o act no inconsiderable part in the future
history of Texas. Within the last few years they have given a severe
lesson to the governments of both Texas and the United States. The
reader is already aware that, through a mistaken policy, the government
of Washington have removed from several southern states those tribes of
half-civilized Indians which indubitably were the most honourable and
industrious portion of the population of these very states. The
Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Choctaws, among others, were established
on the northern banks of the Red River, in the territory west of
the Arkansas.

The Cherokees, with a population of twenty-four thousand individuals;
the Creeks, with twenty thousand, and the Choctaws, with fifteen, as
soon as they reached their new country, applied themselves to
agriculture, and as they possessed wealth, slaves, and cattle, their
cotton plantations soon became the finest west from the Mississippi, and
latterly all the cotton grown by the Americans and the Texans, within
one hundred miles from the Indian settlements, has been brought up to
their mills and presses, to be cleaned and put into bales, before it was
shipped to New Orleans. Some years before the independence of Texas, a
small number of these Cherokees had settled as planters upon the Texan
territory, where, by their good conduct and superior management of their
farms, they had acquired great wealth, and had conciliated the goodwill
of the warlike tribes of Indians around them, such as the Cushates, the
Caddoes, and even the Comanches.

As soon as the Texans declared their independence, their rulers,
thinking that no better population could exist in the northern districts
than that of the Cherokees, invited a few hundred more to come from the
Red River, and settle among them; and to engage them so to do, the first
session of congress offered them a grant of two or three hundred
thousand acres of land, to be selected by them in the district they
would most prefer. Thus enticed, hundreds of wealthy Cherokee planters
migrated to Texas, with their wealth and cattle. Such was the state of
affairs until the presidency of Lamar, a man utterly unequal to the task
of ruling over a new country.

Under his government, the Texans, no longer restrained by the energy and
honourable feelings of an Austin or a Houston, followed the bent of
their dispositions, and were guilty of acts of barbarism and cruelty
which, had they, at the time,