Considering, Sadly, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek

Most of you are familiar with the phrase “the Trail of Tears.” Perhaps many of you, though, don’t remember hearing anything about the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Only recently did I learn that that was the name of the first removal treaty that initiated the trail of tears for Native Americans. 

Andrew Jackson instigated the removal of Indians from the eastern U.S. states. One of the major events of the War of 1812 was the Battle of New Orleans in 1814, led by General Andrew (“Old Hickory”) Jackson. He was then regarded as a war hero, and 14 years later, he was elected the seventh POTUS.

As I noted in my June 2012 blog post about the War of 1812 (see here), the greatest losers in that war were the Native Americans. Jackson fought against the “Indians” then, and subsequently, in his first State of the Union address (in December 1829), he asked Congress to pass Indian removal legislation.

In April 1830, the Senate passed the Indian Removal Act, and then on May 26, the House of Representatives passed the Act by a vote of 101 to 97. Four days later, it was signed into law by President Jackson. Then the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was enacted 195 years ago, on September 27, 1830.

Dancing Rabbit Creek was the name of a small geographical area in what is now Noxubee County, Mississippi. The Choctaw Nation occupied more than 2/3 of what became the state of Mississippi. The 1830 treaty was with those living in the northern part of the Choctaw’s land. Their removal began in 1831.

The 1831~33 journey westward was marked by hunger, exposure, disease, and death. During that terrible time, the Arkansas Gazette reported that a Choctaw chief lamented that his people’s removal from Mississippi resulted in a "trail of tears and death."*¹

The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek continued genocidal actions of the U.S. against Native Americans. Even though most USAmericans have not usually considered the nation’s treatment of Indians as genocide, that seems to be an apt description of what has gone on for centuries.

The 1948 UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

But according to Claude (whom I have repeatedly called my AI buddy), many genocide scholars now argue that the cumulative effect of European colonization, including disease, warfare, and deliberate policies, constitutes genocide even if individual components were initially unintentional.

For the Native Americans who lived in the northeastern part of what became the USA, a large percentage of the Native Americans in “New England” had already died before 1621 from diseases (mostly smallpox) brought by the Europeans who had come in the previous decade.*²

So, whether intentional or not, European colonists caused the genocide of Native Americans.

Much more needs to be done to correct past genocidal activities. Fortunately, it is generally said that the “Indian Wars” ended in 1890. But mistreatment of Native Americans continued long after that.

I was delighted that Deb Haaland became the first Indian Cabinet secretary in U.S. history in March 2021. But her maternal grandparents suffered under government regulations.*³   

Currently, up to 20% of Native Americans live on reservations. That represents several hundred thousand people out of a total Native American population of around 6-9 million. Many of those living on reservations suffer from poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, and relatively low life expectancy.

Native Americans have the highest poverty rate of any major racial group, and unemployment rates have averaged 50% for decades on many reservations. Alcoholism death rates among young Native Americans is over ten times the national average of the general population.

Further, Indian communities experience higher rates of suicide compared to all other racial and ethnic groups, and Native Americans have the lowest life expectancy among racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.

These negative considerations are all largely rooted in the shameful Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. And they are all issues that need to be addressed more fully by the federal government, seeking liberty and justice for all U.S. citizens.

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*¹ It should be noted that the term “the trail of tears” is most often associated with the removal of the Cherokee Nation from northern Georgia and bordering areas beginning in 1838.

*² This was mentioned in my Thanksgiving blog post made in November 2009: The View from This Seat: What About the First Thanksgiving Day?

*³ A January 2021 blog post was titled, “A Notable Nomination: Haaland for Secretary of the Interior.” That was certainly notable, for she became the first Native American to serve in a President’s Cabinet. Considerably after 1890, her maternal grandparents were, in Haaland’s words, “stolen from their families when they were only 8 years old and were forced to live away from their parents, culture and communities until they were 13.” They were forced to go to a federal Indian boarding school, and such schools continued until the 1960s.

America's First War

The Revolutionary War began before there was a United States of America, so the first war declared by the USA began 200 years ago this month. On June 18, 1812, the day after its approval by the U.S. Congress, a declaration of war against the British Empire was signed by President Madison. That was the beginning of the War of 1812, America’s first war.

The subtitle of historian David R. Hickey’s definitive book The War of 1812 (1989) is “A Forgotten Conflict.” It is perhaps the least understood of all American wars. It was also probably the most controversial: some of the northeastern states even considered seceding from the Union because of it.

The primary slogan of the “War Hawks,” as the most vocal pro-war advocates were called, was “Free Trade & Sailors’ Rights.” British ships in the years before the war often interfered with U.S. merchant ships, hindering their “free trade” with European countries (mainly France).

A bigger problem was “impressment,” the British practice of capturing seamen on American ships and forcing them into service on British vessels. Hickey points out that perhaps as many as 6,000 American citizens suffered impressment by the British between 1803 and 1812 (p. 11).

Other matters lurked in the minds of at least some War Hawks, propelling them toward war. One was the desire to conquer Canada and, thus, to eradicate British land-holding on the North American continent. Similarly, others wanted to fight in order to end British influence over and cooperation with Native Americans, with whom the young nation was constantly fighting.

And so the U. S. declared war on the British Empire. That led to the first, and only, invasion of the U.S. by a foreign country (unless you count the invasion of the Union by the Confederate States in 1863). The primary British invasions were into Maryland and Washington, D.C., in August 1814. That was a terrible time for the nation, for the British burned the Capitol, the President’s home (officially known only since 1901 as the White House), and other government buildings.

The following month, after a night of “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air” in a decisive battle fought at Fort McHenry and in the harbor southeast of Baltimore, Francis Scott Key penned the words to “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Although a peace treaty to end the war was signed on Christmas Eve, 1814, the final and one of the bloodiest battles of the war was fought the following month. That was the Battle of New Orleans, led by General Andrew (“Old Hickory”) Jackson, a war hero who was later (in 1828) elected President. Finally, the War of 1812 was officially declared over in February 1815.

Perhaps the greatest losers in the War of 1812 were the Native Americans. In 1813-14, General Jackson led major battles against the Creek Indians in the southeastern states. Later, President Jackson called for an Indian Removal Act in a 1829 speech. That Act was signed into law the following year, and it led to the removal of Indian tribes to federal territory west of the Mississippi River. The Native Americans’ sad trek west is known as the Trail of Tears.”

While we rejoice that the War of 1812 preserved this nation and greatly increased its status among the nations of the world, we also painfully recognize how unjust was the treatment of the Native Americans after that war. Learning from the mistakes of the past, let’s resolve to work now toward the removal, in ourselves and in society, of all harmful attitudes and actions toward people of other ethnic, racial, national, or religious groups.