ANALYZING PRIMARY SOURCES: ACCOUNTS OF NATIVE AMERICANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
As you read and examine the documents, you are required to fill out the worksheet. We will fill out the first sheet as a class and you will complete the other worksheets in your groups. Please write in complete sentences!
Document One: Indian Commissioner Thomas L. McKenney Explains Removal, 1828.
Who is the author of the document?
How does the author feel about Native Americans?
How do you know this?
How does the author feel about White Americans?
How do you know this?
5. Summarize the message of the document in a couple of sentences. What do you think is most important?
Document Two: Tecumseh (Shawnee) Speaks Out Against Land Cessions, 1810.
Who is the author of the document?
How does the author feel about Native Americans?
How do you know this?
How does the author feel about White Americans?
How do you know this?
5. Summarize the message of the document in a couple of sentences. What do you think is most important?
Document Three: President Andrew Jackson Favors Removal, 1828.
President Andrew Jackson Favors Removal, 1829.
“…The condition and ulterior destiny of the Indian tribes within the limits of some of our States have become objects of must interest and importance. It has long been the policy of Government to introduce among them the arts of civilization, in the hope of gradually reclaiming them from a wandering life…
…Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national character. Their present condition, contrasted with what they once were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies. Our ancestors found them uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become extinct…
…I suggest for your consideration the propriety of setting apart an ample district west of the Mississippi, and without the limit of any State of Territory now formed, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they shall occupy it…
…This emigrations should be voluntary, for it would be as cruel as unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and seek a home in a distant land…”
Ulterior: another word for future.
Reclaiming: Claim back something that has been taken away or given to another.
Appeal: urgent request to somebody for something.
Propriety: displaying behaviors through to be correct or appropriate.
Ample: large, especially in physical size.
Emigration: to leave one’s home to live somewhere else.
Aborigine: another word for Indian or Native American.
Who is the author of the document?
How does the author feel about Native Americans?
How do you know this?
How does the author feel about White Americans?
How do you know this?
5. Summarize the message of the document in a couple of sentences. What do you think is most important?
Document Four: Speckled Snake’s (Cherokee) Reply to President Jackson, 1830.
Who is the author of the document?
How does the author feel about Native Americans?
How do you know this?
How does the author feel about White Americans?
How do you know this?
5. Summarize the message of the document in a couple of sentences. What do you think is most important?
Document Five: Cherokee Editor Elias Boudinot Opposes Removal, 1828.
Who is the author of the document?
How does the author feel about Native Americans?
How do you know this?
How does the author feel about White Americans?
How do you know this?
5. Summarize the message of the document in a couple of sentences. What do you think is most important?
Document Six: A White Man’s Rationale for Killing Indians on the Overland Trail, 1849.
A White Man’s Rationale for Killing Indians on the Overland Trail, 1849.
“Still if anyone thinks otherwise, and believes that a free and roving tribe, uncontrolled by military force, can be humanized and civilized by any process know to civilized or Christianized man, I nevertheless would warn him not to risk his person among them. Powder, not prayer, is their only civilizer. You can not manage him by reason with him and persuading him…
…Nothing will convert an Indian like convincing him that you are his superior, and there is but one process by which that can be done, and that is to shut off his wind…
…All I have ever known have been cowardly and treacherous, never act like men, but crawl upon you , three or four to one, and shoot you down, as they did sixteen of our party in the canon. They why not attack them, not wait to be attacked by them, and then only in have self-defense take, perhaps one of their worthless lives?
…The Indian is the emigrants enemy. If the emigrant gets the advantage, why should he not take it, for most surely the Indian will? I do not believe in wanton cruelty to the Indian, but when you are in a country where you know he is your enemy, and is not only waiting his chance but looking out for his opportunity, why not cut him down, as otherwise he most surely will you?”
Who is the author of the document?
How does the author feel about Native Americans?
How do you know this?
How does the author feel about White Americans?
How do you know this?
5. Summarize the message of the document in a couple of sentences. What do you think is most important?
Tecumseh (Shawnee) Speaks Out Against Land Cessions, 1810.
“…It is true I am a Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From them I take my existence; from my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own fortune; and oh! That I could make that of my red people, and of my country, as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think of the Spirit that rules the universe. I would not then come to Governor Harrison, to ask him to tear the treaty, and to obliterate the landmark; but I would say to him, Sir, you have liberty to return to your own country. The being within, communing with past ages, tells me, that once, nor until lately, there was no white man on this continent. That it then all belong to red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit that made them, to keep it, to traverse it, to enjoy its productions, and to fill it with the same race. Once a happy race. Since made miserable by the white people, who are never contented, but always encroaching. The way, and the only way to check and stop this evil, is, for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it never was divided, but belongs to all, for the use of each. That no part has a right to sell, even to each other, must less to strangers; those who want all, and will not do with less. The white people have no right to take the last from the Indians, because they had it first; it is theirs…
…It belongs to the first who sits down his blanket or skins, which he has thrown upon the ground, and till he leaves it no other has a right.”
Shawnee: Tribe of Native Americans that lived in the land that is now Ohio, West Virginia, Western Kentucky and Maryland.
Red People: This is a derogatory name for Native Americans that referred to their skin color.
Conception: General understanding of something.
Obliterate: To destroy something so that nothing is left.
Traverse: To travel across, over or through an area or place.
Encroaching: to advance by gradual steps into the rights or possessions of another.
Speckled Snake’s (Cherokee) Reply to President Jackson, 1830.
“…When the white man first came to these shores, the Muscogees gave him land, and kindled him a fire to make him comfortable; and when the pale faces of the south made war on him, their young men drew the tomahawk, and protected his head from the scalping knife. But when the white man had warmed himself before the Indian’s fire, and filled himself with the Indians hominy, he became very large; he stopped not for the mountaintops, and his feet covered the plains and valleys. His hands grasped the eastern and the western sea…
…I heard a great many talks from our great father, and they all begun and ended the same, Brothers! When he made us a talk on a former occasion, he said, ‘Get a little farther; go beyond the Oconee and the Oakmulgee [River]; there is a pleasant country.’ He also said, ‘It shall be yours forever.’ Now he says, ‘the land you live on is not yours; go beyond the Mississippi; there is game; there you may remain while the grass grows or the water runs.’”
Kindled: Begin to burn
Tomahawk: Native American weapon used in war.
Hominy: Type of food Native Americans grew and ate. Made with corn.
Cherokee Editor Elias Boudinot Opposes Removal, 1828
“…It appears that the advocates of this new system of civilizing the Indians are very strenuous in maintaining the novel opinion, that it is impossible to enlighten the Indians, surrounded as they are by the white population, and that they assuredly will be extinct, unless they are removed. It is a fact which we would not deny, that many tribes have perished away in consequence of white population, but we are yet to be convinced that this will always be the case…
…What proof have they that the system which they are not recommending will succeed? Where have we an example in the whole history of man, of a Nation or tribe, removing in a body, from a land of civil and religious means, to a perfect wilderness, in order to be civilized...we are sorry to see that some of the advocates of this system speak so disrespectfully…”
Advocate: In support of a cause or individual.
Strenuous: another word for difficult
Enlighten: to learn
Perish: to suddenly disappear
Roving: To travel about with no purpose.
Humanized: Some white men did not place Native Americans on the same level as themselves to the point where they were not even human.
Powder: refers to gun power or in another words-violence.
Treacherous: disloyal or untrustworthy.
Emigrants: somebody who leaves a place to go live in another country.
Wanton: Without reason or restraint.