Since our last communicalion Lo You we have been made lo feel some lillle inquietude on the subject of Lhe norlhcrn emigrant Judians of Texas. IL is said on very credible authorily LhaL Several Chiefs of the Cherokee and olher Lribes had been at Matamoras, holding councils wilh Gen! Urrea and ncgociating a treaty of alliance wiLh him. Their council fires have been lightened within the wigwams of our enemy, and it may be, the war-whoop will soon be heard in our land. These Cherokees and their associalc bands are in truth Indians of the United Stales-they are recent emigrants from that Counlry and have been thrown into our Lerritory, by the peculiar transplanting policy of Lhat government. l therefore conceive that they come, objectively, within the purview of thaL clause of the treaty between the Republics of Mexico and of the U States, which relates lo the ludians of the respective contracling parties. This government feel that they are entitled Lo any beneficiary provision contained in that treaty which relates to Indian hostilities, as this porlion of the then Confcreration of i\lexico was the only one to which Lhat clause of the Lrealy could have any practical reference. Treaties have a territorial as well as a political relation and the disruption of the Confederacy of Mexico and the Severance of Texas from the new government established over the residue of that Counlry, cannot deprive Texas of the benefits of that portion of tlie Treaty which has a peculiar and exclusive application lo its territorial circumstances. Those benefits may to be Sure be superseded by a subsequent and separate treaty made between the Governments of Texas and the United Stales, but no such treaty has yet been celebrated. UnLil it is, Texas has a right to expect, as a late integral portion of the Confederate Sovereignties of Mexico, the advantage of a treaty made with that confederacy and having special and peculiar relation to her own territory. Independent of this abstract right which we would advance wiLh some diffidence we rely confidently upon the generous sympathy which has been so abundantly manifested by the people of the United Slates in our behalf, for a liberal and humane interpretation of the obligations of that Lreaty and for a practical extension to their "Kindred according Lo the flesh", of all the benefits that were intended, in the original ratification of that treaty, lo be conferred upon them. I therefore entcrlain a hope that the contemplated hostilities of the Cherokees and other lately Northern trib<'s
185
Powered by FlippingBook