Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/459

 troops thousands of miles to subdue these Indians in the illimitable West? It is impossible that it can be done, Mr. President. Then you will have to purchase peace; and, beside all that, for ten years to come, you will have to increase your officers, and clerks in your accounting offices, to pay for the lost horses, and the incidental losses and injuries done.

But, we are told by the honorable Senator from Alabama [Mr. Fitzpatrick] that there is great danger from the Indians, in large bodies of two thousand five hundred, sweeping down the Missouri River and the Mississippi, and that carnage, massacre, and slaughter will be the consequence of it. Much respect as I have for the honorable Senator—and I assure you it is of the most sincere character—T can not agree with him on these Indian subjects, though he has lived in a State contiguous to the Indians, but of a character very different from those of the plains. The Indians of the plains are sui generis when compared with others. They are not like the Indians located in the towns or wigwams of the South; they have no marks of civilization in their habits. The want of contact with the whites has deprived them of a thousand advantages which the Indians of the South possessed from the earliest recollection of the Senator.

But, sir, how would a force of Indians embody themselves on the frontiers and remain for twenty days embodied? It can not be done. My honorable colleague [Mr. Rusk] well knows that they can not do it, unless they have the appliances and comforts of the white man; unless they have stock from which they can prepare provisions for the occasion, and produce grain. It is impossible, sir, and it is now their daily employment, with the exception of a few outlaws or war parties that occasionally go out to engage in hunting, to support their women and children, and to keep them from starvation. Yes, sir, it is impossible that they can embody themselves, and remain fourteen days embodied, in an attitude menacing to the security of our frontier settlements.

I apprehend no danger. We find, from every circumstance, that the Indians there are perfectly disposed to peace and conciliation. There is no disposition to go to war, except on the part of some outlaws in each tribe, who may go on predatory excursions, regardless of the authority of their chiefs; but the chiefs have influence enough, for they are despotic, their power is absolute, and if you will give them time they will control the tribe, and those fellows will be surrendered, and make an atonement for their crimes. They will be surrendered, for, after the killing—I will not call it massacre—or after their repelling of the attack made by Lieutenant Grattan and his party, which terminated so disastrously to them, amounting almost to their entire extermination, the chiefs, apprehensive of the consequences, and of the difficulty of having the facts presented to this Government, and fearing the involvement of their wives and children in difficulties, and that they should be harassed and reduced to starvation to an extant greater than they had yet experienced, came forward with propositions to make reparation for the injury done, and to surrender the ofl:enders. But the officer did not receive them. No, sir, he drove them off: " Away, sir, I want nothing to do with you." If you wish to have a force, under such circumstances, exercising no more discretion or precaution than is here evinced, sufficient to protect our frontier, you will have to maintain three hundred