WRITINGS oF SAM HousToN, 1839
333
and told us to-show them no mercy, but to kill them wherever they could be found. The Bowl was as anxious to have them brought to justice as we were- they were bad men he said and deserved punishment. But, Sir, ( said Mr. H.) I deny the charge.that-Bowls and his companions were criminals. He had lived within seven miles of them in Tennessee and recollected that time he left the country. They had always supported a good character, and the charge was untrue that they had been forced to leave their own country for crime. They first settled on the Arkansas- then on the Red River, where they remained until they were invited into this country by the Mexican authori- ties. It was his last remove and he died nobly defending his own and his country's rights. But the Bowl and his followers were not the only ones whom he had heard accused of leaving the .United States for crime. He had heard white men asked what they had done in the States which brought them here. The Bowl and his companions came to this country under an invitation from the Mexican govern- ment, and they were as much entitled to their land as any of the emigrants from the United States. The gentleman from Nacogdoches had read from Kents Com- mentaries to·show that the Indians could not have nothing [sic] but a possesory claim to land in the United States, and that they could have no right to the soil. He knew that was the doctrine laid down in the United States, but Mexico had pursued a very different policy. Mexico had invited Indians from the United States - granted them lands, and extended other privileges to them which she did not to other people. They came to the country in good faith and got their grant-- and now forsooth, they must be cheated out of their rights while others were crying out lan.d! land! give me more land!!! He must allude to one subject, which though not intimately connected with this question, had been frequently alluded to upon this floor. The people whom he had the honor to represent, and indeed the whole east, had been constantly jeered about the manufacture of fraudulent land claims. There might be some ground for the accusation- but if they had been manufactured in the East, they had migrated to the West, where the demand was so great, they always met with a ready sale! He ·was not certain that the supply had always kept pace with the demand, and he thought if the subject were properly examined, it would
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