They were living in perfect peace. If you
can get Indians located, and place their wives and children within
your cognizance, you need never expect aggression from them. It is the
Indian who has his wife in security beyond your reach, who, like the
felon wolf, goes to a distance to prey on some flock, far removed from
his den; or like the eagle, who seeks his prey from the distance, and
never from the flocks about his eyrie.

The agent to whom I have referred lost two oxen from his ranche where
he kept his cattle. He went to the officer in command of Fort Belknap,
got a force from him, and then marched to those Indians, sixty miles
from there, and told them they must pay for the oxen. They said, "We
know nothing about your oxen; our people are here; here are our women
and children; we have not killed them; we have not stolen them; we
have enough to eat; we are happy; we have raised corn; we have sold
corn; we have corn to sell; we have sold it to your people, and they
have paid us for it, and we are happy." The agent and the military
gentlemen scared off the Indians from the limits of Texas, and drove
them across the Red River to the Wichita Mountains, taking every horse
and animal they had to pay for the two oxen. This was done by an
accredited agent of the Government, and by an officer who deserved but
little credit. Are such things tolerable, and to be tolerated in the
present age and condition of our Government?

What was the consequence? Those Indians felt themselves aggrieved.
They saw that a new _regime_ had come; they had had the era of peace
and plenty, and now they were expelled by a different influence. They
felt grateful for the benign effects of the first policy toward them,
and that only exasperated them to a greater extent against the second;
and they began to make incursions, ready to take vengeance on any
white man they might meet in their neighborhood, and slay whoever they
might find. They made their forays from the opposite side of the Red
River, from the Wichita Mountains, and came like an avalanche upon our
unprotected citizens. There is one fact showing how your interference
with the Indians within her limits has injured Texas. . . . . .

Well, sir, there is a remedy for all this, and it is very easy to
apply it; but how are we circumstanced there? Is it supposed by some
that we are deriving great aid from the army, and that the greatest
portion of the disposable forces of the United States is i