Question. Is there any gratitude in the Indian? Answer. Very little. Question. The general impression is that the Indian has rather a grateful heart for favors. Answer. Those who have been upon the frontier will not indorse that opinion. To the white man the Indian shows but little gratitude. The wild Indian deems every favor extended to him by a white man as but an evidence of fear or weakness. Question. Have these Indians any well-defined ideas concerning property? Answer. The mixed bloods have; but the idea of the full-blood Indian is a very ill-defined one. The ground over which he hunts is deemed to be his own. He has no idea of titles vesting by virtue of improving lands. The Indians of the Five Nations do not hold their lands in fee-simple; they are not allowed to dispose of their lands. Question. How is the transfer of lands made? Answer. A party is permitted to hold all the lands he improves and fences, without limitation as to the number of acres; and he can pass his title to the improvements, but not to the land itself. Question. The title to the land itself remains in the nation? Answer. Yes, sir. It is to be hoped that that system will not be continued, so that there may be an influx of white population in that region, in order to develop the mineral and agricultural resources of that country, which now lie dormant. Question. What is the custom among them in regard to the right of holding and improving lands? Is a license, or any similar document, given by the chief or the council to each individual Indian? Answer. A record is kept by the proper officer of the amount of land claimed as improved, and a small tax is paid-a fee for registration. Question. They have an office of registration? Answer. Yes, sir, and other offices. Their legislatures meet annually, and their laws are published in book form. Question. Will you describe their government and their mode of legislation? Answer. Their government is republican in form. Members of the legislature, an upper and a lower house, are elected every two years, I think, who pass local laws and impose local taxes. For instance, by the laws of the several Indian legislatures, no intoxicating liquor is allowed to be sold within their territories, and a military organization is kept up, termed the "light-horse," as a police, for the purpose of preventing whites from bringing liquor into the territory and disposing of it. Those local legislatures impose taxes and fines. In cases occurring between whites and Indians-a case of homicide, for instance the case is not triable under any local laws of the Indian territory, but in the nearest United States district court. Question. How are the members of their legislative bodies elected, and what are the qualifications of an elector? Answer. That they shall be citizens of the Indian territory, whether white men or red men. Question. Can a white man residing there vote? Answer. He can if he is a citizen of the territory; and he can become a citizen immediately by marrying an Indian woman and making application, which is invariably granted, or by a residence of one or two years in the territory and making improvements-by becoming an actual settler. Question. How is the vote taken? Answer. By ballot. Question. And in the organization of their legislative houses, have they a speaker and other officers ? Answer. Yes, sir; their legislatures are modelled after the legislatures of the several States; and they have a territorial secretary and treasurer, the treasurer being the custodian of the several funds of the territory-the school fund, &c. Question. After a bill has been passed by the two houses how is it approved-how does it become a law? Answer. Each nation has a head chief; the head chief of the Creek nation is called king, or mico; of the other nations they are termed head chiefs. Among them are men of very considerable ability. Question. Does the head chief, or king, of a nation approve the bills in a manner similar to the governors of States? Answer. In addition to their legislatures they hold councils, at which the head chief presides. These councils consider questions of general policy-the applications of persons to become citizens; and the treaties are made by the councils, and not by the legislatures. Question. And a bill would be approved by the head chief and the council? Answer. I suppose so. Question. Suppose the chief and council dissented from the provisions of any bill? Question. Has the chief or council power to alter or amend a bill? Answer. No, sir; they can suggest or recommend alterations. It is a very crude system. Question. Do you think of anything further to state in regard to the enslavement of the black race among these Indians? Answer. There are some very large slaveholders in the Indian territories. A mulatto is very seldom seen in the country. I do not recollect, with all my experience in those territo ries, to have seen two mulattoes there. The African race has been preserved in its purity there. Question. And those are now held there as slaves? Answer. Yes, sir, unless their status has been recently changed by some treaty of which I am not advised. Question. How do the Indians regard the amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery throughout the United States? Answer. They do not deem it applicable to them, as their separate and independent sovereignty and nationality have been recognized by the United States, ever since the establishment of the government of the United States, by the making of treaties with them which are ratified by the Senate of the United States, in the same manner as treaties with any foreign power. But there is among the Indians a very general willingness to abolish slavery at once, provided they can receive a moderate compensation for their slaves. Question. The fact is, that at present they do hold and use these negroes as slaves? Question. And treat them as articles of transfer and sale? Answer. Yes, sir, as slaves are treated in all countries where there are slaves. Question. The Indians do this to this day? Answer. Yes, sir. Question. And, so