368
cept the rich furs which still abounded in his woods. Hence the chase became necessary, not merely to provide for his subsistence, but in order to procure the only objects of barter which he could furnish to Europe.[1] While the wants of the natives were thus increasing, their resources continued to diminish.
From the moment when a European settlement is formed in the neighbourhood of the territory occupied by the Indians, the beasts of chase takes the alarm.[2] Thousands of savages, wandering in the forest and destitute of any fixed dwelling, did not disturb them; but as soon as the continuous sounds of European labour are heard in the neighbourhood, they begin to flee away, and retire to the west, where their instinct teaches them that they will find deserts of immeasurable extent. “The buffalo is constantly receding,” say Messrs. Clarke and Cass in their Report of the year 1829; “a few years since they approached the base of the Allegany; and a few years hence they may even be rare upon the immense plains which extend to the base of the Rocky mountains.” I have been assured that this effect of the approach of the whites is often felt at two hundred leagues' distance from the frontier. Their influence is thus exerted
- ↑
Messrs. Clarke and Cass, in their report to congress, the 4th February, 1829, p. 23,
expressed themselves thus: “The time when the Indians generally could supply
themselves with food and clothing, without any of the articles of civilized life, has
long since passed away. The more remote tribes, beyond the Mississippi, who live
where immense herds of buffalo are yet to be found, and who follow those animals in
their periodical migrations, could more easily than any others recur to the habits of
their ancestors, and live without the white man or any of his manufactures. But the
buffalo is constantly receding. The smaller animals, the bear, the deer, the beaver,
the otter, the muskrat, &c., principally minister to the comfort and support of the
Indians; and these cannot be taken without guns, ammunition, and traps.
“Among the northwestern Indians particularly, the labour of supplying a family with food in excessive. Day after day is spent by the hunter without success, and during this interval his family must subsist upon bark or roots, or perish. Want and misery are around them and among them. Many die every winter from actual starvation.”
The Indians will not live as Europeans live; and yet they can neither subsist without them, nor exactly after the fashion of their fathers. This is demonstrated by a fact which I likewise give upon official authority. Some Indians of a tribe on the banks of Lake Superior had killed a European; the American government interdicted all traffic with the tribe to which the guilty parties belonged, until they were delivered up to justice. This measure had the desired effect.
- ↑ “Five years ago,” says Volney in his Tableaux des Etats Unis, p. 370, “in going from Vincennes to Kaskaskia, a territory which now forms part of the state of Illinois, but which at the time I mention was completely wild (1797), you could not cross a prairie without seeing herds of from four to five hundred buffaloes. There are now none remaining; they swam across the Mississippi to escape from the hunters, and more particularly from the bells of the American cows.”
