In Johnson v. M’Intosh, a non-Indian who purchased a tract of land from the Piankasaw Indians sues a non-Indian who claimed he was granted the same plot by the U. S. government. The Supreme Court finds that the man who obtained the tract through the government land grant had the superior claim. In the decision, the Court maintains that when tribal territory is incorporated into the United States, the tribes’ “rights of complete sovereignty, as independent nations, [are] necessarily diminished.” In addition to further undermining Indian tribes’ sovereign status, the ruling determines that Indian tribes have no authority to negotiate land cessions with anyone except the U. S. government.
Sacagawea’s (Sacajawea’s) son, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, travels to Europe.
Under the sponsorship of Prince Paul Wilhelm, Shoshone Indian Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau travels to Germany, where he sets up residence in a castle outside of Stuttgart. Over the following six years, Charbonneau will study languages and tour lands throughout Africa and Europe. The son of Sa-cagawea (Sacajawea), as an infant he accompanied his famous mother on the Lewis and Clark Expedition (see entry for APRIL 1804). (See also entry for MAY 4, 1999.)
Mission Indians at La Purisima Concepcion revolt.
Indians at La Purisima Concepcion, a mission near present-day Lompoc, California, rebel against their Spanish overlords after two Indians are killed in a dispute. With the aid of Indians from the nearby Mission Santa Ines, they take over La Purisima and hold it for a month. The rebels are finally subdued by Spanish troops in a three-hour battle. During the conflict, 16 Indians are killed, and many more are injured. Spanish officials come down hard on the uprising’s instigators, executing seven and imprisoning 18 others.
The Life of Mary Jemison is published.
The highly popular Life of Mary Jemison recounts the 70 years Jemison spent among the Seneca after
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“Not long after the Delawares came to live with us, my [Iroquois] sisters told me that I must go and live with one of them, whose name was Shenin-jee. Not daring to cross them, or disobey their commands, with a great degree of reluctance I went; and Sheninjee and I were married according to Indian custom. . . . The idea of spending my days with him, at first seemed perfectly irreconcilable to my feelings: but his good nature, generosity, tenderness, and friendship towards me, soon gained my affection; and, strange as it may seem, I loved him!”
—Mary Jemison, captive of the Seneca, in her 1824 autobiography
Being taken as a captive in southwestern Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War (see entry for JULY 4, 1754). Adopted into the tribe, Jemison had two Seneca husbands and chose not to return to white society when she later had the opportunity.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is created.
Secretary of War John C. Calhoun establishes the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the War Department. The bureau is charged with administering the United States’s various dealings with the Indian tribes within its borders. Calhoun chooses Thomas McKenney (see entry for 1821) as the bureau’s first head and instructs him to manage funds allocated for Indians, regulate Indian trade, and oversee Indian schools.
World History
