“Oh, no!” was the response.  “Beyond the great river Mississippi,” said the President to them in 1829, “where a part of your nation has gone, your Father has provided a country large enough for all of you; and he advises you to remove to it.  There your white brothers will not trouble you:  they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it, you and your children, as long as the grass grows or the water runs, in peace and plenty. It will be yours for ever.”

With this assurance, many left the land of their birth and the homes of their childhood, travelled hundreds of miles, crossed the Mississippi, and settled on the banks of the Arkansas.  M. de Tocqueville was “assured, towards the end of the year 1831, that 10,000 Indians had already gone to the shores of the Arkansas, and fresh detachments were constantly following them.”  Many, however, were unwilling to be thus expatriated.  “The Indians readily discover,” says M. de Tocqueville, “that the settlement which is proposed to them is merely a temporary expedient.  Who can assure them that they will at length be allowed to dwell in peace in their new retreat?  The United States pledge themselves to the observance of the obligation; but the territory which they at present occupy was formerly secured to them by the most solemn oaths of Anglo-American faith.  The American Government does not, indeed, rob them of their land, but it allows perpetual incursions to be made upon them.  In a few years the same white population which now flocks around them, will track them to the solitudes of the Arkansas:  they will then be exposed to the same evils, without the same remedies; and as the limits of the earth will at last fail them, their only refuge is the grave.”

The views of this keen French philosopher were prophetic.  In vain did I strain my eyes, as we passed along, to discover any trace of these Indians.  Not one representative of those noble aborigines was to be seen.  In 1836 Arkansas was constituted a State, and admitted into the Union; and, if you look at a recent map of the United States, you will see the “location” of these Indians marked, not in the State of Arkansas at all, but far—­far beyond, towards the setting sun, in what is called the “Western Territory,” where, indeed, the river Arkansas has its source.  Nor will ten years pass away before they will be again disturbed, and pushed further back.

At the mouth of the Arkansas is a village called Napoleon, of which I received, on authority not to be disputed, the following horrible account.  A few years ago it was the head quarters of lawless and bloody men.  They fabricated base coin, gambled, robbed, murdered.  To such a pitch of wickedness had they arrived, and such a terror were they to the whole country, that a party of men from Memphis (a city on the eastern side of the Mississippi, 180 miles up) took the law into their own hands, armed themselves with deadly weapons, came down, scoured the country around, caught about fifty of the ringleaders, and put them to death.  Some they shot,—­some they hanged,—­and some they threw, tied hand and foot, into the river.  Of this dreadful tragedy no judicial notice was ever taken!