The American Board

The Bitter Harvest

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the Evangelical Protestant Churches of America initiated a program aiming at nothing less than the transformation of the world into a Holy Utopia by evangelism. Evangelism meant preaching God’s word to those not yet influenced by it.57

Lyman Beecher was the foremost proponent of this movement created by the Second Great Awakening. He encouraged the formation of benevolent societies as the best way to accomplish missionary tasks. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, formed in 1810, was among the first of these societies to be established. 58

Initially, the newly-formed American Board, under the leadership of Jeremiah Evarts,59 was dedicated to fighting for the rights for all people, regardless of race. Evarts advocated that “the fundamental principles of freedom should never be abandoned; the great and paramount and spiritual interests of immortal beings should never be deserted.”60

In 1821 the federal government had begun pressing for removal of the Indians: “Their sovereignty over vast territories should cease, in lieu of which the right of soil should be secured to each individual and his posterity in competent portions.”61 By 1830 the government’s policy had vacillated from “civilization, to voluntary removal, to removal under any circumstances.”62 Evarts, however, remained steadfastly opposed to the plan for Indian removal. He realized that while the Indians themselves did not want to be removed, colonized, or settled among the Whites, he felt that “There is not a place on the earth to which they can migrate and live in the savage and hunter state. The Indian tribes must, therefore, be progressively civilized, or successively perish.”63 He fervently believed that the Indians, and the Blacks, could be incorporated into American society. In 1824, Evarts, writing of his belief that people of all races could live together as equals stated: “Can it be pretended at this age of the world, that a small variance of complexion [sic] is to present an insuperable barrier to matrimonial connexions [sic], or that the different tribes of men are to be kept forever and entirely distinct?”64 He advised his colleagues at the American Board to ignore the outcries of the public and the pressure by the federal government. By early 1829 Evarts’ opinions ran contrary to the federal government’s and to American popular opinion. He began writing a series of essays opposing American treatment of and attitudes toward the Indians, under the pseudonym “William Penn.”65

Despite Evarts fervent campaign opposing it, on May 26, 1830, the Indian Removal Bill passed the House by a margin of 102 to 97. By the winter of 1831, his health and his case for the Indians failing, Evarts quietly made his decision--he advised his missionaries to resist the government directives, even if it meant going to prison. However, on May 10, 1831, before his final opposition could be instituted, Evarts, along with the cause he had devoted his life to, died.66

Shortly before Evarts death, in 1830, a Baptist missionary named Isaac McCoy had begun writing a series of essays campaigning against the ideology of “William Penn.” In 1823, he had come up with a plan calculated to solve the problem for everyone: Colonization of the Indians. McCoy felt, as many people of his era did, that “The only feasible plan for reforming the Indians, is that of colonizing them.”

We could point to the precise spot on which we designed to locate them, could show them their relations on the ground, the provisions in schools, smitheries, &c. Made for their accommodation. . . . They would clearly perceive that the measure was very unlike the ordinary affair of [removal]. . . . Under these circumstances, not a shadow of doubt can exist that the majority of tribes would readily accept the offers of our government. 67

McCoy compared his plan of Indian colonization with the plan of Black colonization, insisting that in each case colonization was the only feasible solution, as Blacks and Indians could never be allowed to live with Whites as equals. His plan was enthusiastically embraced by the federal government and the American public, however, it outraged abolitionists who felt that both Indian removal and colonization were racist policies. At this time the federal government’s Indian removal program became virtually identical to the American Colonization Society’s plan to remove the Blacks from American society.68

Without the impassioned leadership of Jeremiah Evarts, the American Board’s dedication to continuing his work began to diminish. Several factors contributed to its decline. First, researchers in the newly emerging field of ethnology had discovered “proof” that Blacks and Indians were, indeed, inferior to Whites. According to these scientists, these savage people could never be domesticated or civilized. At this time the American Board withdrew its support of abolition and began supporting slavery.70 Any missionaries who objected to this policy would face immediate dismissal. Another factor was increasing competition among the missionary societies for federal funding.71 These federal funds were available to organizations that would promote and help put into place the government’s aggressive Indian removal/colonization program. Finally, in 1830, in response to the American Board’s reluctance to support their plan of Indian removal, the federal government canceled their yearly funding of $3,000.00. The American Board hastily renounced the last remnants of the civil rights doctrine that Jeremiah Evarts had given his life for, and began officially espousing the need for Indian removal.72 The American Board had become a pawn in the hands of the federal government and the colonizationists.

