And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 12:11:33 -0600
>From: David Rider <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [FN] John Adams on Indians
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>Now that the brou-ha-ha has passed, I finally found one of the things
>I was looking for to make a point that so many of you were making so
>well yourselves: That Indians did not embrace the ways of the
>missionaries, did not freely choose Christianity, or anything else
>that our guest wanted us to believe. John Adams, second President of
>the United States, and VP under George Washington, had this to say to
>a Judge (William Tudor) in 1812:
>
>"What infinite pains have been taken and expenses incurred in treaties,
>presents, stipulated sums of money, instruments of agriculture,
>education, what dangerous and unwearied labors, to convert these poor,
>ignorant savages to Christianity! And, alas! with how little success!
>The Indians are as bigoted to their religion as the Mahometans are to
>their Koran, the Hindoos to their Shaster, the Chinese to Confucious,
>the Romans to their saints and angels, or the Jews to Moses and the
>Prophets. It is a principle of religion, at bottom, which inspires the
>Indians with such an invincible aversion both to civilization and
>Christianity."
>
>I can't help but notice that Prez Adams used exclamation points as
>liberally as did our guest, and - at least for me - to the same
>nerve-wracking effect.
>
>In going through sources on early efforts to separate Indians from their
>land, Thomas Jefferson, Adams' VP and the third U.S. President, provides
>a reasonable case study. In a letter to the Seneca leader, Handsome
>Lake [who was discussed on this list just a week or so ago], Jefferson
>promises "that the lands you then held [when he and Jefferson met
>earlier] would remain yours, and shall never go from you but when you
>should be disposed to sell." (November 3, 1802 is the date of that
>letter). Jefferson wrote a "working paper" on December 29, 1802, just
>two months later, entitled "Hints on the Subject of Indian Boundaries",
>which contained Jefferson's "confidential" plan to spirit that land
>away from the Indians. These "hints" were shared in confidence with
>both houses of Congress the next month, who were sworn to secrecy
>because, Jefferson urged, the plan would not work in expropriating
>Indian lands if the Indians caught word of the sinister plan. On
>correspondence to the House on January 18, 1803, Jefferson revealed
>his plan to urge Indians to abandon hunting and take up the whiteman's
>planting/farming ways. Doing so would force Indians into reliance on
>farming implements and sundry goods that would increase their debt
>to the United States. When the debt reaches a critical point, leaders
>in Indian communities would be forced to sell land that they otherwise
>would refuse to sell.
>
>Nowhere [in my cursory reading] is this plan more straightforwardly
>spelled out than in a letter by Tom Jefferson to William Henry
>Harrison, Governor of the Indiana Territory, on May 24, 1803: "To
>promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare
>and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want,
>we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and
>influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe
>that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they
>become willing to lop them off by a cession of land."
>
>Jefferson was a busy president, and his efforts at scrounging land
>were not restricted to Six Nations land in the northeast or Shawnee
>alliance land in the Ohio Valley, but also to Creek land in the
>South. In a letter of Feb 18, 1803, to a military advisor, he wrote
>that the Creeks should show the "wisdom of the animal which amputates
>and abandons to the hunter the parts for which he is pursued..." -
>for the Creeks, that part was their land. It became Andrew Jackson's
>express policy when he became President a short time later.
>
>dave
>
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
