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Seat of Empire | 138 || Chapter 13 | Moccasin Tracks There’s but two tribes any how in this country. One is the moccasin and the other the boots. In those days the moccasins had the county and I was on the trail; now the boots have it, and the moccasins have disappeared, but blamed if I know whether the country is any better off. Early Austin resident Ben Gooch, Brown, Annals of Travis Country, ch. 11 Sometime during the 1810s a Georgia schoolboy named Mirabeau Lamar took up his pen while pondering the question, “Were the Europeans Justified in Conquering and Taking Possession of America in the Manner They Did?” The idealistic youth began by noting, “It must be acknowledged . . . in the conquest of America many daring and outrageous acts of barbarity were committed by the Europeans.” Europeans had been guilty of “neglecting the laws of humanity and their god. . . . The fact is, that, the Europeans finding America a fruitful and advantageous Country, and allured by their thirst for conquest, and wealth, sought the destruction of the natives that they might open a road to their own aggrandizement and profits.” Denying the validity of the rights of discovery and conquest, Lamar argued, “As well might the natives of any land in the ocean who have not yet discovered Europe fit out a ship, land on the coast of England or France and finding no inhabitants but poor peasants or fishermen, drive them from their lands, and claim the whole country by right of discovery.” In summarizing, the young man left no doubt about his answer to the question under debate, “It is self-evident and clear and that it was absolutely unjust.”1 Decades later this same schoolboy addressed his countrymen in quite a different tone: If the wild cannibals of the woods will not desist from their massacres: if they will continue to war upon us with the ferocity of Tigers and Hyenas, it is time we should retaliate their warfare, not in the murder of their women and children, but in the prosecution of an exterminating Moccasin Tracks | 139 | war upon their warriors, which will admit of no compromise and have no termination except in their total extinction or total expulsion.2 From the start President Lamar pursued a stern policy against “the wandering tribes that infest our borders.” He denounced a soft approach toward “the debased and ignorant savages” and their “atrocious cruelties”: “As long as we continue to exhibit our mercy without shewing [sic] our strength, so long will the Indian continue to bloody the edge of the tomahawk .” Contrary to Sam Houston, whose friendliness toward the Indians in general, and the Cherokee in particular, aroused accusations of treason from Lamar partisans, the new president did not concede “that the Indians, either Native, or Emigrant, have any just cause of complaint. That the Emigrant Tribes have no legal or equitable claim to any portion of our territory is obvious.” Even the Native tribes “shall deport themselves in a friendly manner; being subordinate to our laws.”3 Lamar believed this despite the fact that he had immigrated to Texas fifteen years after the Cherokee, and only three years before this speech. When Lamar assumed office, relations between the Texas government and the Cherokee were peaceful. This quickly changed. Lamar, like many Texans, suspected the Cherokee of conspiring with Mexico against the new republic.4 Chief Bowles, the elderly leader of the Cherokee and a close friend of Sam Houston, professed good will toward Texas, but Lamar thought him a liar. His suspicions seemed confirmed after Manuel Flores’s courageous death on the North San Gabriel River in May 1839.5 In Flores’s saddlebags were letters from Mexican officials containing an invitation to the Cherokee to join Mexico in ousting the Anglo-Texans.6 Lamar demanded that the Cherokee leave the republic. When Bowles refused, Lamar sent an army to evict him. The inevitable battle destroyed Cherokee military power. A wounded, unarmed Bowles had his brains blown out by one of the Texans.7 Another then cut strips of flesh from the chief’s body to make a belt. The old man’s trademark hat was shipped to Sam Houston in mocking tribute.8 Lamar’s treatment of the Cherokee triggered ethnic warfare. While many Texas tribes reacted violently to their eviction, the Comanche in particular saw in Lamar’s actions proof that the whites intended to destroy them. Anglo settlers, including those...

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