Washington [494]
Washington’s Indian policy was a tragedy of noble intentions that failed to fix a seemingly insoluble problem. He wanted to fashion a series of homelands that might guarantee the permanent safety of Indian tribes. In his last year in office, he issued his “Address to the Cherokee Nation,” which attempted to define a way for Americans and Native Americans to coexist in harmony. He again advised the Indians to abandon traditional hunting and gathering and to imitate the civilization of white settlers by farming and ranching. He urged them to domesticate animals, to farm crops, and to encourage spinning and weaving among their women. He even offered Mount Vernon as a model: “Beloved Cherokees, what I have recommended to you, I am myself going to do. After a few moons are passed, I shall leave the great town and retire to my farm. There I shall attend to the means of increasing my cattle, sheep, and other useful animals; to the growing of corn, wheat, and other grain; and to the employing of women in spinning and weaving.”34 As was so often the case when slavery was involved, Washington did not see the absurdity of presenting himself, a large slave owner, as a shining example for the Indians to emulate.
If the speech was enlightened in its warm, friendly tone toward the Cherokees, it was unrealistic in asking them to abandon their culture and adopt that of their rivals. It was, in essence, telling the Indians that to survive they had to renounce their immemorial way of life—that is, cease to be Indians and become white men. At bottom lurked the unspoken threat that, if they flouted this advice, harm would follow. For all of Washington’s good intentions, it proved impossible for the federal government to prod speculators and state governments into dealing fairly with the Indians, who continued to lose millions of acres from the rapacious practices of white men.
THE MAIN CRISIS that monopolized Washington’s time in the summer of 1794 came not from troublesome Indians but from restive white settlers. From the time Congress imposed an excise tax on distilled spirits in 1791—an important component of Hamilton’s plan to pare the federal deficit—Washington had expected resistance and vowed to exercise his legal powers “to check so daring and unwarrantable a spirit.”35 The new government, he believed, had to punish infractions and instill reverence for the law. If laws were “trampled upon with impunity,” he warned, “and a minority . . . is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government.”36 The chief locus of opposition to the whiskey tax arose in western Pennsylvania, where many farmers owned small stills and converted their grain into whiskey to make it more portable to seaboard markets. They were especially outraged by the investigative powers granted government inspectors, who could inspect barns and cellars at will. Compared to inhabitants of eastern cities, frontier settlers had a more tenuous allegiance to the federal government and tended to resent its intrusions more keenly, especially when it came to internal taxes such as the whiskey tax.
As opposition flared into violent discontent, the first target was Colonel