USA > Texas > History of Texas : from 1685 to 1892, volume 1 > Part 13
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Captain Abner Kuykendall was the patriarch of a large and respectable connection of that name in Austin's colony, whose descendants are now numerous throughout the State. His murder and the execution of Clayton, his murderer, in 1835, are yet to be narrated.
Of prominent men coming to Texas in those days it may be stated that in 1826, the famous James Bowie partially identi- fied himself with the country and in 1828 became a Coahuil- Texano, to die in the Alamo as a Texian and be apotheosized among those whose names shall not perish.
In 1829, after two prior visits, came the eloquent, the
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gifted, the zealous and the spotless John A. Wharton - em- balmed at death as " the keenest blade of San Jacinto " __ to join his brother, William H., who came in 1826, and had married Sarah A., the only daughter of Jared E. Groce,1 a lady who, in all the eventful years to follow, exhibited the highest type of American womanhood, and became, in that same year, the mother of an only child who, in the war be- tween the States, won distinction as Major-General John A. Wharton, in the Confederate States army. His death, at the close of that war in 1865, followed by that of his wife and only child, rendered this brilliant family of Texians extinct.
Among the prosperous colonists on the Brazos in 1829, was Elijah Roark, native of North Carolina, who came from Mis- souri to east Texas in 1821 and to Austin's colony on the Brazos, in 1823, and secured a title to his league of land on Oyster Creek, from the Baron de Bastrop on the 10th of July, 1824. He was industrious, frugal and prosperous, soon count- ing his cattle and hogs by hundreds. The sequel is quoted from the "Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas," by the author of this work:
" In December, 1829, having a large number of hogs, fat from the abundant masts of the forests, and there being no market for them except in San Antonio, Mr. Roark started with near a hundred of his best porkers for that place, dis- tant about two hundred and thirty miles, the only habitations on the route being one where they crossed the Colorado, and a few in the infant settlement of Gonzales. With him were Leo, the second one of his five children, Andrew Cox, Robert Spears and David McCormick.
They kept guard at night, but nothing unusual occurred till the night of December 24, 1829, when they were encamped near the Forty-mile Water-hole, that distance short of San
1 Jared E. Groce was an immigrant from Tennessee in 1822, a man of comparative wealth and the first to plant cotton for the market and to erect a cotton-gin in Texas.
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Antonio. Leo Roark and Spears mounted guard till midnight or a little later, when they were relieved by others of the party; but the latter concluding that there was no danger, after an hour or two returned to their pallets and to sleep - the sleep of death.
" Perhaps two hours before dawn, they were charged and fired upon by a band of about thirty Indians. Elijah Roark and Spears were killed instantly. Cox ran a few paces and fell dead. McCormick ran a short distance, but, the moon being very bright, saw that the Indians had fallen back, and that the boy Leo was preparing to mount his horse, and ran back to him, and asked what he was going to do. The intrepid boy replied : ' I am going to San Antonio. Mount your horse and follow me. Hasten, for the Indians are ready to charge again.' McCormick was slow in untying and mount- ing his horse ; so much so that he left his gun. Both, however, escaped, riding on blankets instead of saddles. A third blanket protected Leo from the chill of the cold, frosty air. Rarely have two horses made forty miles in less time. They reached San Antonio early in the morning, and met a warm reception under the hospitable roof of Mr. John Brown, the brother of Captain Henry S. Brown. Mrs. Brown, then the only American lady in San Antonio, and a young mother, personally knew both of them, and ministered to their wants, as only woman in her matchless sympathy can. Her heart entered into the sorrows of the fatherless and severely bruised boy.
Mr. Brown 1 at once notified the Mexican authorities of the affair, and thirty Mexican soldiers, joined by several
1 Early in 1825, Henry S. Brown sent his brother, John, James Musick, Thomas Jamison and Andrew Scott, with a large amount of goods, to trade with the Comanches, on the upper Brazos, while he went to Mexico on a similar mission. On the clear fork of the Brazos, John Brown exchanged his grods for eleven hundred horses and mules, buffalo hides and peltries and started home. At night on the Brazos, the Indians attacked his camp, stampeded his animals, and seized all of his goods. The other men escaped
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Americans, with the boy Leo, arrived at the scene of the tragedy on the following afternoon. They buried the slain, found all the hogs, drove them to San Antonio, and Mr. Brown, moved by sympathy, as Leo ever afterwards con- tended, paid him much more than the market price for them. Leo returned home to become a man and a good citizen. He served in the affair of Anahuac, in 1832, and was in the battles around San Antonio in 1835.
