Gone to Texas (An Evans Novel of the West)

by Don Worcester

  After Saucedo and Ahumada left, Ellis resumed his duties as Indian agent. He made frequent visits to the chiefs of the immigrant tribes, which kept him in the saddle and away from home much of the time. He had to admit to himself, when he thought about it, that a widow with small children desperately needed a husband; under the circumstances, Candace did only what any woman would have done. He tried hard to put it out of his mind, but the thought of Parmer in bed with her for two nights continued to nettle him like a deep-seated, irritating rash.

  With a well-traveled Delaware guide and a squad of cavalry from the small force Ahumada had left in the old Nacogdoches barracks, Ellis set out for the villages of the hostile Wacos and Tawakonis. An extra pack mule bore gifts from the Cherokees to the two tribes. They approached the Wacos cautiously, bearing a white flag and hoping the Indians would recognize it as a symbol of peaceful intent. They responded to the Delaware’s hand signals and allowed the riders to enter their village, but their reception was cool. After a few days of talks in Spanish and sign language, the Wacos accepted a peace treaty and agreed to cease their raids. A few of them then accompanied Ellis and his party to the Tawakonies, who were also willing to make peace.

  On his return to Nacogdoches, Ellis wrote Austin concerning the treaties, and assured him that his settlers could now treat the two tribes as friends. Some of them, he added, had even agreed to accompany him to San Antonio, and from there to Comanche camps, so he could try to make peace with them.

  They met with only one small band under a chief named Wounded Bear, for no other Comanches were in the area. Although Wounded Bear was willing to talk peace, one of the Tawakonis who spoke Spanish took Ellis aside. “If you make peace with just this one band,” he warned Ellis, “you are condemning them to death. Each band does what it wants, and none of the others will even know about this treaty. When others raid and a party of whites goes hunting Comanches, they’re likely to come onto this band because it won’t be trying to hide. To whites, all Comanches are enemies, so they will kill the peaceful warriors.”

  Realizing that what the Tawakoni said was true, Ellis broke off the peace talks with Wounded Bear. “When all the Comanches are willing to talk peace,” he told the Comanche leader, “have the chiefs send word to the officers in San Antonio.”

  In June, Colonel José de las Piedras arrived as commander of the Nacogdoches garrison, bringing with him two hundred cavalrymen. Piedras, who was senior to Ellis, was humorless and strictly military in all actions. Ellis found him stiff-necked and inflexible, and he was soon unpopular with both Tejanos and Texians, who yearned for the opportunity to catch him away from his troops and cane him.

  In March 1828, Ellis wrote Austin about a small party of filibusters under a Dr. Dayton, who claimed that two or three hundred more followers were coming. When they arrived, Dayton said, they would seize De León’s fort. He recruited a few idlers in Nacogdoches, then left. Ellis doubted that more were coming, but warned Austin that the troublemakers appeared to be headed for his colony.

  A month later Austin wrote to thank Ellis for the warning. Dayton had been in his colony trying to stir up trouble by telling men that the empresario should bear all of the expenses for settling them on their lands, and trying to recruit followers. Austin’s men had seized Dayton and convicted him of disturbing the peace. After shaving his head, they’d stripped him to his drawers and tarred and feathered him. Then they ordered him to leave and not return. He appeared eager to comply, Austin wryly added.

  With all but the Comanches at peace, Ellis took up buying and selling land, hoping to make money while waiting for an empresario contract. He maintained his ranch at Mound Prairie, and with a pair of slaves he’d traded for, he cultivated cotton as well as corn. His cattle, bearing his “B” brand and swallow fork cut in the right ear, now numbered nearly a thousand head. Each year he sold fat steers to men who drove them to New Orleans. On May 28 Candace gave birth to a son. She immediately named him Ellis, hoping that would be balm on Ellis’ wounded pride. It was, but only briefly.

  Early in June 1828, aristocratic General Manuel de Mier y Terán rode into Nacogdoches accompanied by Lt. José María Sánchez and several scientists. He immediately sent for Ellis.

