The Fate of the Indians
For the indigenous Indians, every American cliché ran in reverse: expansion became contraction, democracy became tyranny, prosperity became poverty, and liberty became confinement. Before 1800, a million Indians lived north of the Rio Grande, speaking 2000 languages and subsisting in small villages on maize, game and fish. The coming of the Europeans caused a flowering of Indian culture. From whites, the Sioux obtained their horses, the Navajo their sheep, the Iroquois, their weapons. But destruction quickly followed. The New England tribes, hard hit by disease, were broken in the Pequot War (1636) and King Phillip’s War (1675-6). In the middle colonies, the great Delaware nation was defeated by the Dutch in the Esopus War (1660), disgraced by the Iroquois (who made all the Delaware into “honorary women”), and cheated by Quakers. The Delaware began a great diaspora; today they are scattered from Canada to Texas. For the southern tribes another fate was in store. Planters, led by Andrew Jackson, obtained a law for their “removal.” Despite the opposition of the Supreme Court, some 50,000 Cherokee were collected in concentration camps and sent on a winter march to Oklahoma in 1836. Many died. The Choctaw, Creek and Chiksaw suffered equally. Only the Seminole resisted for long in the Florida swamps.