Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/450

 Give us agents who are capable of following out their instructions, and who understand the Indian character. Give us an army, gentlemen, who understand not only the science of command, but have some notions of extending justice and protection to the Indian, against the aggression of the whites, while they protect the whites against the aggressions from the Indians. Then, and not till then, will you have peace.

How is this to be done? Withdraw your army. Have five hundred cavalry, if you will; but I would rather have two hundred and fifty Texas rangers (such as I could raise), than five hundred of the best cavalry now in service. I would have one thousand infantry, so placed as to guard the United States against Mexico, and five hundred for scouting purposes. I would have five trading-houses from the Rio Grande to the Red River for intercourse with the Indians. I would have a guard of twenty-five men out of an infantry regiment, at each trading-house, who would be vigilant and always on the alert. Cultivate intercourse with the Indians. Show them that you have comforts to exchange for their peltries; bring them around you; domesticate them; familiarize them with civilization. Let them see that you are rational beings, and they will become rational in imitation of you; but take no whiskey there at all, not even for the officers, for fear their generosity would let it out. Do this and you will have peace with the Indians. Whenever you convince an Indian that he is dependent on you for comforts, or for what he deems luxuries or elegances of life, you attach him to you. Interest, it is said, governs the world, and it will soon ripen into affection. Intercourse and kindness will win the fiercest animal on earth except the hyena; and its spots and nature can not be changed. The nature of an Indian can be changed. He changes under adverse circumstances, and rises into the dignity of a civilized being. If you war against him, it takes a generation or two to regenerate his race, but it can be done. I would have fields around the trading-houses. I would encourage the Indians to cultivate them. Let them see how much it adds to their comfort; how it insures to their wives and children abundant subsistence, and then you win the Indian over to civilization; you charm him, and he becomes a civilized man.

Sir, while people are seeking to civilize and Christianize men on the banks of the Ganges, or the Jordan, or the Brahmapootra, why should not the same philanthropic influence be extended through society, and be exerted in behalf of the American Indians.? Is not the soul of an American Indian, in the prairie, worth as much as the soul of a man on the Ganges, or in Jerusalem? Surely it is. Then let the American Government step forward; let it plant the standard of regeneration and civilization among the Indians, and it will command the co-operation of the citizens in their philanthropic efforts. I am willing to appeal to the venerable and distinguished Senator from Michigan, who knows what an Indian is, and what his disposition is, perhaps more thoroughly than I do myself. To him would I defer, but to no other man, for a certain and intimate knowledge of the Indian character.

There is another point in connection with the dealings of the Government with the Texas Indians to which I will advert. There are the Comanches of the woods, and the Comanches of the prairie. The Texas Indians do not receive their annuities in Texas, but they are brought into Kansas, a great