Adam Berg: Trade Mission

This archive piece can be found at http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/aj/id/17972

Adam Berg

Dr. Coronado

English 226: Archive Project

12-9-14

Trade Mission

     Long have we heard the tales of the great slayings of Native Americans by the settlers. The Trail of Tears is perhaps one of the best known examples of a large group of Native Americans being taken out of their lands and forced to relocate, with many dying along the way because of poor conditions. However, it is rare that we see any texts which show us the steps leading up to such a massacre. In the year 1820, a man by the name of Morrill Marston drafted a letter to an aide to the president detailing his interactions with numerous tribes of Native Americans in the upper Mississippi Valley.        This letter came after he was tasked with the job of studying the local Native American tribes’ way of life and advising the aide on steps that he feels are necessary in order to form a lasting peace between the developing America and the native tribes. Marston’s report is filled with his observations and opinions on many of the tribes in the area and his ideas for whom the government should try to form lasting relationships with in order to make the migration west safer experience for those who decided to take the trip. Through Marston’s report, we can see that certain tribes take his favor while others fall out based upon the opinions of certain tribes given by others. Marston’s letter is an important document which needs to be widely read because it shows the amount of effort which was exerted in order to attempt lasting peace with certain Indian tribes.

     In the report, we get a very detailed account of Marston’s meetings with the Native American tribes and what went on. Specifically, Marston tells us exactly what was asked and what was said by recording large parts of his report as a dialogue between himself and the tribes. His areas of question and answer with the tribes reveal a great deal about the methods by which he attained the information he was looking for; namely to find out which tribes would be loyal to the government of the United States. The first such dialogue we see comes between Marston, a Sauk chief, and a Fox chief. The questions asked by Marston are quite normal, such as customs and which tribes they are on good terms with, but an odd feeling is stirred when Marston is insistent on knowing exactly which tribes these two are on good terms with and where they are located. After some questioning, Marston adds a note that “They acknowledge that the Sauks, Foxes, Kickapoos & Iowas are in close alliance, but observed that the reason for being in alliance with the Iowas was, because they were a bad people, & therefore it was better to have their friendship than enmity” (Marston 58-2). He states very clearly that these two tribes share a common friend because they are afraid to have them as an enemy. By the insistency that we see in his questioning, we can see that these tribes are ones that Marston feels that the government should trade with. In his article, “We are not now as we once were:” Iowa Indians’ Political and Economic Adaptations during U.S. Incorporation,” David Bernstein discusses the impact that the Iowa Indian Tribe had in the developing of the new world. He says that during a meeting of tribes from the upper Mississippi Valley, “The Iowa representatives… highlighted their communities’ agricultural activities… [the Iowa chief] hoped that by illustrating the Iowa’s recent transition from a hunting economy to one based on sedentary agriculture, he could convince the treaty commissioner to accept Iowa land claims over others” (Bernstein 605-606). We see that, though the other tribes disliked the Iowa, the Iowa tribe knew that they would gain more favor with the government if they were to talk about their transition to a calmer, more European lifestyle which was dependent on farming. By doing this, we can see that the Iowa tribe thought like the Americans and, from the perspective of the other tribes, could be seen as a bad people for accepting the way of life which the Americans had settled into. Bernstein has the luxury of looking back on the situation with the Indians and Marston had to analyze and decide on the fly. To Bernstein, it is obvious that the Iowa tribe was adapting to the American culture and were trying to conform to what the Americans expected the tribes to become. The chief of the Iowa tribe was smart enough to see that he could get the best possible areas for his people if he were to “Americanize” himself. Marston’s report gives us the beginning of the story of how the Iowa tribe was viewed by other tribes and how they became part of the American society. This is important to read about because it shows that not all tribes wanted to resist the American machine.

     Another important aspect of history that we rarely read about is how Marston’s report reveals what the lives of these Native American tribes were like before the Americans started to meddle in their affairs. Marston pays special attention to the way in which the Sauks and Foxes form their armies of warriors. He tells us that

The males of each nation of the Sauks & Foxes are divided into two grand divisions, called kishkoo-qua & osh-kosh: -- to each there is a head called, War chief. As soon as the first male child of a family is born he is arranged to the first band, & when a second is born to the second band, & so on… when they go to war & on all public occasions, his band is always painted white, with pipe clay (Marston 58-11).

