Part 31 (1/2)

Coffin next came forward with a suggestion that Indian colonization in Texas would be far preferable to colonization elsewhere, although if nothing better could be done, he would advocate the selection of the Osage land on the Arkansas and its tributaries.[670] Why he wanted to steer clear of the Indian Territory is not

[Footnote 666: ”... I would most respectfully suggest that a Treaty be gotten up by you and the Sec. of the Interior, and sent to me and Gov.

Carney and some other suitable com. to have ratified in due form and returned. And you will pardon me for saying that the Treaty should be a model for all that are to follow with the broken and greatly reduced, and fragmental tribes in the Indian Territory, and may be made greatly to promote the interests of the Indians and the Government especially in view of the removal of the Indians from Kansas and Nebraska as contemplated by recent Act of Congress.”--COFFIN to Dole, March 22, 1863, Ibid., Land Files, _Southern Superintendency_, 1855-1870, C 117.]

[Footnote 667: Cutler to Dole, May, 1863, Ibid., General Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869, C 240.]

[Footnote 668: Ok-ta-ha-ras Harjo and others to ”Our Father,” April 1, 1863, (Indian Office General Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869).]

[Footnote 669: Same to same, May 16, 1863, Ibid., O 6.]

[Footnote 670: Coffin to Dole, May 23, 1863, Ibid., Land Files, _Southern Superintendency_, 1855-1870.]

evident. The Pottawatomies[671] asked to be allowed to settle on the Creek land,[672] but the Creeks were letting their treaty hang fire.

They wanted it made in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and they wanted one of their great men, Mik-ko-hut-kah, then with the army, to a.s.sist in its negotiation.[673] Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la had died in the spring[674] and they were seemingly feeling a little helpless and forlorn.

Thinking to make better progress with the treaties and better terms if he himself controlled the government end of the negotiations, Commissioner Dole undertook a trip west in the late summer.[675] By the third of September the Creek treaty was an accomplished fact.[676]

Aside from the cession of land for the accommodation of Indian emigrants, its most important provision was a recognition of the binding force of Lincoln's Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. In due course, the treaty went to the Senate and, in March, was accepted by that body with amendments.[677] It went back to the

[Footnote 671: A treaty had been made with the Pottawatomies by W.W.

Ross, their agent, November 15, 1861 [ibid., _Pottawatomie_, I 547 of 1862]. Its negotiation was so permeated by fraud that the Indians refused to let it stand [Dole to Smith, January 15, 1862].

At this time, 1863, Superintendent Branch, against whom charges of gambling, drunkenness, licentiousness, and misuse of annuity funds had been preferred by Agent Ross [Indian Office General Files, _Pottawatomie_, R 21 and 143 of 1863], was endeavoring to persuade Father De Smet to establish a Roman Catholic Mission on their Reserve. De Smet declined because of the exigencies of the war. His letter of January 5, 1863, has no file mark.]

[Footnote 672: Cutler to Dole, June 6, 1863, Indian Office General Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869.]

[Footnote 673:--Ibid.]

[Footnote 674: Coffin to Dole, March 22, 1863.]

[Footnote 675: Proctor's letter of July 31, 1863 would indicate that Dole went to the Cherokee Agency before the Sac and Fox. Proctor was writing from the former place and he said, ”Mr. Dole leaves to-day for Kansas ...” [Indian Office General Files, _Southern Superintendency_, 1863-1864, C 466].]

[Footnote 676: Indian Office Land Files, _Treaties_, Box 3, 1864-1866.]

[Footnote 677: Usher to Dole, March 23, 1864, Ibid.,]

Indians but they rejected it altogether.[678] The Senate amendments were not such as they could conscientiously and honorably submit to and maintain their dignity as a preeminently loyal and semi-independent people.[679] One of the amendments was particularly obnoxious. It affected the provision that deprived the southern Creeks of all claims upon the old home.[680] Dole's Creek treaty of 1863 was never ratified.

Other treaties negotiated by Dole were with the Sacs and Foxes of Mississippi,[681] the Osages, the Shawnees,[682]

[Footnote 678: Its binding force upon them was, however, a subject of discussion afterwards and for many years [Superintendent Byers to Lewis V. Bogy, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, February 7, 1867, Ibid., General Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869, B 94].]

[Footnote 679: For an interpretation of the treaty relative to the claims of the loyal Creeks, see Dole to Lane, January 27, 1864 [ibid., _Report Book_, no. 13, pp. 287-291]. It is interesting to note that a certain Mundy Durant who had been sixty years in the Creek Nation, put in a claim, February 23, 1864, in behalf of the ”loyal Africans.” He asked ”that they have guaranteed to them equal rights with the Indians ...” ”All of our boys,” said he, ”are in the army and I feel they should be remembered ...” [Ibid., General Files, _Creek_, 1860-1869, D 362].]

[Footnote 680: Article IV. Both the Creeks and the Seminoles, in apprising the Indian Office of the fact that they had organized as a nation, had voiced the idea that the southern Indians had forfeited all their rights ”to any part of the property or annuities ...”]

[Footnote 681: The Sacs and Foxes brought forward a claim against the southern refugees, for the ”rent of 204 buildings,” amounting to $14,688.00 [Indian Office Land Files, _Southern Superintendency_, 1855-1870, Letter of May 14, 1864. See also Dole to Usher, March 25, 1865, Ibid., also I 952, C 1264, and C 1298, Ibid.,].

Coffin thought the best way to settle their claim was to give them a part of the Creek cession [Coffin to Martin, May 23, 1864, and Martin to Dole, May 26, 1864, Ibid., General Files, _Sac and Fox_, 1862-1866, M 284]. The Sac and Fox chiefs were willing to submit the case to the arbitrament of Judge James Steele. Martin was of the opinion that should their treaty, then pending, fail it would be some time before they would consent to make another. This treaty had been obtained with difficulty, only by Dole's ”extraordinary exertions with the tribe” [Martin to Dole, May 2, 1864, Ibid., M 270].]

[Footnote 682: Negotiations with the Shawnees had been undertaken in 1862. In June, Black Bob, the chief of the Shawnees on the Big Blue Reserve in Johnson County, Kansas, protested against a treaty then before Congress. He claimed it was a fraud (cont.)]