WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1855
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alarm, one would think that New Orleans itself could hardly be safe, but that the Indians would sweep down the Missouri and Mississippi, and carry death, destruction, and devastation in their course! Are these causes calculated to produce such mighty effects? Is it proper that the nation should be involved in a general Indian war at this time? Is it proper that $5,000,000 should be expended from the Treasury to begin this war? If this be done, what will be the consequence? The Indians will not be embodied to meet you. Your troops will hear that in some direction there is a Comanche, or a Kioway, or an Osage camp, and they will advance upon it "with all the pomp and circumstance of a glorious war." A morning gun will be fired as a signal to .rise and prepare for the march. On such an occasion, with the bugle sounding in advance, how beautiful must be the reflection from the arms and banners floating in the prairie! That is to be the spectacle which is to amuse or drive the Indians ahead. They are to meet the Indians on a trackless waste. You might as well pursue the course of a ship's keel on the ocean, as to pursue the Indians of the prairies. They would disperse, and your army would be left there; and they, perhaps, surrounding you, in the distance, and laughing at the glorious pomp with which you were marching through their prairies. If you take men there and make a dis- play without efficiency, you provoke their ridicule and supreme contempt. But, Mr. President, the course which has been pursued since the days of William Penn to the present moment, has not been entirely successful in conciliating the Indians. Under the man- agement of Washington, of the first Adams, of Madison, of Monroe, of the second Adams, of Jackson, and of Polk, we have, with few exceptions, been very successful in maintaining peace with them. The suggestions made by our fathers in relation to their civilization and humanization, are exemplified and illus- trated in the present condition of the southern tribes, who have received the greatest benefits of the light shed on them; and they have responded to it by the cultivation of mind, by the develop- ment of resources, both physical and intellectual, which reflect lustre on their character. Can not the Indian now be influenced in the same way, by the same means? Have we no landmarks to guide us? Have we not experience to teach us? Have we not humanity to prompt us to march on in the path which is already laid out before us?
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