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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1855
There is another fact in connection with the Indian policy of Texas which I shall mention. How was it with the Wichita In- dians? Texas sought to conciliate them; they lived beyond her borders, and made incursions from the limits of the United States into Texas while .she was an independent Republic. She did everything in her power to bring about peace with them, and, through the friendly Indians, was pacifying them. One of their chiefs, with his wife and little child, and twelve of his men, came to Fort Belknap. Some one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles west ·of the fort, at Hamilton's valley, property had been stolen by Indians. It was not known which out of the thirteen different tribes had taken it; for outlaws occasionally congre- gated from each, half a dozen of them stealing off from their tribes, without the influence of their chiefs operating upon them. They were outlaws, careless of the destiny of their tribes, and reckless of the crimes which they might commit, so that they could gratify their cupidity and recompense their daring. These men had taken some property. Dragoons came on in the direc- tion of Red River, and reached Fort Belknap. So soon as they arrived, the officer said to this chief: "Sir, I retain you as a prisoner. It is true you came under a white flag; but I am an officer; I have the power; I take you prisoner, and you must stay here a prisoner until the horses are brought back. Your men must stay, too, except one, whom I will send to your tribe with intelligence of the fact." The chief said: "My tribe have not committed the robbery; it is a great distance from me; it is in another direction. I come from the rising sun; that is toward the setting sun; I was far from it; you are between me and it; I did not do it." "But," said the officer, "you are a prisoner." The officer put him in the guard-house. Imprisonment is eternal infamy to an Indian. A prairie Indian would rather die a thou- sand deaths than submit to the disgrace of imprisonment. You may wound and mutilate him as you please, you may crush every limb in the body of a prairie Indian, and if he can make no other resistance, he will spit defiance at you when you come within his reach. This chief, meditating upon his deep disgrace, know- ing that he was irreparably dishonored, unless he could wash out his stains with blood, resolved that night that he would either die a freeman or rescue himself from dishonor. He rose in the night. He would not leave his wife and child in the hands of his enemy; so he took his knife and stabbed his squaw and little one to the heart. Not a groan was heard, for he well knew where ■
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