far as you know, they do not regard as applicable to them the amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery? Answer. Not at all. They regard themselves as foreign nations, as independent sovereignties. They perceive the fact that the exchangeable value of the slave has been greatly impaired by their vicinage to the States of the United States, as those States would furnish a secure asylum to their slaves whenever they may choose to leave their masters. But the slaves there are very well contented. They are treated by their masters with great liberality, and upon terms approaching a perfect equality, with this exception, that the owner of the slave generally does more work than the slave himself. I am satisfied this statement would be sustained by any number of negroes taken at random from any portion of the Indian territory. Their attachments to their Indian masters are very strong. Question. What has become of Albert Pike? Answer. He is at present residing in Arkansas, of which State he was one of the supreme judges at the time of the surrender. Question. How is he regarded by the people of the late Confederate States? Answer. General Pike is held in high esteem at the south because of his ability as a scholar and a poet, and his high moral character as a gentleman. He wields a very great influence in the State of Arkansas, and is regarded by the Indians as their friend and exponent. It is within my own knowledge that he accepted with very great reluctance the position of briga dier general in the confederate service. In treating with the Indians on the border his aim has always been simply to secure their neutrality, that they might not be used on either side in the late contest; and he has always worked with the Indians in the interest of humanity, endeavoring, as I have already said, to secure prisoners from maltreatment by the Indians, by offering rewards for the safe delivery of prisoners to him, and, since the surrender, he has been assiduously laboring for the interests of the government of the United States. Question. Were the Indians of the Five Nations at all unanimous in their adhesion to the late Confederate States? Please state the facts in reference to that alliance. Answer. They were unanimous, with the exception of a fraction of the Creek and Seminole nations that went north at the beginning of the contest. In May of 1861 the Cherokee nation issued a declaration of neutrality in view of the then impending war. That declaration was concurred in by the confederate authorities, and respected by General McCulloch, who was then upon the Cherokee border with an army of about 8,000 men, composed of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana troops. They maintained this neutrality until the defeat of the United States forces at the battle of Wilson's creek, Missouri, in the month of August, 1861; they then, through their principal chief, John Ross, addressed a communication to General Albert Pike, commissioner from the Confederate States to the Indian nations, and proposed to renounce their neutrality and enter into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the Confederate States. General Pike effected a treaty with them on this basis. By the terms of that treaty the Confederate States agreed to pay them the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand (250,000) dollars cash, and to continue to them the annuities that they had received from the United States, and to reimburse, them for the loss of their neutral lands in Kansas, &c. In return, the Cherokees were to furnish all their able-bodied men for service against the United States, provided that the Cherokee troops were not to be ordered out of the Cherokee nation without their own consent. Pursuant to this treaty a Cherokee force was organized under the especial direction of John Ross, who issued a declaration of war against the United States on behalf of the Cherokee nation. About one thousand of these Cherokees were present at the battle of Pea Ridge, or Elkhorn, in March of 1862. They consisted altogether of men of the Pin or Ross party. At night, after the battle was done, they moved over the field and killed and scalped the wounded of the federal army. In July of 1862 Colonel Wier, of the United States army, then commanding a force on the northern order of the Cherokee country, proposed to John Ross to abrogate the treaty entered into by the Cherokees with the Confederate States, and invited his attention to the fact that the Confederate States had violated that treaty by withdrawing their forces from the Cherokee country, and he urged the Cherokees to enter into an alliance with the United States, and tendered to John Ross and the chiefs of the nation a safe conduct to Washington and return through his lines. This proposition was at once rejected by Ross, who declared that the Cherokees were bound to the people of the south in a community of interest and sentiment, and would stand or fall with the Confederate States. He also stated that the Cherokees would never break the faith of treaties to ally themselves with a people who had authorized and practiced the most monstrous barbarities, in violation of the laws of war. This reply was forwarded with a letter explanatory, by John Ross, to General Pike, who was then about 175 miles distant, with the confederate and Indian troops, in the Chickasaw nation near the Texas border. I read the reply and letter; they were delivered to General Pike by a son or John Ross. About three months after this reply John Ross went over to the north with about one-half of the Cherokee nation, embracing the larger portion of the full-blood Indians. Many of them entered the service of the United States, and, in my opinion, it would have been cheaper for the government to have fought them than to have fed them. T. J. MACKEY. NOTE.-Many of the statements and opinions which appear to have been volunteered by me in the above testimony were elicited by remarks and questions on the part of the committee, which have not been noted by the reporter. T. J. MACKEY. |