USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume I > Part 4
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Welch, Luther H., III, 301
Wellborn, Olin, II. 501
Wells, Jasper B .. IV. 639
Wells, Jim, II. 475
West, Claiborne. I. 83, 173. 187, 252. 271
West, Rufus B., IV. 474
Westbrook Hotel, II, 644 Westmoreland, Ernest T., III, 122
Westover, Ira, I, 243
Wharton. John A., I, 119, 134, 143, 149. 173, 187, 413 Wharton. William H., I. 82. 86. 127, 160. 187. 192. 216, 218, 343
INDEX
XXXV
Wheat production, II, 586 Wheeler, Charles A., III, 72 Wheeler, T. B., II, 481 Wheeler County, II, 849 Whigs, I, 387 Whitaker, William, I, 173, 187 White, Claude, IV, 397 White, Francis M., I, 187 White, James C., IV, 479 White, Sidney V., III, 294 Whitesboro, II, 507 Whitley, John M., IV, 744 Whitley, John T., IV, 744 Whitmore, Erastus F., IV, 426
Whitmore, G. W., I, 401
Wichita County, I, 370; II, 565, 850
Wichita County oil field, II, 851
Wichita Falls, II. 510, 515, 569, 853; the city that faith built, II, 855; pop- ulation of, II, 855; new buildings in, II. 857
Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce, II, 858
Wichita Falls, Graham & Breckenridge, II. 516 Wichita Falls oil district. II. 856 Wichita Falls, Ranger & Fort Worth Railway, II, 516 Wichita oil and gas field, II, 850
Wichita Valley Railroad, II, 515, 853 Widner, Earl E, IV, 630
Wigfall, Louis T., I, 392, 397, 401
Wilbarger, Joseph, I, 65
Wilbarger County, I, 370; II, 862 Wilcox, John A., I, 401
Wild, Claude C., IV, 722
Wiley. A. P., I 401
Wilkinson, Henry T., III, 233
Wilkinson, James, I. 6
Wilkinson, Toseph G., III, 59
Wilkinson, William W., IV, 418
Willet, B. R., II, 540
Williams, Ed, III, 305
Williams, Henry W .. TII, 174
Williams, L. H., I. 401 Williams, Robert H .. T. 149
Williams, R. R., II. 494 Williams. Samuel M., I, 58. 62, 65, 100. 101, 135. 217. 334 Williams, W. H., IT, 612
Williamson, Tames M., TII, 358 Williamson. R. M., I, 58, 114, 135, 139. 142. 187, 204 Williamson Countv. I, 369; II, 547 Willingham, Rav, IV, 501 Wilson, Carl, IV, 575 Wilson, Charles. I, 173, 187
Wilson, Duard D., IV, 480 Wilson, George R., III, 307 Wilson, J. C., II, 631 Wilson, James C., III, 69 Wilson, Robert, I, 82
Wilson, W. P., II, 624 Windsor, II, 730
Winfrey, M. F., III, 132
Wingrove, C. H., III, 76
Winkler County, II, 858 Winston, George, III, 319 Winters, John N., IV, 483 Wise County, I, 369; II, 547, 600, 850
Witherspoon, Cliff F., IV, 532
Witt, Benjamin F., III, 115 Wolfenberger, Samuel, I, 118
Woll, Adrian, I, 341 Woman's suffrage, II, 506 Women's clubs, II, 650 Wood, G. Clint, IV, 586
Wood, George T., I, 358, 388
Wood, James B., I, 173, 187
Wood, Lee C., IV, 388 Wood County, I, 369 Woodbine, II, 730 Woods, James B., I, 271
Woody, Sam. II, 600, 859
Wooten, Dudley G., II, 485
Workman, Bonnie C, III, 88
World war, II, 680
Worth County, I, 369 Wortham, W. B., II, 486, 655
Wray, John W., IV, 685
Wren, Frank J., IV, 472
Wright, Cyrus A., III, 65
Wright, David, I, 83
Wright, G. W., I, 401
Wright, James L., IV, 504
Wright, John H., III, 18
Wyatt, P. S., I, 255
Wynn, Ike A., IV, 514
Wynne, R. M., II, 492
Yancey, John W., III, 222 Yarbrough, Thomas B., III, 56 Yates, A. J., I, 65
Yates, J. E. M., III, 12
Yates, Robert L., III, 100
Yoakum County, II, 864
Young, Bruce, II, 630 Young, Claud L., IV, 576
Young, Robert B., IV, 385
Young, Sam D., III, 157 Young, Thomas F., III, 141
Young, William B., II, 601 Young, William C., I, 407
Young County, I, 369; II, 547. 574, 865 Young Men's Christian Association, II. 644 Young Women's Christian Association. II, 642
Zambrano Row, I. 236. 239 Zane-Cetti. II, 601, 611. 624, 632, 872 Zane-Cetti, Jesse S., IV, 705 Zapata County, I, 370 Zavala County, I, 370
PREFATORY NOTE
Probably the most complete and best balanced work on Texas history, particularly down to annexation, is a History of Texas and Texans, issued.in 1914. This work, available to the publishers and editors of this edition, was revised and rearranged with a view to presenting a more straightforward and concise account without eliminating material required in a modern reference book on Texas history.
