Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/443

 upon it with "all the pomp and circumstance of a glorious war." A morning gun will be fired as a signal to rise and prepare for the march. On such an occasion, with the bugle sounding in advance, how beautiful must be the reflection from the arms and banners floating in the prairie! That is to be the spectacle which is to amuse or drive the Indians ahead. They are to meet the Indians on a trackless waste. You might as well pursue the course of a ship's keel on the ocean, as to pursue the Indians of the prairies. They would disperse, and your army would be left there; and they, perhaps, surrounding you, in the distance, and laughing at the glorious pomp with which you were marching through their prairies. If you take men there and make a display without efficiency, you provoke their ridicule and supreme contempt.

But, Mr. President, ihe course which has been pursued since the days of William Penn to the present moment, has not been entirely successful in conciliating the Indians. Under the management of Washington, of the first Adams, of Madison, of Monroe, of the second Adams, of Jackson, and of Polk, we have, with few exceptions, been very successful in maintaining peace with them. The suggestions made by our fathers in relation to their civilization and humanization, are exemplified and illustrated in the present condition of the southern tribes, who have received the greatest benefits of the light shed on them; and they have responded to it by the cultivation of mind, by the development of resources, both physical and intellectual, which reflect lustre on their character. Can not the Indian now be influenced in the same way, by the same means? Have we no landmarks to guide us? Have we not experience to teach us? Have we not humanity to prompt us to march on in the path which is already laid out before us? Sir, how different is the policy now pursued from what it once was! I must read, for the instruction of the Senate, an extract from the last annual report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and I beseech your attention to it, because it contains more good sense and reflection than I could impart in the same number of words. It will be necessary in the examination of this subject, in relation both to the Indians and the Army, to see in what manner they harmonize with each other, and how far the one is necessary to the success of the other. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his report to the Secretary of the Interior, describes a transaction to which I wish to call attention: "As heretofore reported to you, an association of persons has undertaken to appropriate to their own use a portion of the land ceded by the Delawares, fronting on the Missouri River, and south of Fort Leavenworth; have laid out a city thereon, and actually had a public sale of the lots of the same on the 9th and 10th of October last. These unlawful proceedings have not only taken place under the eyes of the military officers stationed at the fort, but two of them are said to be members of the association, and have been active agents in this discreditable business. Encouraged by these proceedings, and prompted by those engaged in them, other persons have gone on other portions of the tract ceded by the Delawares in trust to the United States, and pretend to have made, and are now making, such 'claims' as they assert will vest in them the lawful right to enter the land at the minimum price under the preemption law of July 12, 1854."