Ohio History Journal

THE CONQUEST OF THE INDIAN. BENJAMIN R. COWEN, CINCINNATI. [Portion of an address delivered by General Cowen on the 28th of June, 1904, at the placing of the tablet in commemoration of the Har- rison-Tarhe Peace Conference.] We have heard the story of the historic incident this monu- ment is designed to commemorate eloquently told by the Regent

of the Columbus Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolu- tion. That society has rendered a valuable service in the erection of this unique memorial which commemo- rates what is not only an interesting incident in local history, but an import- ant epoch in the history of the great Northwest Territory, while being at the same time an enduring landmark of our progress. I have heard it suggested that in- as much as woman has ostensibly little or nothing to do with government functions or with the wars, the hard-

ships and the sacrifices of the race under primitive conditions she has no business meddling with them in any manner. Never was a greater error. True, war and border struggles and sacrifices are generally regarded as peculiar to the stronger sex from which woman is exempt. Yet war and sacrifice and hardship have been woman's burden since our first parents turned their backs on Eden. So that the women who have erected this memorial were strictly in the line of duty, and privilege, for women should have a place of honor wherever the hardships and the sacrifices of the race are held in grateful memory. (139)

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'Tis said the doting pyramids have long forgotten the names

of their builders. Here we have a monument eons old before

those buildiers were born, yet to the eye of science the glacial

hieroglyphics carved thereon tell the story of its antiquity and its

endurance. We, the ephemera of a day, will soon pass from

memory, but let us hope that this monument, in its indestructible

character, may prove a type of the imperishable recollection of the

event it is intended to commemorate and of the form of govern-

ment to the establishment of which that event contributed.

In the mighty changes which have taken place since Harrison

erected here a bulwark against a threatening barbarism the people

of Ohio have had much to be proud of; much to be thankful for.

In the intervening years Ohio has grown from 40,000 population

to four millions and the Nation from eight millions to eighty

millions, a growth so remarkable as to be without parallel in the

world's history.

It is so customary, however, to give thanks for visible and

tangible mercies and blessings, rather than for the escape from

possible evils which have been averted that our expressions of

gratitude for the former are so absorbing as to leave little room

for thought of the latter.

We are all proud of our State and of her name and all that

it implies of history and endeavor and achievement. Could we

have been equally proud, think you, had the name once sought to

be fixed on it been allowed to stand? I have my doubts.

It is a historic fact little known, to-day, that a Committee of

the Continental Congress, March 1st, 1784, reported a scheme

for the organization of the Northwest Territory which contem-

plated its division into nine States and prescribing the boundaries

and the names of each. The territory now embraced in the State

of Ohio was to be made into two states, the Northern to be called

Washington and the Southern Polysipia. The only redeeming

feature of the last name was that it was less objectionable than

some of the other names proposed. Those names were: Sylva-

nia, Michigania, Cheronessus, Asenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia,

Saratoga, Polypotamia, Washington and Polysipia.

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The Conquest of the Indian.            141

 

In reckoning our mercies let us not forget to return thanks

that we are neither Polypotamians nor Polysipians, but plain

Ohioans. The name Ohio is good enough for us.

Yet I have no doubt the wonderful achievements of the sons

of this State during the past 100 years would even have popular-

ized the name Polysipia and made it a name to conjure with as

the name of Ohio is to-day.

This monument is intended to perpetuate an event in which

both white men and Indians took part on a plane of perfect equal-

ity. The part borne by the Indians was not only highly creditable

to them; it was of great advantage to the whites at a most critical

period in our history. So that it seems appropriate to the occasion

that I divide my time between the two races.

As the Indian has disappeared from the stage of action, how-

ever, we can only tell of his past. As the white man - the Amer-

ican-the Anglo-Saxon, so called, approaches the zenith of his

powers, we may in some measure speak of his future.

But, through the glowing story of our pioneer struggles and

successes runs a dark thread of shame in our treatment of the

Indians which cannot be ignored in any fair narration of the

story of the contact of the two races.

It was long an accepted maxim on the frontier that "the only

good Indian is a dead one." But had an Indian Thucydides,

smarting under the wrongs of his people, arisen to write a truthful

story of his race on this continent I imagine the verdict of his-

tory might be different.

To civilize a race it would seem a wise policy to offer it such

models as are pleasing and attractive and by as much as those

models are superior to and more desirable than existing methods

in so much will they be accepted.

The three civilizations - Spanish, French and English--

which first came in contact with the North American Indian had

respectively bloomed and given to the world as the ripe fruit of

their culture and their faith the Inquisition, St. Bartholomew

and the Bloody Assizes. The crimson annals of Indian warfare

furnish no names so execrated for inhumanity as Torquemada,

Catherine de Medicis and Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys. The In-

dian could not conceive, much less execute any tortures so ex-

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quisite, any crimes against humanity so horrible and unnatural,

as were perpetrated under the forms of law in the lands of the

several Christian sovereigns under whose broad seals of authority

those pioneers of the New World had come to convert and to save.