The editor of the former work, Dr. Eugene C. Barker, stated in his preface :
"For some years before his death in 1884 Colonel Frank W. Johnson occupied himself in collecting material for and writing a comprehensive history of Texas down to annexation. He left his manuscripts to several 'literary executors,' of whom Judge A. W. Terrell was the last to survive. In August of 1912 the American Historical Society of Chicago asked me to write for them a history of Texas. I was unable to undertake the task and suggested that they publish Johnson's manuscript with editorial additions which would bring it down to date and give the results of research since Johnson's time. They accepted the suggestion and Judge Terrell welcomed the opportunity to publish the book and consented to write a sketch of Johnson as an introduction. His sudden death two months later prevented his carrying out this intention. On examination I found Johnson's work of value chiefly for the period from 1820 to 1836. His plan was to make the book a documentary history, letting the original documents, so far as possible, carry the narrative. Some of the docu- ments that he used had already been printed in Kennedy, Foote and Yoakum, and since his death some additional ones have appeared in John Henry Brown's 'History of Texas,' but some have never been pub- lished. The idea of a documentary history of this period is a good one, for the reason that the colonization of Texas by emigrants from the United States, and the subsequent revolution from Mexico, have generally been misrepresented as deliberate moves in a conspiracy of Southern slave- holders to wrest Texas from Mexico and annex it to the United States. No denial of this charge can be so effective as the contemporary docu- ments themselves, which go far toward revealing the thoughts and feelings of the settlers. For this reason I have frequently added documents to which Johnson did not have access. These additions as well as occasional paragraphs and chapters which I have found it necessary to insert, are indicated in footnotes. The chapters on the period since annexation are written by Mr. E. W. Winkler of the State Library."
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History of Texas
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The history of Texas told in the following pages is mainly a narra- tive of events falling within the century from 1820 to 1920. Texans, like Missourians or Georgians, are "heirs to all the ages" and are affected by all the experiences of mankind, but in few cases have such influences originated within Texas beyond the century.
Geographical Texas became the meeting point of two civilizations. The first, in point of time, was the Spanish, spreading northward through soldier-priest-convert from the land of the Montezumas. The second was the English-speaking civilization developing on the Atlan- tic seaboard of North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies, and with each decade after the War for Independence pushing westward with unprecedented energy and of its own initiative until it touched the nominal frontier of Spain. A brief account of Spanish Texas may properly be preceded by a partial survey of this aggressive and overwhelming power concentrated in the United States of Amer- ica and soon to submerge the older regime in Texas.
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At the first census, 1790, approximately 4,000,000 persons were enumerated in the seventeen states and territories of Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia. The westward impulse over the mountains had been directed chiefly into Kentucky and Tennessee, which, together, contained about 110,000 people, and a few years later were admitted as states.
In thirty years following, population had marched to the Missis- sippi and was pouring into the Louisiana Purchase beyond. The census of 1820, computed from twenty-six states and territories, gave a total of nearly 10,000,000, and there was a compact grouping of states from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, while west of that river Louisiana had been a state since 1812, Missouri only awaited the "compromise" to be admitted, while Florida in 1819 had been pur- chased from Spain.
On the west bank of the Mississippi in Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri, the census had found about 250,000 residents. New Orleans (though only 27,000) was the fifth city in the nation and the great market of all the Middle West. Steamboat traffic had begun on the western rivers; canals and turnpikes were being planned, and while these and other instrumentalities were important in uniting the East and the West, more effective still was the national spirit of free initia tive-a trait common to Americans of the pioneer epoch-in welding together all to a common ideal of enterprise and culture. While
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HISTORY OF TEXAS
limited in other respects, an American community, though trans- planted a thousand miles, becomes self-contained, self-sufficient ; tries to get along without help "from home"; acts without orders from a central authority, yet maintains its typical Anglo-Saxon character without written models or instructions.
