Part 11

In 1857 there was an uprising of Texan wagoners against the Mexican cartmen, who were engaged in hauling goods from the coast towns to San Antonio. Mexican labor was much cheaper than any other, and a large number of these teamsters, who were honest and reliable, were employed by merchants and planters. The Texan wagoners, failing to drive out Mexican cartmen by threats, raided them on the roads, drove off their oxen, broke up their carts, and in some instances killed the drivers.

Governor Pease, by ordering out a company of rangers to protect the Mexican teamsters, finally put a stop to the “Cart War,” as it was called.

No other trouble marred this bright period. “Our inhabitants,” said Governor Pease, in his message to the legislature in 1855, “are prosperous and happy to a degree unexampled in our former history.”

3. DYING RACES.

The Indian tribes who possessed the fair land of Texas when the white man first set foot on its soil were rapidly dying out. Some were already extinct, having left hardly a trace to show where their villages and wigwams had once stood. The Cenis, that noble nation which welcomed La Salle and nursed him tenderly when he lay for months “sick of a fever” in their midst, and who sheltered the fleeing fugitives from Fort St. Louis,—these had entirely passed away. So had the kindly Coushattis, the friends of Lallemand’s colonists; and the Orquisacas, the Nacogdoches, and all those gentler tribes by whose help the Franciscan friars had built the earliest missions. Gone were the music-loving Wacoes from the banks of the Brazos; and from the Trinity the corn-growing Tehas.

The fierce Carankawaes, once the terror of the coast and long believed to be cannibals, and the Kiowas, called the _red-eyed_, had melted before the coming of the pale-faces, as the snow melts under the April sun.

But remnants of the warlike western tribes remained. The Comanches, the Apaches, and the Lipans still hovered like dark clouds about the frontier. They called themselves _Nianis_ (live Indians); and though they were taken away by the government from their hunting-grounds and penned up in a Reservation (that is, upon lands reserved or set apart for them), they continued every now and then to swoop down upon their old haunts, where every rock and bush and hillock was familiar to them. Even within the past twenty years the borderman dared not be too far from his rifle.

But the Texas Indian was passing. His tribes were dying out, as the Mohicans, the Powhatans, and the Alabamas had died out before them.

With the Red Man, another race, as wild, as noble, and as free as his, was as slowly drifting to its end.

When La Salle sailed up a certain pleasant stream in 1685, he called it _Les Vaches_ (the cows), from the number of buffalos grazing on its banks. They roamed the vast prairies and the shaded timberland, from the utmost verge of the country on the north and west to the salt waters of the Gulf. The herds were so large that the thunder of their hoofs startled the air and their trampling shook the ground.

As the Indian retreated westward, the shaggy buffalo followed his moccasined foot; as the savage warriors, who were as the sands of the seashore for numbers, dwindled away, so dwindled the buffalo herds.

4. THE TEXAS RANGER.

The daring and ever-watchful foe of the Texas Indian, the dashing and ever-ready hunter of the Texas buffalo, was the Texas ranger. He, too, is passing away before the march of civilization, and fast becoming a memory only; but a memory which will live forever in song and story, with the brave, the generous, and the noble of all times.

The first company of Texas rangers was formed in 1832; but it was not until the administration of President Burnet (1836) that this arm of the service was regularly organized and put into the field.

They became at once a power, and they have since played an important part in the history of the state. Mounted upon a swift horse, with a _lariat_ (rope) coiled about the high pommel of his saddle and a blanket strapped behind him; with his long rifle resting in the hollow of his arm, and the bridle held loosely in his hand; erect and graceful, the brim of his slouch hat hiding the sparkle of his keen eyes,—the Texas ranger is a striking and picturesque figure. But he is more than that. For fifty years and more he has been the terror of Indian and intruding Mexican, of thief and desperado, of lawlessness and crime.

