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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1859
229
you establish one system with the Indian, and very soon change it, he can rely with no degree of certainty on any calculation he has made, and he believes it is a promise to suit the convenience of the white man, and that so soon as it suits their further con- venience or inclination, the Indian is to become the victim of perfidy. Now, if this reservation be not established, what will be the consequences? · Within the last few months, depredations have been committed there; passengers have been killed; parties have been destroyed upon this very identical route where the· Indians are who will be embraced in the western reserve. They will be there congregated; they will be subsisted; care will be taken of them, and they will make the return of faithful• fidelity for the care extended to them. But withdraw now a promise of aid to them which has been made by our agents, and fearful retribution will follow. Intelligence passes among them like the breeze of the forest; it is everywhere buzzed, and it is astonishing with what celerity intelligence will pass amongst these Indians from one tribe to another; they reason and discuss the subject; their• minds will become settled upon it; their hearts will become fixed upon it. They have few objects to attract them. They are not like the white man, amused by a thousand means that result from education and intelligence. Their objects are all of a material character; their pleasures are material; they pertain to the animal; and so long as you foster these, so long is the Indian your friend. Withdraw these, and he is the wild man of the forest; he is to pursue war as his natural employment. Hence, it is that I wish these Indians gathered together on the western reserve; I wish them withdrawn from the mail route to Cali- fornia, and from the route of the emigrants. I wish the emi- grants to be protected; I wish no hazards to result; and a few misfortunes of this character, when the Government of the United States comes to reimburse them, will either absorb the annuities granted by the Government, thus amounting to a declaration of war, or it will incite the Indians to instant war, and to depredate upon our frontier; for the Indian is as much at home in one place in the forest as in another. He considers distance only for the comforts that commend it. Let him find that the comforts that he commands at one point he can command at all, subsisting by the hunter's life, and he will as soon start from El Paso and go to our frontiers, if he had to wreak vengeance for an injury done, or for a falsehood told, as he would go twenty miles. Time,
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