Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/466

 that I see the subject of legislation for negroes introduced into the Senate. I do not think it a proper place for it. I have never recognized the right of the Senate to do it, and I never will; and there I take issue with the honorable Senator in that particular.

But, independent of that, the Indians are a people who are upon our borders. We are brought in contact with them. We have taken their soil, their country. They have yielded to superior intelligence, and to the spirit of domination inherent in our race. They are a feeble race, yielding to the pressure of circumstances, and to the mastery of white men. But, sir, if they are inferior, and have fallen beneath our prowess, and they are prostrate, let us raise them up; let us elevate them; let us bring them to equality with ourselves as to intelligence, for they are not inferior in native capacity, they are not inferior in the employment of mechanical arts. What did the Senator from California [Mr. Weller] say yesterday? He stated that the wild Indian boys, who were taken in California, and put to agricultural pursuits, learned with the same readiness that the white boys did, to plow, and the arts of agriculture, so far as they had been tried. It was manly testimony, and it commends the gentleman and his experience to consideration. He tells you, too, that a few years ago, there were not less than ten thousand Indians in four counties, who have now dissolved and melted away, until but a fraction over three thousand remain. With the vast number that are still there, perhaps the proportion of diminution will soon be as great. We ought to look with some degree of commiseration upon these people. It is not the duty of every gentleman to feel sympathy for them, but he should feel a manly respect for himself; he should feel for humanity in any shape, for a merciful man will be m.erciful to his beast. They are degraded and sunk by their contact with the white man. They have, unfortunately, first to learn his vices, and, by degrees, to glean his virtues. But yet we see, under these influences, nations rise, become respectable, intelligent, scientific, and not only scientific, or learned, but we find them with their judicial department, their political department, their administrative department, and their Christian department. You find, in the last twenty years, not less than seventy ministers of the Gospel have grown up among the Creeks, the last to raise a hostile arm against the United States. Why not produce the same result with other tribes? My distinguished friend from Michigan [Mr. Cass] well knows that the Indian is susceptible, not only of improvement, rapid improvement, proportioned to the facilities afforded to him, but that he has as high and generous impulses as ever swayed the human heart, or quickened life's vital current; and who, when their friendship is plighted, would give their life to redeem you from an adversary's blow. Yet these men are not worth legislating for! Were their existence to terminate, and not to go beyond this earthly sphere, were there no eternity to receive the undying spirit of an Indian, humanity would bid us do justice to the red men. But they have an undying spirit, and if you inflict wrongs upon them and they are unredressed, the accountability is beyond human power to tell;| but the honor of this nation demands the maintenance of good faith toward hem. Have we heard that any efforts have been made to redress the wrongs recently inflicted on the Delawares? No, sir, we have not heard that the military there have interposed and