Inflexible, merciless and selfish, and little adapted to attract

simple, primitive natures yet it was those forms of civilization to

which our aborigines were first introduced and which inaugu-

rated the Indian policy which substantially prevailed on this

continent ever since.

"Welcome, Englishmen," was the cordial greeting of the

pagan Indian Samoset, as with the open hand of friendship he met

the discouraged band of Christian pilgrims as they stepped ashore

at Plymouth one bleak December day in 1620. For nearly 300

years, with mailed hand and the robber's plea, those civilized

Christian Pilgrim-Puritans, so called, and their descendants, by

robbery, murder, enslavement, debauchery, and every form of

wrong which the devilish ingenuity of perverted religionists could

devise, have given the response of Christian civilization to that

pagan welcome.

Through all the colonial times since the first treaty when the

Plymouth governor made old Massasoit drunk and stole his land,

Indian treaties were made but to be broken, and from the first

treaty made by our government, that with the Delawares at Fort

Pitt in 1778, when that nation was cajoled into active alliance

with the infant republic by the promise of a State organization

and a representative in Congress, down to the latest treaty with

the tribes huddled together on the arid lands of the far West-

in all over 900 treaties, every one of the number was broken in

one or more important particulars by the whites. And the same

is true of all the contracts made with our predecessors, the French,

the Spanish and the British.

In the treaty of peace of 1783 with Great Britain no mention

was made of the native tribes and their rights in the soil, and

no demand or request was made by Great Britain in their behalf,

though she had been greatly aided during our Revolutionary War

by her Indian allies.

Let me cite some authorities on the subject of the relative

reliability of the two races:

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The Conquest of the Indian.            143

 

Gen. Harney, of the army, said: "I never knew an Indian

to break his word."

Again he said: "I have lived on this frontier fifty years,

and I have never yet known an instance in which war broke out

between the tribes and the government, that the tribes were not

in the right."

Bishop Whipple said: "I have traveled on foot and on horse-

back over every square mile of my diocese. I have known every

Indian settlement in it. I have watched them for a dozen years.

Some of them will drink and some of them will steal, and they

are of our race for they have our vices, but in every difficulty

that has occurred in the twelve years of my residence between the

Indians and the government, the government has been always

wrong and the Indian has been always right."

In 1867 a celebrated council was held with the Sioux at

which were Major Generals Sherman, Terry, Harney and Auger.

The report of that council contained the following language:

"In every case of complication existing with the Indians at

the date of our appointment and for several years previous to that

time and which was investigated by us the cause of the difficulty

was traced to the wrong doing of our own people, both civil

and military."

Thus do men of war and men of peace, looking at the subject

from different standpoints, reach the same conclusion.

All that the Indian ever knew of the justice of the Anglo-

Saxon was the sharp edge of its sword; the equal balance of its

scales he never saw.

On one occasion, while visiting the Quaker City in charge

of a party of Ute Indians, the gentleman who was acting as our

guide, took special pains to illustrate the character of William

Penn, and pointed out the spot where his historic treaty was

made, emphasizing his uniform justice and fairness to the In-

dians. Ouray, the head chief, a man of few words, listened

quietly, and when the guide had finished said grimly: "Yes, Mr.

Penn seems to have been a good man, and you say treated the red

man right. His children are many and rich, and their lodges are

crowded like the leaves of the forest; but where are the Indians?"

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The battle of Little Big Horn where General Custer and his

command were exterminated is cited as an evidence of Indian

cruelty in war, but which was the attacking party, and where was

the battle field? That fight was in broad daylight, and far within

the lines of the Indian reservation. It was horrible in the re-

sult-only less so than some other incidents I shall cite. The

army under Custer had followed the Indians to their homes and

made the attack, resulting in the total destruction of the army.

"You defend yourselves savagely," said Alexander to the

barbarians of India.

"Sir, if you but knew how sweet freedom is you would defend

it even with axes," was the reply.

But acts of cruelty are not confined to the red men in their

contact with the whites.

King Philip, of Pokanoket, was killed after a long and stub-

born resistance. His body was quartered and his head exposed

on a gibbet at Plymouth for twenty years.

In the rear of General Hancock's army in Kansas, an Indian

woman was found scalped.

I have myself seen Indian scalps displayed as trophies of war

by our soldiers and frontiersmen.

In a fight between our soldiers and the Cheyennes in 1878,

one man and thirteen women and children were killed.

In the same year a great many horses and all the women and

children were killed by our soldiers in a fight with the Bannocks.

In April, 1871, at Camp Grant, in Arizona, 18 women and

children and eight men, peaceable, unarmed, and under govern-

ment protection were murdered and mutilated by a band of white

men from Tucson.

At Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864, Indian men, women and

children were butchered in cold blood, infants were scalped in

derision, and men were tortured and mutilated in the most horri-

ble manner. The result was an Indian war that cost us 30 mil-

lion of dollars.

