Joseph Martin (general) - Career As An Indian Agent

Career As An Indian Agent

Ultimately, General Martin lost his appointment as chief Indian agent. Martin's "manner of treating with the Indians necessarily prevented his appointment," Senator Richard Henry Lee informed Patrick Henry in September 1789. "At present no such office as a standing Indian agent is appointed. The Government of the Western Territory is charged with such affairs."

In some quarters Martin was seen as too lenient with the Indians, especially after an incident in 1786 when several young Cherokee warriors were said to have murdered two white settlers near Clinch Mountain. The killings set off calls for retribution within the secessionist State of Franklin, and Martin found himself trying to mediate the dispute, and calm the settlers, while trying to prevent the angry Cherokees from joining with the Creeks. Martin did little to disguise his contempt for the authorities of the State of Franklin, who, Martin wrote Henry, "immediately marched into the above mentioned Town, where they killed one Young woman, and Shot Several others."

But Martin himself had not hesitated to wield military power against the Cherokees, especially when they killed several colonists at the instigation of Loyalist and English agents during the Revolution. In 1781, following a running battle between Indian forces and those of the colonists, Colonel Arthur Campbell, Lieutenant Colonel John Sevier and Martin addressed a letter to the Indian chiefs, warning them about their actions. "You know you began the war," the bulletin began, "by listening to the bad councils of the King of England and the falsehoods told you by his agents." Further hostilities, the three colonial leaders warned, would result in a military campaign against the Indian villages. Seven years later, in 1788, Martin again fought the Cherokees as well as the Chickamauga Indians in a battle at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee.

But having eventually struck a hard-won peace with the tribes, Martin bridled at the actions of the State of Franklin. Henry empathized with Martin, writing the General in May 1785 that "the disorderly behavior of the Franklin people, as they call themselves, gives me concern. If they will not be subservient to the Rules and Regulations respecting Indian affairs, which prevail in all the States, they must expect none of the advantages of the Union."

"Partisans of the State in N Carolina afterwards found him obnoxious to their views," former Governor Henry wrote Virginia Senator William Grayson in urging Martin's reappointment in 1789, "and as I believe often endangered his Life For his duty called him to discourage their Disorderly conduct thwart their favorite Schemes." Henry then commended Martin for his efforts to impose restraints upon the actions of the State of Franklin settlers, whose "frequent Butcherys of Indians & Refinement in cruelty sufficiently characterize these people who are Mr Martins decided Foes."

Martin's attempts to restrain the State of Franklin settlers from a more-belligerent course made Martin unacceptable in some quarters, where he was seen as too 'soft' on the tribesmen. Martin also became controversial in some quarters are the Treaty of Hopewell in 1785, when Martin, Andrew Pickens and Benjamin Hawkins, acting as government agents, concluded treaties with the Cherokees and the Choctaws. The Cherokee treaty particularly engendered later enmity from the Indian signatories, as well as the colonial state governments. The Indians saw the treaty as a thinly-veiled land grab, and the state governments saw the treaty as an attempt to encroach on local government authority, and attempts were made in Congress to void it. "No action of Martin's life brought down on him more condemnation than this ," wrote historian Stephen B. Weeks of the incident.

Consequently, his appointment as agent was not renewed, despite Henry's repeated entreaties to political allies for Martin's reinstatement. (In a 1789 letter to Senator William Grayson, Henry reminded his political ally that Martin had been so effective in his Indian dealings during the Revolutionary War that British agents had offered rewards to their Indian allies for Martin's scalp.)

But the forces allied against Martin overwhelmed Henry's defense, and in 1789, his career as Indian agent finished, General Martin sold his large holdings in the Powell's Valley and near Cumberland Gap and returned to his lands in Henry County next door to Henry's to spend the rest of his life. A year later, in 1790, when the governorship of the Southwest Territory opened up, Patrick Henry suggested Gen. Martin, along with George Mason, for the job, but both were passed over in favor of William Blount.

Later Judgments on Martin's career as an Indian agent have been mixed. Writing in 1894, Theodore Roosevelt called Martin "a firm friend of the red race, had earnestly striven to secure justice for them."