So much by way of preface before turning to the contrasting civili- zation that had gained such a feeble foothold west of the Sabine in spite of a century of intermittent effort. The following is a brief survey of Texas under the Spanish regime :
Indirectly Spain began to accumulate information concerning Texas in 1519, when Alvarez de Pineda sailed the Gulf from Florida to Tampico. Ten years later (1528) several survivors of the Narvaez expedition were cast on the shore of Texas, and, after six years of wandering along the coast from Galveston to Corpus Christi, Cabeza de Vaca and four others escaped from the Indians who had enslaved them and made their way to Mexico. De Vaca wrote an account of their experiences, which gives us our earliest source for conditions of the Texas interior. In 1540 members of the De Soto expedition, after the death of their leader, passed through East Texas on their way to Mexico; and the same year Coronado's expedition, searching for Quivira, traversed a considerable portion of West Texas. The interior of Texas continued to be penetrated by occasional parties of Spanish explorers for the next 150 years. Until well past the middle of the seventeenth century these parties advanced eastward from New Mexico, which the Spaniards had early occupied ; but at the same time settlement was slowly pushing toward Texas through northern Mex- ico, and the missionaries were already urging the occupation of the Tejas country when news reached the government that a French expedition was headed for the country.
France had begun to occupy Canada at the beginning of the seven- teenth century. Fur traders and Jesuit missionaries moved rapidly westward, and in 1673 Louis Joliet and Father Marquette explored the Mississippi River from Wisconsin to Arkansas. Ten years later La Salle followed the Mississippi to its mouth, and then returned to France to beg permission from Louis XIV to settle a colony there. His plan was a strategic one. France already held the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, the Ohio and the Upper Mississippi, and a colony at the mouth of the great river would go far toward securing the possession of the whole valley. Moreover, it could be made the basis of operations against Mexico, in case France and Spain were involved in war. The king approved, and La Salle was generously fitted out with colonists and supplies. The colonists included some farmers, artisans and men of family. but too many of them were un- desirable adventurers. In the West Indies one small vessel was cap- tured by Spaniards, but the incident was not immediately reported to the viceroy and at the time, therefore, created no alarm in Spain. The remainder of the little fleet lost its bearings, and in February, 1685. entered Matagorda Bay and made a landing. A vessel was wrecked here-the Aimable, the supply ship-and many provisions and arms were lost. Beaujeu, the sailing master, returned to France in another ship.
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HISTORY OF TEXAS
leaving La Salle one small vessel. This, too, was later wrecked. It soon became evident that the Mississippi did not enter Matagorda Bay, but La Salle could not believe that it was far away. A fort was built some miles inland on the Lavaca River, and a search for the Mississippi began.
The Indians, malaria and their own excesses soon brought the party to a desperate state. La Salle was stern, arbitrary and unsym- pathetic and incurred the hatred of some of the worst characters, who murdered him in 1687 near the present site of Navasota,* while he was making his third expedition in search of the Mississippi. After La Salle's death the settlement rapidly went to pieces. Some of the party eventually reached the Mississippi and made their way to Canada and France ; many died of disease or were massacred by the Indians. When the Spaniards arrived in search of them in 1689 there were less than half a score of survivors scattered among the Indians.
The Spanish authorities had learned during the fall of 1684 of La Salle's plan for a settlement on the Gulf, and between 1686 and 1689 four searching parties were sent by sea and five by land to find him. It was only the fifth of the land expeditions that succeeded. Capt. Alonso de León commanded this expedition in 1689 and with him was Father Damian Massanet, a devoted Franciscan missionary. They found the French settlement (Fort St. Louis) in ruins. Several dead lay unburied on the prairie. Clearly the danger of a French occupation for the present was over.
Learning that four Frenchmen were living among the Tejas In- dians in East Texas, De Leon wrote to them inviting them to accom- pany him to Mexico. Two of them joined him, and with them came a chief of the Tejas. Missionaries and explorers had long been wishing to get in touch with these Indians, and Father Massanet exerted him- self especially to win the friendship of this chief. He was successful. and parted from him with a promise to return the next year and establish a mission among the Tejas, the chief assuring him that the Spaniards would be welcome.
