Lone Star Nation (8 page)

But the fighting developed differently than most imagined. The critical event of the second decade of the nineteenth century for the future of Texas was not the war with Britain nor the treaty with Spain, but the implosion of the American economy. Stephen Austin, sitting impatiently with his cargo of lead in New Orleans in 1812, might have been forgiven for thinking wars the principal cause of financial distress in the United States. In fact, peace was often harder on the economy. American money in those days consisted primarily of paper notes issued by scores of banks scattered across the several states, and because these banks, like all banks, owed more (to depositors) than they kept in their vaults, the slightest financial disturbance could set off a chain of failures, which might result in a strangling contraction of the money supply. Such a series of events produced the Panic of 1819, with prices plunging, debtors defaulting, mortgage holders foreclosing, and thousands of families losing their land. The effect was most dramatic in the West, where the entire economy was premised on rising—not falling—prices for land. The panic and its aftermath set an army on the march: an army not of soldiers but of farmers and their dependents, men and women and children akin to those bedraggled pilgrims Moses Austin had seen in 1796 looking for their promised land in Kentucky. The growth in population since then had pushed the promised land farther west, to the American territories of the upper Louisiana Purchase—and, as things developed, to the Spanish territory of Texas.

While financial developments made emigration to Texas appealing, technological developments made it possible. The greatest inventions of the era were the cotton gin and the steamboat. Eli Whitney's 1793 invention of a mechanical technique for separating seeds from fibers of the short-staple cotton that flourished on the Gulf Coastal plain opened whole new territories to settlement. Whitney's gin reduced costs of cotton goods, putting manufactured textiles within the reach, and on the backs, of millions who previously wore homespun. Cotton had been a crop; now it became an industry, and a very profitable one for those who acquired land inexpensively. Within a generation the territories of Alabama and Mississippi filled up with cotton planters and their slaves. Some plantations were large, sophisticated enterprises, with hundreds of slaves toiling under the supervision of hired managers and overseers. Other plantations were mere farms, with the owners toiling beside their slaves. But large or small, the cotton operations required land, and the cheaper the better.

Robert Fulton's steamboat was no less decisive for the development of the West. Observers laughed when Fulton guided his belching, banging contraption up the Hudson River in 1807, but as the revolutionary nature of his antigravity device—a boat that could travel
up
stream, under its own power—became apparent, its commercial and hence demographic promise silenced the laughter. Never in American history had the self-sufficient farm been more than a myth; farmers required access to markets. Before Fulton, access had often been slow and subject to the uncertainties of weather and river currents (like those that sank Stephen Austin's barge). Fulton weakened the tyranny of nature by letting boats climb against the current and keep to more or less regular schedules. The first steamboats were ungainly and subject to spontaneous explosion, but as the technology developed they became (relatively) safe and able to navigate even the most modest watercourses. Every river promised to be a highway, along whose banks farmers could grow crops for sale; every estuary became a potential port of entry, the hub of a thriving community upstream.

“The land lies on the Colorado and Brazos rivers and includes a situation on the Bay of St. Bernard, suitable for a sea-port, at which place a port of entry is ordered to be established,” Stephen Austin wrote in July 1821, in a public notice regarding the Texas venture. “This concession to my father is granted by Don Joaquin de Arredondo, the governor of the Internal Provinces, and is duly confirmed by the Supreme Council of those Provinces. . . . It contains a permission to settle three hundred families on the lands, to each of whom a tract of land is to be given and to whom most liberal privileges are secured, both in regard to commercial interests and civil rights.”

Austin's notice, printed in several western papers, had an immediate effect. “This part of the country is all alive and nothing spoken of but the province of Texas since your publications in the papers have appeared,” Maria Austin wrote from Missouri. “And I have no doubt but one-third of the population of Missouri will move in the course of another year.”

There was much to do before the settlers arrived—starting with a visit by Austin to the territory he had suddenly begun promoting. He traveled by steamboat up the Mississippi from New Orleans to the Red River, and up the Red River to Natchitoches. There he met Erasmo Seguín, the emissary who had brought the news from San Antonio de Béxar that Moses Austin's proposal had been approved. Accepting Stephen in place of his father, Seguín led Austin west.

Austin kept a log of the journey; on July 16, 1821, he described his first impression of the land to which he had linked his fate.

Started from Camp Ripley [on the Sabine River] and entered the Province of Texas. . . . The first 4 miles fine timber and poor land. We then suddenly came to an open rolling country thinly timbered, soil about the color of Spanish brown, and in some places redder. This land is very productive and is covered with the most luxuriant growth of grass I ever beheld in any country; almost any of it would produce as much hay as the best meadows. The country so far is well watered.

A few days farther on he noted:

The general face of the country from within 5 miles of the Sabine to Nacogdoches is gently rolling. . . . The grass is more abundant and of a ranker and more luxuriant growth than I have ever seen before in any country and is indicative of a strong rich soil. . . . The creeks are numerous and water very pure and limpid.