The rangers are subject to the call of the government. “But no tap of spirit-stirring drum or piercing fife, no trumpet call or bugle sound was heard on the border,” in those early days. A rider passed from settlement to settlement, from home to home; there would be wiping of rifles and moulding of bullets. Oftener than otherwise it was the wives and the sisters and the sweethearts who moulded the bullets and packed the wallets, while the men ground their knives and saddled their horses. Then with a hurried good-bye, the rangers were mounted and away; now on the bloody trail of the Comanches, now tracking the fierce Lipans; to-day protecting a lonely frontier cabin, to-morrow helping the Mexican teamsters in the cart war.

The rangers, during the war of the United States with Mexico, were noted for their courage and gallantry. “I have seen a goodly number of volunteers in my day,” a war correspondent wrote of them at that time, “but the Texas rangers are choice specimens. From the time we left Matamoras until we reached this place (Reynoso), the men never took off their coats, boots, or spurs. And although the weather was rainy and two fierce northers visited us, there was not a minute when any man’s rifle or pistol would have missed fire or he could not have been up and ready for an attack.”[35]

Another writer describes the rangers in camp: “Men in groups, with long beards and mustachios, were occupied in drying their blankets and cleaning and firing their guns. Some were cooking at the camp-fires, others were grooming their horses. They all wore belts of pistols around their waists and slouched hats, the uniform of the Texas ranger. They were a rough-looking set; but among them were doctors, lawyers, and many a college graduate. While standing in their midst I saw a young fellow come into the camp with a rifle on his shoulder and a couple of ducks in his hand. He addressed the captain: ‘Ben,’ he said, ‘if you haven’t had dinner, you’d better mess with me, for I know none of the rest have fresh grub to-day.’

The “captain” was Benjamin McCulloch, famous in the annals of the rangers. He is thus described by Samuel Reid, one of his own men:

“Captain McCulloch is a man of rather delicate frame, about five feet ten inches in height, with light hair and complexion. His features are regular and pleasing, though from long exposure on the frontier they have a weatherbeaten cast. His quick, bright blue eyes and thin compressed lips indicate the cool and calculating, as well as the brave and daring, energy of the man.”

McCulloch was a Tennesseean by birth. His father served under General Jackson during the Creek war. Ben followed the trade of a hunter until he was twenty-one years old. In those days the settlers depended chiefly on bear meat for food. If a man were a poor marksman he sometimes went without his breakfast. But young McCulloch was a fine shot; he often killed as many as eighty bears in the course of a season.

He came to Texas with David Crockett. A fortunate illness kept him at Nacogdoches until after the fall of the Alamo, where Crockett perished. He served in the artillery at the battle of San Jacinto, and was one of the first to join the “ranging service.” He was in almost all the expeditions of his time, and engaged in nearly all the fights.

The most noted ranger of this period, however, was Colonel John Coffin Hays, familiarly known as “Jack” Hays. Samuel Reid says of him:

“I had heard so much of Colonel Hays that I was anxious to meet the commander of our regiment. On this occasion I saw a group of gentlemen sitting around a camp-fire. Among them were General Mirabeau Lamar, Governor Henderson, and General McLeod, all distinguished men of Texas whose names are enrolled on the page of history. As I cast my eyes around the group, I tried to single out the celebrated partisan chief; and I was much surprised to be introduced to a slender, delicate-looking young man who proved to be Colonel Jack Hays. He was dressed quite plainly, and wore the usual broad-brimmed Texas hat and a loose open collar, with a black handkerchief tied carelessly around his neck. He has dark brown hair and large, brilliant hazel eyes which are restless in conversation and speak a language of their own not to be mistaken. His forehead is broad and high. He looks thoughtful and careworn, though very boyish. His modesty is extreme.”

Colonel Hays was also a Tennesseean. He emigrated to Texas when but nineteen years of age. His talent as a leader showed itself early; and at the age of twenty-one (1840) he was placed in command of the frontier, with the rank of major. He soon became famous as a fighter of the Indians, by whom he was both feared and admired. “Me and Blue Wing,” said a Comanche chief on one occasion, “we no afraid to go anywhere _together_, but Captain Jack _great brave_. He no afraid to go anywhere _by himself_.”