  “I’m inspecting the boundary and making a scientific survey, “ he explained after greeting Ellis warmly. “I’m also selecting sites for new presidios, and I want your opinion. After the Fredonian revolt, and with all the warlike Indians, we certainly need more garrisons than the ones at San Antonio, LaBahía, and Nacogdoches.” Ellis agreed, but not wholeheartedly.

  “There are Indian troubles on the frontiers,” he admitted, “but I don’t expect to see another foolish affair like that one. Everyone was against it.”

  “That may be true,” Mier y Terán admitted, “but officials in Mexico City are still aroused over it. It confirmed the fears of many of them that the American government plans to seize Texas if we won’t sell it, and they don’t intend to allow that to happen.”

  “The ones who have titles to their lands are all satisfied and grateful to Mexico,” Ellis assured him. “Austin once said that the worst thing that could happen would be for the U. S. to take over Texas and introduce its land policy.”

  Lt. Sánchez spoke up. “In my opinion, the spark that ignites the torch that will consume Texas will be struck at San Felipe.” Ellis tugged at his earlobe, then shook his head.

  “You won’t find a more loyal or reliable Mexican citizen than Stephen F. Austin,” he replied, “and his colonists follow his lead. Remember that a lot of them helped put down the Fredonian revolt. Things would have to get pretty bad to change Austin’s attitude. In my judgment, trouble is much more likely to start among those who can’t get titles to their lands, and that includes the Cherokees and other tribes. Luckily for us, they listened to me and only a few of them joined the Fredonians.”

  “Nacogdoches doesn’t look at all like San Felipe,” Mier observed. “Straight streets with houses built of lumber, instead of log cabins that look like they’d been blown there in a storm and scattered every which way.” He paused. “Speaking of storms,” he continued, “the worst one I ever saw struck us at San Felipe. Lightning striking all around us, and the rain so heavy you couldn’t see ten feet. And the wind!”

  “Yes,” Lt. Sánchez added, “and the river rose so high we were stuck there. We finally got an American to ferry us across, and that was a mistake. He was drunk and trying to steer the boat while two slaves rowed it. They must have been drunk, too, for they sang—it was more like howling than singing—the whole way. I thought I’d go mad before a floating log could swamp us. Somehow we made it across, but it was awful.” Mier nodded and smiled at the thought of the wild boat ride.

  Ellis took Mier y Terán through the piney woods to visit the chiefs of the Cherokees and other tribes who came to the meeting. “I’ll do what I can to get you titles,” Mier y Terán assured them, while they listened, their faces impassive. He also promised the squatters in the border area that he would urge the governor to send a commissioner to give them titles, as Colonel Ahumada had already recommended. Mier wrote the governor as promised. “I asked him to appoint you as empresario of the border reserve,” he told Ellis, “so that you can see to it that the region is legally colonized.” Ellis’ hopes rose again.

  Accompanied by Ellis, Mier y Terán chose a number of sites for new presidios, and he gave most of them Aztec names to emphasize that they were Mexican. Anáhuac was to be at the head of Galveston Bay, Tenoxtitlán, where the Nacogdoches–San Antonio road crossed the Brazos. Lipantitlán would be on the Nueces. The smaller posts were Terán on the lower Neches and Lavaca on the river of the same name. Later, a strong force would be stationed at Velasco near the mouth of the Brazos. These posts were strategically located for dominating the approaches to all of the settlements.

  “Once these forts are constructed,” Mier y Terán remarked, “we’ve got to build up Mexican or European settlements around every one of them
. Either we occupy Texas soon or it will be overrun by Americans. They make industrious citizens and Mexico needs them, but it would be folly not to balance them with Mexicans or Europeans. They carry their constitutions in their heads, and if they ever become dissatisfied with the government, Texas is lost forever. A reconquest from a base eight hundred miles away would be impossible. Don’t you agree?”

  Ellis shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. “I reckon you’re right about that,” he admitted, “but Mexico has been generous to them, and I know most appreciate it. I guess some do resent having to change their religions.”

  “Since there aren’t any priests among them,” Mier y Terán responded, “I’m going to recommend that the government drop the religious requirement. It would be better to have any religion than none.”

