[Urgent Manuscript Letter to Stephen Van Rensselaer Regarding "our Indians" during the Lead Up to the Trail of Tears].

Washington, 7 April 1829. 8vo, 2 pp. on single sheet, inlaid.

A letter from “the pioneer of North American Ethnography,” likely soliciting support for the Indian Removal Act and exhibiting the damaging attitude held by even the most benevolent administrators.

Thomas McKenney, inaugural Superintendent of the Office of Indian Affairs and the driving force behind both the famous History of the Indian Tribes of North America and the infamous Trail of Tears, writes this letter "To The Hon Stephen Van Renselier [sic]" in the attempt to secure Rensselaer's quick support of a benevolent effort on behalf of the Indians. "I know well your solicitude for them– and knowing this, feel free to ask your co-operation, should you & Bishop Hobart agree in seeing the subject as I do, in a work of so much mercy...there is not time to be lost." A New York Representative at the time, Rensselaer (1764–1839) was one of the wealthiest landholders of his day and was widely acknowledged to be a progressive. The Right. Rev. Bishop Hobart, to whom McKenney mentions having also written a letter, was likely John Henry Hobart (1775–1830), the third Episcopal Bishop of New York and an active Indian sympathizer.

Because he believed that "the next Congress" would "decide the fate of our Indians," it is highly possible that the "work of so much mercy" to which McKenney refers in this letter is the Indian Removal Act itself, which was indeed passed during the 21st U.S. Congress he mentions. Though generally in agreement with the President on the necessity of removing the Indians from their ancestral lands (believing it, apparently, to be the lesser of all the possible evils facing them) McKenney’s vision for the Act’s implementation, along with his insistence that “the Indian was, in his intellectual and moral structure, our equal” (qtd Drinnon), clashed so heartily with President Jackson that, in 1830, Jackson dismissed McKenney from his post. Ironically, it was McKenney’s ability to rouse religious support for Indian causes that saw him appointed to the post by Jackson in the first place.

In spite of staunch and often crippling opposition to many of his efforts, McKenney spent much of his life working doggedly to ameliorate the lot of Native Americans. Prior to his appointment to the new Office of Indian Affairs, he was Superintendent of the Indian Trade, in which capacity he instituted a network of fair—and thus controversial—government-owned trading houses. However, like many of his time who considered themselves respectful supporters of the Indians, McKenney pushed primarily for westward flight, or for their complete assimilation. Towards this latter end, he spearheaded the 1819 Indian Civilization Act, and at one point even took into his household two teenage Indian boys, teaching and employing them over the course of several years. After losing the post of Superintendent to the Office of Indian Affairs, McKenney failed to find another position and spent the rest of his life struggling in vain for cash and influence.

CONDITION: Excellent.

REFERENCES: Dictionary of American Biography pp. 89–91; American National Biography Online, "McKenney, Thomas Loraine"; Drinnon, Richard, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-hating and Empire-building, pp. 172.