WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1858
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him on it, and he will be convicted at least of inconsistency with the present rule of the Government, though there is nothing criminal in what he has done; but his conduct is so rare and so extraordinary that it even furnishes some pretext for the sus- picion that there is criminality in it. Eighty thousand dollars were appropriated for his agency, and he has had the impudence to report to the Department, that out of the $80,000 he has an unexpended balance of $60,000 now on hand. That is an out- rageous thing; I insist that such a thing has not been since the establishment of the Government, and therefore he ought to be held responsible for setting such an example. [Laughter.] That is the only thing he has done improperly that I have heard of, and it is a rebuke to so many that I think he would not meet with much favor. I will now show the influence that civilization has had upon the Indians under his care. I have stated that there are four hundred Indians on one re- serve. They have one hundred and fifty acres of land in cultiva- tion there; but they have no protection against the wild Indians. On the Brazos reserve there are twelve hundred Indians, with eight hundred acres of land in cultivation. They raised last year no less than eight thousand bushels of corn and sixteen hundred bushels of wheat. Does not that look like advancing civilization among Indians, that before never had anything but a flying camp; never lived in a hut for an hour; never took hold of an implement of agriculture at all, until within the short space of time that the Government has been experimenting upon them? Is this making no progress? I am satisfied that with anything like reasonable care exercised toward the Indians, and without any remarkable increase of expenditure, or rather corning within the limits of what has been expended, all the Indians that have been hostile to us can be brought down to domestication and rendered good people, inoffensive in their character; for so soon as you can turn them to the arts of agriculture, peace ensues. They begin to find that their homes with their women and chil- dren comfortable, are better than a camp in the wilderness with their women and children standing around them. Their friends coming in from far distant hunting grounds see their comforts, and they will seek to change their modes of life, abandoning the hunter's pursuit and turning their attention to the arts of civilized life. There has not been such an advance made since the settle- ment of this continent to the present moment, amongst any Indian tribes, as has been made in Texas for an inconsiderable
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