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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 75.: CONDUCT OF THE UNITED STATES TOWARDS THE INDIAN TRIBES EXAMINER, 9 JAN., 1831, P. 25 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

75.: CONDUCT OF THE UNITED STATES TOWARDS THE INDIAN TRIBES EXAMINER, 9 JAN., 1831, P. 25 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I [1822]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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75.

CONDUCT OF THE UNITED STATES TOWARDS THE INDIAN TRIBES

EXAMINER, 9 JAN., 1831, P. 25

This article was provoked by commentary on the Message of Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), military hero and Democratic President of the United States, 1828-36, in The Times, 4 Jan., 1831, pp. 1-2 (the passage concerning the Indians is on p. 2), and by the leading articles on the subject in The Times, 5 Jan., p. 2, and the Standard, 4 Jan., p. 2. A leading article in “Foreign Intelligence,” it is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A short article on the conduct of the United States towards the Indian tribes, without heading, in the Examiner of 9th January 1831” (MacMinn, p. 14). In the Somerville College set it is listed as “Article on the conduct of the United States towards the Indians” and enclosed in square brackets; there is one correction: at 236.19, “it” is deleted from the phrase “it is assumed”.

we have no room this week for any lengthened observations on the Message of the American President; but we think it an act of bare justice to take the earliest possible notice of some very mischievous remarks which have appeared in the Times and in the Standard on that portion of it which relates to the removal of the Indians. The facts are as follows:—Several of the States contain within their allotted boundaries the possessions of some of the Indian tribes. These possessions have invariably been held sacred; and the Indians have been protected by law against all attempts to encroach upon them. But in order that the lands now occupied by these tribes may be appropriated and cultivated by civilized men, the Government of the United States has proposed to the Indians to resign their present possessions, and accept others not yet included within the boundaries of any State, and which it is proposed should never hereafter be so included. The Indians will therefore retain these lands for themselves and their posterity. The President informs Congress that several of the Indian tribes have accepted these terms.

Hereupon a loud wailing from the Times and Standard, on the hardship and injustice sustained by these unfortunate men, in being turned out to make room for the descendants of Europeans. The pity of the reader is invoked for the extermination which is assumed to be their inevitable lot; and the Times asks “why should no attempt be made to civilize them?”1 This wise public instructor scarcely ever touches upon any topic beyond the range of daily conversation without betraying the fact of his knowing nothing whatever about it. The most prodigal expenditure in a Government like ours, professedly for a public object, generally proves nothing but that some of the “proprietors of Parliament,”2 or their connexions, are to be benefitted thereby. But when a Government like that of America, parsimonious even to excess, devotes money to any purpose, it affords such a proof as it is hardly ever in the power of any other Government to give, of its being deeply in earnest. Now, the Government of the United States has for years expended, for the purpose of civilizing the Indians, sums so large, as to form a very important item in the moderate expenditure of that cheap Government. The conduct of the United States towards the Indian tribes has been throughout, not only just, but noble. The Indians have occasionally been unjustly treated by several of the State Governments, who, like other people, are not the very best of judges in their own cause; but the Federal Government has been the guardian and protector of the rights of the Indians on all occasions, and has recently been very seriously embroiled with one of the State Governments3 on their account. We inform the Times—of what it should have known without our information, viz.—that one of the chief motives which suggested the removal of the Indians from their present lands was the desire that the State Governments might no longer have sovereign controul over them, and that they might be under the exclusive protection of their “great father,” the Government of the United States.

[1 ]5 Jan., 1831, p. 2.

[2 ]A remark attributed to Henry Grattan (1746-1820), Irish statesman and orator; see his speech in the Irish Commons on parliamentary reform (15 May, 1797), in The Speeches of the Right Honourable Henry Grattan, ed. Henry Grattan (the younger), 4 vols. (London: Longman, et al., 1822), Vol. III, p. 334.

[3 ]Georgia and the Federal Government differed over agreements with the Lower Creek Indians embodied in the Treaty of Indian Springs (1825) and the Treaty at Washington (1826); the former, which gave the Creeks title to lands beyond the Mississippi in return for Georgia lands, was abrogated by the latter, which allowed them to keep territory within Georgia.