped, the memory of the confederation they had thus established among the Southern Indians. By means of this fort they intended to control all the territory enclosed between the rivers Mississippi, Yazoo, Chickasaw, and Mobile. The Spaniards also expended large sums of money in arming the Creeks, and in bribing them to do, what they were quite willing to do of their own accord,--that is, to prevent the demarkation of the boundary line as provided in the New York treaty; a treaty which Carondelet reported to his Court as ”insulting and pernicious to Spain, the abrogation of which has lately been brought about by the intrigues with the Indians.” [Footnote: Draper MSS., Letter of Carondelet, New Orleans, Sept. 25, 1795.]

Carondelet's Policy.

At the same time that the bill for these expenses was submitted for audit to the home government the Spanish Governor also submitted his accounts for the expenses in organizing the expedition against the ”English adventurer Bowles,” and in negotiating with Wilkinson and the other Kentucky Separatists, and also in establis.h.i.+ng a Spanish post at the Chickasaw Bluffs, for which he had finally obtained the permission of the Chickasaws. The Americans of course regarded the establishment both of the fort at the Chickasaw Bluffs and the fort at Nogales as direct challenges; and Carondelet's accounts show that the frontiersmen were entirely justified in their belief that the Spaniards not only supplied the Creeks with arms and munitions of war, but actively interfered to prevent them from keeping faith and carrying out the treaties which they had signed. The Spaniards did not wish the Indians to go to war unless it was necessary as a last resort. They preferred that they should be peaceful, provided always they could prevent the intrusion of the Americans. Carondelet wrote: ”We have inspired the Creeks with pacific intentions towards the United States, but with the precise restriction that there shall be no change of the boundaries,”

[Footnote: Draper MSS., Spanish Docs.; Carondelet's Report, Oct. 23, 1793.] and he added that ”to sustain our allied nations [of Indians] in the possession of their lands becomes therefore indispensable, both to preserve Louisiana to Spain, and in order to keep the Americans from the navigation of the Gulf.” He expressed great uneasiness at the efforts of Robertson to foment war between the Chickasaws and Choctaws and the Creeks, and exerted all his powers to keep the Indian nations at peace with one another and united against the settler-folk. [Footnote: _Do_., Carondelet to Don Louis De Las Casas, June 13, 1795, enclosing letter from Don M. G. De Lemos, Governor of Natchez.]

The Spaniards far more Treacherous than the British.

The Spaniards, though with far more infamous and deliberate deceit and far grosser treachery, were pursuing towards the United States and the Southwestern Indians the policy pursued by the British towards the United States and the Northwestern Indians; with the difference that the Spanish Governor and his agents acted under the orders of the Court of Spain, while the English authorities connived at and profited by, rather than directly commanded, what was done by their subordinates. Carondelet expressly states that Colonel Gayoso and his other subordinates had been directed to unite the Indian nations in a defensive alliance, under the protection of Spain, with the object of opposing Blount, Robertson, and the frontiersmen, and of establis.h.i.+ng the c.u.mberland River as the boundary between the Americans and the Indians. The reciprocal guarantee of their lands by the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws was, said Carondelet, the only way by which the Americans could be retained within their own boundaries. [Footnote: Carondelet to Alcudia, Aug. 17, 1793.] The Spaniards devoted much attention to supporting those traders among the Indians who were faithful to the cause of Spain and could be relied upon to intrigue against the Americans. [Footnote: _Do_., Manuel Gayoso De Lemos to Carondelet, Nogales, July 25, 1793.]

Carondelet's Tortuous Intrigues.

The divided condition of the Creeks, some of whom wished to carry out in good faith the treaty of New York, while the others threatened to attack whoever made any move towards putting the treaty into effect, puzzled Carondelet nearly as much as it did the United States authorities; and he endeavored to force the Creeks to abstain from warfare with the Chickasaws by refusing to supply them with munitions of war for any such purpose, or for any other except to oppose the frontiersmen. He put great faith in the endeavor to treat the Americans not as one nation, but as an a.s.semblage of different communities. The Spaniards sought to placate the Kentuckians by promising to reduce the duties on the goods that came down stream to New Orleans by six per cent., and thus to prevent an outbreak on their part; at the same time the United States Government was kept occupied by idle negotiations. Carondelet further hoped to restrain the c.u.mberland people by fear of the Creek and Cherokee nations, who, he remarked, ”had never ceased to commit hostilities upon them and to profess implacable hatred for them.”

[Footnote: Carondelet to De Lemos, Aug. 15, 1793.] He reported to the Spanish Court that Spain had no means of molesting the Americans save through the Indians, as it would not be possible with an army to make a serious impression on the ”ferocious and well-armed” frontier people, favored as they would be by their knowledge of the country; whereas the Indians, if properly supported, offered an excellent defence, supplying from the Southwestern tribes fifteen thousand warriors, whose keep in time of peace cost Spain not more than fifty thousand dollars a year, and even in time of war not more than a hundred and fifty thousand.

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