In selecting Henry and Eliza Spalding as missionaries to the Nez Perce Indians in 1836, the American Board had made an ideal choice. The Spaldings had been recommended to the American Board by Lyman Beecher, one of their founders and a dedicated colonizationist. Having proven their commitment to the American Colonization Society, the Spaldings would not would not stand in the way of American colonization of the Indians and their land, thus guaranteeing continued federal funding of the American Board’s missions. Indeed, their acceptance of the inherent inferiority of non-Whites would facilitate the government’s aggressive Indian colonization policy, which it was racing to implement before time ran out. Due to the abolitionists’ vociferous opposition to colonization and to racism, the tide of public sentiment was beginning to change.
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57. James Fraser Cocks, III, “The Selfish Savage: Protestant Missionaries and Nez Perce and Cayuse Indians, 1835-1847" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1975).

58. Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response, 1787-1862 (n.p.: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), 1; Cocks, “The Selfish Savage,” 3-7; Andrew, From Revivals to Removal, 61.

59. Jeremiah Evarts (1781-1831). His family lived in Guilford, Connecticut before moving to Vermont where he was born. He graduated from Yale in 1803. Elected treasurer of the American Board in 1811, by 1815 he was actively involved in a great many of the benevolent societies. Andrew, From Revivals to Removal, 10, 12, 19, 73.

60. Andrew, From Revivals to Removal, 104.

61. Ronald N. Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1975); Andrew, From Revivals to Removal, 106.

62. Ibid., 115.

63. Ibid., 124.

64. Ibid., 135.

65. Ibid., 106, 115, 120, 124, 135, 169.

66. Ibid., 228.

67. Emory J. Lyons, Isaac McCoy: His Plan of and Work for Indian Colonization (Topeka, Kans.: Kansas State Printing Plant, 1945), 20, 21.

68. The plan of Indian removal was initiated by Thomas Jefferson in 1803. “For Jefferson, removing the Indians . . . was, like his plan for colonizing emancipated Blacks in Africa, a way of expelling from the nation those influences he believed deleterious to the American spirit. . . .”

In 1826 President James Madison wrote regarding removal: “Next to the case of the black race within our bosom, that of the red on our borders is the problem most baffling to the policy of our country.” His solution was to “export the evils of their presence through the American Colonization Society.” Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian From Columbus to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978),157; Thomas L. McKenney, Memoirs, Official and Personal: With Sketches of Travels Among the Northern and Southern Indians; Embracing a War Excursion, and Descriptions of Scenes Along the Western Borders, 2nd ed., 2 vols. in one (New York: Paine and Burgess, 1846), 229, quoted in Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (New York: Schocken Books, 1990), 99, 183.

69. Lyons, Isaac McCoy, 45; Andrew, From Revivals to Removal, 123, 242; Satz, American Indian Policy, 55.

70. They have tried to justify their position by claiming that several of the Indian tribes owned slaves. However, in light of the general belief in the inferiority of both races at that time, that would have been, in reality, a non-issue.

71. In 1819 Congress began setting aside $10,000 a year “for the purpose of providing against the further decline and final extinction of the Indian tribes adjoining the frontier settlement of the United States and for introducing among them the habits and arts of civilization.” This money was used to subsidize missionary operations. This collaboration between the church and the federal government benefited everyone involved. “The missionaries received federal money and moral support, the Indians received civilization, and the government leaders salved the American conscious while they hoped soon to acquire native lands no longer needed by their transformed inhabitants.” Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, 149.

72. Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, 58; Satz, American Indian Policy, 252; Andrew, From Revivals to Removal, 267.