Americans long remembered British military alliances with American Indians during the War of 1812 and feared the British were continuing to cultivate such alliances, spreading sedition among the tribes located in both the northwestern United States and Texas. For example, in March 1844 JS said of Texas, “The British are now through out that whole country trying to bribe all they can.” Were they to get control of the region, he warned, “the first thing th[e]y will do will be to set the negroes free & Indians & th[e]y will use us up.” (Woodruff, Journal, 7 Mar. 1844; JS, Journal, 7 Mar. 1844.)

Woodruff, Wilford. Journals, 1833–1898. Wilford Woodruff, Journals and Papers, 1828–1898. CHL. MS 1352.

An annual exchange of gifts was an important feature of British-Indian relations throughout their North American provinces. The Bagot Commission’s review of British-Indian relations in Canada in the 1840s reported that while there was “no express pledge on the part of the Government to maintain either the present kind or extent of support to the Indians” through gifts of clothing, tools, arms, and ammunition, “the continuance of the practice, and the language of the Officers of the Crown . . . have led the latter to expect it, and to consider the Government pledged to its maintenance ‘as long as they shall remain a Tribe.’” Nevertheless, the commission reported that the practice had gradually declined since the War of 1812. Sir George Simpson, the governor of the Hudson Bay Company since 1821, orchestrated a similar decline in the presents distributed by his agents in the northwestern territory of British North America known as Rupert’s Land. (Report on the Affairs of the Indians in Canada [24 June 1847], Appendix to . . . the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, appendix T, sec. 3, p. [6]; Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, 195–198.)

Appendix to the Sixth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. From the 2nd Day of June to the 28th Day of July, 1847, Both Days Inclusive, and in the Tenth and Eleventh Years of the Reign of Our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria. Being the Third Session of the Second Provincial Parliament of Canada. Vol. 1. Montreal: Rollo Campbell, 1847.

Ray, Arthur J. Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660–1870. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.

Haws was likely referring to his experiences helping found the Latter-day Saint lumbering operations on Wisconsin’s Black River in the fall of 1841. (See Clayton, History of the Nauvoo Temple, 15.)

Clayton, William. History of the Nauvoo Temple, ca. 1845. CHL. MS 3365.