Christopher Columbus,
Letter to Luis de Sant’ Angel (1493)
Jefferson's Indian
Addresses
Jackson to Congress
1829
The Removal Act 28
May 1830
Cherokee letter protesting the Treaty
of New Etocha 1836
Sagoyewatha ("Red Jacket", Chief of the
Seneca) to missionary Reverend Cram from the Boston Missionary Society at
Buffalo Creek 1805
Other Primary documents
Visión de los
Vencidos Relaciones indígenas de la Conquista
Christopher Columbus,
Letter to Luis de Sant’ Angel (1493)
In this letter to one of his leading supporters in the Spanish court,
Christopher Columbus describes his reaction to the sights of the New World. He
is describing the island of Hispaniola, present-day Haiti and the Dominican
Republic.
Alvar Núñez Cabeza de
Vaca, "Indians of the Rio Grande" (1528-1536)
In 1528, half of the crew of the Spanish explorer Panfilo de Navarez was
stranded in Florida. After sailing in makeshift vessels across the Gulf of
Mexico, the crew was shipwrecked and enslaved by coastal peoples. After six
years, Cabeza de Vaca, an Arabic slave, Estevancio the Moor (referred to as
"the negro" in this excerpt), and two others escaped and made the
overland journey from Texas through the Southwest and south to Mexico City. In
this selection from his journal, Cabeza de Vaca describes the native peoples and
environment of what is now Texas and northern Mexico.
Bartolomé de Las Casas, "Of the Island of Hispaniola" (1542)
Iroquois Constitution
History of the Pequot War Mason's Narrative
A Brief History of the Pequot War (1736, repr. 1971);
Andrew Jackson, First
Annual Message to Congress (1829)
In the early nineteenth century, the lands occupied by southeastern and
northwestern Native American groups, including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw,
Seminole, Fox, and Creek, were closed in upon by an expanding frontier of white
settlement. In this address, President Jackson, a former frontiersman and Indian
fighter, cloaked his argument for the relocation of Native Americans in the
language of concern and honor. Indian removal helped bring about economic
expansion for the new republic, but at tremendous cost to both the Native
Americans who fought displacement and who moved west.
The Removal Act
28 May 1830
"Memorial
of the Cherokee Nation" (1830)
The Washington administration had established a policy designed to
"civilize" the Indians, and the Cherokee, more than any other Native
American group, had done so-by codifying their own legal system, printing their
own newspapers, and even owning slaves. However, no amount of assimilation
helped the Cherokee when the state of Georgia demanded their land. During the
"trail of tears," when the Cherokee were forced to march to Oklahoma,
more than 4,000 Cherokee died. The "Memorial of the Cherokee Nation"
appeared in Nile’s Weekly Register in 1830.
General Winfield Scott
Order to the Cherokee
First hand account of
Removal by Army Pvt John Burnett
Black
Hawk, “Life of Black Hawk” (1833)
In 1832, Black Hawk (1767–1838), whose Native American name was
Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, led a band of Sauk and Fox Indians in a fight to
reclaim lands in Illinois and Wisconsin that the Indians believed Americans had
stolen in 1804. Desperate and hungry, they were no match for the U. S. Army,
which hunted down and killed most of Black Hawk’s group at The Battle of Bad
Axe in western Wisconsin. In this document, Black Hawk, dictating his
autobiography through a federal interpreter, remembers the coming of the
“American father” to the midwestern prairie and the land swindle that Black
Hawk called “the origin of all our difficulties.”
Chief
Seattle, Oration (1854)
Native Americans were devastated by the effects of American expansion:
70,000 Indians died in California alone between 1849 and 1859; the Paiute were
shot for sport by trappers. Between 1853 and 1857, the United States forced the
secession of 147 million acres of Native American land. This land included those
of Chief Seattle, who chose to capitulate to the government rather than risk
conflict with an army that had been singularly effective in crushing other
Indian groups.
Congressional
Report on Indian Affairs (1887)
The federal government sought to force Indians into a sedentary way of
life on limited parcels of land known as reservations. The stated goal of such a
policy was to compel the Indians to assimilate to the culture and politics of
the United States. As the secretary of the interior’s 1887 report to Congress
made clear, requiring the Indians to forsake tribal languages for English was a
key ingredient in the government’s strategy.
Federal and Indian
Lands: Map Layer Description File
A map layer of federal and Indian lands. A United States Geological Survey
website. This map layer portrays the federal and Indian administered lands of
the U.S. that have any area equal to or greater than 640 acres. The government
agencies that administer these lands include the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the
Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Defense,
the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and
the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Documentary
Relations of the Southwest
The archaeological research and collections of ASM provide the 'prehistory'
before written accounts. DRSW provides the research tools and finding aids
to the written record that began with the arrival of the Spanish explorers in
the 1530's. The 1,500 microfilm reels of documents include the diaries of
explorers and reports of missionaries and soldiers, from the first written
accounts of contact with indigenous peoples in the 16th Century to the Mexican
declaration of independence from Spain in 1821. The place names,
architecture, food, and many of the Southwestern cultures have their origin in
the history of this region. The 'Southwest' in this case covers Texas, New
Mexico, Arizona, California, and northern Mexico: all of what was northern New
Spain.
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