In January, 1870, 173 men, women and children of the Pie-

gan tribe in Montana, suffering severely with the smallpox, were

butchered in cold blood by our troops under Colonel Baker, of the

2d Cavalry. But 15 of the victims were men of fighting age.

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The Conquest of the Indian.            145

This disgraceful affair was ostensibly to avenge the killing of a

white man in a drunken brawl at Fort Benton, some time before,

but the murder was found to have been committed by an Indian

of another tribe.

It was my official duty to investigate some of these cases,

so that I speak as one having knowledge. Is it strange that In-

dians should imitate such example?

"The villiany you teach me I will execute," said Shylock,

"and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction."

It is a fact, however, that the origin of our serious troubles

with the Indian in later years was almost uniformily traceable to

the encroachments and the impositions of the white settlers.

After the trouble was precipitated by those encroachments the

protection of the army was invoked and the natural result was

that the punishment was swift and terrible. But the army was

only the avenger never the instigator.

On the other hand, in Minnesota, in 1862, during the mas-

sacre, every Christian Indian remained friendly to the whites.

One Indian conducted a large party through the worst part

of the massacre to safety. Another conducted 25 men and 42

women and children to St. Paul.

During the hearing of the celebrated Cherokee case in the

U. S. Supreme Court Wm. Wirt made use of the following lan-

guage: "We may gather laurels on the field of battle and

trophies on the ocean, but they will never hide this blot on our

escutcheon. 'Remember the Cherokee Nation,' will be answer

enough to the proudest boast we can make."

Thus did the Anglo-Saxon civilization manifest itself

through the passing years of our history. It has been the same

old robber plea, that-

"He shall take who has the power,

And he shall keep who can."

During the years from 1869 to 1877 I visited, in an official

capacity, every important Indian tribe in the country, both in the

interior and on the Pacific coast, including some that were con-

sidered hostile, without military escort or armed guard, and was

never disturbed or threatened. I passed in and out among them

Vol. XIV- 10.

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146       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

with impunity, and was never conscious that I was in any special

danger.

If I have dwelt too long on this branch of my subject in de-

fence of the Indian character attribute it to my pronounced con-

viction derived from personal contact and varied experience, and

to the fact that there are few left to say a word in that behalf.

He is as amenable to fair treatment as any race of which I

have knowledge.

It was a stereotyped phrase in Indian treaties for many years

that the lands named therein were solemnly guaranteed to the

Indian to be his home "While grass grows and water runs." The

ground we walk to-day was thus granted, and every tender blade

that meets the quickening breath of spring and every drop in

your beautiful river as it runs to the sea are silent but eloquent

witness of our perfudy toward that unfortunate people.

What has been said relates to events and policies of the past

which may not be changed. The story of the vanished race can

interest us now chiefly as it marks our progress. We are too

busy striving to reach "the regions beyond" to pause beside its

dishonored graves long enough to drop a tear.

Barbarism could not be allowed to occupy this fair domain

forever. My criticism on the policy which prevailed in respect

of the Indian is that it was a war against barbarians rather than

against barbarism. The latter has no rights civilization is bound

to respect; the former may have.

The effort to elevate and assimilate came too late, and never

had a fair trial. Our policy and our contact brutalized and de-

graded the race before any real effort was made to elevate it.

Ninety-one years ago this place was the remote frontier,

the skirmish line of our civilization. Since the day of Harrison's

council that frontier has been pushed westward until it has disap-

peared from the continent. With it have gone those men of

blood and iron who conquered the wilderness. Heroes of an

heroic age were they, so grim and stalwart and unyielding they

might have stalked from out the age of chivalry and romance;

from ancient tombs in dusty crypts of old world cathedrals, to

greet the sun of this New World with eager eyes, the lurid light

of battle on their brows.

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The Conquest of the Indian.            147

 

Yet the type is preserved in our magnificent youth who are

battling on other frontiers. Wherever they go with their modern

equipment of zeal and knowledge and skill and courage, battling

for modern ideas, there is their frontier, and there they are

already winning new victories.

What is the significance of this progress -this attitude-

these conditions?

Before the 20th century shall have filled out its first decade

this continent will in all human probability, have changed front,

so to speak, and the busy human ambitions which now make

Europe an armed camp will be transferred, or at least duplicated

in the Far East--in Asia and Africa. Those continents are

rapidly breaking to pieces. Their long centuries of stagnation

are to be replaced by a healthier and more vigorous moral atmos-

phere. There a field offers for the wholesome civilization, the

boundless resources, the commercial courage and the high moral

purpose of the Anglo-Saxon. And by Anglo-Saxon I mean that

composite product which controls this continent to-day and which

should be called American.

The same spirit which drew our forebears to the fulfillment

of their destiny during that stirring and picturesque era as they

skirmished and battled with the wilderness and the savage, writ-

ing the nation's epic, is drawing the splendid young men of to-day

to other and far distant fields where they find something to con-

quer - that is their Frontier.

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