Bonga, George (fl. ca. 1800-1874) to Henry B. Whipple
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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC05121 Author/Creator: Bonga, George (fl. ca. 1800-1874) Place Written: Leech Lake, Minnesota Type: Autograph letter signed Date: 22 October 1863 Pagination: 7 p. ; 25.2 x 20 cm. Order a Copy
Long letter about the 2 October 1863 Red Lake Treaty with the Red Lake and Pembina bands of Chippewa Indians. Discusses government and missionary efforts to assimilate the Indians and the Indian resistance to adapting the "habits of the white man." Comments on changes in the Chippewa community, distrust between Indians and whites, the validity of treaties made, the proper location for a reservation and how and when to remove the Indians to it, and the need for education for assimilation.
Biography: George Bonga was the son of a Chippewa mother and black fur trader. He was a Ojibway leader who worked as an interpreter and fur trader. Henry Whipple was a bishop in the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Minnesota who had helped to persuade Abraham Lincoln to commute most of the death sentences of Sioux involved in an uprising in Minnesota.
...The Missionaries & the Gov[ernmen]t has been trying for many years, to educate & civilize the Ind[ian].... I am one of the many, who think it almost impossible to civilize the Ind[ian] as long as he inhabits this thick wooded country without a very large expenditure of money.... I have now been 35 years a pretty close observer of Ind[ian] affairs between the Gov[ernmen]t & Missionaries, & the Ind[ian]s. & I have always noticed, that after the Gov[ernmen]t has fulfilled its treaty stipulations about farming, never anything was done by Ind[ians] after, not even to enlarge his own garden. It could not be the expected of Missionaries, to have such large means, so as to show them what benefit they could derive by cultivating the soil and thereby induce them to adopt the habits of the whites.
The Ind[ian] & his father before him have been used to the chase, altho hard work, he is proud of it & thinks to cultivate the soil is only the work of hirelings & squaws & most of the men are ashamed to work in that way. Many a good advice has been given to them, all to no purpose. Starvation will come to him first, before he will cut down trees & dig up roots; when he very well knows it would much better his condition. It would seem, that they can't perceive, that when their game is all killed off, which is disappearing very fast, they will then have to come down to the very lowest depth of degradation, if they are not exterminated, before that time reaches them....
The little I know of the whites leads me to think, that they will not allow their Ind[ian]s to roam in their midst much longer as well as all the Inds. who live near the white settlements, if the Ind[ian] could be induced to see his own good he would learn that the sooner he was removed from the whites, the better it would be for himself & for his children after him. Having lived the most of my life time with the Ind[ian]s, I easily perceive that the Ind[ian] of today is not the same kind of Ind[ian] that was 40 years ago, altho the same band. In those days we lived and mingled with them, as if we all belonged to one & the same family, our goods often out without lock & key, never fearing anything would go wrong. Far different is it now a days. There is that suspicion on either side, that when we hear of 10 or more Ind[ian]s gathered together, we feel anxious & ask each other, what that can mean, if it is not some bad design & on the Ind[ian] side, they have always some complaint to make. Some imaginary promise that the Gov[ernmen]t has not fulfilled, has led them to that belief, that the whites are combined to try & destroy them. It appears to us all, that there is something smoldering in the breast of the Ind[ian] that it will not take much to set it to a blaze. If that should ever take place, no one can foretell how far the flames will extend.....
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