Twice A Year They Are Obliged To Make
Long And Dangerous Expeditions, To Procure The Necessary
Provisions For Themselves And Their Families.
For this purpose
horses are absolutely requisite, for their own comfort and
safety, as well as for the transportation of their food, and
their little stock of valuables; and without them they would be
reduced, during a great portion of the year, to a state of abject
misery and privation.
They have no brood mares, nor any trade
sufficiently valuable to supply their yearly losses, and endeavor
to keep up their stock by stealing horses from the other tribes
to the west and southwest. Our own people, and the tribes
immediately upon our borders, may indeed be protected from their
depredations; and the Kanzas, Osages, Pawnees, and others, may be
induced to remain at peace among themselves, so long as they are
permitted to pursue the old custom of levying upon the Camanches
and other remote nations for their complement of steeds for the
warriors, and pack-horses for their transportation to and from
the hunting ground. But the instant they are forced to maintain a
peaceful and inoffensive demeanor towards the tribes along the
Mexican border, and find that every violation of their rights is
followed by the avenging arm of our government, the result must
be, that, reduced to a wretchedness and want which they can ill
brook, and feeling the certainty of punishment for every attempt
to ameliorate their condition in the only way they as yet
comprehend, they will abandon their unfruiful territory and
remove to the neighborhood of the Mexican lands, and there carry
on a vigorous predatory warfare indiscriminately upon the
Mexicans and our own people trading or travelling in that
quarter.
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