washing dishes: a father’s glimpses

The early agents

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As I clicked through Wikipedia rabbit holes, I read about the Darlington Agency and the Kickapoo agent. Two men who had 3 and 2 wives, respectively.

But, seeing one referred to as the proper-noun Agency, and not just a common-noun agent, made me wonder: what was an agency and who was an agent? Wikipedia suggested that both Darlington and Miles were both Quakers, which adds some nuance and complexity to the broad brushstrokes that learning history decades later can paint.

Among some descriptions of the roles that Indian agents played include:

  • a civilian appointed by the POTUS to be an ambassador with Native Americans who lived near the agent and agency;
  • the eyes, ears, and mouth for Bureau of Indian Affairs
  • to monitor trade and resolve disputes between Native Americans and White settlers;
  • falling within the bureaucracy of the War Department, with the Bureau of Indian Affairs replacing the Indian Trade Office in 1824;
  • missionaries;
  • coercive authorities commanding Native Americans assimilate by adopting Christianity, to have their children learn in ways that White children were learning, and for women to foresake roles in planting and harvesting for men to assume those roles;
  • distributors of supplies and suppliers of annuity goods

This reading exercise led me to the Nonintercourse Acts, aka the Indian Intercourse Acts aka the Indian Nonintercourse Acts, six laws passed between 1790 and 1834 attempting to set terms of White/Native American transactions, living, interactions, disagreements, struggles, and escalations that became lethal.

The quote of a George Washington speech is comically tragic three centuries later: “the security for the remainder of your lands”, “The general government will never consent to your being defrauded”, and “protect you in your rights.”