While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
"The treaty that was made at the aforementioned council
has been broken by some of the white people, which I now intend
acquainting the Governor with. Some white people are not willing that the
Indians should hunt any more, whilst others are satisfied therewith; and
those white people who reside near our reservation, tell us that the woods
are theirs, and that they have obtained them from the Government. The
treaty has also been broken by the white people using their endeavors to
destroy all the wolves, which was not spoken about in the council at Fort
Stanwix by General Putnam, but has originated lately."
Corn Plant further complains that "white people could
get credit from the Indians and do not pay them honestly according to
agreement;" also that "there is a great quantity of whiskey brought near
our reservation, and the Indians obtain it and become drunken." He
complains further that he has been called upon to pay taxes, and says: "It
is my desire that the Governor will exempt me from paying taxes for my
land to white people, and also to cause the money I am now obliged to pay
be refunded to me, as I am very poor."
"The Government has told us that when difficulties
arose between the Indians and the white people they would attend to having
them removed. We are now in a trying situation, and I wish the Governor to
send a person authorized to attend thereto the fore part of next summer,
about the time that the grass has grown big enough for pasture.
"The Government requested me to pay attention to the
Indians and take care of them. We are now arrived at a situation in which
I believe the Indians cannot exist unless the Governor shall comply with
my request, and send a person authorized to treat between us and the white
people the approaching summer. I have now no more to speak."
This singular production of Corn Plant was of course
dictated to an interpreter, who acted as amenuensis, but the sentiments
are undoubtedly his own. It was dated in 1822, when the lands reserved for
the Indians in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania became surrounded by
the farms of the whites and some attempt was made to tax the property of
the Seneca Chief, in consequence of which he wrote this epistle to the
Governor.
The letter is distinguished by its simplicity and good
sense, and was no doubt dictated in the concise, nervous and elevated
style of the Indian orator, which has lost much of its beauty and poetical
character in the interpretation. His account of his parentage is simple
and touching-his unprotected, yet happy home, where he played with the
butterfly, the grasshopper and the frog is sketched with a scriptural
felicity of style. There is something very pathetic in his description of
his poverty when he grew up to be a young man, and married a wife, and had
no kettle nor gun, while the brief account of his visit to his father is
marked by a pathos of genuine feeling. It is to be hoped indeed that as
the account states the father was non compos mentes.
