Lewis Cass Justifies Removal

Introduction:

By the mid-1820s, Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan Territory between 1813 and 1831, had become widely regarded as one of the best informed, most experienced, and highly thoughtful experts in the country on United States Indian policy and the histories and cultures of the tribes. As superintendent of Indian affairs, an office all territorial governors held, he was certainly familiar with the details of United States relations with the Indians of the Great Lakes. He had toured the region, visited many tribes in their home countries, and arranged several treaties with them. He also was reputed to be a hardheaded, tough, but fair negotiator who supported the attempts of the government and the missionaries to “civilize” the Indians. The policy of changing the cultures of the Indians, turning them into plow farmers who produced surplus crops for sale in the marketplace, was the only way, Cass and many others believed, that the Indians could survive. If they remained “uncivilized,” they would perish.

Cass made his reputation outside of government circles through a series of essays published in national magazines. The North American Review, one of the nation’s leading literary journals, published several of his essays. Written as extended reviews of books and articles about Indians, Cass used these essays to put forth his opinions about Indian policy and United States relations with the tribes. His most significant essay appeared in the January 1830 issue of the North American Review in the guise of a commentary on the publication of several letters, addresses, and resolutions in support of removal. Cass’s essay, fifty-nine pages in length, was the first extended pro-removal document to appear in the popular press, written by an expert, since the election of Andrew Jackson, the publication of the “William Penn” essays, and the passage of Georgia’s legislation to extend its civil and criminal jurisdiction into the Cherokee Nation.

What does Cass think of the “civilization” policy now? Notice Cass’s claims to expertise, his tone, his range of arguments and his use of evidence. What do his readers who are not experts learn from him? How does he explain and justify Indian removal? What are his assumptions about the Constitution, state sovereignty, and the relations between state and federal governments? How does he deal with the reputation of the Cherokees as a “civilized” people? And how does all of this lead him to interpret the political and territorial rights of the Cherokees and all other tribes east of the Mississippi?


 

LEWIS CASS

“Removal of the Indians”

January 1830

Article III: Documents and Proceedings relating to the Formation and Progress of aBoard in the City of New York, for the Emigration, Preservation, and Improvement of the Aborigines of America, July 22, 1829.

The destiny of the Indians, who inhabit the cultivated portions of the territory of the United States, or who occupy positions immediately upon their borders, has long been a subject of deep solicitude to the American government and people. Time, while it adds to the embarrassments and distress of this part of our population, adds also to the interest which their condition excites, and to the difficulties attending a satisfactory solution of the question of their eventual disposal, which must soon pass sub judice. That the Indians have diminished, and are diminishing, is known to all who have directed their attention to the subject.

It would be miserable affectation to regret the progress of civilization and improvement, the triumph of industry and art, by which these regions have been reclaimed, and over which freedom, religion, and science are extending their sway. But we may indulge the wish, that these blessings had been attained at a smaller sacrifice; that the aboriginal population had accommodated themselves to the inevitable change of their condition, produced by the access and progress of the new race of men, before whom the hunter and his game were destined to disappear. But such a wish is vain. A barbarous people, depending for subsistence upon the scanty and precarious supplies furnished by the chase, cannot live in contact with a civilized community. As the cultivated border approaches the haunts of the animals, which are valuable for food or furs, they recede and seek shelter in less accessible situations…

…Distress could not teach them providence, nor want industry. As animal food decreased, their vegetable productions were not increased. Their habits were stationary and unbending; never changing with the change of circumstances. . . . There is a principle of repulsion in ceaseless activity, operating through all their institutions, which prevents them from appreciating or adopting any other modes of life, or any other habits of thought or action, but those which have descended to them from their ancestors…

…From an early period … various plans for their preservation and improvement were projected and pursued. Many of them were carefully taught at our seminaries of education, in the hope that principles of morality and habits of industry would be acquired, and that they might stimulate their countrymen by precept and example to a better course of life. Missionary stations were established among various tribes, where zealous and pious men devoted themselves with generous ardor to the task of instruction, as well in agriculture and the mechanic arts, as in the principles of morality and religion... . Unfortunately, they are monuments also of unsuccessful and unproductive efforts. What tribe has been civilized by all this expenditure of treasure, and labor, and care? …