His regiment of rangers which included McCulloch’s company was foremost in every battle of the war with Mexico. His word was law with his men. Off duty he was a gay and pleasant companion; the rangers called him Jack, but there was something about him which kept them from taking any liberties with him.

The rangers continued to serve the state after peace was made with Mexico. In 1862 the legislature passed a law for the protection of the frontier. This law provided for the raising of ten companies of rangers of one hundred men each. Each company was to be divided, and the two detachments stationed about one day’s ride apart, just beyond the settlements.

The command of this regiment was given to Colonel J. H. Norris. He went at once to the frontier. He distributed his soldiers from the Red River to the Rio Grande, with orders for each company to send a scout every day from one station to the next, the scout to return the following day. This plan gave a patrol scout from Red River to the Rio Grande every day. In addition to this, each company kept out a flying scout all the time.

“This,” remarks an old ranger (E. L. Deaton), “was a busy year for both rangers and Indians.”

On the 8th of January, 1864, five hundred rangers, under Captains Gillentine, Fossett, and Totten, met and defeated two thousand Comanche Indians on Dove Creek in what is now Tom Green County. This was one of the last pitched battles fought with Indians on Texas soil.

In later years the rangers have served as a sort of state police. Many a stronghold of cattle thieves has been raided by them; many a nest of desperadoes has been broken up; many a bitter neighborhood feud has been settled.

At the present time (1896) there are about two hundred rangers in the service. They furnish their own horses, and receive forty dollars a month; their rations and their arms being supplied by the state.

Some of those noted for steady nerve and daring courage among the ranger captains of earlier and later times are Colonel “Rip” Ford, Lawrence Sullivan Ross (since governor of Texas, and called by his old comrades “Sul” Ross), Colonel “Buck” Barry, Lieutenant Chrisman, Sergeants J. B. Armstrong and L. P. Selker, and Captains Tom Wright, Jesse Lee Hall, and L. B. McNulty.

5. A CLOUD IN THE SKY.

In the spring of 1848 there appeared on the streets of Austin a young man wearing a costume which attracted much attention. It was composed of gray stockings and knee breeches, with a black velvet tunic and broad-brimmed, gray felt hat. The rather dashing-looking stranger was evidently French, but he called himself an Icarian. He was, in fact, on his way from New Braunfels, where he had been living, to Icaria, a new settlement near the Cross Timbers in Fannin County.

This settlement was founded by Etienne Cabet (Ca-bā), a Frenchman who dreamed of establishing a community where nobody would be rich and nobody would be poor, but all money and other property would be held in common. Devotion to women and children, honesty, and the ability and willingness to work for the good of the brotherhood were the chief rules of the fraternity. They numbered in France in 1847 many thousand persons of all classes.

Cabet obtained from the Peters Immigration Company in 1847 a million acres of land in North Texas. The land was given to him on condition that a settlement should be made upon it before the 1st of July, 1848. In January, 1848, the first cohort, numbering sixty-nine persons, embarked at Havre, France. They arrived at Shreveport, Louisiana, the following April. From there they marched on foot to their chosen home in Texas, carrying firearms, household goods, and provisions.

“Oh, if you could see Icaria!” they presently wrote back to the brotherhood in France. “It is an Eden. The forests are superb; the vegetation rich and varied. We have horses, cows, pigs, and chickens in abundance.... Many Texans come to see us. They are good-natured and very honest. We camp and sleep out of doors. We lock up nothing and are never robbed.”[36]

Houses were built and fields ploughed and planted. By midsummer the Icarians in their cosy hamlet were on the lookout for the second cohort of colonists. But before it arrived the cholera broke out in Icaria. Many of the settlers died; nearly all those who were left abandoned their homes in a panic and returned to New Orleans, where Cabet himself joined them with several hundred recruits from France. A new and more fortunate Icarian settlement was finally made in Missouri.

