tribal existence is gone, and ere long the Cherokees will forever be extinct.

The Fourth Congress assembled at Austin on the 11th of November, 1839. President Lamar's lengthy message was delivered on the following day. In this well-written document he speaks at length on his favorite theme, and affirms that the war waged against the Indians proved to be a national blessing. "The cries of captivity and murder," he says, "have of late been seldom heard upon our borders, with the exception of a few recent massacres, resulting from the lack of vigilance on the part of less-protected settlers. The frontier has for some time enjoyed peace and security, heretofore unknown, and which we hope, by proper vigilance and promptness, to render as permanent as beneficial." President Lamar furthermore declared it as his opinion that the proper policy to be pursued toward the aborigines was "absolute expulsion from the Republic." And in conclusion, he stated that he was determined "to push a vigorous war against them, pursuing them to their hiding-places, without mitigation or compassion, until they should be made to feel that flight from our borders, without the hope of return, was preferable to the scourges of war." Lamar advocated his "expulsion policy" with much enthusiasm, and no doubt meant well; but we think the humane reader will stop to question the true Christian morality of this stern policy towards the natives, whose ancestors had occupied their littoral hunting-grounds untold ages before the advent of the pale-faces. But right or wrong, such was the logic of events. That the red race should be deprived of the ownership of Texas was hastily conceded to by all, while the propriety of such unhumane proceedings was never for one moment considered. "But admitting the inhumanity of this procedure," says Mr. Yoakum, "whither could the aborigines fly? To drive them into the territories of the United States would be a violation of treaty obligations; to force them into Mexico would have supplied her with many thousand exasperated warriors, infinitely more brave and daring than her own people; and to massacre them, even if practicable, would have savored of unmixed barbarity."

choice land, set apart for them by the United States. In an article on "The Indian Country," in the Century Magazine for August, 1885, Mr. Henry King, in speaking of the Cherokees, says, "The Cherokees are regarded as the most apt and advanced of all the Indians, and they are certainly the most adroit and ambitious. They may be said to be the governing tribe. Their leading men are exceptionally capable, and the people in general are remarkable for their vigor and alertness of intellect. They maintain admirable public schools, two seminaries, and an orphan asylum; and they have a well-conducted weekly newspaper, printed mainly in their own language, after an alphabet invented by a Cherokee genius named Sequoyah, who became so frightened at the effects of his contrivance, the Indians say, and felt so apprehensive that the 'bad medicine' of reading, which he had introduced, would break up the old native habits and destroy his people, that he lapsed into a settled melancholy, and wandering off to Mexico, died there of a broken heart."

Notwithstanding the large and increasing sums of money that had been expended, and the vigorous steps taken during the previous summer of this year to chastise the depredating bands of Indians and to drive them out of the country, they continued to be troublesome, and to harass border settlers all along the entire line of our extensive frontier.

On the 24th of October, Captain Thomas B. Howard encountered a war-party of one hundred and forty well-mounted prairie Indians. The rangers came upon them in an open prairie between the San Gabriel and Little Rivers. A skirmishing fight at once ensued, in which three or four Indians were killed and several wounded. The Texans succeeded in escaping unhurt." Again on the 25th of December, General Burleson had a severe engagement with a party of Cherokees, on Cherokee Creek, in San Saba County. When come upon by Burleson, they sent forward one of their number with a message, asking to have a talk; but believing this to be a blind in order to gain more time in which to prepare to defend themselves, Burleson took their messenger. into custody. Seeing their plans thus defeated, they at once opened a heavy fire upon the rangers, who now attacked them with such vigor and determination that the Indians were compelled to leave the field, despite their desperate effort to hold their position. In this sanguinary engagement six warriors were left dead upon the field; besides these, one man (the messenger), five women, and nineteen children were taken prisoners. Among the captives were the unfortunate wife and children. of the celebrated Cherokee chief, Bowles, who had been killed while bravely fighting for the disputed rights of his people in East Texas. The Texans lost in this fight the gallant Captain Lynch, who met his

25 Report of James H. Starr, Secretary of the Treasury, November 3, 1839. In a speech of Senator Rusk, delivered in the United States Senate on the 19th of July, 1854, there is exhibited a statement under the hand of James B. Shaw, Controller of Texas, dated March 20 of that year, showing the expenses incurred by the Republic of Texas in maintaining peace with and protecting her frontier from the incursions of Indians removed thither and belonging to the United States. As this probably includes the greater part of the appropriations made by Texas on account of the Indians, we compile from it the following table of Indian appropriations for each year:

26 Thrall's History of Texas, part vii. p. 462. Captain Howard's Report,

October 29, 1839.

untimely fate while bravely performing his duty in the first charge. "These conflicts," says Mr. Yoakum, "were some of the fruits of the 'Indian policy' of those days." Thus closed the eventful year of 1839, which might properly be denominated the "year of wars" in the history of Indian wars in Texas.

