austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

32 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
quently (Utley and Washburn, 1985). In an attempt to help protect both
themselves and their land from the invading American settlers, many
Indians allied themselves with the French in various wars, as well as
politically with Britain in some of the continuous disputes over settlers
stealing Indian property (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990).
Finally, Britain, which sought to exploit the Indians via trade as
opposed to land theft (Jaimes, 1992), established in 1763 a blanket proclamation
that formally forbade American settlers from stealing more
land from the Indians, setting a boundary at the Allegheny mountains
(Smith, 2000). While frontiersmen like George Washington saw the
proclamation as a "temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians,"
and while there were numerous attempted breaches of this law
(including an outright military invasion of Indian territory by Virginia
militia in 1774), the Indians (with some British encouragement in the
complex political environment) had some success in en forcing the proc ­
lamation (Downes, 1940). In fact, the 1763 legal in fringement on settlers
' "right" to steal Indian lands was one of the primary motivating
factors in the American settlers' revolution from British rule 12 years
later (Novack, 1972), although important tax and trade issues were
also involved in the conflict (Smith, 2000). Most Indians quite naturally
sided with the British against the USA in the American Revolutionary
War (which lasted until at least 1782 west of the Allegheny
mountains), as, despite some French political assistance later in the war,
USA attempts to win Indian neutrality with treaties promising to steal
no more Indian land and to engage in friendly trade (through which
the Indians hoped to obtain the weapons needed to de fend against settler
encroachments. on their land) were foiled by continued USA settler
invasions of Indian territory and by the USA's failure to pay for goods
traded with the Indians (Downes, 1940).
After the USA victory over Britain, the white American settlers were
"freed" from British legislation prohibiting the theft of more land from
the native Americans. As a result, it became possible for more USA
territories and states to be created out of further areas stolen from the
Indians. The USA initially claimed all Indian territory as its own, arrogantly
announced that the Indians as a whole had no rights whatsoever
to their own land, and offered the Indian nations the choice of various
small reservations under USA dominion or the "destruction" of their
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''women and children" (Downes, 1940). However, USA military invasions
of Indian territory were initially de feated in the early 1790s, and
so the USA resorted thereafter to using local military superiority to
force individual Indian tribes/nations to enter into treaties to· give up a
portion of their land in return for the USA agreeing to stop its attacks
(Jennings, 1993). Such treaties were similar to those entered into by the
USA in the 1775- 1782 war (Downes, 1940), although this pacification
strategy was not completely successful in holding all Indian military
forces at bay in the American Revolutionary war or in subsequent conflicts
such as in the War of 18 12 (Utley and Washburn, 1985).
The USA pacification treaties with the Indians were substantially different
from those typically entered into earlier by the European colonial
powers. In particular, the European colonists had generally engaged in
treaties with Indians merely in order to form alliances with them to
promote trade, although it is true that allied Indians were often encouraged
to fight other tribes who were cooperating with competing European
powers (Jennings, 1975). In contrast, the USA's strategy was to
use each successive treaty to "keep the natives quiet" on the frontier
until the newest conquered possessions could be fully absorbed and
"resources could be mustered and organized" to allow armed settlers
and soldiers to invade other Indian territories that the USA had guaranteed
by treaty not to seize (Jennings, 1993). Grinde (1975) provides
an illustrative case study whereby settlers in the 1800s invaded Cherokee
land guaranteed by federal treaty and engaged in widespread killing
of lndians there, but Federal officials generally allowed such behavior,
legally asserting in the Cherokee case that the Federal treaties were
overridden by local government rights (such as that of the state of Georgia
here) which invariably sided with the settlers and left the Indians
with no rights.
USA purchases of land from European powers, as well as the USA's
seizure of territory from Mexico in an imperialist war that the USA
launched in the middle of the nineteenth century (Zinn, 1995), enabled
the USA to carry on its strategy of engaging in pacification/extermination
of ever more Indians. Frequently, after settlers had invaded the Indian
territories guaranteed by prior treaties (and had begun taking or destroying
Indian food sources on the Indian lands), the Indians were paid a
nominal amount for the lands they were forced to give up (under threat