Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/465

 from which I come is left entirely free from all the influences of its provision and all its benefits. My honorable colleague says that those who are in danger ought to feel for home. I say so too, but I am sure he has not looked into this, and exercised his accustomed sagacity, or he would perceive that Texas has not been mentioned in this provision; but it relates to the emigrant routes of California. Texas is to be put out of the way.

There is nothing central there—no preponderating political influence there. Texas is neglected.

I made a proposition the other day, that if the troops are to be called out, and one-fourth of the money were given to our agent that would be annually expended, I would stake my life upon the event that we should have perfect peace there; and the influence of peace there would radiate to the Pacific. Justice will be done. Their wants will be supplied. We must remember, sir, there is a race of mortals wild, who rove the desert free. They owe no homage to the written rules which men have made; owe no allegiance to the idle forms which art suggests; but, proud of freedom in their native wilds, they need but competency's aid to make them blest. Well, sir, feed them. You have it to do, or you have to kill them. Which is the most expensive, leaving out the humanity of the thing? If you merely regard it as a matter of dollars and cents, you will find that to feed them is cheaper than to kill them, though you should not lose a human life, nor the labor or the exposure of the citizens, and suffer the casualties which would be brought upon them by a war.

I go for conciliation; and I come here, Mr. President, to legislate in part for Indians, but not to legislate for Indians to the exclusion of the whites. But the honorable Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Jones], for whose eloquence and high conceptions I have great respect—though I do not, in everything, coincide with him—differs from me. I must be permitted to make a commentary upon a few sentences which appear in the remarks that he made the day before yesterday. He said: "I am not here to legislate for Indians. I am here to legislate for white folks and negroes, and not for Indians. I have no Indian constituency; and I confess that I have no great sympathy for them. When I remember their barbarities in my own State, when I see there the graves made by their hands, this heart of mine has no warm, impulsive feeling for them. I would do them no wrong; I would give them all the protection which can be accorded to them; but I would protect our own citizens against them. They should perpetrate no outrage upon our citizens if I could avert it." Mr. President, the Senator says he has no Indian constituency. I have none; and moreover, Mr. President, I have no Buncombe constituency, either. [Laughter.] I have a very proud and exalted constituency. They are pretty much self-existent and independent. But, Mr. President, I come here to legislate for Indians. I find them embraced within the pale of our Constitution. It points out the course for me to pursue in relation to them in my legislative action. The principles of our Government, independent of the express letter of the Constitution, would suggest to me what course to pursue. They are here recognized by the action of this body in the ratification or rejection of treaties which have been made with them. I grant you it is a farce which has lost now even the solemnity of a farce, if it ever had any; but still I come here to legislate for the Indians. To tell you the truth, sir, it is always with great reluctance