Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

Jackson’s Indian policy, especially the Removal Act of 1830, an act that, according to another scholar,
resulted from an overextension or abuse of federal power, treated the Indians terribly. (Cave, 416-419).
Rather than continuing to condemn Indian policy, Irving who had set out with companions Charles Joseph
Latrobe and Count de Pourtales on a trip west, joined a government expedition. At Fort Gibson in
Arkansas the three met up with Captain Henry Levitt Ellsworth, who had been appointed to carry out
peaceful removal negotiations with the Indians. Ellsworth offered Irving the position of secretary for the
expedition. Irving wrote to his sister,
I shall accompany the commissioners on their expedition into the territories west
of the Mississippi, to visit and hold conference with the emigrating Indian tribes.
The commissioner, Mr. Ellsworth...invited me. (Pierre Irving, Vol. 3, 34).
Irving never mentioned the removal act in his letters or his book, except for the description of Ellsworth as
“pacificator.” (Pourtales, 46). He and his companions traveled the rest of the way with Ellsworth. Irving’s
participation in the journey would seem out of character for one so strongly opposed to such treatment of
the Indians if he did not already view the situation as a lost cause.
Irving participated in this government expedition because he believed that Indian races were
already doomed, and he wanted to see them before it was too late, not because he lacked principle or
desired to produce a great literary work about them. In his letters, Irving expressed almost boyish
excitement about seeing the western Indians. He wrote to his sister, “[I am] completely launched in savage
life & extremely excited and interested by this wild country and the wild scenes and people.” (Pierre Irving,
3, 23). Not only curiosity drove Irving, but also his belief that the Indians were part of a fast-disappearing
America. In another letter, one to his brother Peter, Irving wrote about his participation in Ellsworth’s
expedition:
The offer was too tempting to be resisted. I should have an opportunity of seeing the
remnants of those great Indian tribes, which are now about to disappear as independent
nations, or to be amalgamated under some new form of government. I should see those
fine countries of the far west while still in a state of pristine wildness, and behold herds of
8