The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

I give this interview, and what transpired there, as a sample of the treatment which the Indians were in the habit of receiving at the hands both of the General Government and the State authorities. Not the wisest kind of treatment, one would think, this which Red Iron received, taking all the circumstances into account. The reader will be surprised, however, that Governor Ramsey, not content with 'breaking' the chief, as he called it—the greatest dishonor which he could inflict upon an Indian of rank—sent him, when the council broke up, to the guard house, under an escort of soldiers! This impolitic official ought to have remembered that the fire was even then ready for the kindling, which finally burst out in such fearful devastation over his devoted State; that it was enough to have cheated the Indians, without thus inflaming their already excited passions, by heaping so great an indignity upon the person of their chief. But he was regardless of everything except the display of his own power and authority. No doubt he thought he was acting for the best, and that the dirty redskins needed to be held with a high hand. But it was bad thinking and doing, nevertheless; a most shortsighted and foolish policy, which came wellnigh, as it was, to an Indian outbreak.

The braves of Red Iron retired under the leadership of Lean Bear, a crafty fellow, eloquent in his way, and now irreconcilably mad against the whites; and when he had led them about a quarter of a mile from the council house, they set up a simultaneous yell, the gathering signal of the Dacotah. Ere the echoes died away, Indians were hurrying from their tepees toward them, prepared for battle. They proceeded to an eminence near the camp, where mouldered the bones of many warriors. It was the memorable battle ground where their ancestors had fought, in a Waterloo conflict, the warlike Sacs and Foxes, thereby preserving their lands and nationality.

A more favorable occasion, a more fitting locality for the display of eloquence which should kindle the blood of the Indian into raging fire, and persuade him to any the most monstrous and inhuman deeds, could not have been chosen even by Indian sagacity. An old battle ground, where the Sioux had been victorious over their enemies; the whitened bones of the ghastly skeletons of their ancestors who fought the battle, bleaching on the turf, or calling to them from their graves below to take God's vengeance in their own hands; the memory of the old and new wrongs inflicted upon them by the whites; the infuriating insult just offered to their favorite chief—all conspired with the orator's cunning to give edge to his eloquence and obedience to his commands.

Governor Ramsey has a good deal to thank God for, that, stimulated by Lean Bear's rhetoric, the Sioux did not that night attack the whites, and make an indiscriminate slaughter of the population, as they would have done, if it had not been for the friendly Indians and half breeds. Perhaps he thought he was strong enough, for the hour, to defeat them in any attempt at an outbreak. But it is not strength so much as strategy which is needed in Indian warfare. To whip the Indians, we must become Indians in our plan and conduct of battle. The civilization and mathematics of war, as practised by cultivated people, are useless in the wilderness, and all our proud and boasted tactics are mere foolish toying and trifling—a waste of time, strength, and opportunity. No one doubts that if our troops could meet the Indians in open field, they would slaughter them like rats; but they know better than to be caught on the open field, except they are pretty sure of an advantage. They steal upon you like thieves, shod with moccasons which have no sound; they think it equally brave to shoot a man from behind a tree as to sabre him in a hand-to-hand encounter.

It is dreadful to contemplate what an incarnate fiend we have roused in this cheated, wronged, and despised Indian. I tremble to think of it. I tremble when I remember also what Bishop Whipple says in the 'Plea,' from which I have already quoted; they are words which ought to be thundered continually into the ears of the 'Great Father,' until he compels a total revolution in our Indian affairs—words which all settlers in those regions should keep forever present in their minds; and, with the Minnesota massacres still fresh in their memory, they should be taught by them never for a moment to trust an Indian, and never knowingly to give him just cause for complaint; to go always armed; to organize, in towns, districts, and counties, the yeomen of the soil, who must be ready at any moment, by night or day, to meet the treacherous, ubiquitous enemy. These last will be found of more value than the 'thundering' suggestion contained in the first of these precautionary propositions. For it is upon themselves that they must chiefly rely for defence, these hapless settlers! and upon no Government, and no soldiers.