The cause of this total failure cannot be attributed to the nature of the experiment, nor to the character, qualifications, or conduct, of those who have directed it. The process and the persons have varied, as experience suggested alterations in the one, and a spirit of generous self-devotion supplied the changes in the other. But there seems to be some insurmountable obstacle in the habits or temperament of the Indians, which has hereto fore prevented, and yet prevents, the success of these labors…

We have made the inquiry respecting the permanent advantage, which any of the tribes have derived from the attempts to civilize them, with a full knowledge of the favorable reports that have been circulated concerning the Cherokees. Limited as our intercourse with those Indians has been, we must necessarily draw our conclusions respecting them from facts which have been stated to us, and from the general resemblance they bear to the other cognate branches of the great aboriginal stock.

Those individuals among the Cherokees have acquired property, and with it more enlarged views and juster notions of the value of our institutions, and the unprofitableness of their own, we have little doubt. And we have as little doubt, that this change of opinion and condition is confined, in a great measure, to some of the half-breeds and their immediate connexions. These are not sufficiently numerous to affect our general proposition…

…But, we believe, the great body of the people are in a state of helpless and hopeless poverty. With the same improvidence and habitual indolence, which mark the northern Indians, they have less game for subsistence, and less peltry for sale. We doubt whether there is, upon the face of the globe, a more wretched race than the Cherokees, as well as the other southern tribes, present…

We are as unwilling to underrate, as we should be to overrate, the progress made by these Indians in civilization and improvement. We are well aware, that the constitution of the Cherokees, their press, and newspaper, and alphabet, their schools and police, have sent through all our borders the glad tidings, that the long night of aboriginal ignorance was ended, and that the day of knowledge had dawned. Would that it were so. None would rejoice more sincerely than we should. But this great cause can derive no aid from exaggerated representation; from promises never to be kept, and from expectations never to be realized. The truth must finally come, and it will come with a powerful reaction. We hope that our opinion upon this subject may be erroneous. But we have melancholy forebodings. That a few principal men, who can secure favorable cotton lands, and cultivate them with slaves, will be comfortable and satisfied, we may well believe. And so long as the large annuities received from the United States, are applied to the support of a newspaper and to other objects, more important to the rich than the poor, erroneous impressions upon these subjects may prevail. But to form just conceptions of the spirit and objects of these efforts, we must look at their practical operation upon the community. It is here, if the facts which have been stated to us are correct, and of which we have no doubt, that they will be found wanting.

The relative condition of the two races of men, who yet divide this portion of the continent between them, is a moral problem involved in much obscurity. The physical causes we have described, exasperated by the moral evils introduced by them, are sufficient to account for the diminution and deterioration of the Indians. But why were not these causes counteracted by the operation of other circumstances? As civilization shed her light upon them, why were they blind to its beams? Hungry or naked, why did they disregard, or regarding, why did they neglect, those arts by which food and clothing could be procured? Existing for two centuries in contact with a civilized people, they have resisted, and successfully too, every effort to meliorate their situation, or to introduce among them the most common arts of life. Their moral and their intellectual condition have been equally stationary. And in the whole circle of their existence, it would be difficult to point to a single advantage which they have derived from their acquaintance with the Europeans. All this is without a parallel in the history of the world. That it is not to be attributed to the indifference or neglect of the whites, we have already shown. There must then be an inherent difficulty, arising from the institutions, character, and condition of the Indians themselves.

…It is difficult to conceive that any branch of the human family can be less provident in arrangement, less frugal in enjoyment, less industrious in acquiring, more implacable in their resentments, more ungovernable in their passions, with fewer principles to guide them, with fewer obligations to restrain them, and with less knowledge to improve and instruct them. We speak of them as they are; as we have found them after a long and intimate acquaintance; fully appreciating our duties and their rights, all that they have suffered and lost, and all that we have enjoyed and acquired.