Old and decrepit, but greatly respected, he was a citizen of Ellis County fifty-five years later and it is believed, ten years later, in 1892, that he is yet a living reminder of the suffer- ings of the early colonists of Texas. [He died in 1893.]
When this episode occurred, Stephen F. Austin, with an escort of eight, men, was a few miles in the rear of Roark's party, and on discovering the dead bodies, returned to Gon- zales to put the people on their guard.
Among the valuable accessions to the country, not hereto- fore mentioned, from 1826 to 1829, were Jesse Grimes from
and got in on foot; but Brown being lame in one leg, became separated from them and two days later was captured by the Waco Indians, by whom he was cruelly treated and only spared through the influence of a chief who was less brutal than his tribe. On returning from Mexico some months later and meeting these tidings, Henry S. Brown raised forty-two men to seek his brother. Heavy rains rendered travel difficult, but they finally approached the Waco village (where the city of Waco now stands), found its occupants hostile and attacked them. After a combat in which several Indians were killed, the savages retreated to the Brazos, in crossing which nine of their warriors were slain. The company then returned. In the autumn of 1826, Mr. John Brown escaped from a marauding party of Wacoes, west of the Barnard Creek, and reached San Felipe, where his brother had just arrived from a second trip to Mexico with a well armed party of Mexi- can and American herders in charge of the horses for which he had exchanged his goods. With these and a few volunteer citizens, Captain Brown made a night march, surprised the Indians at daylight on Cummins Creek and killed nearly all of the party, seventeen in number.
Mr. John Brown died in San Antonio on the 8th of December, 1831. His only child to reach maturity, Dr. John Duff Brown, at sixty -seven years of age, is now, in 1892, a respected citizen of Llano, Texas, having been a surgeon in the Mexican war of 1846-8, and a Captain in the Confederate army,
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Alabama, Adolphus Sterne, of foreign birth, John H. Moore from Tennessee, and Robert M. Williamson from Georgia, in 1826; James Morgan from North Carolina and Dr. James B. Miller from Kentucky, in 1827; Gail Borden, Sr., and his four sons, Gail, Jr., Thomas H., Paschal P., and John P , originally of New Jersey, but last from the Ohio River, and Robert Wilson, of Harrisburg, in 1828 ; Dr. Robert R. Peebles from South Carolina, and Thomas J. Chambers, a Kentuckian, who had been three years in the city of Mexico, in 1829. The Harris brothers came to Texas in 1826-8.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Austin's account of his dealings as an Empresario -Last attempt of Spain to recover possession of Mexico - Santa Anna regarded as the Savior of his Country - Administrative changes in Mexico - Ascendancy of Busta - mente and the Decree of the 6th of April, 1830, directed against Immigra- tion from the United States - Despotism inaugurated by Bustamente and the Representatives of his Government in Texas- Bowie's Report of the famous Indian fight on the San Saba in 1831.
As has been shown, Austin's temporary powers as civil and military ruler of his colony, ceased on the 1st of February, 1828, and he remained simply as an empresario in charge of the land affairs of the colony, in so far as immigrants were concerned in acquiring lands under the colonization laws. Availing himself of this relief, he published on the 1st of November, 1829, in a printed pamphlet of seventy pages, an address to the people of the colony. That pamphlet is now before me, perhaps one of the only two or three existing copies. It is full, elaborate and exhaustive in the statement of the legal facts connected with his father's and his own acts, rights, grants and concessions, from the beginning in Decem- ber, 1820, down to that date, whether from the general or the State government, including copies of the contracts, letters from the Governor signing them, his own acceptances, and every material fact connected with them. The facts herein previously given in relation to the different grants are in harmony with those given by himself, and embrace all that is of permanent historical interest in regard to them.
Colonel Austin refers to various misapprehensions among the settlers at different times prior to that date and to some allegations affecting the rectitude of his conduct on particular
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points, and meets them so fully and frankly as to dissipate all misunderstandings and refute all allegations, referred to by him. His mind seems to have been peculiarly sensitive to criticism, a fact made more or less apparent in much of his correspondence in subsequent years; but the review of his trials, hardships and labors, as set forth in this important compilation of facts and documents, presents him in an hon- orable and enviable attitude. That any man could emerge from the six years' ordeal through which he had passed, in which the rights of so many had been involved, without more or less misapprehensions and heart-burnings -not to say criminations and recriminations - would be evidence of an approach to perfection not yet vouchsafed to our race. Colonel Austin seems to have come as near doing so as could be expected of the best-intentioned man, and posterity can exact no more in passing its judgment.
