Traces of History by Patrick Wolfe

Author:Patrick Wolfe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Hamilton was reacting to what he saw as the dangerous excesses of the years immediately following independence, when many of the successful revolutionaries had been in no mood to appease tribes who, in many cases, had sided with the British. In 1786, Congress, fearing that Virginia’s threatened invasion of Indian country could unite the southern tribes in a hostile alliance, urged Virginia to ‘abstain from committing Hostilities against, making Reprisals upon, or entering into War with all or any Tribes or Nation of Indians with which the United States are in Peace or any other’.19 Other state legislatures – Georgia, North Carolina and New York in particular – sought to run their own Indian affairs, a situation that threatened to get out of hand when, in Robert Clinton’s words, ‘Georgia’s unilateral efforts at cessions and treaty-making with rump delegations of the Creek Nation spawned an Indian war on the eve of the Constitutional Convention.’20 The response of a committee of the Continental Congress would echo down the annals of federal Indian policy:

An avaricious disposition in some of our people to acquire large tracts of land and often by unfair means, appears to be the principal source of difficulties with the Indians … The committee conceives that it has been long the opinion of the country, supported by Justice and humanity, that the Indians have just claims to all lands occupied by and not fairly purchased from them … and no particular state can have an exclusive interest in the management of Affairs with any of the tribes.21

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