245
WRITINGS OF SAI\•I HOUSTON, 1850
"Sir: In pursuance of a law passed at the late session of Con- gress, directing the manner of appointing Indian agents, &c. (to take effect from and after the 18th instant, and which requires that all Indian agents shall be nominated by the President, and appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate) you were appointed Indian agent to the Cherokees on Tennessee river. "You will be pleased to notify this department of your accept- ance or non-acceptance of said appointment, and in case of the former, you will return as soon as convenient the enclosed bond, required by the law, duly executed, with the certificate of the district attorney or other known and respectable persons attached of the sufficiency of the securities, on the receipt and approval of which, a commission will be forwarded to you. "In transacting the business of said agency, you will be gov- erned by the instructions which have been given to you from the department under your former appointment. "You are requested to inform all sub-agents attached to your agency, that their compensation is fixed at five hundred dollars a year from the 20th instant, and they will continue to perform the duties heretofore assigned them." Department of the Interior, Office Indian Affairs, August 24, 1850 I certify the foreging to be a correct extract, taken from the original now on file in my office. .L. Lee, Commissioner. Upon that intimation I quit. My salary had formerly been equal to thirteen hundred dollars per annum. It was reduced to five hundred dollars. Colonel Meigs, in writing to Mr. Pleasanton, the Fifth Auditor, on the 14th October, 1818, from Knoxville, Tennessee, says, speaking of me: "When he [Mr. Houston] received the information of the alternation of the salaries, &c., of the Indian agencies, he resigned his appointment as sub-agent, and went to West Tennessee." It appears, sir, that after I had retired to private life, I was not exempt from annoyance, either fancied or real. The Gov- ernment owed me pay as a first lieutenant from October 22d, 1817, to March 1st, 1818. My accounts had not been settled, and it appeared that on the Indian account for that quarter I drew in advance at 'Washington, and that a balance of some sixty-seven dollars remained unpaid to the department. For this the Government gave direction, as soon as my whereabouts was learned-and I had not retired to a corner-to sue me for the amount of sixty-seven dollars, although at the same time the
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