173
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1830
the Crowells, and McKinney's identity with them,, would be suffi- cient reasons to prevent reference being made of the matter, when i;.ome one of the parties was not to be directly benefited!" And the result of the business, has shown the forecast of the advice. When the papers were referred, in the War Department, to Mc- Kinney, he supposed it an important check upon the "exile," when placed in the hands of the "learned Judge," and so, forsooth, it came out in the character of Gen. McIntosh's "lament!" What would be the language of McIntosh, if he could rise and stand before the President of the United States?-Would he not shake his gory locks? and, bowing his mutulated limbs, say "Jackson! Behold your murdered friend-your red right a1··m in battle. His blood hcis unbiwied the land which his valor has often de- fended. His SPOILERS yet l-ive. His people are f(l.r distant from the land of his spirit. They fiul from his destroyers. They could not look uvon the hands which were red with thefr Chieftain Fathe1·'s blood! They would not bow to the rod which chastised him with death. They a1·e gone, but the robber has followed thefr path, and overtaken them. In darkness they are fearful, and in the morning they awake in sorrow and distress. Oh! spare the people of M clntosh! Remembe1· they are human beings. They can feel hunger. They are cold when the snow of winte1· falls upon their naked l-imbs. Take away the svoilers from my people. "Break the jaws of the wicked, and pluck the spoil from thefr teeth." Now what does the learned Judge think of this? I would sup- pose that he would have appended this to his "lament," if he had not been taken with a small twitching in the "jaws." I will now take up some of the Judge's smartness, and see about the contract. Co!. Arbuckle did bid off the contract, and his motives in so doing, I cheerfully admit, were such as would do honor to the proudest philanthropist. It was to take the Indians' corn, furnish a market for them, and, by a good price, fairly paid, they could live, for the Government has not paid them one cent of money in three yrnrs. Judge Blake was to receive the corn for them and issue it to the emigrants. He receipted for it, and how the issues were managed, matters not; but the Judge lost nothing, as the story goes, but issued what he tech- nically calls "short rations," from three to fom· quarts, less in the bushel, than what the Government allowed. Then Major Love 0 was sent by the Agent to St. Louis, with "LETTERS OF CREDIT!!" (not denied,) and there purchased
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