TEXAS INDIAN PAPERS, 1860-1916
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the Pacific, the interests and common welfare of the Mexican and American peoples along this vast outstretch of national boundary are so far forth one and the same that whatever af- fects injuriously the people one country must in the nature of things prove prejudicial to their neighbors of the other country? When the citizens and public authorities shall act in good faith. upon this broad basis and natural relation of things, then both peoples will have entred the right road to hue progress and unmolested prosperity & they will have arrived at the con- ditions nescessary to enduring peace and good will. Short of this the frontiers will present scenes of misunderstanding of wild outbreaks and a disorders for years to come. Give security to life and property, give to intelligent indus- try and enterprise, to trade and commerce, immunity from dan- ger and freedom from oppression upon these frontiers, and your waste places will be built up as if by Magic, the vast Mineral regions skirting your easten1 and northern boundary in com- mon with those of Texas and Arizona will teem with population and millions of Capital-, While the valley of the Rio Grande, second only to the Mississippi -and in many of its elements and resources the first upon the Continent-and at this time the most inviting unoccupied region in the Americas-now shut out from and unknown to the world--comparatively absent and without inhabitants will instantly spring to life-and astonish our own peoples respectively and the nations abroad, for the variety & value of its great staple productions, and the devel- opment of boundless capabilities in almost every department of material research and industry. Shall then the citizens and local & i:-upreme authorities of civilized & neighboring nations-whose intrests lying sicle by side for hundreds of leagues, and which intrests so completely harmonyise, permit for a single day, the presence and acts of barbarious and semi savage wandering tribes to interfere with their mutual good understanding, debaring cultivated and in- telligent emigrants, so much needed by both states, from found- ing homes and civilized communities in the territories of each respectively? Shall the raids and plunderings the robberies and murders committed by these tribes and other, be knowingly encouraged and made a traffick of by the citizens of either of their States? Shall the progress of settlement- the opening up of various in-
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