Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/239

sioners sent to them by the President of the United States until they had the sanction of the Government of Texas; and the symbols of confidence were put in the hands of the commissioners before the Indians would treat with them. Take an illustration: One of their chiefs, with his wife and child, and twelve men came to Fort Belknap, some one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles west of the fort at Hamilton's Valley. Property had been stolen by Indians. It was not known which of thirteen different tribes had taken it, for outlaws occasionally congregated from each, half a dozen of them stealing off from their tribes without the influence of their chiefs operating upon them. They were outlaws, careless of the destiny of their tribes, and reckless of the crimes which they might commit, so long as they could gratify their cupidity, and recompense their daring. These men had taken some property. Dragoons came on in the direction of the Red River, and reached Fort Belknap. So soon as they arrived, the officer said to this chief: 'Sir, I retain you as a prisoner. It is true you came here under a white flag: but I am an officer; I have the power; I take you prisoner, and you must stay here a prisoner until the horses are brought back. Your men must stay, too, except one, whom I will send to your tribe with the intelligence of the fact.' The chief said: 'My tribe have not committed the robbery; it is a great distance from me; it is in another direction. I come from the rising sun; that is toward the setting sun; I was far from it; you are between me and it; I did not do it.' 'But,' said the officer, 'you are a prisoner.' The officer put him in the guard-house. Imprisonment is eternal infamy to an Indian. A prairie Indian would rather die a thousand deaths than submit to the disgrace of imprisonment. You may wound and mutilate him as you please, you may crush every limb in the body of a prairie Indian, and if he can make no other resistance he will spit defiance at you when you come within his reach. This chief, meditating upon his deep disgrace, knowing that he was irreparably dishonored, unless he could wash out his stains with blood, resolved that night that he would either die a free man or rescue himself from dishonor. He rose in the night. He would not leave his wife and child in the hands of his enemy; so he took his knife, and stabbed his squaw and little one to the heart. Not a groan was heard, for he well knew where to apply the poignard. He went and shot down the sentinel, rushed upon the superior officers, was shot, and perished like a warrior, in an attempt to wipe a stain from his honor. His men fled, and returned to their tribe, but it was to bring blood, carnage, and conflagration upon our settlements. They came not again as brothers to smoke the calumet of peace, but with brands in their hands to