Think of it, our 'Great Father' at Washington! and you, his unruly children, you Senators and Congressmen! One of your most loyal citizens in the State of Minnesota, a Christian bishop, well acquainted with all the facts, the dodges, lies, frauds, and all the ins and outs of your Indian administration, declares, with the fullest solemnity which his office and functions can give to words, and with the voice, not of prophecy, but of logical deduction, that the same causes which brought about the Sioux massacre, 'are to-day, slowly but surely, preparing the way for a Chippewa war!' What a Chippewa war means, those who did not know in 1861, found out through the Sioux in 1862 and 1863, to their perpetual sorrow. Like the Bourbons, however, our Government either cannot or will not learn lessons from experience. If they were compelled to bear the penalties of their neglect and wanton maladministration of affairs in the Indian districts, the loss would be small and the retribution just. But they sit at ease, far away from the scene of carnage, and 'get' nothing but the 'news,' which they read as they would any other record of human passion and depravity. It is the innocent settlers who pay the penalty for the guilt and transgressions of their rulers.

It is time somebody, or some vast numbers, banded as one man, began to think upon this threatening question, and to act upon it. It concerns the faith and honor of this great republic before all the world, that the wrongs alluded to should be speedily righted. We are not, in reality, what our Indian legislation would almost seem to accuse and convict us of, a nation of man-catchers, baiting our trap with fine farms, and free government, and happy homes, and abundant prosperity of all sorts, that so we may inveigle the simple minded, and then hand them over to the tender mercies of the Indians! God forbid that such crimes should be ours! But there is a coloring of truth about the whole programme. We invite settlers to populate our vast and wellnigh boundless wilderness, promising them protection from enemies abroad and a happy peace at home; and in the same breath we cheat the savages, and stir them up to hatred and violence against every white man, woman, and child in the country. This is like preaching security and peace while your lighted match is applied to the powder barrel. It is a logic which confutes itself, and needs no sillygism to prove its lying.

Why should we not bravely and manfully, with all the wisdom we possess, confront and reform the evils and iniquities of this system? It is a part and parcel of the work committed to our charge, that we shall wisely deal with this people, until God, by His own mysterious means and agencies, removes them finally from the continent and the planet. There is no room for the red man where the white man comes. He must give way. It is destiny, and there is no help for it. He knows this as well as we do; and he gnaws the grim fact with the teeth of the hopeless damned. But why imbitter him needlessly against us, against the Government, against the people among whom he resides, and over whose dear lives and properties he holds suspended the scalping knife and the flaming pine brand? We are unworthy of the sovereign possessions reserved for us from before the foundations of the world—making the title deeds, therefore, unusually sound and wellnigh unquestionable—if we cannot deal like rational men with the hordes of savages, whose lands we have robbed them of, whom we have reduced to mere pensioners upon our caprice—not bounty—and so satisfy them and their claims that the business of human life may be carried on safely in their vicinity and actual presence. 'Who art thou that saith 'there is a lion in the way'? Rise, sluggard, and slay the lion! The road has to be travelled.'

We are certainly not afraid of any lion, whether he be red or black; and, until lately, both these monstrous red and black animals lay in the direct path of the nation, on which it must travel or perish. We have pretty well mauled and knuckled the black animal, and wellnigh settled with his keepers, one and all! but this red lion is of a different sort, and requires altogether another kind of treatment. We shall yet save the bruised and bleeding black to the service of civilization and humanity. He never was half a bad fellow at the bottom of his leonine bowels, and he already takes to white civility and customs, like an educated, intelligent, and trusty dog of the 'poor dog Tray' sort! And I, for one, have more than a sneaking affection for his old black mug, and a world of hope in his future behavior, if we don't spoil him for the field and for watch and guard at home, by our infernal 'culture,' as the thing is called.

