Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/447

 and maintained, the safety and protection of our frontiers insured, and the Indians made peaceable and happy.

When Texas was annexed to the United States, these Indians, on account of faith having been maintained with them by the then Executive of Texas, refused to meet and confer with the commissioners sent to them by the President of the United States, until they had the sanction of the Government of Texas; and the symbols of confidence were put in the hands of the commissioners before the Indians would treat with them. A treaty was then negotiated. What was the history of it? One of the commissioners — a noble and gallant gentleman, who afterward fell at Chapultepec, in Mexico, at the head of his regiment—was too much indisposed to render any assistance. His co-commissioner assumed the whole business; and what did he do? He had the Indians' names signed with a mark on a sheet of paper, had it attested, and brought it on here. He made large promises to the Indians; he assured them of an annuity of $14,000, to be paid annually, at a certain trading-house; but when he wrote his treaty (for he did not write it until he came here, when he appended to it the sheet containing the signatures), it contained a provision that they should receive barely $14,000 as a full acquittance. It cost $60,000 to negotiate this treaty, as the records of the treasury show. This is a sum equal to the price of six years' peace between the Indians and the Government of Texas. Perhaps, however, the people of Texas were better then than now. Since that time they have been under the Government of the United States. I simply state facts. I leave the inference to others.

Sir, if the agent appointed by Mr. Polk, who has been restored by the present Executive—it is a bright spot in his Administration, and I commend him for it—had never been removed, there would have been peace to this day on the borders of Texas; but as soon as the Indian agent who was appointed to succeed him went there, he must forsooth establish a ranche; he must have a farm. The Indians who had been settled there from 1843 up to 1849, had been furnished by the Government of Texas with implements of husbandry, with seeds of every description, and they were cultivating their little farms. They were comfortable and independent. They were living in perfect peace. If you can get Indians located, and place their wives and children within your cognizance, you need never expect aggression from them. It is the Indian who has his wife in security, beyond your reach, who, like the felon wolf, goes to a distance to prey on some flock, far removed from his den; or like the eagle, who seeks his prey from the distance, and never from the flocks about his eyrie. The agent to whom I have referred lost two oxen from his ranche where he kept his cattle. He went to the officer in command of Fort Belknap, got a force from him, and then marched to those Indians, sixty miles from there, and told them they must pay for the oxen. They said, " We know nothing about your oxen; our people are here; here are our women and children; we have not killed them; we have not stolen them; we have enough to eat; we are happy; we have raised corn; we have sold corn; we have corn to sell; we have sold it to your people, and they have paid us for it, and we are happy." The agent and the military gentlemen scared off the Indians from the limits of Texas, and drove them across the Red River to the Wichita mountains, taking