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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1344
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were so perfidiously retained, and permitted to return home- with the exception of Dn. Jose Antonio Navarro, one of the illfated number composing the Santa Fe expedition, who alone remains to bear the vengeance of a government which seems to delight in inflicting upon a helpless iudividual those wrongs and cruelties which would degrade the head of any other nation to a level with the rudest savage. The laws of the last Congress touching our prisoners in Mexico, were carried out as frilly and as speedily as circum- stances would permit. The commission sent out by this government to confer with a similar commission on the part of Mexico, in regard to the establishment of an armistice between the two countries, con- cluded their labors in the month of February last. Under the instructions by which they were governed, it became necessary for the Executive to approve or reject their proceedings. As soon as they were submitted, he did not hesitate, for reasons palpably manifest, to adopt the latter course. The subsequent manifesto of the Mexican government, in relation to this subject, disregarding as it did every ordinary courtesy, even between belligerents, and descending into the vilest and most unmerited abuse of the people of Texas, forced upon the President the necessity of a response. He accordingly replied in such terms as he believed the occasion required at his hands. Our Indian affairs are in as good condition as the most san- guine would reasonably have anticipated. When it is remembered that a good while necessarily elapsed before the various tribes, all of whom were in a state of the most bitter hostility, could be reached through the agents of the government, and that they are now, taken as different communities, completely pacified and in regular friendly intercourse with our trading establishments, in the judgment of the unprejudiced and impartial, the policy which would inculcate and maintain peace, and thereby save the frontiers from sava·ge depredation and butcheries, will be viewed as satisfactorily demonstrated. It is not denied that tnere are among the Indians, as among our own people, individuals who will disregard all law and commit excesses of the most flagrant character; but it is unjust to attribute to a tribe or body of men disposed to obey the laws, what is properly chargeable to a few renegades and desperadoes. Other governments of far superior resources for imposing restraints upon the wild men of the forests and prairies, have not been exempt from the infraction of treaties and the occasional commission of acts of rapine and
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