Robert Remini

The following was a book review I wrote for Native American Readings, a class I took a couple terms ago. At the risk of being seen as an egomaniac, I will quote myself at the end because I think I made an excellent point.

M. Andrew Barton
Andrew Jackson & His Indian Wars

Remini wanted, “…to explain what happened and why” (P. vii) in the Removal of the Indian tribes from East of the Mississippi during the lifetime of Andrew Jackson. His unstated aim was to justify Jackson’s actions through a chronological look at the times the Removal occurred in.
Remini defines the Indians as the whites of the time allegedly viewed them. They were savage as far as white sensibilities were concerned. They were cruel and brutal. They had no written language or schools. They did not farm or work in factories. The land was useless to them as they could fish and hunt anywhere. They were simply “bloodthirsty children.” (p. 26)
By contrast the whites are portrayed as wonderful people. They worked hard to farm barely arable land. They were honest and generous. The “Scotch-Irish heroes” (p. 12) farmed on in constant fear of their mystical, savage neighbors. Racism was the order of the day.
The third corner in the land fight triangle was the European powers. England and Spain occupied the land North and South of the fledgling United States. Their chief role was to supply the Indians with weapons and instigate them to attack the colonies.
Jackson was born into this three cornered war. By the time he was 15 he seems to have established a hatred for the Indians and British based on childhood experiences, including but not limited to fighting in the Revolutionary War.
Two key series of events shaped his later policies towards the Indians. The first was the prevailing attitude regarding boundaries. Treaties were habitually made and remade to designate Indian lands and white lands. The second events were the use of Indians to supplement British raiding forces. Jackson developed a philosophy that to ensure security for the fledgling United States the Indians must be separated from the whites and foreign influences must be eliminated.
Jackson played a key role in eliminating the foreign influence. During the War of 1812 he kept key warriors from joining Tecumseh and, by extension, the British when he defeated the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend. This was particularly important as most European military forces were engaged in the Napoleonic Wars and manpower was at a severe shortage. The crisis was so acute that when Jackson used his status as a war hero to force the United States to ignore provisions of the Treaty of Ghent stipulating the return of lands to the Indians the British could do no more than protest through diplomacy. Having defeated the Indians on the field of battle Jackson turned to Removal to deal with their later threats.
His early attempts to remove the Indians were through treaties with the chiefs. Jackson established a pattern. He would typically corrupt the chiefs through threats and bribes. The chiefs would be put in untenable positions where they had to sign treaties exchanging their homelands East of the Mississippi for unfamiliar lands West of the Mississippi. Typically the treaty would stipulate a multiple acre to the West for each Eastern acre, moving expenses, and yearly annuities. The chiefs would receive a substantially larger portion of land as part of their bribe.
Concurrent with the coerced treaties other Indians were being forced to sign similar treaties to pay off debts. White merchants would extend credit. When the specie less Indians could not pay them back they would be forced to sign treaties ceding land to pay off their debt.
Both treaty types failed as whites would repeatedly violate the new borders. Enforcement of treaties was very one sided. Indian violators were to be turned over to white authorities for prosecution and punishment. By contrast, white violators were simply to be complained about.
The various treaties were all done by executive order until Jackson became President. He then involved Congress. With the weight of the ever more powerful government against them the Removal of the Indians was complete in all but the final execution. Either as the chief negotiator or through governmental fiat Jackson was instrumental in the final Removal of virtually every remaining Indian tribe by the time his Presidency was over.
The list of land acquired by Jackson’s efforts is very impressive. The claim that his removal of the tribes to the West of the Mississippi preserved the Indian cultures and “…was more than just a land grab” (p. 280) is also brought forth as Remini concludes that Jackson, through Removal, “…saved the five civilized tribes from probable extinction.”(P.281)
Remini demonstrates a familiarity and love for his subject. He clearly did his research. He also attempts to illustrate that Jackson was a product of his times just as the Japanese removal during World War II was understandable as a product of the time.
Indeed, a clever historian might point out that many nations developed in size and power under ruthless, cruel men who followed the dictates of their time. When morality is not part of the picture rapid expansion of national borders is historically much easier.
Remini falls short, however. His writing is rife with fragmented quotes, horribly offensive language, and an exceedingly annoying habit of referring to Jackson as Sharp Knife, Old Hickory, or his obvious favorite, the Hero. When a book is so heavily intent on hero worship it loses all credibility as an objective look at morally reprehensible actions.
He does a nice job of pointing out some of Jackson’s flaws such as his habit of haranguing and threatening chiefs. He tries to balance this out with anecdotal evidence that on rare occasions Jackson would also punish whites who violated his personal sense of fair play.
Ultimately the book has value for historical insight into what happened during the Removal of the Indians. That value unfortunately is overshadowed by the hero worship, offensive language, and justification of evil.
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Thus ends my report. And here goes my quoting of myself (I feel like Halpern all the sudden...except less famous and less financially well off)
Remini defines the Indians as the whites of the time allegedly viewed them. They were savage as far as white sensibilities were concerned. They were cruel and brutal. They had no written language or schools. They did not farm or work in factories. The land was useless to them as they could fish and hunt anywhere. They were simply “bloodthirsty children.” (p. 26)
This manner of thinking is one of the inspirations for Dreamcatchers when I began writing it. The perception of Indians as "savages", of being a people who loved to fight, lived to fight, and wanted nothing more than a good fight....that was overwhelming. The literature and media of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and even a good deal of the 20th century was rife with depictions of the warrior Indian. Every Indian was pictured as wanting to scalp, rape, kill, and smoke his pipe. Those were his only interests. It is fortunate for the Native Americans that Griffith chose The Klansman as the basis for his Birth of a Nation because had he turned his cinematic genius on the Indians, the Ku Klux Klan might have been after those with red pigmentation rather than black.
I bring Griffith up deliberatley. Many people credit him for singlehandedly reviving the Klan with his racial stereotypes and frightening pictures of the black man as sexual predator and fearsome murderer, only being defeated at the last second by the heroic whites. If you are familiar with Birth then you know of his innovations in film that so powerfully affected people, the tension that built as he cut back and forth between the "savage, bloodthirsty, rapacious" blacks circling the outnumbered, defenseless whites and the heroic, horse-back riding Klan coming in for the save.
It doesn't take much imagination to port that over to the defenseless, outnumbered whites in cabins or wagon trains being surrounded by the "savage, bloodthirsty, rapacious" Indians until the heroic, horse-back riding Cavalry makes the save.
And that was most frequently the early depiction of the Indian. Comic relief was gained from any Indian (cinematically speaking) who behaved otherwise. After all, how would an Indian know how to use a knife or fork, properly conjugate sentences, or play a tuba?
Yet the Carlisle band was famous for its talented musicians. Reality and cinema had little relation. No, much easier to assume the rows of neatly dressed musicians were the exception and somewhere out on the plains hid thousands of naked savages waiting their opportunity to kill and scalp and rape.
Check out the depictions most people had of Native Americans. Buffalo Bill took his show international in which again and again people saw enacted the scenario of the innocent, God-fearing wagon riding pioneers were attacked by screaming, half-naked "savages' (and that was deliberately the way the scene was framed) only to be rescued by Buffalo Bill. It was a good show, primed for dramatic effect...and it worked. AThe idea of the Indian as aggressor was indeliably stamped on the U.S. consciousness...until Vietnam came along and caused a reexamination of our history. More on that maybe later. Or maybe you are all bored already. Hard to say.