  When Haden Edwards’ contract was canceled, Ellis and the Mexican liberal Lorenzo de Zavala both applied for it.

  Before Mier y Terán left Nacogdoches early in 1829, he gave Ellis permission to visit Magdalena for a month. Leaving Candace and the children in a house he’d built in Nacogdoches, Ellis took a riverboat to New Orleans and boarded a schooner for Veracruz. As they approached the port city, Ellis stared at the grim fortress, with its black and red walls, looming up on the island of San Juan de Ulúa. He thought of the Castle of San Diego in Acapulco and shuddered.

  To Ellis, Veracruz appeared unimpressive, partly because of the hundreds of black sopilotes, or buzzards, soaring in search of dead animals or circling around one they’d found. Behind the port city were hills of red sand, which did nothing to improve his opinion of Veracruz.

  The men on the streets wore the typical wide-bottomed trousers split up the side, broad-brimmed hats, and serapes. Many of the women wore black dresses and mantillas. Others wore rebosos, or scarves, over their heads. Every-where Ellis saw sopilotes playing the role of street-cleaners, at least where carrion was concerned.

  The coach jolted across the barren stretch, then entered the hills among a great variety of trees and vines. It passed through Indian villages, where women with their hair in braids and straw hats on their heads carried infants in slings on their backs. As the road climbed higher, the air became cooler, even cold.

  Ellis recalled Jalapa’s steep streets, the fine old houses and churches, and the ancient Franciscan convent. A few miles beyond Jalapa the coach stopped at Las Banderillas, and Ellis eagerly alit for a joyful reunion with Magdalena. During his month’s stay, he told her of his success in quelling the Fredonian revolt and in making peace with the Indian tribes. “I’ve applied for the grant that Haden Edwards lost,” he told her. “With General Mier’s support, I should get it as well as the border reserve. When I get it I’ll have to fulfill the contract. That will take a while, but it should make me wealthy.”

  She told him of her problems managing the hacienda, but with the vision of an empresario grant on his mind, he found it difficult to focus on them.

  “When are you coming to stay?” she asked when his month was up and he prepared to leave.

  “When I get things well in hand,” he replied. “I don’t know when that will be, but I promise you that one day I’ll come for good.” She wistfully watched him board the coach.

  On his return to Nacogdoches, Ellis replied to an inquiry from Austin concerning a rumored Spanish invasion of Mexico from Cuba. He’d heard talk about it in New Orleans, he said, but the general view there was that if the Spanish troops left Cuba, the Cubans would immediately rebel. Most of the men he talked to thought that an invasion of Mexico was unlikely. He thanked Austin for sending him a copy of a state law that exempted colonists for twelve years from being sued for debts contracted before coming to Texas. He’d heard, he wrote, that American speculators were buying up the debts, expecting to use them to gain possession of valuable cotton plantations.

  Ellis waited, hoping for good news from Saltillo, but in February, the state government decided that, although Ellis deserved to be rewarded for his services, his “personal difficulties” made it necessary to award the former Edwards grant to Zavala.

  Disappointed again, Ellis still hoped Texas would be made a territory and that he would be named governor. But the Texians chose not to accept territorial status, for that would mean the federal government, not the state of Coahuila y Texas, would control all public lands. In the meantime, Ellis developed and leased a salt deposit. He also bought a league of land on Carrizo creek near Nacogdoches on which he built a house and sawmill. He lived alone in the house, while Candace and the children remained in Nacogdoches.

  Political strife in Mexico would soon make Mexicans look back on the years of peace under Guadalupe Victoria with nostalgia. In 1828 Gómez Pedraza had been elected President, but Santa Anna led a revolt that ousted him in favor of old rebel Vicente Guerrero. King Ferdinand VII still regarded Mexico as a colony in rebellion, and the political strife offered an opportunity to intervene to restore order and to recover Mexico. He seized it.