…The Indians are entitled to the enjoyment of all the rights which do not interfere with the obvious designs of Providence, and with the just claims of others. Like many other practical questions, it may be difficult to define the actual boundary of right between them and the civilized states, among whom or around whom they live. But there are two restraints upon ourselves, which we may safely adopt, —that no force should be used to divest them of any just interest they possess, and that they should be liberally remunerated for all they may cede. We cannot be wrong while we adhere to there rules. .

There can be no doubt, and such are the views of the elementary writers upon the subject, that the Creator intended the earth should be reclaimed from a state of nature and cultivated; that the human race should spread over it, procuring from it the means of comfortable subsistence, and of increase and improvement. A tribe of wandering hunters, depending upon the chase for support, and deriving it from the forests, and rivers, and lakes, of an immense continent have a very imperfect possession of the country over which they roam. That they are entitled to such supplies as may be necessary for their subsistence, and as they can procure, no one can justly question. But this right cannot be exclusive, unless the forests which shelter them are doomed to perpetual unproductiveness. Our forefathers, when they landed upon the shores of this continent, found it in a state of nature, traversed, but not occupied, by wandering hordes of barbarians, seeking a precarious subsistence, principally from the animals around them. They appropriated, as they well might do, a portion of this fair land to their own use, still Leaving to their predecessors in occupation all that was needed, and more than was used by them….

 ‘We have already expressed our convictions, founded on some knowledge of the Indian character, and of the efforts which have been formerly and recently made to change their condition and institutions, that so long as they retain positions surrounded by our citizens, these efforts will be unproductive, and that the Indians themselves will decline in numbers, morals, and happiness. If “these things are so,” no just views of policy or humanity, require on their part the assertion of such a right, or the acknowledgment of it on ours. A false conception of their own interest, or a temporary excitement, which may have operated on some of their influential men, and led to the present state of things, ought not to affect our views or decision. This demand is now made, for the first time, since the discovery of the continent. Writers upon natural law, courts of high character arid jurisdiction, the practice of other nations, are all adverse to it. We can discern no advantages which either party can reasonably anticipate from such a measure.

There can be none to the Indians; for if they are anxious and prepared for a stable government, which shall protect all and encourage all, such governments they will find in the states where they reside. What has a Cherokee to fear from the operation of the laws of Georgia? If he has advanced in knowledge and improvement, as many sanguine persons believe and represent, he will find these laws more just, better administered, and far more equal in their operation, than the regulations which the chiefs have established and are enforcing. What Indian has ever been injured by the laws of any state? We ask the question without any fear of the answer. If these Indians are too ignorant and barbarous to submit to the state laws, or duly estimate their value, they are too ignorant and barbarous to establish and maintain a government which shall protect its own citizens, and preserve the necessary relations and intercourse with its neighbors. And if there are any serious practical objection to the operation of these laws, growing out of the state of society among the Indians, it would be easy for the state authorities to make such changes and interpose such securities as would protect them now, and lead them hereafter, if anything can lead them, to a full participation in political rights.

But if it is difficult to perceive the advantages which the Indian tribes would derive from these independent governments, it is not difficult to foresee the mischiefs they would produce to the states and people, within whose limits they might be formed.

The progress of improvement would be checked. Extensive tracts of land would be held by the Indians in a state of nature. The continuity of settlements, and the communication between them, would be interrupted. Fugitives from labor and justice would seek shelter, and sometimes find it, in these little sovereignties…

Many excellent men believe, that the Indians have advanced, and are advancing in knowledge and improvement, and that they have both the right and ability to reorganize their political institutions, and assume a station which shall be coequal with the state governments. Erroneous as such an opinion is, both in principal and policy, still something is due to the feelings and motives of those who entertain it. In the practical assertion of jurisdiction, which circumstances now require some of the state governments to make, their authorities will no doubt accommodate their measures to the helpless, defenseless, and sometimes, we fear, hopeless condition of the Indians; taking care that such checks and limitations are imposed, as their ignorance and the superior intelligence of the whites may render necessary….