Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/429

 were idolaters, and the object was to keep the people of Israel free from the taint of idols and idolatry, under the command of Providence, and therefore the extermination in His dispensation became necessary. But the Cherokees never have been idolaters, neither have the Creeks, nor the Choctaws, nor the Chickasaws. They believe in one Great Spirit—in God—the white man's God. They believe in His Son Jesus Christ, and His atonement, and propitiation for the sins of men. They believe in the sanctifying efficacy of the Holy Ghost. They bow at the Christian's altar, and they believe the Sacred Volume. Sir, you may drive these people away, and give their lands to the white man; but let it not be done upon the justification of the Scriptures. They have well-organized societies; they have villages and towns; they have their state-houses and their capitols; they have females and men who would grace the drawing-rooms or saloons of Washington; they have a well-organized judiciary, a trial by jury, and the writ of habeas corpus. These are the people for whom I demand justice in the organization of these territories. They are men of education. They have more than one hundred native preachers in those tribes, as I have heard. They have their colleges, as I remarked in my former address to the Senate on this subject. They become associated in friendship with our young men in the various institutions in the United States; and they are prepared to be incorporated upon equal terms with us. But even if they were wild Indians, untutored, when you deprive them of what would give them knowledge, and discourage them from making an effort to become civilized and social beings, how can you expect them to be otherwise than savage?

When you undertake to tame wild horses, do you turn them from you and drive them into the desert, or do you take care of them and treat them with humanity? These Indians are not inferior, intellectually, to white men. John Ridge was not inferior in point of genius to John Randolph. His father, in point of native intellect, was not inferior to any man. Look at their social condition, in the nations to which I have alluded. Look at the Chickasaws who remain in the State of Mississippi. Even among white men, with all their prejudices against the Indians, with their transcendent genius and accomplishments, they have been elected to the Legislature. Whenever they have had an opportunity, they have shown that they are not inferior to white men, either in sense or capability.

But the honorable Senator from Iowa [Mr. Dodge] characterizes the remarks which I made in reference to the Indians as arising from a feeling of "sickly sentimentality." Sir, it is a sickly sentimentality that was implanted in me when I was young, and it has grown up with me. The Indian has a sense of justice, truth, and honor, that should find a responsive chord in every heart. If the Indians on the frontier are barbarous, or if they are cannibals and eat each other, who are to blame for it? They are robbed of the means of sustenance; and with hundreds and thousands of them starving on the frontier, hunger may prompt to such acts to prevent their perishing. We shall never become cannibals in connection with the Indians, but we do worse than that. We rob them, first of their native dignity and character; we rob them next of what the Government appropriates for them. If we do not do it in this hall, men are invested with power and authority, who, officiating as agents or traders, rob them of everything which is designed for them. No less than one hundred millions of dollars, I learn from statistics, since the adoption of this Government, have