Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

entertained a high opinion of the superintendent of Indian trade and refused to credit the charges of maladministration preferred by Benton. This refusal led Benton to open a direct assault upon the system in the Senate. In this two advantages favored his success: as an inhabitant of a frontier state he was presumed to have personal knowledge of the abuses of the system he was attacking; and as a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs he was specially charged with the legislative oversight of matters pertaining to the Indians.

Benton believed and labored to show that the original purpose of the government trading houses had been lost sight of; that the administration of the system had been marked by stupidity and fraud; that the East had been preferred to the West by the superintendent of Indian trade in making purchases and sales; in short that the factory system constituted a great abuse, the continued maintenance of which was desired only by those private interests which found a profit therein. In view of the circumstances of the situation his conclusion that the government trading houses should be abolished was probably wise; but the reasons on which he based this conclusion were largely erroneous. His information was gained from such men as Ramsey Crooks, then and for long years a leader in the councils of the American Fur Company. This organization had a direct interest in the overthrow of the factory system. Its estimate of the value of the latter was about as disingenuous as would be the opinion today of the leader of a liquor dealers' organization of the merits of the Prohibition party.

Benton's charges of fraud on the part of the superintendent and the factors failed to convince the majority of the Senators who spoke in the debate, and the student of the subject today must conclude that the evidence does not sustain them. There was more truth in his charges with respect to unwise management of the enterprise; but for this Congress, rather

than the superintendent, was primarily responsible. It is evident, too, that in spite of his claim to speak from personal knowledge Benton might well have been better informed about the subject of the Indian trade. One of his principal charges concerned the unsuitability of the articles selected for it by the superintendent. But the list of items which he read to support this charge but partially supported his contention. Upon one item-eight gross of jews'-harps-the orator fairly exhausted his powers of sarcasm and invective. Yet a fuller knowledge of the subject under discussion would have spared him this effort. Ramsey Crooks could have informed him that jews'-harps were a well-known article of the Indian trade. Only a year before this tirade was delivered the American Fur Company had supplied a single trader with four gross of these articles for his winter's trade on the Mississippi.

Although Benton's charges so largely failed of substantiation, yet the Senate approved his motion for the abolition of the factory system. The reasons for this action are evident from the debate. Even his colleagues on the Committee on Indian Affairs did not accept Benton's charges of maladministration. They reported the bill for the abolition of the trading-house system in part because of their objections to the system itself. It had never been extended to more than a fraction of the Indians on the frontier; to extend it to all of them would necessitate a largely increased capital and would result in a multiplication of the obstacles already encountered on a small scale. The complicated nature of the Indian trade was such that only individual enterprise and industry was fitted to conduct it with success. Finally the old argument which had been wielded against the initiation of the system, that it was not a proper governmental function, was employed. The trade should be left to individuals, the government limiting itself to regulating properly their activities.

Benton's method of abolishing the factory system exhibited as little evidence of statesmanship as did that employed

by Jackson in his more famous enterprise of destroying the second United States Bank. In 1818 Calhoun, as Secretary of War, had been directed by Congress to propose a plan for the abolition of the trading-house system. In his report he pointed out that two objects should be held in view in winding up its affairs: to sustain as little loss as possible; and to withdraw from the trade gradually in order that the place vacated by the government might be filled by others with as little disturbance as practicable. Neither of these considerations was heeded by Benton. He succeeded in so changing the bill for the abolition of the system as to provide that the termination of its affairs should be consummated within a scant two months, and by another set of men than the factors and superintendent. That considerable loss should be incurred in winding up such a business was inevitable. Calhoun's suggestions would have minimized this as much as possible. Benton's plan caused the maximum of loss to the government and of confusion to the Indian trade. According to a report made by Congress in 1824 on the abolition of the factory system, a loss of over fifty per cent of the capital stock was sustained.

The failure of the trading-house system constitutes but one chapter in the long and sorrowful story of the almost total failure of the government of the United States to realize in practice its good intentions toward the Indians. The factory system was entered upon from motives of prudence and humanity; that it was productive of beneficial results cannot be successfully disputed; that it failed to achieve the measure of benefit to the red race and the white for which its advocates had hoped must be attributed by the student, as it was by Calhoun, "not to a want of dependence on the part of the Indians on commercial supplies but to defects in the system itself or in its administration." The fatal error arose from the timidity of the government. Instead of monopolizing the field of the Indian trade, it entered upon it as the competitor of the private trader. Since its agents could not stoop to the

practices to which the latter resorted, the failure of the experiment was a foregone conclusion. Yet it did not follow from this failure that with a monopoly of the field the government would not have rendered better service to the public than did the private traders. Lacking the courage of its convictions, it permitted the failure of perhaps the most promising experiment for the amelioration of the condition of the red man upon which it has ever embarked.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF JONATHAN CARVER

WILLIAM BROWNING

Few of our early native explorers rank with Carver. The importance of a correct account of him, however, depends not so much on the value of his discoveries as on the pragmatic fact that his name has occupied a prominent place for the past one hundred and forty years. The wide interest that Carver's work elicited and the hold it has kept despite all the attacks of critics have naturally aroused inquiry concerning his personal history. Yet, as John Thomas Lee says, "we know very little of Carver's early life." Lee has done more than anyone else to correct the criticisms aimed at Carver and has with thoroughness gathered the material referring to him, but he recognizes, nevertheless, the mystery that shrouds the career of Carver.

One sketch, that of Judge Daniel W. Bond, gives some items, the best account perhaps that has appeared. But it is in a little-seen volume, lacks much of importance to the picture, has inevitable slips, makes no reference to the author's sources of information, and has doubt thrown on it by the editor.

The accounts of Lee and Bond give practically everything so far known regarding the personal side of Carver's career. Yet even so primary a fact as the date of Carver's birth has not been hitherto known. To anyone acquainted with Connecticut it must seem incomprehensibly strange that such a man could have been bred there, and yet no traces of his life or lineage be discoverable.

1“A Bibliography of Carver's Travels,” in State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Proceedings, 1909, 148.

* George Sheldon, History of Deerfield, Massachusetts (Deerfield, 1895), II, 101-104; Carver genealogy supplied by Judge Daniel W. Bond.

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »