Ohio History Journal

THE PROBLEM OF

THE HISTORIC INDIAN IN THE OHIO VALLEY:

THE HISTORIAN'S VIEW

 

by DWIGHT L. SMITH

 

Sometime early in the morning of October 12, land having

been sighted, a party debarked for shore. "Presently they descried

people, [who were] naked." Possession of the island was taken

in the presence of witnesses from the ship and a number of "the

people of the island" who had collected there.¹ "As I saw that

they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be

much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than

by force," wrote the leader of the expedition in his journal, "I

presented them with . . . many . . . trifles of small value, wherewith

they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to

us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots,

balls of cotton thread, javelins and many other things which they

exchanged for articles we gave them."2

These observations were made by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

It is precisely at this time and with this document that the "historic

Indian" becomes a reality. This is the point of departure for any

study of the history of the indigenous peoples of the New World.³

In any given locale, however, the date at which the term historic

Indian can be applied is that of the first recorded European contact.

This, in the Ohio Valley-Great Lakes area, was when the French

explorers and Jesuit missionaries first penetrated the depths of the

woodland and lake regions, probably near the middle of the

seventeenth century.

When this contact occurs the historian is immediately interested

 

1 Christopher Columbus, Journal of First Voyage to America (New York, 1924),

23-24. The original manuscript journal has long since disappeared. These quotes are

from Bartolome de Las Casas, who had access to a copy of the original journal.

2 Ibid., 24-25. This is in the words of Columbus as copied by Las Casas.

3 The name Indian was applied to these people because Columbus believed he had

discovered India. The term was probably used for the first time in a letter he wrote

to one of his benefactors on the return from his initial voyage to the New World.

Columbus to Louis de Sant Angel, Lisbon, February 1493, quoted in F. F. Hilder,

"Origin of the Name 'Indian,'" American Anthropologist, N.S., I (1899), 545-549.

172

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in the Indian as a contributing factor to the overall story of

American history. He is interested in determining the role and

effect of the Indian on the frontier with respect to international

struggles and diplomacy, the land question, his impact on frontier

society, his contributions to the lives of the pioneers, and his

subsequent absorption, liquidation, or removal to make room for

new settlements and new states. Then, of course, there are specialists

who are interested in Indian history as a subject in itself, just as

there are specialists who are interested, for example, in the

evolution of democracy in British colonial governments, political

parties, or the Germans in the United States. These specialists are

concerned with every aspect of the Indian--political, social,

economic, religious, and cultural.

The approach of a historian to the Indian is precisely the same

which he uses in the study of any other subject. The task of a

historian, simply, is to reconstruct past events, to weave a fabric

from the threads of information recorded and left behind by eye-

witnesses and participants. This reconstruction is never completed;

and, at best, it can only be an approximation. The term "definitive"

is sometimes applied to an historical study, but it is only a relative

term. The late Douglas Southall Freeman, for example, would have

been the first to admit that 'his exhaustive, multivolume treatment

of the life of George Washington is not definitive. Likewise, the

late William T. Morgan, who devoted a lifetime to the study of

the twelve-year reign of Queen Anne of England, considered his

extensive several volumes of bibliography of that era to be but an

introduction to the period.

With regard to the historic Indian, there have been no such

monumental endeavors. Indeed, more so than in any other phase of

American history in which one might specialize, this one is affected

by a condition which makes it almost impossible to satisfactorily

achieve such a goal. The difficulty arises from the fact that the

Indian did not convert his spoken language into a written form

until a relatively recent time. This means, of course, that until

this occurred, he made no written records. What the historian

learns of the Indian, therefore, is that which has been recorded by

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Europeans who came into contact with the Indian, not from any-

thing that he himself left.

