mnants, share the same fate?"

"Oh, no!" was the response. "Beyond the great river Mississippi," said
the President to them in 1829, "where a part of your nation has gone,
your Father has provided a country large enough for all of you; and he
advises you to remove to it. There your white brothers will not trouble
you: they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it, you
and your children, as long as the grass grows or the water runs, in
peace and plenty. _It will be yours for ever_."

With this assurance, many left the land of their birth and the homes of
their childhood, travelled hundreds of miles, crossed the Mississippi,
and settled on the banks of the Arkansas. M. de Tocqueville was
"assured, towards the end of the year 1831, that 10,000 Indians had
already gone to the shores of the Arkansas, and fresh detachments were
constantly following them." Many, however, were unwilling to be thus
expatriated. "The Indians readily discover," says M. de Tocqueville,
"that the settlement which is proposed to them is merely a temporary
expedient. Who can assure them that they will at length be allowed to
dwell in peace in their new retreat? The United States pledge
themselves to the observance of the obligation; but the territory which
they at present occupy was formerly secured to them by the most solemn
oaths of Anglo-American faith. The American Government does not,
indeed, rob them of their land, but it allows perpetual incursions to
be made upon them. In a few years the same white population which now
flocks around them, will track them to the solitudes of the Arkansas:
they will then be exposed to the same evils, without the same remedies;
and as the limits of the earth will at last fail them, their only
refuge is the grave."

The views of this keen French philosopher were prophetic. In vain did I
strain my eyes, as we passed along, to discover any trace of these
Indians. Not one representative of those noble aborigines was to be
seen. In 1836 Arkansas was constituted a State, and admitted into the
Union; and, if you look at a recent map of the United States, you will
see the "location" of these Indians marked, not in the State of
Arkansas at all, but far--far beyond, towards the setting sun, in what
is called the "Western Territory," where, indeed, the river Arkansas
has its source. Nor will ten years pass away before they will be again
disturbed, and pushed further back.

At the mouth of the Arkansas is