In 1829, as has been shown, Guerrero had been, by revolu- tion, installed as President of Mexico, instead of Pedraza, the legally elected candidate. At the same time Anastasio Bustamente, a bigoted, unprincipled military chieftain, was made Vice-President.
In 1829, Spain made her last effort to recover possession of Mexico, for three hundred years the treasure-house from which, through exactions and oppressions at which humanity yet shudders, she had maintained despotic sway over her peo- ple at home, and fattened as detestable an array of hidalgos, grandees and licentious favorites, as ever flourished in modern Europe. This last struggle was made by General Barradas, at the head of four thousand men, who landed at and seized Tampico in that year.
Santa Anna, still a great popular favorite because of his successful part in the downfall of Iturbide, conducted an expedition, both by land and water, from Vera Cruz and the south against the invader; and speedily so cut off his retreat and hemmed him in, that Barradas was glad to surrender,
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with permission to re-embark and forever abandon all claims of Spain to Mexico.
This was indeed a proud and glorious achievement by Santa Anna. Had his career then closed, his name would have gone down to posterity as a patriot. That it was not to be, is one of the inevitable pangs to which the genuine friends of humanity and human rights are, ever and anon, subject, in reviewing the past struggles between humanity in its excellence and in its depravity.
This brilliant achievement was hailed throughout Mexico as a crowning glory to her independence, and Santa Anna was almost deified as the savior of his country. The name of Tampico was changed both by law and universal acclaim to Santa Anna de Tamaulipas, to distinguish it from a town of that name in Oaxaca. For the moment he was the idol of the populace, and he little thought that, as a result of his future wrongs, the name of Tampico would be restored, that he would become a prisoner to another race resisting his mur- derous cruelty and oppressions, that his leg, lost in battle for his country, would be exhumed and jeeringly desecrated by his own people, that he would be driven an exile from his own country, and that when old, helpless and derided, barely permitted to return and die in its capital.
Bustamente, the Vice-President, late in 1829, headed a suc- cessful revolution against Guerrero, and, by force of arms, assumed the presidency. In an attempt to regain his position, Guerrero was captured and basely put to death. Bustamente assumed arbitrary powers and developed the characteristics of a cold and unprincipled tyrant. To strengthen himself with the ignorant multitude, he exhibited bitter and jealous feelings towards foreign influence and foreigners generally, and above all towards the peaceful and prosperous American colonists in the savage wilderness of Texas, against whose wild and roving bands of barbarbous Indians, he well knew that Mexico, as a vice-royalty, had long been, and as an independ-
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ent power still was powerless, not only for reclamation and expansion, but even for protection and the preservation of the remaining feeble foot-hold his countrymen had in it.
It fell to this tyrant and bigot to adopt a measure destined to wield a great influence in the successive steps which led to the withdrawal of Texas from the Mexican union. The unwarranted and despotic exercise of power by Governor Victor Blanco in 1826, in refusing a hearing or trial to Haden Edwards annul- ling his contract and the rights of American settlers under it, was not forgotten by any and rankled in the breasts of many in Texas. It was a sore spot.
On the 6th of April, 1830, this usurper and tyrant issued a remarkable decree, odious in various respects, but its eleventh article, afterwards famous in the popular mind as it was infamous in the popular heart of Texas, can only be classed as a second, but much the most ominous step in the misrule of Mexico, in the series of evil deeds which finally drove the colonists of Texas into revolution and independ- ence. The eleventh article of that edict practically forbade the farther immigration of North Americans into Texas. Its only possible excuse was that in 1825, 1827 and 1829, the United States, through their minister to Mexico, had made efforts to purchase from that country the whole, or if that could not be, a part of Texas ; and the further fact that the Americans settling Texas were enlightened, liberty-loving people, and therefore to be dreaded by such a despotic tyrant as Bustamente, whose success as seen from his contracted and supremely selfish point of observation, was largely dependent upon the ignorance and docility of the great mass of his own countrymen.
