The Banality of Evil

Treaty with the Cherokee, 1835 / Treaty of New Echota (excerpts)

ARTICLE 1. The Cherokee nation hereby cede relinquish and convey

to United States all their lands east of the Mississippi, and hereby release all their claims upon the United States for spoliations of every kind for and in consideration of the sum of five millions of dollars to be expended paid and

invested in the manner stipulated and agreed upon in the following

articles But as a question has arisen between the commissioners and

the Cherokees whether the Senate in their resolution by which they

advised "that a sum not exceeding five 'millions of dollars be paid to

the Cherokee Indians :for all their lands and possessions east of the

Mississippi river" have included and made any allowance or consideration for claims for spoliations it is therefore agreed on the part of the

United States that this question shall be again submitted to the Senate

for their consideration and decision and if no allowance was made for

spoliations that then an additional sum of three hundred thousand

dollars be allowed for the same.

Treaty of May, 1828, ARTICLE 2. Whereas by the treaty o:f May 6th 1828 and the supplementary treaty of Feb. 14th 1833 with the Cherokees west of

the Mississippi the United States guarantied and secured to be conveyed by patent, to the Cherokee nation the :following tract

of country "Beginning at a point on the old western territorial line of

Arkansas Territory being·twenty-five miles north from the point where

the territorial line crosses Arkansas river, thence running from said

north point south on the said territorial line where the said territorial

line crosses Verdigris river; thence down said Verdigris river to the

Arkansas river; thence down said Arkansas to a point where a stone

is placed opposite the east or lower bank of Grand river at its junction

with the Arkansas; thence running south forty-four degrees west one

mile; thence in a straight line to a point four miles northerly, from the

mouth of the north fork of the Canadian; thence along the said four

mile line to the Canadian; thence down the Canadian to the Arkansas;

thence down the Arkansas to that point on the Arkansas where the

eastern Choctaw boundary strikes said river and running thence with

the western line of Arkansas Territory as now defined, to the southwest

corner of Missouri; thence along the western Missouri line to the land

assigned the Senecas; thence on the south line of the Senecas to Grand

river; thence up said Grand river as far as the south line of the Osage

reservation, extended if necessary; thence up and between said south

Osage line extended west if necessary, and a line drawn due west from

the point of beginning to a certain distance wetit, at which a line running north and. south from said Osage line to said due west line will

make seven millions of acres within the whole described boundaries. In addition to the seven millions of acres of land thus provided

for and bounded, the United States further guaranty to the Cherokee

nation a perpetual outlet west, and a free and unmolested use of all the

country west of the western boundary of said seven millions of acres,

as far west as the sovereignty of the United States and their right of

soil extend:

Provided however That if the saline or salt plain on the western Proviso.

prairie shall fall within said limits prescribed for said outlet, the right

is reserved to the United States to permit other tribes of red men to

get salt on said plain in common with the Cherokees; And letters patent shall be issued by the United States as soon as practicable for the

land hereby guarantied."

And whereas it is apprehended bv the Cherokees that in the above Additional land is not a sufficient quantity o f land for the

accommodation of the whole nation on their removal west of the Mississippi the United States in consideration of the sum of five hundred

thousand dollars therefore hereby covenant and agree to convey to the

said Indians, and their descendants by patent, in fee simple the following additional tract of land situated between the west line of the

State of Missouri and. the Osage reservation beginning at the southeast

corner of the same and runs north along the east line of the Osage

lands fifty miles to the northeast comer thereof; and thence east to

the west line of the State of Missouri; thence with said line south fifty

miles; thence west to the place of beginning; estimated to contain eight

hundred thousand acres of land; but it is expressly understood that if

any of the lands assigned the Quapaws shal fall within the aforesaid

bounds the same shall be reserved and excepted out of the lands above

granted and a pro rata reduction shall be made in the price to be

allowed to the United States for the same by the Cherokees.

Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. 1st HarperPerennial ed., Reissued [with a new afterword by the author]. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998.

Pages 2, 72.

Police Reserve Battalion 101 was part of the Order Police sent to the Eastern Front. These were civilians who served as reservist policemen, not regular military. But in July 1942, on patrol in Poland, they received new orders.

“The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 climbed down from their trucks and assembled in a half-circle around their commander, major Wilhelm Trapp, a fifty-three-year-old career policeman affectionately known by his men as ‘Papa Trapp.’ The time had come for Trapp to address the men and inform them of the assignment the battalion had received.

“Pale and nervous, with choking voice and tears in his eyes, Trapp visibly fought to control himself as he spoke. The battalion, he said plaintively, had to perform a frightfully unpleasant task. This assignment was not to his liking, indeed it was highly regrettable, but the orders came from the highest authorities. If it would make their task any easier, the men should remember that in Germany the bombs were falling on women and children.

“He then turned to the matter at hand. The Jews had instigated the American boycott that had damaged Germany, one policeman remembered Trapp saying. There were Jews in the village of Jozefow who were involved with the partisans, he explained according to two others. The battalion had now been ordered to round up these Jews. The male Jews of working age were to be separated and taken to a work camp. The remaining Jews—the women, children, and elderly—were to be shot on the spot by the battalion. Having explained what awaited his men, Trapp then made an extraordinary offer: if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out.”

[Only about a dozen of the 500 men in the battalion took Trapp’s offer of removing themselves from this duty. Many men in the battalion were interviewed in the 1960s on their conduct in the war.]

“Most of the interrogated policemen denied that they had any choice. Faced with the testimony of others, many did not contest that Trapp had made the offer but claimed that they had not heard that part of the speech or could not remember it. A few policemen made the attempt to confront the question of choice but failed to find the words. It was a different time and place, as if they had been on another political planet, and the political values and vocabulary of the 1960s were useless in explaining the situation in which they had found themselves in 1942. Quite atypical in describing his state of mind that morning of July 13 was a policeman who admitted to killing as many as twenty Jews before quitting. ‘I thought that I could master the situation and that without me the Jews were not going to escape their fate anyway…. Truthfully I must say that at the time we didn’t reflect about it at all. Only years later did any of us become truly conscious of what had happened then…. Only later did it first occur to me that had not been right.’”