Download (PDF): Document Images     Transcription

Andrew Jackson to David W. Haley (Draft)
Washington. Octbr. 15th. 1829
Sir
you have kindly offered to be the bearer of any communications to the
Indians amonghst whom you will pass on your return Home. I place in your
hands, copies, of a talk made by me last spring, to the Creeks; I wish you to
shew them to the chiefs of the Choctaws, as you pass, and say to them, as far
as this talk relates to their situation with their white brothers, and my wishes
for them to remove beyond the Mississippi; it contains my sentiments towards
the Choctaw, & Chikesaw Indians, and if they wish to be happy, and to live
in quiett, and preserve their Nation, they will take my advice, and remove
beyond the Mississippi.
Say to them as friends & brothers, to listen to the voice of their father,
and their friend: where they now are, they and my white children are too near
to each other, to live in harmony and peace. Their game is destroyed, & many
of their people will not work, & till the earth. Beyond the great river
Mississippi, where a part of their nation have gone, their father has provided
a country, large enough, for them all, and he advises them to remove to it.
There their white brethern will not trouble them; they will have no claim to
the land, and they can live upon it, they and all their children, as long as grass
grows or water runs, in peace and plenty. It will be theirs forever. For any
improvements in the country where they now live, and for any stock which
they cannot take with them, their father will stipulate, in a treaty to be holden
with them, to pay them a fair price.
Say to my red choctaw children, and my chikesaw children, to listen—
my white children of Mississippi have extended their laws over their country,
If they remain where they now are they will be subject to those laws—If they
remove across the Mississippi river they will be free from those laws of the
state, and only subject to their own laws, and be under the care of their father
the President of the united States—where they now are, say to them, their
father cannot prevent them from being subject to the laws of the State of
Mississippi. They are within its limits, and I pray you to explain to them that
so far from the united States having a right to question the authority of any
State, to regulate its affairs within their own limits, the General goverment will
be obliged to sustain the States in the exercise of this right. Say to the chiefs
and warriors that I am their friend, that I wish to act as their friend but they
must, by removing from the limits of the States of Mississippi, and Alabama,
and by being settled on the lands I offer them, put it in my power to be such—

Images Source: Library of Congress, Andrew Jackson Papers