A few years later (1853) a procession, also composed of French emigrants, passed along Main Street in Houston. They had just landed from the steamboat _Eclipse_ on the bayou at the foot of the street. At their head walked a tall gentleman in a velvet coat and three-cornered hat. He carried a drawn sword in his hand, and the tricolored flag of France floated above his head. His long white hair streamed over his shoulders. The whole company, men, women, and children, sung the Marseillaise hymn as they marched along.

The tall gentleman was the Count Victor Considerant. He had come with his followers from France to Texas to found a Phalanstery, a community much like that already attempted by Cabet. His watchword was “Liberty and Equality.” The faces of the emigrants lighted with joy as they traveled away over the prairies, following this beautiful vision.

They founded their town on the east fork of the Trinity River, in Dallas County, and called it Reunion. But the brotherhood soon fell to pieces. The emigrants scattered over the country, finding it pleasanter to own homes in a land of true liberty and equality, than to live by the count’s fine theories.

Many descendants both of the Icarians and of Count Considerant’s colonists are to be met with in North Texas.

Sam Houston succeeded Runnels as governor in 1859. When he took his seat at Austin, clouds from more than one quarter were gathering in the clear sky of Texas. Roving bands of Indians from the Territory came across the border and murdered in cold blood a number of families. At first they stole in, made their raids, and dashed back in a single night. But they grew more and more bold and insolent, until the governor was obliged to send the rangers to their old work of watching the frontier.

Lawrence Sullivan Ross, afterward governor of Texas, was at this time a lieutenant in the ranging service. He was a gallant and dashing soldier. During a raid on the Indians, on Pease River (1860), he rescued Cynthia Ann Parker, a white woman, who had been carried away by the Comanches, when but nine years of age. She had been a captive twenty-four years and had forgotten her native tongue. She was the wife of Peta Nocona, a Comanche chief, and the mother of several children. Lieutenant Ross returned her to her kindred with her little daughter Ta-ish-put (Prairie Flower). But she was not happy among these long-unknown white people; she pined for her dusky adopted kinsmen; and four years after her rescue she died, little Ta-ish-put soon following her to the Happy Hunting-grounds. Inanah Parker, one of her sons, became a Comanche chief.

During this period a Mexican bandit named Cortina crossed the lower Rio Grande into Texas at the head of four hundred men. Their object was plunder, and in their forays a great many innocent people were killed. The governor appealed to the general government at Washington for protection along the Mexican border.

The War Department in response ordered Colonel Robert E. Lee (afterward famous as commander-in-chief of the Confederate States army), then stationed at San Antonio, to attack the bandit and drive him out, crossing the Rio Grande, if necessary, in pursuit.

Some United States troops, with several companies of rangers, were at once put in the field, and Cortina’s band was soon broken up.

These troubles were light, however, compared with those which were about to follow.

The two sections of the United States, the North and the South, had for some years been drifting apart. Their views differed widely on several important questions, particularly the question of states’ rights, and there seemed to be no chance of a mutual agreement. In 1860, at the time Abraham Lincoln was elected President, the Southern States determined to withdraw from the Union. They believed that each state had a right to withdraw or secede from the Union whenever that Union became for any reason undesirable to it, as the individual members of a family may leave the paternal home if they wish to do so. But the Northern States did not agree to this. They believed that the Union should be preserved, and that the states should be held together—even by the power of the sword.

South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. Texas, on hearing of this news, was filled with excitement. Military companies were formed all over the state; the air was thick with the flutter of secession flags; the ground echoed the tramp of awkward squads drilling under the eyes of officers as awkward and inexperienced and enthusiastic as themselves.

Governor Houston, as well as some other patriotic and true-hearted Texans, was bitterly opposed to secession, but his voice was lost in the loud clamor of public feeling.

A convention was held in Austin in January, 1861. A declaration of secession was drawn up and submitted to the people (February 23). Texas by a large majority voted herself out of the Union, which she had entered fifteen years before.

