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[Anonymous].

[Trail of Tears related manuscript bearing on the mistreatment of Native Americans by government contractors.] Indian Supplies [and] Indian Supplies at Fort Gibson [manuscript captions].

[Arkansas?], 1838. 12.9” x 8”. 4 pp. neatly written on ruled paper, several corrections (insertions, replacements, and cancellations of words). CONDITION: Good, old tape repairs at top and bottom, short tears along outer margins at the central old fold (not affecting text), gutter margin with light dampstaining, some foxing; overall surprisingly well preserved.

An unpublished Trail of Tears related editorial letter defending both the War Department and a government contractor, Glasgow, Harrison & Co., a firm later found to have withheld or overcharged for provisions intended for the various migrating native peoples. 

In 1832 Congress created a commission to oversee the removal of various tribes from the East to Indian Territory. The commission made its headquarters at Fort Gibson, Arkansas which served as “a dispersal site” for the Seminoles, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Creeks after their grueling journey from their homelands in the southeastern U.S. The anonymous author of the present letter contends that surviving migrants of the various tribes were properly provisioned at Fort Gibson, as contracted by the U.S. government, an assertion later proven false. 

The author begins the letter by offering a full transcript of an anonymous editorial titled “Indian Supplies,” published in the Arkansas Times and Advocate on 5 July 1838, which he himself or one of his associates probably wrote. He requests that the article be reprinted in The Republic, adding commentary to be published along with it. The Times editorial is, on the face of it, a response to criticism of the War Department for establishing a depot of provisions for the displaced native people. Its author defends the Department’s decision, asserting that the creation of a depot was “a measure of absolute necessity,” as there were 15,000 Creeks on the frontier border, with many more expected, “among them the Seminoles.” He alludes to the failure of “Mr. Mackey, the (at one time) contractor for supplying” the Creeks, which left the responsibility for feeding them to Captain James R. Stephenson, who had “immediate charge of that tribe” and who, in spite of the challenges he faced, succeeded in doing so. “In 1837 a new contract was made for the subsistence of the Creeks and Seminoles for the remainder of the year (about nine months.)—the gentlemen who took the contract were very enterprising and respectable men, still, it was hardly thought possible that they could fulfill their agreement.” This, he asserts, they nevertheless managed to do, but notes that had

the Government been unprepared for such an emergency, nothing less than a border war would have been the consequence. The scalps of the handful of soldiers at that time stationed at [Fort] Gibson, (however gallant and efficient the officers,) would not have given a hair to each warrior, and the red hand that spares not, would have reaped a rich harvest in Arkansas.

While the editorial seems to be mainly concerned with defending the War Department’s establishment of a depot, the letter’s real purpose was evidently to provide cover for the “very enterprising and respectable men,” subsequently identified in the author’s commentary as Glasgow & Harrison and Company: 

In addition to what is there said, we feel authorized to remark that the whole amount of the original cost of the provisions did not much exceed $300,000, and that more than one third were purchased for an emigrating tribe (the Chickasaws) for which Glasgow, Harrison & Co. were not contractors, and in accordance with a request made by the Indians themselves, as we are informed [canceled line reads: the expense being payable out of their own money]. The loss, if any, will be very small. It is probably owing to the extraordinary circumstances that the Arkansas continued navigable six or eight weeks longer than usual last year, that Messrs. G[lasgow], H[arrison] & Co. were able to fulfill their contract, having brought in provisions from the northwestern states. If they had failed (and they are such men that failure could only occur from the impossibility of getting the provisions at any price) and the measure in question had not been taken, the Seminoles had gone, as well as from 7 to 10,000 Cherokees, and 4000 additional Creeks, who were expected to emigrate in the summer and fall of 1837, we ask The Republican what it would have said of the nonfulfillment of a treaty stipulation by which starvation ensued and a bloody border war? For ourselves we say, better that the whole should be lost than that one Indian should have died from starvation.

The frauds perpetrated against the Native Americans (and the U.S. Government) by Glasgow, Harrison & Co. appear to be well documented. Congress itself determined that this “subordinate agent” withheld and overcharged provisions that had been promised to the forcibly relocated tribes. Cf. the 1843 congressional investigation, “Frauds upon Indians—Right of the President to Withhold Papers” (H.R. Rep. No. 271, 27th Cong., 3rd Sess.). The report “expose[s] the whole machinery of fraud, by which the Government and Indians have been so often greatly wronged.”

A remarkable 1838 Trail of Tears manuscript concerning the provisioning of Native Americans by U.S. Government contractors.

REFERENCES: “Trail of Tears” at Britannica online; “Fort Gibson State Historic Site” at National Park Service online; “Fort Gibson, Oklahoma on the Indian Frontier” at Legends Of America online.

Item #7992

Price: $3,500.00

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