Alexis de Tocqueville was sympathetic but not optimistic.
In Michigan Territory during the summer of 1831, young French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville met Indians not yet burdened with European religion, principles and ideas. But he did not doubt that soon the civilizing process would, by compulsion or choice, transform them, and he was just as certain they would not be better off by rejecting their traditional ways. The bottom line for the thoughtful observer was that the “cupidity and violence” of the white race meant doom for American Indians.
Though he didn’t venture west of the Mississippi during his travels in the United States, Tocqueville (1805–59) had seen enough of “the most grasping nation on the globe” to draw conclusions about the fate of the Indian tribes. He devotes some 35 pages to the Indian situation in his massive 1835 first volume of Democracy in America, a penetrating analysis that explained America and its people not only to the rest of the world but also to Americans themselves. The book also examined the wide differences in outlooks, attitudes and values between Americans and Europeans even then. A great deal of what he wrote holds up 175 years later. Not all, of course, but many of the forecasts he made played out along lines very close to what he predicted.
Although generally positive and enthusiastic about the vibrant and dynamic social structure of the young republic, Tocqueville did not flinch from exposing and criticizing its darker aspects. The consequences of many of those early American fault lines remain with us today. In the chapter “The Present and Probable Future Condition of the Three Races Which Inhabit the Territory of the United States,” Tocqueville contrasted the stark situation of blacks and Indians with the “immense and complete democracy” enjoyed by what he called the “European population.” He wrote: “These two unfortunate races have nothing in common, neither birth, nor facial features, nor language, nor customs; their misfortunes alone are similar. Both occupy an equally inferior position in the country they inhabit; both experience the effects of tyranny; and, if their sufferings are different, they are able to blame the same people.” Needless to say, that particular chapter was not well received by many Americans.
In his analysis of the American Indians’ situation, Tocqueville was very sympathetic. At one point he wrote: “[George] Washington said in one of his messages to Congress: ‘We are more enlightened and more powerful than the Indian nations; we are therefore bound in honor to treat them with kindness, and even with generosity.’” Tocqueville lamented the fact that such a “noble and moral policy” was never adopted.
Tocqueville arrived in North America in 1831 and stayed just nine months. Yet in that short time he managed to travel 7,000 miles, acquiring insights both broad and deep. He made it to 17 of the 24 states and several of the territories east of the Mississippi, ranging as far south as New Orleans and as far north as Sault Ste. Marie and Quebec. On one of his western journeys, he reached the small U.S. Army outpost at Green Bay, in a part of the country that would not be officially designated Wisconsin Territory for another five years.
Passing through Buffalo, N.Y., on one of his journeys west, he recorded his profound disappointment in the condition of the few Indians he encountered: “We had in front of us, I am sorry to say, the final remnants of that renowned confederation of Iroquois whose virile wisdom was no less famous than their courage and who long maintained the balance between the two greatest European nations.” Tocqueville was referring here to the pivotal role played by the Iroquois during the British-French struggle for control of North America in the 17th and 18th centuries.
When Tocqueville arrived in America, the Indians were already well into their westward retreat. Fewer than 6,400 Indians remained in the original 13 states and only about 300,000 in the entire territory occupied or claimed by the United States, including the lands west of the Mississippi acquired from France under the Louisiana Purchase. Tocqueville was especially concerned about the plight of the 75,000 individuals that remained of the four great nations in the southeastern states—the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Cherokees. Commenting on the efforts of the latter nation to adapt to the steady encroachment of European civilization, he noted that the Cherokees had already created a written language and had established a fairly stable form of government. The Frenchman added, “Since everything in the New World proceeds at a giddy speed, they founded a newspaper before they all had clothes.”
Tocqueville identified the long-term patterns of bad faith in dealing with the Indians, and he unflinchingly described the cold and cynical legalistic method in which they were systematically deposed of their lands. “When the European population begins to approach the wild places occupied by a savage nation, the United States government usually sends a solemn embassy to the latter. The whites gather the Indians in a great plain and, after eating and drinking with them, address them as follows: ‘What are you doing in the land of your fathers? Soon you will have to dig up their bones in order to live. How is the country where you live worth more than any other? Are there woods, marshes and prairies only where you are living now, and can you live nowhere but under your own sun? Beyond these mountains which you see on the horizon and on the other side of the lake skirting the land to the west, there are vast countries where wild animals still roam in abundance. Sell us your lands and go and live happily in those places.’”
The American representatives would then attempt to sweeten the deal by offering firearms, blankets, piles of trinkets and, especially, alcohol. If the Indians remained unconvinced, they were reminded there was a limit to what the government could do to protect their rights indefinitely and that is was only a matter of time before they would lose their lands without compensation. As Tocqueville noted, the U.S. government routinely turned a blind eye to the steady encroachments carried out by private citizens. “Half convinced and half compelled, the Indians move away to dwell in new deserts where the whites will not allow them to live 10 years in peace,” he wrote. “Thus it is that Americans acquired for next to nothing whole provinces which the richest monarchs of Europe could not afford to buy.”
Tocqueville was no bleary-eyed European romantic waxing lyrical in the manner of Rousseau about the “noble savage” of North America. He saw the collection of different but closely related American Indian cultures as having strengths and weaknesses, enlightened and barbaric elements, just like every other human culture. But he also saw only too clearly what the outcome would be when these indigenous cultures competed with people of the transplanted European one for the same land. “The Indians of North America,” he wrote, “had only two paths to safety: war or civilization; in other words, they had to destroy the Europeans or become their equals.”
Whichever path the Indians pursued, the technologically more advanced and economically better organized of the two groups would inevitably win in the long run over what was essentially a late Neolithic group of peoples. “I believe that the Indian race of North America is doomed to perish, and I cannot help thinking that the day Europeans settle on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, they will have ceased to exist.”
It didn’t work out exactly that way in the long run, of course. The Indians survived physically, but their culture was overwhelmed. Elements of that culture, however, survive as a distinctive and refreshing subset of the homogenized mass-consumer culture of 21st-century America. One can only wonder what Alexis de Tocqueville would have had to say about that.
Originally published in the April 2010 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