Is this red lion a more terrible devil to combat, or harder to trick into civility, or more impervious to the injunctions of the Ten Commandments? I suppose it will be said that he is; that the black fellow bolted the whole code at a gobble, and wagged his tail, as if the feat must surely please his new masters; that he had long had the benefit of civilized cooking, and knew a gentleman by his toggery; that, moreover, he was of a teachable, plastic nature, and was meant to lie down in due time upon the hearth rug before the fire, in any gentleman's sitting room in the land. It may be true. I believe all this myself, and a good deal more, about him; and I take renewed hope also for this great republic—which is the hope of the world!—that it has thus, at last, tamed him, and fitted him for exhibition upon a nobler theatre than that of Barnum.

But the red lion, you say, is untamable—cannot be dealt with successfully by the wit of white men; and that it is best, therefore, to rob him of the golden apples which he guards, and which are his only food, and so starve him out. But you can't deal that way with the Indian lion, my friend, without feeling the taste of his claws. You have tried it long enough. Bishop Whipple says, 'for fifty years'! And I ask you how much nearer are you to the taming of him now, than you were those 'fifty years' ago? Echo answers: 'That's an impudent question!' and I reply, so be it! but you can't shuffle it off in that way. I have tried my hand at suggesting how imminent dangers, calamities, and horrors may even yet be averted from the Western settlements; and if those who urge that justice shall be done to them, equal to that which we here render, or try or pretend to render to each other—if those who urge this are not listened to now, their plea will be remembered when it is all too late, and thousands of innocent people are again murdered, and their homes laid waste and desolate.

I again say, let no one think by these statements that I am making a special pleading for the Indians, or that I sanction their butcheries. God knows how far all this is from my thought or feeling! I am a white man right through all the inmost fibres of my being: too white, I often fear; for I find my love of race, and pride of blood and ancestry, often encroach too far upon the proper regions of my humanity, and threaten to blear my eyesight to the fair claims of the inferior races.

But I have to do with a thoughtful, reflective, and, at the bottom, just and humane people; and knowing this, I felt safe, or nearly so, against all misconstruction, in this my attempt to show that the late Indian massacres were not instigated merely and solely by the passion of the Indian for blood, but that they had deeper, broader, more tangible causes than this, some of which I have briefly hinted at. Woe to them by whom these butcheries came! Woe also to them who, knowing what must inevitably result from their foul dealings, continued to deal foully with the Indian—until the doomsday came!

I have not put in a single tithe of the evidence which I might adduce to prove my case. It is of no use appealing to the higher powers for redress. 'I am sick at heart,' says the good Bishop Whipple; 'I fear the words of one of our statesmen to me were true: 'Bishop, every word you say of this Indian system is true; the nation knows it. It is useless; you will not be heard. Your faith is only like that of the man that stood on the bank of the river, waiting for the water to run by, that he might cross over dryshod!'' And then he continues, with solemn emphasis and pity: 'All I have to say is this, that if a nation, trembling on the brink of anarchy and ruin, is so dead that it will not hear a plea to redress wrongs which the whole people admit call for reform, God in mercy pity us and our children!'

BURIED ALIVE

A Dirge

"There may be thought,

Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily."

"A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted."

