William Carey Crane

“ A swarthy, keen-eyed lawyer, pleading in the Supreme Court of New York, or a very dark-haired gentleman who sits next to you in a general's uniform at a State dinner in the White House, are, to the keenest ethnological eye, about the only signs of the now thickly peopled States, covered with cities and towns, having been once inhabited only by dwellers in wigwams, who fished the salmon, and hunted the bear and the deer, with no man to make them afraid. ”

“ But there is not a tribe that has not been outraged and defrauded; and nearly all the wars we have prosecuted against the Indians, have grown out of the bold frauds, and the cruel injustice, played off upon them by our Indian agents and their accomplices. But the purposes for which these vast annuities and enormous contingent advances were made, have only led to the destruction of the constitutions of thousands, and the increase of immorality among the Indians. We can not measure the desolating effects of intoxicating liquors, among the Indians, by any analogy drawn from civilized life. ”

“ White men had wronged them, introduced discord at their council fires, robbed them of their forests and game, driven them from the graves of their fathers, and enticed them from their happy hunting grounds by deceitful bribes of trinkets and rifles. White men had introduced among them their vices and loathsome diseases. ”

“ These agents and sub-agents had powerful friends in Congress. Instigated by mortified pride, they crowded the journals of Arkansas with infamous libels upon Houston's character. They never forgave him the crime of tearing away the mask from a band of leagued land pirates, and they lavishly used their money with a venal press to overwhelm him with infamy. A hostile majority controlled Congress at that time and used the most strenuous exertions to crush General Jackson ”

“ But a young hero was the sworn friend of the President. If they could not strike General Jackson directly, they might injure him through his personal friend. All the foes of General Jackson were successfully rallied against him. He had proved incontrovertibly against them some startling facts. The agents had been contractors for furnishing Indian rations. To multitudes only a scanty and insufficient supply of food had been supplied, and through their neglect or cupidity, some of the Indians had actually died of starvation. ”

“ Disease, whiskey, misery untold, and villainous saltpetre have civilized them off of the face of the earth, once their own. Once, all the region east of the Mississippi, from Maine to Louisiana, was thickly peopled with the prosperous villages of those whom the old travellers called ' the savages.' No part of America now shows so thickly populated a country, or so joyous a savage race as those who there hunted in the woods, and paddled their birch canoes, or Mandan coracles. ”

“ In this view, some of the political opponents of Gen. Jackson concurred. Houston spoke in his own defence on the trial, at great length, with consummate ability and eloquence. But as the matter dragged wearily for a month, his foes became tired of the prosecution, and the people were becoming indignant that the business of the country should be abandoned by the Congress, to prosecute a soldier who had bled in the service of his country, and who was unfortunately self-exiled. He had been four years a member of the body before which he was arraigned ”

“ Life Among the Indians— Wrongs Done Them — His Condemnation of such Wrongs— The Difficulty with Hon. Mr. Stansberry, of Ohio — The Caning — Trial By House of Representatives and Courts of the District of Columbia. While a runaway boy among the Cherokee Indians in the HiWassee Country, Sam Houston was adopted as his son by Oolooteka, the chief, who gave him shelter and protection. In the course of events this Cherokee chief had removed to Arkansas and had become principal chief of his tribe, resident there. ”