But the usurper did not stop at this deadly thrust at the heart of Texas. He followed it up by establishing garrisons and erecting posts at various points in the country to enforce his edicts and hold the people in subjection. The commanders of these troops, Colonel Jose de las Piedras and Lieutenant -
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Colonel Domingo de Ugartechea and Juan D. Bradburn, were his immediate adherents and partisans.
Piedras, with 350 men, garrisoned Nacogdoches, as senior commander of the whole; Bradburn, with 150 men, built and occupied a fort at Anahuac, on Galveston Bay, at the mouth of the Trinity River, the position having been chosen on a recent visit by General Manuel Mier y Teran, commander of what were formerly designated as the Eastern Internal Provinces, with headquarters at Monterey, a man who had gallantly fought through the Mexican revo- lution ; but who, after independence was achieved, became an earnest ally of such men as Bustamente, and manifested the most implacable animosity towards foreigners, especially towards Americans. Ugartechea, in command of about 130 men, built and garrisoned a fort at Velasco, on the Gulf shore, on the east side of the mouth of the Brazos River, destined to become the theater of the first actual clash of arms between the Texian colonists and their Mexican oppressors. There were also Mexican troops, in furtherance of the general plan of repression, stationed at San Antonio and Goliad, and a small force, under Bean, at Fort Teran, on the Neches. These troops were to be supported by receipts from the custom houses and other tributes laid upon the country. These new dispositions went into effect late in 1830 and early in 1831, and it soon became evident that their mission was one of harassment to the colonists, to be enforced by the military power and by the depreciation of the civil authorities. Such was developed as pre-eminently true by Bradburn at Anahuac.1
1 John Davis Bradburn was a Kentuckian who entered Mexico under the patriot Mina, in 1816-17. He survived the revolution and thus became a Mexican officer. His odious conduct and departure from Anahuac is herein narrated. His next appearance in Texas was as a Brigadier-General under Santa Anna in 1836; but either by design or good fortune, he remained with the reserves west of the Guadalupe and thus missed an opportunity of meeting his own countrymen on the battle field and enjoying their hospitality with his blood-stained chief, Santa Anna.
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Bradburn soon began a system of annoyances, indignities and oppressions toward the people; and before 1831 1 closed he is- sued an order closing all the ports in Texas of any advantage to
1 In the years 1830 and 1831, valuable additions were made to the American population of Texas. In what is now Liberty County (then part of the territory claimed by the New York and Galveston Bay Land Com- pany), between the years 1826-1830, had settled Taylor White, Hugh B. Johnson, Win. M. Logan; the four brothers, A. B., William, Franklin and Watson Hardin, from Maury County, Tennessee, and others. In 1830, on the establishment of Anahuac, at the mouth of the Trinity, William Barrett Travis (the Leonidas of Texas) from South Carolina, Patrick C. Jack from Alabama; and in 1831, Dr. N. D. Labadie from Louisiana, settled at that place. Sterling C. Robertson, the empresario, and Alexander Thompson, with numerous families from Tennessee and some from other States, settled on the Brazos in what was originally Leftwich's grant - afterwards known as the Nashville Company - and finally as Robertson's colony. Among these settlers were E. L. R. Wheelock, J. G. W. Pierson, the Cavitts and others. Nacogdoches and the country east, west and south of it, received large and valuable accessions, extending down to the present town of Jas- per (then Bevil), where John Bevil had settled in 1824, and on whose original headright his son John, aged eighty years, died in June, 1888. Claiborne West, Wyatt Hanks and George W. Smyth were also early-time settlers in the ancient jurisdiction of Bevil. De Witt's colony, in 1830 and 1831, was strengthened by the addition of such valuable recruits as William Ponton and sons, Joel and Andrew; James B. Patrick from Missouri, and Bartlett D. McLure from Kentucky (whose patriotic young bride, now the widow of Charles Braches, yet (in 1892) lives on their original headright, ten miles east of Gonzales), and a considerable number of others. In those years, too, came to the Irish colonies of Power, at the mission of Refugio, and of McMullen and McGloin, at San Patricio, the first installments of many who were to suffer, and not a few to die for Texas. To Austin's colony with many others destined to exert an influence for good, came the patriot orator,, Dr. Branch T. Archer from Virginia, the eloquent William H. Jack from Alabama, Samuel Rhoads Fisher from Pennsylvania, John Caldwell of Bas- trop, Thomas H. Mays of Bastrop, and one whose name and deeds were destined to be indelibly impressed on the most heroic pages of Texian history, Edward Burleson, one of the noblest of the noble and bravest of the brave and member of a large family of bold and heroic pioneers. But the largest and most remarkable addition to Austin's colony, arriving by land in De- cember, 1830, and by water in February, 1831, was a self-organized colony of kinsmen and friends from Decatur and Tuscumbia, Alabama, who settled on the Navidad in Jackson County, and on the Colorado in the neighborhood called Egypt, now in the upper part of Wharton County. Those who came
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the Americans, excepting that at Anahuac under his immediate eye. This high-handed usurpation was utterly without even the pretense of an apology and was absolutely ruinous to the settlers in Austin's, Robertson's and De Witt's colonies, de- pendent, as they were, on the mouth of the Brazos and the landings on Matagorda Bay, as ports of ingress to and egress from the country. It was intended and by them accepted, if allowed to stand, as a death blow to their prosperity.
