Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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Most presidents, including Lincoln, had limited experience with Indians, and even less knowledge. On those occasions in the White House when he met with Indians personally he would speak to them in Pidgin English saying to them “Where live now?” and “When go back to Iowa?” He had little doubt that they were an inferior people, and an obstacle to America’s progress and development. His major concern was winning the Civil War, after that his highest priority was settling and developing the west. The Homestead Act of 1862 accelerated white settlement of lands formerly occupied by Indians, and many of the treaties he signed opened up Indian lands for the development of the transcontinental railroad. His Indian policy mainly was one of making treaties with the Indians that would remove them from the lands the settlers coveted.⁶⁵

Lincoln’s Indian policy was carried out by the Office of Indian Affairs, a bureaucratic entity that was created by the secretary of war in 1824 and moved to the Interior Department in 1849. The major and minor posts of the Indian system were filled by “spoils of office.” The commissioner of Indian affairs reported to the secretary of the interior, who in turn was responsible to the president. Lincoln’s appointees were William P. Dole of Pennsylvania for commissioner and Caleb Smith of Indiana for secretary of interior. Both men were politicians with no special expertise in Indian matters. A variety of Indian agents assigned to tribes and reservations reported to regional superintendents, which in turn were responsible to the commissioner. Claimants, contractors, and traders all milked the Indian system for federal monies. All of these offices together comprised the Indian patronage system of the Lincoln administration, and many people believed, as did Bishop Henry Whipple of Minnesota, “that the Indian Department was the most corrupt in our government.”⁶⁶ When it came to Indian affairs, Lincoln was more the politician than the statesman.