For one who came late to the idea of colonizing Texas, Austin caught on quickly. The two months of this first visit were a continuous search for the richest soil, the lushest grass, the sturdiest timber, the purest streams, the most promising town sites, and the most navigable waterways. His journal recorded his rising excitement at a project he initially considered dubious but which now seemed inspired. “Large rich bottoms on the banks and good pasturage on the upland,” he wrote of a creek just west of Nacogdoches. On July 31 he reached the Brazos River and described the land along its banks as “very good: rolling prairie, black soil.” West of the Brazos was the Colorado, which flowed between high banks on which a town might be located safely above the flood line. The soil on either side of the stream was obviously rich: “Grapes in immense quantities on low vines, red, large and well flavored, good for red wine.” Fish crowded the river and buffalo and deer its banks. “I killed a fat buck,” he recorded on August 5.

The landscape grew still more inviting as Austin and Seguín angled south toward San Antonio. Of the valley of the San Marcos River, Austin observed, “Country beautifully rolling, soil very black and rich.” The San Marcos was striking in that it arose abruptly from three springs and immediately crashed down a waterfall “fine for mills.” The valley of the Guadalupe River was even more delectable. “Country the most beautiful I ever saw—rolling prairies, soil very black and deep.” Mesquite trees, which could supply lumber, grew along the creeks that fed the Guadalupe; dazzling white limestone, ideal for building, lay all about.

As fortunate as Austin's timing was with regard to events in America, it was most
un
fortunate with respect to developments in Mexico. Or so it seemed on his approach to San Antonio de Béxar, when three scouts Seguín sent ahead returned with news that Mexico, after more than a decade of revolution, had finally won its independence from Spain. Austin's companions were delighted. “The Spaniards,” he wrote (apparently without noting the irony of this characterization of Seguín and the others), “hailed this news with acclamations of ‘Viva independencia' and every other demonstration of joy.”

Austin took part in the celebration even while wondering what the change of governments meant for the Texas project. The charter he had inherited from his father bore the seal of Spanish authorities, now ousted. Whether their Mexican successors would view the American colonization of Texas in the same light was anyone's guess.

Austin carried on as though the charter still held. Seguín introduced him to Governor Martínez, explaining that the young man had come to carry out the commitment given by his father and to see Texas for himself. The Baron de Bastrop again acted as interpreter and go-between. Austin was encouraged upon hearing that Martínez still supported the colonization project, and, at the governor's invitation, Austin submitted a more specific plan for allotting land to settlers. Splitting the difference between American custom, which had evolved in relatively rainy country where crops were the primary concern, and Mexican practice, suited to arid country devoted to livestock, Austin proposed to give each family 320 acres of crop land and 640 acres of grazing land. Additional amounts would be awarded depending on the number of people in the families.

Martínez had no quibble with the size of the plots. Considering the immensity of Texas, he probably would have accepted parcels ten times that large. What mattered more to Martínez was the conduct of the colonists. As director—
empresario,
in Spanish usage—of the project, Austin would be answerable for the behavior of those he brought in. “They must be governed by and be subordinate to you,” Martínez insisted. Austin said they would be.

After a week in Béxar, Austin resumed his reconnaissance. Following the San Antonio River southeast toward the Gulf, he continued to be thrilled by the country. “The land adjoining the river is very rich and lays beautifully,” he wrote. After a week he reached La Bahía, where a small village clustered about the Franciscan mission. “This place is beautifully situated on an eminence, immediately on the bank of the St. Antonio River. The surrounding country is rolling prairie, land rather sandy but produces well; might all be watered from the river.”

Austin carried letters of introduction from Governor Martínez. The alcalde of La Bahía wasn't impressed; when Austin asked for guides to conduct him on the next stage of his journey, the official said he couldn't release anyone without another letter specifically directing him to do so. The local curé, however—“a very gentlemanly and liberal minded man and a great friend of the Americans,” Austin noted—saw in the empresario a ticket out of a dismal post. “He expressed a wish to be appointed the curé of my new settlement.”

On this eastward leg of the journey, Austin encountered several groups of Indians. He had heard of the Tonkawas, a powerful tribe that intimidated its enemies by, among other methods, eating them. Consequently he was surprised to meet some Tonkawas along the San Antonio River who seemed as happy as the friars to learn of his project. The leader of the Tonkawa band, which comprised eight men and ten women, approached Austin in a friendly manner. “I had a talk with him, smoked and gave him some tobacco, informed him of my intended settlement, which pleased him, and he sent on two of his sons next day with me to his town to inform his nation who we were and our objects.”

A run-in with some other indigenes caused Austin greater concern. On the lower Colorado he heard an “Indian war whoop.” A native approached Austin's party and signaled for them to stop. His mien wasn't especially threatening, but he was backed by more than a dozen warriors. Austin, telling his companions to be on their guard, went forward to engage the Indian. This fellow wanted Austin and the others to come to his camp. Austin asked who they were, and was told they were Cocos, whom Austin knew to be a branch of the Karankawas. In light of the Karankawas' bad reputation—they, too, practiced cannibalism, and were considered treacherous by the Spanish—Austin declined the invitation, “until one of the chiefs laid down his arms and five squaws and a boy came up to me from their camp. This satisfied me they believed us to be too strong for them and therefore that they would not attack us (of their disposition to do so I had no doubt, if they thought they could have succeeded).”