The sons born to each family are placed in different brigades of the tribe’s military. Marston goes into great depths about how these tribes of warriors are led and what the function of each member of the war tribe is. From Marston’s report, and the way he explains these customs, we see that Marston sees the tribes as still being savage peoples, particularly in the way that he emphasizes the fact that the boys are sent to these tribes to be part of wars, and glosses over the fact that the placement of these boys into these tiered tribes is a sort of social hierarchy which places the older boys in a position which the younger are expected to strive to achieve. Because of Marston’s attitude toward the Native American tribes, it is important for this piece to be read because we are seeing someone apply their predigest thinking to a people who they have just met. Through this report, we see a glaring oversight in what the warrior tribes of these two tribes actually signify; not war, but status for the first born son in each family. It is because Marston is blinded by his preconceived notions of these tribes that he skips over the fact that the Sauk and Fox chiefs have clearly told him that these tribes of warriors are actually used for status. In this, we see the attitude that many Americans would have had toward the Indians.

            Marston also writes about death among the tribes and gives us the burial rights for normal members and for warriors, something that is rarely seen in print. Of the burial rights, Marston says:

When an Indian dies, his relations put on him his best clothes, & either bury him in the ground… As soon as an Indian dies his relations engage three or four persons to bury the body; they usually make a rough coffin of a piece of a canoe or some bark, the body is then taken to the grave in a blanket or Buffaloe skin, & placed in the coffin, together with a Hatchet, Knife, &c., & then covered over with earth. If the deceased was a warrior, a post is usually erected at his head, on which is painted red crosses of different sizes, to denote the number of men, women,& children he has killed of the enemy during his life time, & which they say he will claim as his slaves now that he has gone to the other world (Marston 58-20/58-21).

The interesting thing to note in this quote is how Marston is, basically, describing how we bury our dead. Even at the time when Marston wrote this report, we were burying our dead in the ground and holding ceremonies where family and friends would spend hours around the body. What is noteworthy about Marston’s description is that he seems to find their customs odd and makes a heavy note of how the warriors are treated differently. Marston seems to be seeing his own customs reflected back at him yet he is unable to recognize the actions that he, doubtlessly, has performed at some point in his life. This section of his report is important to read because it shows that the American’s of the time were unable to see the Indian tribes as human and could not accept that they had many of the same customs. In modern teachings, we are taught that the Indians were savage and it was a favor to their people that they were murdered, but Marston’s report shows that the opposite is true, the Indians were just different and that Americans could not look past the small differences to accept the Indians as human.

            Saul Schwartz of Princeton writes, in his article “Middle Ground or Native Ground? Material Culture at Iowaville,” that “Ethno historians situate and contrast contemporary Indian-European relations in central and eastern North America as either a "middle ground" or a "native ground." Yet these constructs reproduce the very narratives they were intended to challenge. By framing Indian responses to colonialism as a binary of assimilation or resistance, they reduce cultural production to an expression of underlying power structures, recalling simplistic acculturation models that link cultural continuity with relative strength and cultural change with relative weakness” (Schwartz 537). Schwartz’s article defines the two types of interactions that the Americans had with the Native Americans. It is the second classification, “Native Ground,” which applies in the case of Marston’s article because the Indians were met on ground which was theirs, but which the white man wanted to harvest resources from.

Though I have only highlighted a few instances which exemplify why Marston’s text should be published and read widely, I feel that these instances are main cruxes as to why this report needs to be read. Overall, the report shows modern readers the frame of mind which Americans of the 1820’s held when interacting with the people native to America. We see many places where Marston’s view of the Indians is clouded by the preconceived notions which were instilled in him before he had contact with these tribes. Though Marston is on a mission to estimate the feasibility of a continuing trade relation with these tribes, we see his personal feelings come through and it is a perfect representation of the bias that was held by many “partial” agents who were given such tasks. This report needs to be read so we have a piece to show the hardships that the Native Americans had to face simply by inviting a white man into their villages to conduct such studies. We often hear of occurrences such as The Trail of Tears and this report is a clear example of why such atrocities cam to pass.

Work Cited

Bernstein, David. "We Are Not Now As We Once Were": Iowa Indians' Political And Economic Adaptations During U.S. Incorporation." Ethnohistory 54.4 (2007): 605-637. America: History & Life. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

Marston, Morrill. “Indians of Upper Mississippi (1820).” American Journeys. Wisconsinhistory.org. Web. 9 Sept 2014.

Schwartz, Saul, and William Green. "Middle Ground Or Native Ground? Material Culture At Iowaville." Ethnohistory 60.4 (2013): 537-565. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.