  Spanish troops from Cuba landed on the coast of Tamaulipas, but the admiral, who had quarrelled with the general, immediately abandoned them there and returned to Cuba. The troops seized the fortress at Tampico, where General Mier bottled them up until yellow fever decimated them. Santa Anna, smelling an opportunity for vainglory, hastened there without orders. With his usual luck, he arrived in time for the surrender but, when the Mexicans learned of the Spanish surrender, they erroneously gave Santa Anna credit for engineering it. With his encouragement, they bestowed on him the undeserved laurel of “Hero of Tampico.”

  Late in 1829, Vice-President Bustamante drove Guerrero from office, and in January 1830, proclaimed himself president. He named archconservative Lucas Alamán as Minister of the Interior, and his friend Mier y Terán, as commandant general of the Eastern Interior States, with headquarters at Matamoros. Although Bustamante was honest and well-intentioned, he was manipulated by more astute men, particularly Alamán.

  Alamán's deep distrust of Americans had been reaffirmed by the Fredonian revolt, and he reminded the congress of the recommendation to colonize Texas with Europeans and Mexicans to offset the American settlers before it was too late. Alamán wanted no half measures. He urged military occupation and military rule over Texas, and the exclusion of immigrants from the United States. The congress complied by enacting the Law of April 6,1830, which went far beyond the reasonable recommendations of Mier y Terán. It provided for a loan to cover the cost of bringing Mexican families to Texas and opened the coastal trade to foreign vessels for four years. It recognized existing slavery but prohibited the importation of slaves in the future. Article 11 banned further immigration from the United States and canceled all empresario contracts.

  Fortunately for the Texians, Mier y Terán was named commissioner of colonization and administered the law. Aware that both Austin and DeWitt had introduced colonists who made desirable citizens, he canceled only the contracts of empresarios who had brought less than one hundred families and allowed the two men to continue bringing colonists to fulfill their contracts. Soon after the law was passed, many more troops were sent to Nacogdoches, San Antonio, and La Bahia, which had been renamed Goliad, an anagram for Hidalgo. Work on the new posts began immediately.

  To soothe the Texians who viewed the law as an ugly turn in their relations with the government, the ever-prudent Austin tried to point out its presumed advantages in the Texas Gazette. The troops that were being sent would protect the colonists from the Indians, he wrote, and allowing foreign vessels in the coastal trade would provide them better access to markets. Viewing the law quite differently, most Texians resented it, for many had friends or relatives in the States who had been planning to move to Texas. Now the door was slammed shut in their faces. They were also alarmed by the troop build-up.

  Because the number of troops in Nacogdoches increased to four hundred, Colonel Piedras arranged for building a larger cuartel, buying lumber from Ellis’ sawmill on credit. Ellis was ordered to build the small post of Terán on the
lower Neches, then to remain there as its commander, with a company of fifty men. Candace, who he now saw infrequently, remained in Nacogdoches.

  It wasn’t long before the new law’s teeth were felt in East Texas. Both the state and federal governments had agreed earlier that the squatters there should be given titles even though many were in a restricted border area. The first commissioner who came in 1830 to issue titles was arrested on what were suspected to be trumped up charges of embezzlement and murder. The disappointed people of the border area urgently petitioned the state government to send another, and it complied. In January 1831, commissioner Francisco Madero published in the Texas Gazette his plan to issue titles to families that had arrived before April 6,1830.

  At the new presidio of Anáhuac at the head of Galveston Bay, Colonel John D. Bradbum saw the notice and arrested Madero and his surveyor on the grounds they were violating the Law of April 6. Bradbum was an irascible Kentuckian who fought in the Mexican Revolution and then later rejoined the Mexican army. Once more the East Texas settlers were disappointed and angry.

  Mier y Terán had instructed presidio commanders to maintain cordial relations with the Texians and to cooperate with local officials. But while building his presidio, Bradbum had seized supplies from settlers, used their slaves without compensation, and harbored runaways. Later he arrested Patrick C. Jack for organizing a militia company to protect families against Indians, and lawyer William B. Travis for trying to recover runaway slaves for their owners. They and others were held indefinitely in the guardhouse without being formally charged or brought to trial. Finally, in June 1832, a small force of angry men under Patrick Jack’s brother William set out from Brazoria to rescue the prisoners, by force if necessary. By the time they reached Anáhuac, their numbers had grown to 160.