Letter from the Secretary of War...in Relation to the Hostile Disposition of Indian Tribes on the Northwestern Frontier

Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1828.

House Document 277, 20th Congress, 1st Session. 19 pp, disbound. Light toning; very good. Includes correspondence from Lewis Cass, Thomas McKenney, and Joseph M. Street relating to the Winnebago uprising of 1827 and the probability of further violence between Indians and settlers in the Upper Mississippi region. McKenney asserts that the violence (an attack on civilians by a small faction of the Winnebago tribe in response to encroachment upon their land by miners) was not part of any larger movement by the Indians, and that the incident "may serve to shew that a few Indian outrages may be committed without impying the necessary existence of a plan of a more general and destructive nature....In my opinion there are no more Pontiacs of Tecumthes to form and lead on confederated bands; and that, for the future, all that our frontier citizens may have to apprehend will be an occasional irruption like the present and the destruction of a few lives, and even these will likely be limited...." His opinion was not widely held, however, and the conflict was used by supporters of Indian Removal as further evidence that Americans and Indians could not live peaceably together. Sabin 34482; Whitney, Illinois Bibliography, 725.

Item #22579

Price: $250.00