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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1857
persons, some women and children among the number. Then they said they were ready for peace; they had lost ten, and they had only taken the lives of ten in return; so that the account was squared. This is an instance of the discretion exercised towards the Indians by your modern military officers. We all recollect the transaction which took place a few years since. A lieutenant fired into an Indian camp when unprotected. The Indians had their revenge. White men who had not participated in the pro- ceeding, and who were collected a few miles off unarmed, were not molested by the Indians. They simply took vengeance on those who had given the aggression, as was according to their law; they did not extend their ravage or violence beyond that. General Shields, a gentleman who is well known in the Senate, said to me, "Sir, the attack on Little Thunder and his band of Indians was a most unheard-of atrocity." The gallant general told me that one of the surviving warriors came to him and said: "The whites deceived us; they set upon us when there was no necessity. You know," said he, "when warriors go to battle they are armed; they stand as warriors; they have not their women and children with them. When warriors have their women and children with them they are hunters, not soldiers. We had our women and children with us; we would have put them in a place of security; but the whites came upon us; they sur- prised us; they slaughtered us without cause." General Shields, like a generous soldier, said to me, "Sir, my heart was smitten with sympathy, when I heard that Indian tale of woe and wrong." Mr. President, if you want peace with the Indians you should lead them in the paths of peace. You can never tame the Indian until he is destroyed, if you persist in making him an adversary and an enemy, instead of a friend. Pursue that course and you will have to extinguish him, but you can never subjugate him. The wilderness has been his home, and there he will flee from the white man. He will well know who has been his enemy; and when he can retaliate he will do it in blood. But, sir, estab- lish your factory system; let everything go through pure chan- nels; take for Indian agents men who know something of Indian character, who have some familiarity with frontier life. Do not take men from the interior of a State that has not had an Indian within its limits perhaps for a century. Do not take a man from the sea-board and send him among the Indians with the expecta- tion that he will sympathize with them. He must have a strong
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