Spurred by the fear of French encroachment, the viceroyal govern- ment of Mexico approved the proposal of De León and Massanet for the establishment of a settlement among the Tejas, and in the spring of 1690 De León led a second expedition to the country. Marching first to La Salle's deserted settlement, he destroyed it, so that it might not harbor other intruders, and then proceeded northward to the Tejas. On a small stream some ten miles west of the Neches and northeast of the present town of Crockett he built a rude log chapel and left three priests and three soldiers to win the region to Christian- ity and to Spain. At first the Tejas were peaceful and friendly, but pestilence and bad crops followed and they became ill-humored and troublesome. Next year priests and soldiers were reinforced from an expedition led by Governor Terán de los Rios, but in 1693 they aban-
*This approximate location of the murder of La Salle is derived from Prof. H. E. Bolton, of the University of California.
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HISTORY OF TEXAS
doned Texas, and Spain made no further attempts to occupy the province until fear of the French again arose in 1716.
In 1699 a French settlement was founded at Mobile Bay, and in 1712 a French merchant, Antoine Crozat, received from the govern- ment a monopoly of the trade of Louisiana, which was regarded as including all the territory drained by the Mississippi and its tribu- taries. But this field was too restricted for Crozat's ambition. He wished also to trade with the Spaniards in northern and northwestern Mexico. In view of the exclusive commercial policy of Spain, this could be done only by a system of smuggling with the connivance of the Spanish colonial authorities. A man of ability and address was needed to approach the Spanish officials, and Governor Cadillac of Louisiana selected Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, an experienced Indian trader and explorer. St. Denis led a party up Red River to the present site of Natchitoches, where he established headquarters for trade with the Hasinai or Tejas confederation of Indians in East Texas, and then pressed on across Texas to the Spanish presidio, a short distance southeast of the present Eagle Pass. In 1714 this post was commanded by Capt. Diego Ramón. To him St. Denis unfolded his proposal, but the captain referred the matter to the viceroy at Mexico and held St. Denis a prisoner. An interesting romance has woven itself around the young Frenchman's sojourn here, but the thrilling details presented by Gayarre and Brown seem to have no other foundation than the fact that St. Denis later married Captain Ramon's granddaughter. The viceroy was considerably alarmed by the French advances, and ordered St. Denis sent to the capital.
As the result of personal conferences with St. Denis the viceroy decided to reoccupy East Texas, a measure to which the missionaries had been urging him for years. St. Denis agreed to guide an expedi- tion, and this, with priests, soldiers and settlers, got under way in 1716, commanded by Capt. Domingo Ramón. The Spaniards were welcomed by the Tejas Indians, who had missed the small gifts with which the missionaries had been in the habit of cultivating their friendship, and during the next few years a group of missions was established around the present towns of Nacogdoches and San Augus- tine. In 1718 San Antonio was founded and became the important Spanish stronghold in this outlying province. In the meantime the French post at Natchitoches grew stronger and in 1719 the Spaniards were compelled to flee to San Antonio for protection. Two years later, however, the Marquis De Aguayo re-established the settlements and strengthened the presidios, and further relations between the French and Spanish on this frontier were marked by little friction. In 1762 Louis XV ceded Louisiana to Spain, and the international bound- ary moved eastward to the Mississippi, across which faced the aggres- sive English instead of the easy-going French.
After the founding of San Antonio Spanish governors and mis- sionaries made energetic efforts to colonize Texas and civilize the Indians. Aguayo established a post near the site of La Salle's Fort St. Louis in 1721, which after being twice moved was finally fixed in 1749 at modern Goliad. The great mission buildings which constitute
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HISTORY OF TEXAS
one of the most impressive historical monuments of the Southwest were constructed near San Antonio, and others of less pretentious character were scattered from Refugio and Liberty, near the coast, as far west as San Saba and Rockdale. Following the French cession of Louisiana the settlements in East Texas were abandoned, but many of the settlers who had known no other home were ill at ease in San Antonio, whither they were moved, and in 1779 Gil Ibarbo led a number of them back and founded Nacogdoches on the site of the old mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The permanent results of Spanish activities in Texas to the close of the eighteenth century were pitifully small, but the province was very remote and the Indians were peculiarly untractable. When measured by the results achieved by the United States with a convenient base and incomparably greater resources, Spain's failure to civilize the Indians affords little cause for criticism or surprise.
