Sam Houston and Native American relations
He was an adopted son, and he was a negotiator, strategist, and creator of fair public policy for Native Americans as a legislator, governor and president of the Republic of Texas.
Two years later, his mother Elizabeth Blair Paxton Houston (1757–1831) moved the family of nine children to the wilderness of Blount County, Tennessee.
[11][12][13] According to Texas historian James L. Haley, Houston also preferred the "free and unsophisticated spiritual expression of the Native Americans" over the stern church sermons of damnation and hell.
[15] The Indian agent of the Cherokee in southeastern Tennessee, Return J. Meigs, stated that Jolly's house was "one of the largest ... finest homes in the South.
According to William Carey Crane and James L. Haley, these experiences helped shape his character and gave him skills that aided him while serving in the military and as a leader.
[19][26] As whites settled in the western frontier, political pressure mounted to remove Native Americans from the Southern United States to land west of the Mississippi River, as proposed in 1803 (the year of the Louisiana Purchase) by Thomas Jefferson.
[31] Houston believed that the clothing he had worn showed respect for the Native American delegation, but Calhoun felt that it was unbecoming of an officer in the Army.
Since we parted at the Falls, as you went up the river, I have heard that a dark cloud had fallen on the white path you were walking, and when it fell in your way you turned your thoughts to the wigwam.
[17] More than ten years earlier, Houston had helped negotiate the treaty that brought the Cherokee to Arkansas, believing that they would not be subject to pressure from white Southerners to leave the area.
Although part of the arrangement was that the Indian agents were to give the Cherokee $50,000 (equivalent to $1,387,273 in 2023) in gold coin[47][48] for abandoning their lands in Arkansas, they were given instead worthless certificates or paper money of little value.
[54] Wanting to fully assimilate into the nation, he avoided white people, donned the clothing and turbans of the natives, wore a goatee and grew out his hair, which he braided and let fall down his back.
He shared their appreciation for the land and its forests, and how they related to the natural world, unlike those white men who did not respect the Cherokee's connection with their homelands and hunting grounds.
[58] John Rogers had served as a captain in the British Army during the American Revolutionary War and fought under Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814,[59] alongside his sons and Houston.
[19][67][h] After declining to accompany Houston to Texas in 1832, Diana remained in Indian Territory with titles to their property, which included their residence and land.
[71] In December 1829, Houston, while serving as an ambassador appointed by Jolly (Chief Oolooteka), and accompanied by a delegation of representatives of other Cherokee groups, went to Washington, D.C.[49][72] He met with Jackson who subsequently removed corrupt Indian agents from their positions.
[49] In anticipation of the removal of the remaining Cherokee east of the Mississippi River, Houston made an unsuccessful bid to supply rations to the Native Americans during their journey.
[74] Houston gladly accepted a mission offered by Jackson to negotiate with the Comanche so that they would not attack the Native Americans that the government was moving westward.
He crossed the border into Texas on December 2, 1832,[69] and met with the Comanche in San Antonio; they agreed to meet in May 1833 with governmental officials at Fort Gibson.
[77][j] In 1836, they provided provisions for people who passed through their villages in the Runaway Scrape, while fleeing Antonio López de Santa Anna's army.
Houston, who assumed the office of president in 1836, planned to provide frontier protection, engage in trade relationships, and promote peace.
[78] On December 5, 1836, a law was enacted that gave Houston the power to protect Native Americans by establishing trading posts and blockhouses.
[83] Throughout the last years of his presidency, Houston made numerous efforts for the Republic to find common ground with the various tribes, asserting their right to land ownership.
[k] In early 1844, Amorous Man, Buffalo Hump, and Old Owl (Mopechucope), concluded the Treaty of Tehuacana Creek in which they agreed to surrender all white captives, and to cease raiding Texan settlements in exchange for the cessation of military action against them, the establishment of more trading posts, and formal recognition of the boundaries they chose for the Comanchería.
The Texas Senate, before ratifying the treaty in its final form, removed the boundary that would have confined white settlers to the region east of the Edwards Plateau, causing Buffalo Hump to reject this altered version of the agreement, which led to a resumption of hostilities.
[108] In January, 1853, he was reelected to the Senate,[109] and in November 1857, the Texas legislature chose John Hemphill to succeed him when his term was set to expire in March 1859.
During a night session of the Congressional debates held before its passage, Houston made a closing address to the full galleries, asking a question not raised by anyone else.
Native American war parties from north of the Red River crossed into the frontier regions of Texas and sometimes struck armed white settlements in the far south.
They destroyed an entire German settlement near San Antonio in 1855, and Native raiders on horseback followed the Indian trail used by the Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump to the Gulf of Mexico.
Jefferson Davis, United States Secretary of War at the time, was determined to address the raiding, and hostile policies against Native Americans resumed.
[120] The Cherokee Removal Memorial Park, overlooking Hiwassee Island, was established to honor the relationship between Sam Houston and Native Americans who lived in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