Today's historian has no choice then but to see the Indian through

the eyes of the white man. His sources of information are, in a

sense, second hand rather than first hand. With this second

handedness there is another factor with which the historian has to

reckon, more so in this than in other fields of inquiry. Those who

came in contact with the Indian seemed to evaluate and think of

him with a rather pronounced bias, sometimes very much in his

favor, and sometimes not. This often lends considerable color to

the written impressions. Color is not objectionable, to be sure, but

it is of prime importance that it be recognized as such. It is necessary

to realize that we are seeing the Indian through the eyes of a

third person who probably had a personal bias of one sort or

another. The escaped captive, for example, usually employed as

many superlatives and adjectives as he had at his command to make

the story of his adventures as excruciatingly unpleasant as possible.

He seemed to get a morbid satisfaction from portraying his treat-

ment at the hands of the Indians in lurid details worthy of the most

terrible accounts of the Inquisition or of a Nazi prison camp. His

story was a combination of imagination and fact. His bias was

not by innuendo or indirection but was forthrightly and proudly

stated and proclaimed to all who read his story. The missionary,

on the other hand, filled with sympathy and understanding, might

well report to his superior that these peoples of the forest and

wilderness were kind and lovable "children of God." While the

Jesuit priest was the most intrepid of those who pierced through

the curtain of the unknown into the savage wilderness, his purpose

in doing so led him to be concerned with the better side of the

character and make-up of the Indian. The Moravian missionaries

were dedicated to the proposition that Christianity was for the

Indian as well as for anyone else. The Quakers were motivated by

the principle that the Indian was entitled to the same rights and

consideration as were the whites, and if treated accordingly, military

force leading to subjection would not have to be used to obtain

and maintain peace on the frontier. The bias of the missionary,

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then, was in considerable contrast to that of a person who had

lived in captivity and had gained his freedom.

The gamut of bias ranged from the missionary report to the

captivity narrative with probably the majority opinion holding to

the old frontier maxim that the only good Indian was a dead one.

Efforts were made to salvage the Indian from the damage done

him by this feeling and the treatment he had supposedly suffered

from the whites as a result of it. Helen Hunt Jackson, for example,

in her highly emotional volume, A Century of Dishonor, was in-

strumental in bringing about the organization of the Indian Rights

Association. A more recent example of an extremely pro-Indian

statement was a Time magazine report of a few years ago on con-

ditions in the Southwest. The report evoked considerable concern

and sympathy. This is not to assert that such things as second

handedness, bias, and literary flair render the sources from which

the historian must get his information worthless. Far from it. It is

to say, though, that in a certain sense, the wheat must be separated

from the chaff. And the presence of valuable information otherwise

often not available elsewhere warrants the effort required to salvage

it from these accounts.

What then, specifically, are the sources at the command of

the historian interested in the Indian, and what is the nature of

these sources? The earliest and among the most extensive records

are the contact accounts made by explorers and missionaries. In

the case of the Ohio Valley-Great Lakes area the French explorers

and Jesuit priests pushed into the lake and river valleys together.

The records of the latter especially are crammed with valuable

data. Some seventy-odd edited volumes of Jesuit accounts are

readily available in the average reference library, but unpublished

reports of unknown quantity still exist in European archives. In

many cases, too, the original narratives of the explorers are avail-

able in carefully edited editions and collections.

Fur traders, adventurers, and soldiers kept records or an oc-

casional journal and wrote descriptive letters. Although usually

fugitive pieces they are none the less of value. These are likely to

appear in collections of other subjects or as single items. The busi-

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ness papers and the records of trading posts and government fac-

tories are useful for economic studies. A whole body of literature

in itself is that of the above-mentioned captivity narratives. Their

literary appeal is certainly as gripping and as fascinating as the

dime novel ever was. The Indian point of view is often more nearly

approximated in a captivity than elsewhere because in many cases

the captive had lived for years as an Indian before securing his

freedom. And then, too, as captives, the whites were sometimes eye-

witnesses and participants in Indian-white conflicts. There are

enough accounts of whites who lived in captivity in the Great

Lakes-Ohio Valley area reasonably accessible to justify the time and

effort needed for a detailed study. Thus far the captivity narrative

has only been employed by a few scholars. Some exploratory

projects have been done covering the captivity as a whole or some

particular phase, like torture, and some beginning has been made to

ascertain the value of making a regional or tribal study. As a

valid field of literature, the subject has already been treated satis-

factorily. Bibliographical data, too, has been compiled and is readily

available. But it still remains an almost unexploited source for

the historian.

