401
PAPERS OF l\IIRABEAU BuoNAPARTE LAMAR
community I am yet free to confess that the continued denunciations of some few of my measures, by those who are not unwilling to depreciate the executive at home and abroad, cannot be regarded by me with total indifference so long as there is a possibility that truth, justice and the character of the country may suffer by such efforts. The expulsion qf the Cherokees, for which the Executive has been made the subject of so much unmerited vituperation was a measure which the safety and tranquillity of the country imperiously demancforl. This cunning and malignant tribe, who has acquired many of the per- nicious habits of civilization without any of its virtues, were not only a source of continual annovance to the Eastern frontier, but were the active agents in exciting· other tribes to massacres and ravages along our entire border. Their ability to mischief, too, was daily increasing, by accessions from their kindred tribes beyond the Red River; and the natural tendencies of such a migration must be apparent to every think- ing mind that has the slightest knowledge of the character of this fierce and stealthy race. It required no particular prescience to forsee that the savages of the North migrating to Texas, would find more congenial associations in a political union with Mexico, than any relations which they could be permitted to sustain with a community of honest and enlightened Americans. This truth was no more ohvi_ous to us, than it was to the Mexicans themselves, who taking advantage of the natural tendency of the Indian to assimilate with the Mexican, soon entered into an intimate alliance with the Cherokees-an alliance which con- tributed largely to nourish the vain hopes of Mexico, that she would he able eventually to overthrow our institutions, and reassert her dominion over the Country. These hopes naturally diverting her me<litations from the reciprocal advantages which a peace would confer upon her, as well as upon 11s, rendered an amicable adjustment of our difficulties with her utterly impracticable, so long as these savage allies were per- mitted to remain among us, daily augmenting in numbers, and stimu- lating the desires and expectations of our principal foe. Their immediate removal therefore from the country, became an object of the highest importance to a successful pacification with l\Iexico and would have been rendered doubly important in th0 event of a renewal of hostilities between the two nations. That it was the design of l\Iexi- cans, thus backed and sustained by their faithful coadjutors, to march an army into Texas whenever they could find sufficient repose from domestic discords-and that it was the intention of the Cherokees and other tribes interested with them, to raise the tomahawk simultaneously in the East, in concert with the inYading squadrons of the West, are facts fully known to this. government, and publickly confirmed by the disclosures made in the captured letters from the-Mexican authorities. to Bowls and others. For this government to have waited supinely the full development of such a scheme of carnage and devastation, might have comported with the views of those-if any such there be-whose sympathies were stronger for the savages than for their own natural brethren; but it would have been on the part of those intrusted with the wellbeing of the country, a guilty dereliction of duty, worse than folly and madness; it would have been a moral treason against the ties of blood, religion, and all the sacred principles of nature. But the Executive did not so wait. Energetic measures were prompt-
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