There was wild rejoicing over the state. The capitol at Austin was brilliantly illuminated, bonfires were lighted, bells were rung, the Confederate flag was run up on all public buildings, and the work of mustering troops into the Confederate States army instantly began.

All state officials were required to take the oath of fealty to the new government. Governor Houston, true to his convictions, refused to do this. When the day came for the ceremony (March 16), the hall of representatives was filled to overflowing. “The presiding officer, amid a profound silence, called three times: ‘Sam Houston! Sam Houston! Sam Houston!’ but the governor remained in his office in the basement of the capitol whittling a pine stick, and hearing the echo of the noise and tumult above his head. Houston was declared deposed from his office, and Edward Clark, the lieutenant-governor, was installed as governor.”[37]

Houston left Austin and retired to his place near Huntsville. To the end of his life he continued to declare that, although opposed to the war of the States, his sympathies were with Texas. “My state, right or wrong,” he said. One of his sons entered the Confederate army with his consent and approval.

He died July 26, 1863, at the age of seventy years. His last words, whispered with dying lips, were: “Texas! Texas!”

And Texas, forgetting all her differences with him, and remembering only his ready and gallant services in her hours of need, mourned his loss as that of a well-beloved son.

VIII. GALVESTON. (1861-1865.)

1. A BUFFALO HUNT.

The early months of the year 1861 in Texas were like one long holiday. The country was dotted with white tents where the recruits were encamped, and where, amid bursts of martial music and in all the glory of brand new uniforms, the untried volunteers received their mothers and sisters, and showed them with pride “how soldiers live in time of war.”

Every few days one of these camps would be broken up, the tents and camp baggage would be loaded on wagons, and the “boys” would march to the nearest town. There the whole population would be gathered to greet them; a flag would be presented to them by the hand of some bright-eyed girl, loud cheers would echo on the air, and the company would tramp steadily away to take its place in the fighting ranks of the Confederate States army.

Many of these soldiers carried their negro body-servants with them; all had abundant stores of clothing and bedding, and of those little comforts and luxuries that only mothers know how to provide. Their young faces were eager, their eyes were sparkling, and if there were sobs in their throats as they said those last good-byes, the sobs were smothered in the ringing cheers which mingled with the notes of “Dixie” or “The Bonnie Blue Flag.”

They were soon to learn in many a tentless camp, on many a foot-sore march, on many a bloody and hard-fought field, how soldiers really live in time of war.

But the days as yet were like one long holiday, although mother-hearts ached in secret dread, and the scarred veterans of the Texan revolution and of the Mexican War were filled with inward forebodings for the future.

People along the frontier had been talking for some time about a great buffalo hunt which was to take place that winter in the Pan Handle. John R. Baylor, a noted hunter and scout, had, it was said, raised more than a thousand men to go on this hunt, and a great many scouts and Indian fighters had joined him. Among them was Ben McCulloch, who had done such gallant service in Mexico under General Taylor.

The buffalo hunt did not take place; but Colonel Ben McCulloch, with the buffalo hunters, a thousand or more strong, appeared in San Antonio on the 15th of February (1861).

General David E. Twiggs, United States army, was at that time in command of the troops in Texas. San Antonio was the most important of the United States army posts in the southwest; a large amount of military stores was in the arsenal, and soldiers were kept there ready to march at need to the relief of the frontier forts.

Colonel McCulloch, acting under orders of commissioners from Austin, demanded the surrender of all military posts and supplies in the State of Texas. General Twiggs on the 18th of February made a formal surrender of the department. The United States troops were paroled and marched to Indianola on the coast, where the _Star of the West_, an unarmed United States steamer, was waiting to take them home.

But when they reached Indianola (18th of April) the _Star of the West_ and the gunboat _Mohawk_, which had been guarding her, had both disappeared. The officer in command was in a quandary. He did not know what to do. At length he placed his troops on two schooners and sailed across the Matagorda Bay to the Gulf.

In the meantime, on the 12th of April, at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the first gun of the Civil War had been fired. The struggle between the States had begun.