On October 1, 1800, Spain re-ceded to France "the Colony or Province of Louisiana with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it." On April 30, 1803-as the treaty is dated-France sold Louisiana, with the same limits, to the United States. What were the boundaries of Louisiana thus vaguely described? Napoleon had instructed General Victor to take possession of the Rio Grande, and on that ground, chiefly, President Jefferson and other prominent statesmen were in- clined to claim Texas. But they were much more anxious to extend the eastern boundary over West Florida, a narrow strip along the coast from the Mississippi to the Perdido River, and expected to play the Texas claim against this coveted region. Historians are agreed that the claim to West Florida was baseless, but despite the accidental, temporary character of La Salle's settlement and the deliberate, per- manent occupation of the province by Spain from 1716 onward, the Texas question has not been so easily settled. In 1819 the United States surrendered by treaty all claims west of the Sabine, but many patriotic citizens believed that the government exceeded its constitu- tional power in alienating territory to which its title was good. It was this belief that made possible the demand for the "re-annexation" of Texas in the national Democratic platform of 1844.
Before the acquisition of Louisiana by the United States Anglo- Americans had already begun to penetrate Texas. For years Philip Nolan, a protégé of Gen. James Wilkinson, had been making occa- sional trips to San Antonio. In 1800 he led a small party into the province for the ostensible purpose of capturing wild horses. Whether that was his sole object is even yet not clear. Toward the end of March, 1801, he was overtaken by soldiers near the present city of Waco, and in the ensuing battle Nolan was killed. His men then sur- rendered, expecting to be sent home from Nacogdoches, but on the contrary they were marched to Mexico, where in the course of time all except Peter Ellis Bean elude the historical vision. Bean joined the revolutionists in 1810, and when Mexico gained its independence he was a colonel in the patriot army. During 1833-1835 he was stationed at Nacogdoches as a sort of Indian agent.
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HISTORY OF TEXAS
In 1812 Bernardo Gutierrez and Augustus Magee, lately a lieu- tenant in the United States army, invaded Texas with a considerable force of American adventurers, Spaniards and Indians. They took Nacogdoches in August and Goliad in October. Here Magee died. In the spring of 1813 they advanced on San Antonio and after defeat- ing the Spanish governor in a terrible battle entered the town on April 1. Gutierrez's brutality to the prisoners alienated many of the Americans, who now abandoned him. The others were decoyed into an ambush by General Arredondo near the Medina River in June and badly defeated. The avowed object of Gutierrez and Magee was to win Texas for the revolutionary party in Mexico. They undoubtedly expected to turn success to their personal profit, but in just what way does not clearly appear.
After the signature of the Florida treaty of 1819 by which the United States relinquished its claim to Texas, Dr. James Long of Natchez, Mississippi, led an expedition which for a brief time occu- pied Nacogdoches and proclaimed the independence of Texas. It is somewhat significant that Long, like Nolan, had a connection with Gen. James Wilkinson of the United States army, his wife being Wil- kinson's niece. At the time of Long's invasion the royalist power had almost succeeded in stamping out the revolution in Mexico, and Texas was well defended. Troops advanced from San Antonio, and catching Long's forces in scattered detachments easily defeated and expelled them. Long took advantage of the renewed revolutionary wave in 1820 to return to Texas, but was no more successful than before. In fact, he was taken prisoner and sent to Mexico City, and there a short time later was killed by a Mexican soldier.
In a sense Nolan, Magee and Long, with the men whom they led, were but the advance couriers of American expansion. In the first twenty years of the nineteenth century the United States pushed its settled frontier westward to the Mississippi, and crossed that line in Louisiana, which became a state in 1812, and in Missouri, which was admitted in 1820. The natural line of advance to further expansion was toward the southwest. That the adventurous pioneers entered Texas in organized bands rather than as peaceful trappers and settlers was probably due to the revolutionary condition of New Spain from 1810 to 1821, which suggested the pretext of marching in force to the relief of the local patriots. They served the purpose of spying out the country and of paving the way for the peaceful invasion of Moses and Stephen Austin and the "crowd of expresarios" who followed them. The opportune attainment of Mexican independence in 1821 undoubtedly furthered the colonization of Texas from the United States by creating a temporary glow of friendship for the republicans of the north, who had gone through much the same experience with England as had the Mexicans with Spain, and whose liberal institu- tions the Mexicans dreamed of emulating.
CHAPTER II COLONIZATION BY AMERICANS
Virginia had her John Smith, Maryland her Calverts, Pennsylvania her Penns, but Texas had in Stephen F. Austin a type of colonizer and state builder greater than any of them. His personal fortune and his personal safety were both involved in his colonial enterprise; it was the work of his life. When he died he left the destiny of Texas per- manently shaped. It is with good reason that historians have studied the character and activities of Austin as the chief source of a correct knowledge of Texas history in the colonial period.
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