Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/461

 Senator is not prepared to do it, I insist upon it, as a matter of grave consideration and import to the honor of the nation, that it devolves the responsibility on the Executive of prompt action.

Mr. . The honorable Senator will see, I think, the propriety of my request. He presents a report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, charging two officers of the army with delinquency.

Mr. . Criminality.

Mr. . That is still worse; but he does not enlighten the Senate, or the world, as to who the two officers are; and yet he expects that we can answer for some two officers somewhere. Now, what I ask, in justice to the army, in justice to the Senate, and in justice to the War Department, is, that the honorable Senator specify who the men are, and what the criminality is of which they have been guilty, and then I will join him in punishing them.

Mr. . The report is made by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and is predicated upon the statement of General Whitfield. The gentlemen named are. Major Maclin and Major Ogden, of the United States Army. If they are innocent of this, I most heartily hope—having known one of them, and felt an interest his appointment—they will be enabled to vindicate themselves most fully, and to establish the character which, I believe, they were entitled to up to this time, or until this information came.

Now, Mr. President, here was a report made in relation to the Indians at Fort Laramie. We are told that, for three years, these recommendations for an increase of the army have been before the Senate; and yet, wonderful to tell, all the outrages that have been committed upon the emigrants to California, and Oregon, was the crippled cow transaction. Three years ago there was a call for this as loudly as there is now, and yet no disastrous consequences have taken place; for, if Lieutenant Grattan had never gone there, there would never have been any difficulty; or if, previous to that time, the army had not gone and committed outrages upon the Indians across the Missouri River, there would not have been any difficulty.

Here, sir, by way of digression, I will state that Governor Stevens, with sixty men, and comparatively few presents, perhaps not amounting to more than $5,000 in value, traveled through all the hostile tribes from Fort Laramie, or where he first struck the Indian country, to Oregon, and never met with molestation. He conciliated them all; and he speaks of their great anxiety to conciliate the United States, and the great respect and hospitality with which he was treated. Sometimes his men were in numbers of four, or greater or less, as it happened, and they were always in perfect security, and treated with the utmost hospitality. He often ventured himself with three or four men into the midst of Indian lodges, and received their hospitality; and when he rose from a council, in which all his men had been seated on handsome buffalo skins, those skins were carried to his tent as an expression of respect and hospitality. The Indians could, at any time, have annihilated his whole command; but he was a gentleman of discretion, and possessed of as much chivalry as any one who wore the uniform of the United States. That shows you that there is no actual danger.

We hear constantly of traders going through the country; and when a