Federal Indian Policy

Officers' wives often commented on federal Indian policy which many of them believed to be endangering both their husbands and Indians. Elizabeth Burt, who sympathized with Red Cloud's effort to prevent white settlers and traders from taking the land through which the Bozeman Trail passed, was outspoken about the change in federal policy which resulted in the abandonment of the forts protecting the trail, including Fort C. F. Smith which her husband commanded. Two years before this [1868], our officers and men had begun to build these posts under terrible trials. Many precious lives were lost. Numbers of our comrades were laid away in the little graveyard on Cemetery Hill at Fort Smith and now it seemed the country really was to be given back to the Indians. (Burt, p. 184)

The failure of Indian policy to secure peace through treaties seemed to place Burt's husband in more danger. When in 1873, Major Burt was assigned to escort the engineers surveying the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad, Elizabeth was again filled with foreboding over her husband's safety and her conflicting sympathy for Indians' land rights. She wrote that . . . Indians waited to do all possible harm. They were bitterly opposed to the building of another railroad across their hunting grounds and were determined to fight its construction. But what mattered the Indian's rights or wishes as long as the white man wanted the road! (Burt, p. 207) It is not clear if she really wanted to protect the Indians' rights to the Northern Plains, or if she was simply worn out from years of worry. Nevertheless, it is well to remember that she wrote these words decades after the event when she could safely look back and remark on what should have happened.

Linda Slaughter spoke out publicly about federal Indian policy and her views of Indians while her husband was still an Army officer, though soon to resign. In a series of letters to eastern newspapers, written in the pay of the Northern Pacific Railroad, she called for extermination of all Indians, and a more coherent and workable policy that did not include weapons as part of the annual payments (annuities) Indians received through land cession treaties. The ideal policy, she argued in 1872, should enable some of our brave officers to cut this Gordian knot with the sword and so settle this Indian question forever, even if it should send half of the thieving nations' wards to the happy hunting ground of their forefathers. (Slaughter, Fortress to Farm, p. 69)

Slaughter copied these words into her memoir in 1892, but explained half-heartedly that these words represented "the sentiment then universally prevailing in the army in regard to the Indian question" and that she had written at the request of officers who were not able to criticize the government. (Slaughter, Fortress to Farm, pp. 68–69) Fifteen years later, she published a piece castigating the Army's callousness in ruthlessly pursuing and punishing Indians who protected their land and families. (Slaughter, "Leaves from Northwestern History", pp.230–231)

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