Another considerable body of literature that awaits investigation

as a source of information of the historic Indian of the Ohio Valley-

Great Lakes region is composed of literally hundreds of travel

accounts. Much as a ship's captain keeps a careful log, travelers

from Europe and the eastern seaboard kept detailed journals and

wrote lengthy letters as they journeyed across the Midwest. Much

of this material was published and read widely because little else

was available at the time in the form of travel literature. Ob-

servations were made on everything encountered, including the

Indians. Details often overlooked or taken for granted by local

settlers were made a matter of record by the travelers. Several

research libraries have substantial collections of travel accounts. The

Indian material contained in this literature needs to be utilized.

During the last century there appeared a number of works pur-

porting to be complete histories of the Indian. Many of these were

worthless and many were almost entirely secondary accounts with

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most of the material taken from other sources. Occasionally one

appeared, the foundation of which represented conscientious and

prodigious work either with the Indians themselves or in the source

materials. Some of these assumed considerable proportions and

must still be consulted by scholars today. Because of the immensity

of the subject, however, manifestly these works could not begin

to treat the Indian in any adequate fashion. For example, in the

1830's Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall produced their three-

volume History of the Indian Tribes of North America. This is

indeed a valuable source, but the contents do not even begin to

cover the subject that the authors indicated by their title. During

the next decade, under the direction of the United States Bureau of

Indian Affairs, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft produced his Historical

and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and

Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. This was a

big order even though in comparison with the McKenney and Hall

work just mentioned the geographic area involved was reduced con-

siderably and the number of volumes doubled. Another work,

although of little value today, should be mentioned in this con-

nection merely to illustrate what one writer claimed to cover in his

two volumes. Francis S. Drake in the 1880's produced The Indian

Tribes of the United States: Their History, Antiquities, Customs,

Religion, Arts, Language, Traditions, Oral Legends, and Myths.

The American government adopted the policy of acquiring Indian

lands by treaty--at the termination of wars, by deliberate nego-

tiations, or through the removal plan whereby trans-Mississippi

lands were traded for their holdings in the Ohio Valley-Great Lakes

area. Negotiations with the Indians were slow and deliberate, re-

quiring conferences and councils that often went on for lengthy

periods. Proceedings for these negotiations were usually kept, and

some of them are still available for use today.

Also in this connection, there were public officers who dealt with

the Indians in official capacities and whose papers contain a great

deal of valuable information. It is impossible to know the details

of the government's efforts to secure lands from the Indians in the

Old Northwest without consulting the papers of William Henry

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Harrison, who negotiated most of the treaties before the War of

1812. Careful study of the papers of such men as Arthur St. Clair,

James Wilkinson, and Anthony Wayne, which are quite voluminous

and readily available, is necessary to reconstruct the story of the

Indian Wars following the American Revolution. The records and

papers of John Johnston, long-time Indian agent in western Ohio,

are pertinent for that phase of the Indian story. Lewis Cass and

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft wrote numerous and voluminous official

reports and accounts of their knowledge and observations of the

Indians in the Midwest.

The records, manuscripts, and documents from which the his-

torian pieces together the account of the historic Indian are readily

accessible for use. Any good repository of American history contains

collections that need to be scrutinized and studied for the con-

tributions they can make to Indian history. The Burton Historical

Collection at the Detroit Public Library, the library of the Historical

Society of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, and the Clements Library

at Ann Arbor are a few of the more outstanding ones that one can

mention. Official government records of the bureaus, agencies, and

commissions which at one time or another have dealt with the

Indian are housed by the National Archives and the Library of

Congress. For French-Canadian and English-Canadian records, which

have a great deal of relevance for this area, the Public Archives of

Canada at Ottawa are by far the best.