Deep, deep in the tender heartMake a grave for the joys of the Past!Let never a tear fall hot on their bier,But hurry them in as fastAs we bury the Beautiful out of our sight,Ere corruption and horror have saddened our light.Deep, deep in the sinking heartMake a grave for the dreams of the Past!Let the shrill cries of pain still assail thee in vain,Though they follow so wild and so fast:Through the fibres and sinews, and hot, bloody dewLet the sharp strokes fall piercing, unceasing, and true.Call, call on the feverish brainTo bring aid to the gasping heart!To sustain its quick throbs, to suppress its fierce sobs,As it must with its idols part:While the ruthless spade in the grave it has madeHurries forever the beautiful Dead!Call, call on the tortured soulTo stand close by the sinking heart,While the nervous mesh of the writhing flesh,Shuddering and shivering in every part,Its strange anguish renews as the hot, bloody dewsFollow the track of the rude spade through.Call, call on the gifted brainTo send on in the funeral trainHer fair children enwrought from the tissue of thought—Though their wailing will all be in vain—Yet shrouded in robes of funereal woeLet them move on to monotones, solemn and slow!Rouse, rouse the immortal soulWith its hopes and its visions so bright,To send them in the train with the thoughts of the brain,Though their vesture seemed woven of light,To sigh, wail, and weep o'er the pulse-rhythmed sleepOf the Dead in their living urn!Heave, heave the weird sculptured stone;Press it deep on the throbbing grave!With a wildering moan leave the Buried aloneIn their tomb in the quivering heart:While it pours its wild blood in a hot lava floodRound its beautiful sepulchred Dead.But my God, they are not at rest!Can they neither live nor die?See, they writhe in their throbbing grave!While the nervous mesh of the quivering fleshIts strange anguish renews as the hot, bloody dewsFollow the track of my Beautiful backAs they rush into life again,Bringing nought but a sense of pain!We may bury deep the Past—Vain is all our bitter task!It is throbbing, living still, for beyond all power to kill,It can never find a rest in a woman's stormful breast,It can never, never sleep rocked by anguish wild and deep,It can never quiet lie with shrill sobs for lullaby;And since woman cannot part from the idols of her heart,And as severed life is Hell for the souls that love too well,Better far the tender form whose lorn life is only storm,With the coffined dead should seekTo lie down in a dreamless sleep—And find rest in the dust with the worm.Dig a quiet, lowly graveIn the earth where willows wave!Round the burning anguish deep wrap the cooling winding sheet,Shroud the children of the brain, and the soul's high-visioned train:Ah, o'er the snowy sleep let no pitying mortal weep,For the weary seek repose with the worm!Creeping pines and mosses growO'er the fragile form below!Violets, bright-eyed pansies wave o'er the lowly, harmless grave;Let the butterfly and bee all the summer flutter free,O'er the flowers grown from a heart which no wrongs could ever part,Nor torture e'er remove from the creatures of its love;With the wild and feverish brain, and thought's bright but blighted train,With strong heart, but anguished soul, and pain's weird and heavy dole—Let the weary, tired form, whose lost life was only storm,In the shroud's pure snowFind release from woe,Nor hope, nor joy, nor love it e'er again would know!

NEGRO TROOPS

There was a time not long since when the serious consideration of a question like this would have met with little favor. We remember seeing, in this city of New York, one genial October day, not very many years ago, a small company of negro soldiers. They were marching in Canal street, not in Broadway, and seemed to fear molestation even there. The writer was a schoolboy then, cadet in a military school (one of the first established of those excellent institutions), and had, of course, a particular interest in all military matters. So he stopped to look upon these black soldiers—marching with all the more pride (as it seemed to him) because they marched under the floating folds of the stars and stripes. His boy's heart was stirred by the spectacle, and full of a big emotion; but the fashion of the times overpowered the generous impulse, and he treated the negro soldiers with contempt.

This was in the palmy days of the old régime. The stifling of that generous impulse was one of the glories of the old régime. Not a decade of years went by, and the writer stood again in the streets of New York city, and saw another sight of negro soldiers. It was, indeed, and in all respects, another sight. This time the black men marched in Broadway; this time they feared no molestation. It was a balmy day in spring, and God's sunshine glistened gladly from the bright bayonets of United States black soldiers. What a spectacle it was! There marched the retributive justice of the nation—'carrying the flag and keeping step to the music of the Union.' That march was a march of triumph, and its sublime watchword was: 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!'

What a marvellous change in public opinion! Now, negro companies are treated with respect, negro regiments are honored; because we honor the defenders of our national ensign, which is the representative and symbol of our national life. The men who joined so gallantly in the assault on Port Hudson; who fell so nobly at Milliken's Bend, in repelling the attack of men whose blackness was not, like theirs, of the outside skin, but of a blacker, deeper dye, the blackness of treason in their inner hearts; the men whose blood drenched the sands of Morris Island, and made South Carolina more a sacred soil than it had ever been before, because it was blood poured out in defence of the nation's honor, and to wash out the stain of Carolina's dishonor; these men cannot be contemned now. They have shown themselves noble men. They have made for themselves a place in American history, along with their fathers at New Orleans, and their grandfathers under Washington. And the rebel epitaph of the brave Colonel Shaw, who led them unflinchingly against the iron hail of Wagner, is no reproach, but a badge of honor: 'We have buried him under his niggers.'

