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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1855
lieutenant, and at the instigation of a drunken interpreter, from whom the lieutenant had taken a bottle of whiskey, and had thrown it down and broken it. Who can suppose that such a medium through which to communicate to the Indians was cal- culated either to inspire respect or confidence, or that he was a very suitable medium through which to present grave matters, and make reclamation for a cow? Sir, that cow is to become the wonderful prodigy of the present age, and she is to enlist the sympathies of the whole country for the lieutenant and his company, who fell victims to indiscre- tion and .rashness. Doubtless, induced by the language of this drunken interpreter, he acted with the indiscretion that would characterize youth, but not the deliberation of manhood, and yet this country is to be involved in a war, the least expense to be att.ached to which will be $5,000,000. It will be an expensive cow; and after you have carried on the war as long as the war continued in Florida, and it has cost you another forty-five mil- lions, you will end it in the same way by peace. Where they have boundless deserts, and mountains, and fastnesses, and plains in which to find security, and when those in Florida, who were hemmed in on an isthmus or a cape, could not be reduced by the army of the United States, and the militia of the South, how are you going to take troops thousands of miles to subdue these Indians in the illimitable West? It is impossible that it can be done, Mr. President. Then you will have to purchase peace; and, besides all that, for ten years to come, you will have to in- crease your officers, and clerks in your accounting offices, to pay for the lost horses, and the incidental losses and injuries done. But, we are told by the honorable Senator from Alabama [Mr. Fitzpatrick] that there is great danger from the Indians, in large bodies of two thousand five hundred, sweeping down the Missouri River and the Mississippi, and that carnage, massacre, and slaugh- ter will be the consequence of it. Much respect as I have for the honorable Senator-and I assure you it is of the most sincere character-I can not agree with him on these Indian subjects, though he has lived in a State contiguous to the Indians, but of a character very different from those of the plains. The Indians of the plains are sui gene1·is when compared with others. They are not like the Indians located in the towns or wigwams of the South; they have no marks of civilization in their habits. The want of contact with the whites has deprived them of a thousand I f
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