Then there are notable cases of specialized collections and re-

positories which contain mines of documentary materials. The

archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology command the

attention of historians as well as anthropologists and ethnologists.

The Edward E. Ayer collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago

is of such value that any scholar whose interests are in this field

should not overlook its possibilities. One object Mr. Ayer had in

assembling his collection, and one which is still the policy of its

curator, was to obtain all the available manuscripts and books

recording the first contact of Europeans with every Indian tribe of

North America, those describing the subsequent treatment of the

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Indians by the whites, and all materials shedding light on the later

history of each tribe. The Frank Phillips Historical Collection at

the University of Oklahoma and the holdings of the Oklahoma

Historical Society contain, in addition to many other valuable items,

a great bulk of the records of the Indian nations as they organized

into governments when they removed to the Indian Territory. A

notable private collection containing, among other things of im-

portance, literally hundreds of pages of transcripts of manuscript

materials in European archives, is that of the late Grant Foreman

and his widow, Carolyn Thomas Foreman, of Muskogee, Oklahoma.

Of tremendous importance are the voluminous records presently

abuilding as a result of the investigations of the Indian Claims

Commission. The commission has engaged the services of top-flight

scholars to carry out its work. The materials which they are as-

sembling from every source that might conceivably have bearing

on their investigations are to be housed and made available to

interested scholars after the work of the commission is completed.

The extreme value of these to historical, anthropological, and

ethnological studies is already attested by those engaged in the

project.

Contemporary historians are divided in opinion as to the role and

importance of the Indian to American history. One present-day

history textbook writer suggests in his opening chapter that, "to be

sure, the Indians contributed something, but surprisingly little, to

American history." He adds that their contributions "have been so

slight that one is justified in suggesting that they might be omitted

entirely without appreciably altering the main trend of develop-

ment." It is interesting to note, in this connection, the subtitle to

his volume:"From   Wilderness to World Power."⁴ On the other

hand, another eminent present-day historian asserts that "American

culture has been greatly enriched by the Indians' contribution. The

American character," he says, "even among people of unmixed

European descent, is very different from what it would have been

 

4 Ralph V. Harlow, The United States: From Wilderness to World Power (rev. ed.,

New York, 1953), 1-2.

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180     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

if this continent had been vacant of mankind when our ancestors

arrived."5

These divergent statements would suggest, as is the case, that

all too little has been done by historians in the field of the American

Indian. The implication of the textbook writer that this subject

is not worthy of scholarly pursuit notwithstanding, it constitutes one

of the most neglected and least understood fields in which an

American historian can conduct research. The major difficulty is

that trained research historians devoting any substantial block of

time and effort to the historic Indian are extremely few in number.

The contribution of the historian is important. But the fruits of

his research, by virtue of his methodology, his tools, and the nature

of these tools or sources, are only a part of the story of the historic

Indian. The archaeologist, the anthropologist, the ethnologist, and

the linguist, as well as the historian, all have essential contributions

to make.

The mutual interdisciplinary distrust and suspicion among these

disciplines is gradually being replaced by open-minded cooperation

and exploratory ventures. As a historian learns the techniques and

studies the problems of, for example, the archaeologist, he becomes

a better historian. For several years now specialists in these branches

of learning have met annually to make contributions from their

studies of the Iroquois. The Newberry Library in Chicago called a

special exploratory conference about two years ago to determine

the common interests of these disciplines in the study of the

American Indian and to suggest ways in which interdisciplinary

studies might be encouraged and propagated. It was the privilege

of this writer to be granted a fellowship in ethnohistory as one of

the first fruits of the Newberry conference. The fact that there

exists sufficient interest among individuals of these different groups

to engender an organization such as the Ohio Valley Historic Indian

Conference, on a regional basis, is evidence in itself of the continued

and growing interest in the historic Indian.

5 Samuel E. Morison and Henry S. Commager, The Growth of the American Re-

public (2 vols., New York, 1950), I, 12.

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