by land were the brothers Thomas and William Menefee, with large families ; George Sutherland (who commanded a company in storming San Antonio and whose son, William, fell in the Alamo), Wm. J. E. Heard, family and mother; and Thomas J. Reed and family, reaching the Navidad, December 9, 1830. Those who came by water down the Tennessee, Ohio and Missis- sippi in flat boats to New Orleans, thence in the schooner Emblem, Captain Canon, to the head of Lavaca Bay, arriving there February 12, 1831, were the brothers Jesse White (whose son, Frank M., was commissioner of the General Land Office from 1857 to 1863), and Benjamin J. White; J. M. Heard, Samuel A. Rogers and family, Mrs. Elizabeth Dever and family, John Davis and family, Mrs. Jemima Heard's family (she having come by land), Roys- ter and family, Warren J. Winston and family, and single men named Samuel Davis, Hart, Warren and Willoughby. On the next trip of the Emblem, there came with their families, T. H. P. Heard, Morgan Rector, Joseph Rector (killed by lightning a few weeks later), Richard R. Royal, Robert D. Moore and John D. Newell, embracing in all the equivalent of twenty- three large families and many slaves. Besides those named, there also came to the Lavaca and Navidad, Dr. Francis F. Wells, Archibald White and family, Elijah Stapp and family and the York family, all preceded by the families of Andrews, Guthrie and Alley. It was my privilege after- wards to know most of these people personally, to serve in defense of the country with more than a dozen of them, to sit in the councils of the State with several, to enjoy the fireside hospitality of most of them, and it is a pleasure, heartfelt and profound, to say that, so far as my knowledge extends, not one of them ever lowered the standard of good citizenship or proved recreant to the calls of patriotism, that they were bravely represented on many battle fields and honorably so in the councils of the country from the first assemblage in 1832 for a quarter of a century following. Beyond this, their matrons were models of propriety and hospitality, their daughters ornaments to any society in which intelligence, combined with maidenly modesty and purity, are held essential to respect and esteem. This is said in no fulsome sense, - for I have not seen one of them, male or female, in more than twenty years - but as a just tribute to virtue and patriotism.
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BOWIE'S INDIAN FIGHT IN 1831.
Leaving for a moment the general thread of events, I will here introduce an account of the famous Indian fight of Bowie and others on the San Saba, on the 21st of November, 1831. In 1832 an account of this thrilling encounter was published in a Philadelphia paper by Rezin P., a brother of James Bowie, the leader of the party. That account has been reproduced in almost every work on Texas, as the only one known to be in existence. But among the archives of San Antonio there has recently been found and translated, an official report of the affair made by James Bowie himself, immediately after the occurrence. In essentials the two statements agree, dif- fering only and slightly in immaterial details. The official statement, however, on careful comparison, is believed to be most authentic and is therefore adopted.
REPORT OF JAMES BOWIE.
SAN ANTONIO DE BEXAR, Dec. 10, 1831.
" To the Political Chief of Bexar :
Agreeably to your lordship's request, I have the honor to report to you the result of my expedition from San Antonio to the San Saba. Information received through different channels in relation to that section of the country, formerly occupied by Mexican citizens, and now in the hands of several hostile Indian tribes, induced me to get up that expedition, expecting that some benefit might result therefrom both to the community and myself. But, as my intentions were known to you and approved by your lordship previous to my departure, I deem it useless to enter into these particulars. I left this city on the 2d of November last in company with my brother, Rezin P. Bowie, eight men and a boy. Wishing, with due care, to examine the nature of the country, my pro-
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