BELTON, TEXAS.

JAMES T. DESHIELDS.

(To be continued.)

THE RECENT REBELLION IN THE NORTH

WEST CANADA.

THE rebellion in the Northwest Territories would appear to have aroused little interest in England. Telegrams published in the London newspapers have been meagre and incorrect, and, owing their origin generally to American sources, have been frequently misleading. All eyes at home have been fixed on the more stirring events in the Soudan or in the probabilities of war in Afghanistan, while the campaign in the Far West, undertaken at a day's warning, and brilliantly brought to a close in a few weeks, has passed by almost unnoticed.

Having, by General Middleton's request, accompanied him to the front as chief of the staff, I may be able to furnish some account of his operations in the Saskatchewan, which may not be without interest. To understand them, let us glance back at the events of fifteen years ago, and at the Red River rebellion of 1870.

Louis Riel, a French Canadian half-breed, through the influence of Archbishop Taché, was educated for the Roman Catholic Church. Riel first came into notice in the autumn of 1869, when, on the transfer of Prince Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company to the government of the Dominion, he espoused the cause of the French half-breeds, or Metis, as they are called, and published a Bill of Rights, his chief assumption being that the Hudson's Bay Company had no legal power to hand over land, the property of Metis and Indians, to the Dominion government without their formal consent. With some four hundred "breeds" he established himself at Fort Garry, a Hudson's Bay post at the junction of the Red River and Assiniboine. He there proclaimed a provisional government, one of the first acts of which was the execution, or rather the cold-blooded murder, after a mock trial, of Scott, a settler who had dared to resist his authority. An expedition consisting of a mixed force of British and Canadian troops, in all about twelve hundred men, was organized for the suppression of the revolt, and during the spring and summer of 1870 Colonel Wolseley, with his birch-bark canoes and voyageurs, was pushing up the rapids and over the portages of the Shebaudowan, and threading his way through Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods, Reprinted from the Nineteenth Century.

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and with him McNeill, Redvers Buller, and Butler were sowing the seed of future laurels. Wolseley reached Fort Garry in August without firing a shot. The gates of the old fort stood open. Riel had fled to the States. He was tried for his life, and outlawed for five years.

Fort Garry, the palisaded Hudson's Bay post of 1870, is now the important city of Winnipeg; the three months from Toronto to the Red River by boat and canoe are now five days, in the luxurious carriages of the Canada Pacific Railway; and Riel's rebellion of 1885 has taken place five hundred miles beyond the Fort Garry of 1870, while the Iroquois and the voyageurs of the St. Lawrence and Upper Ottawa have faithfully stood by their chief on the rapids of the Nile.

By, the Manitoba act of 1870, the claims of the Red River Metis were justly recognized. Each half-breed born in the province before the 1st of July, 1870, received a grant of two hundred and forty acres of land in satisfaction of his half-breed title. Nevertheless, many of them fell back before the intrusion of the Dominion officials and sought homes still farther north, among their near relatives the Crees, beyond the Great Salt Plains on the banks of the Saskatchewan,-they wished to be let alone. Now their bugbear, the red tape of civilization, has again surrounded them, and the wilds of the Northwest have given birth to the provinces of Saskatchewan, Assinaboia, and Athabasca, and these Metis and their descendants are again accused of rebellion.

But besides the Manitoba "breeds," many whites moved northwards. The line of the Canada Pacific Railway, as originally proposed, lay far north of that which it now pursues, and, in anticipation. of the northern route, white adventurers, speculating on the prospect of future fortunes to be picked up along the line of railway, settled at Prince Albert, Battleford, and Edmonton. When the route was changed they found themselves en l'air, and have remained to sow discontent, and to spread sedition, should opportunity offer, against the common enemy, the Dominion government.

Riel having long since completed his sentence of banishment, was quite within the law when he made his appearance in the Northwest during the summer of 1884; and though his arrival there was jealously watched at Ottawa, he was believed to have learned wisdom during his sojourn in the States, and no harm was expected from his visit.

At Ottawa the winter passed without a whisper of uneasiness, and it was not till late in March that, almost without warning, we found ourselves face to face with an organized rebellion.

The Metis of the Northwest claim to be placed on the same footing as the Manitoba half-breeds,-viz., to receive grants of two hundred and forty acres. They ask that patents for their land should be issued to settlers in possession, and they protest against the form of govern