Since that memorable assault, another State has witnessed the patriotic gallantry of these despised 'niggers;' and in the first Virginia campaign of Lieutenant-General Grant, negroes have borne an honorable part. There is a division of them attached to the old ninth corps, under Burnside, in the present organization of the Army of the Potomac. While that noble army was fighting the battles of the Wilderness, this division was holding the fords of the Rapid Ann. When Grant swung his base away from the river, after the disaster to his right wing, and moved upon Lee's flank, the ninth corps, with its negro division, held an honorable post in the marching column; and at Spottsylvania Court House the correspondents tell us how, with the war cry of Fort Pillow in their mouths, these 'niggers' rushed valiantly to the assault, and elicited the highest praise for their steadiness and courage. Not less honorable is the record of the negro troops attached to the coöperating Army of the Peninsula. The three extracts from official despatches, which follow, show what the record is.

May 5th, General Butler telegraphs to Secretary Stanton: 'We have seized Wilson's Wharf Landing. A brigade of Wild's colored troops are there. At Powhatan Landing two regiments of the same brigade have landed.'

May 9th, General Butler telegraphs from Bermuda Landing: 'Our operations may be summed up in a few words. With seventeen hundred cavalry we have advanced up the Peninsula, forced the Chickahominy, and have safely brought them to our present position. These are colored cavalry, and are now holding position as our advance toward Richmond.'

May 25th, the War Department announced, in a bulletin, that 'General Butler, in a despatch dated at headquarters in the field, at seven o'clock this morning, reports that Major-General Fitzhugh Lee, lately promoted, made, with cavalry, infantry, and artillery, an attack upon my post at Wilson's Wharf, north side of James River, below Fort Powhatan, garrisoned by two regiments, all negro troops, Brigadier-General Wild commanding, and was handsomely repulsed. Before the attack, Lee sent a flag, stating that he had force enough to take the place, demanding its surrender, and in that case the garrison should be turned over to the authorities at Richmond as prisoners of war(!); but if this proposition was rejected, he would not be answerable for the consequences when he took the place. General Wild replied: 'We will try that.' Reinforcements were at once sent, but the fight was over before their arrival.'

It has been not unfrequently said that negroes were cowards and would not fight. The best answer that can be made to that charge is the official order, hereto annexed, of General 'Baldy' Smith. It will be remembered that Grant had just accomplished the transfer of his army from the swamps of the Chickahominy to the south side of the James River, and had immediately thereupon attacked the earthworks in front of Petersburg. The time was June—a month later than the official despatches from Butler already quoted:

'To the Eighteenth Army Corps:

'The General commanding desires to express to his command his appreciation of the soldierly qualities which have been displayed during the campaign of the last seventeen days. Within that time they have been constantly called upon to undergo all the hardships of the soldier's life, and be exposed to all of its dangers.

'Marches under a hot sun have ended in severe battles, and, after the battle, watchful nights in the trenches gallantly taken from the enemy.

'But the crowning point of the honor they are entitled to has been won since the morning of the 15th instant, when a series of earthworks on most commanding positions and of formidable strength have been carried, with all the guns and materials of war of the enemy, including prisoners and colors. The works have all been held, and the trophies remain in our hands.

'This victory is all the more important to us as the troops never have been regularly organized in camps where time has been given them to learn the discipline necessary to a well-organized corps d'armée, but they had been hastily concentrated and suddenly summoned to take part in the trying campaign of our country's being. Such honor as they have won will remain imperishable.

'To the colored troops comprising the division of General Hinks, the General commanding would call the attention of his command. With the veterans of the Eighteenth Corps they have stormed the works of the enemy and carried them, taking guns and prisoners, and in the whole affair they have displayed all the qualities of good soldiers.