Texas

by James A. Michener

  ‘But if Judge Collinsworth is too young, won’t Lamar’s people throw him out if we do elect him?’ Otto asked, and now Ascot revealed to him the other side of the law: ‘One of the beauties of practical law is that it enables men and women to do the things they want to, even if the printed law says otherwise.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s the law’s responsibility to find a way.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘To prove that things aren’t always quite what they seem.’

  ‘Could you defend Judge Collinsworth? And prove that he has a right to be president, even if he is three years shy?’

  ‘I think I could find a way,’ and Otto marveled as the young lawyer began to shift ideas this way and that. ‘Yes, I’m sure I could come up with a solution.’

  Judge Collinsworth’s second impediment was a hilarious one: he was inclined to be drunk four days each week, so drunk that he could not even dress himself, and Yancey’s unrelenting gang made a great deal of this, but the pro-Houston forces had an ingenious defense. They did not try to deny the charge; too many citizens had seen Judge Collinsworth stumbling into a tree or falling into a ditch to claim that the anti-Houston forces were defaming him. They did point out, however, that since Texas had prospered rather well under General Houston, who was drunk every morning, it was reasonable to suppose that it would do even better under Collinsworth, who would be drunk all day. As one orator shouted: ‘You don’t want a president who sticks his nose into everything, every day,’ and this argument was so persuasive that it began to look as if the all-day-drunk Collinsworth would succeed the half-day-drunk Houston.

  But one day in late July, Judge Collinsworth, while crossing Galveston Bay on a steamer, jumped from the aft end, thus becoming the second opponent of Lamar to escape an election fight by suicide.

  Yancey Quimper and his associates were now convinced that God was participating in the election, since He obviously wanted Lamar to put into operation his announced platform against Indians and Mexicans, and they ridiculed the Pro-Houston party’s third nominee, a roustabout boat captain from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Robert Wilson did not have a history; he had a dossier which summarized scandalous behavior in at least seven different states. In Texas he had been a little of everything—land promoter, gambler, sawmill operator, soldier in the 1835 capture of Bexar, senator—but his behavior in the last-named job was so malodorous that he had to be expelled. Promptly reelected by a district that wanted to be represented by just this kind of man, he told his supporters: ‘You have reinstalled me as a great man in spite of myself.’ He offered himself to the public as ‘Honest Bob Wilson, a man who is always as honest as the circumstances of a particular case and the public conditions of the country at the time allow.’

  Wilson was such a pathetic candidate that even stalwarts like young Otto Macnab could not stomach him, and when the presidential vote was counted, Lamar had 6,995 to Wilson’s 252. The Georgia poet was now president, by a landslide, and yet his inauguration turned out to be a sorry affair.

  On 10 December 1838, Mirabeau Lamar was prepared to deliver a ringing inaugural speech outlining his plans for the next three years, and supporters like Yancey Quimper were delighted with the rumors that circulated regarding the doughty little man’s plans: ‘War against the Indians! War against Mexico! Occupation of Santa Fe! Texas is on the move!’

  It was assumed by the Lamar men that President Houston, whose nominees had fared so badly both at their own hands and at the public’s, would quietly retire from the office which he had occupied with so little distinction, but he astonished them by appearing on the platform in exactly the kind of dress George Washington had worn at his farewell, even to the powdered wig. Then, grasping the lectern with unsteady hands, he delivered a three-hour blistering defense of his conduct and a warning to his successor not to change policies in midstream. At first the audience grew impatient, then restive, and finally, so rebellious that when the tirade ended, poor Lamar folded his grandiloquent speech and passed it along to an assistant, who read it in a confused monotone.

  As soon as Lamar assumed the presidency, things began to change in Texas, and fire-eaters like Yancey Quimper felt their day had come: ‘No more of that Houston nonsense. Now we fight.’ To hear Yancey, one would suppose that the Texians were prepared to march to Santa Fe, Mexico City and anywhere else that came to mind. They were also ready to fight the Cherokee in the east and the Comanche in the west. In fact, if one listened to Yancey, there had never been as belligerent a young nation as Texas.

  Lamar himself had more sense. As a poet and a well-read Georgia gentleman, he stated frequently that his first priority was education, and he laid the foundations for the little that Texas was to do in this field, for as one of his supporters complained: ‘The Texas Congress is always prepared to pay verbal tribute to education but never prepared to vote a penny toward its attainment.’ This was a policy established by General Houston, who was wary of books for the general public, even though he himself treasured the few that had formed his own mind, and who absolutely despised all works of fiction, advising his friends never to bother with them. Texas would for decades speak well of education but not do much about it.

  Nevertheless, Lamar kept prodding his people to establish colleges and support free public schools, and many years later, when the state felt it must do something if it wished to maintain its self-respect, it did so in conformance to the ideals promulgated by its poet-president.

  Lamar also advocated homestead legislation that would enable Texians to establish their families on public lands, but his greatest contribution was in the world of the spirit, for he expanded Texians’ belief that they were a special people, obligated to pursue a special mission. Standing amid the mud-and-dust of Houston at the eastern edge of his nation, he could see westward to a new capital in Austin, to powerful future cities like Lubbock and Amarillo, to Santa Fe, which by right belonged to Texas, and beyond to the Pacific Ocean. And when he proposed such a vision as the guiding light of his administration, he received enthusiastic cheers from men like Yancey Quimper, who believed that one day New Mexico, Arizona and California must fall within the Texas orbit, as well as most of Mexico and what would later become Oklahoma: ‘And Mirabeau Lamar is the man to see that it happens.’

  But once the visionary aspects of his administration had been stated, the little president launched what might be termed the practical obligations: kill Mexicans, expel Indians and lure New Mexico into the Texas nation. In pursuit of the first goal, Lamar dispatched Captain Garner’s ranging company back to the Nueces River, which they crossed on various short expeditions in hopes of catching Benito Garza. They failed, but they did shoot up several groups of Mexicans and would have gone after more had they not been stopped by a surprising development which forced them to withdraw: two messengers from the north rode in to announce that Indians had attacked the republic.

  The official messenger was an army officer; his guide was Yancey Quimper, big hat down over his eyes, his voice quivering with rage: ‘Them damned Cherokee that Sam Houston said he’d pacified …’

  ‘What are they up to?’ Garner asked.

  ‘Nacogdoches way … Uprising … People being kilt.’

  It was always difficult to ascertain exactly what truth lay behind anything that Quimper said, but when the officer took over, it was clear that an Indian war was under way and that the government wanted all companies to converge on Nacogdoches for a final assault on the difficult Cherokee. With some regret, the Xavier County men started north.

  As they rode, the messenger explained the source of trouble: ‘An Eastern tribe—doesn’t belong in Texas—was moved west by the United States government. They argue that they’re a nation too, with the right to make treaties same as England or Spain.’

  He said that the Cherokee were led by a notorious warrior, Chief Bowles, known with respect as The Bowl. He was eighty years old and carried into battle a sword given him by Sam
Houston; it brought him luck, for he had never been vanquished.

  Now Quimper broke in: ‘When you were away, President Lamar issued a proper policy for handlin’ Indians: “Get out of Texas or get killed.” ’

  The officer laughed: ‘He didn’t say it that way. His message to Congress was “Eviction or extermination.” First we’ll try to evict them.’

  One of Garner’s men said: ‘Mexicans and Indians, you can’t tell the difference.’ And this verdict represented the consensus, for Yancey Quimper said loudly: ‘In Texas they ain’t no place for a Cherokee or a Mexican.’

  When the riders reached Victoria, Quimper insisted that he accompany Macnab when the latter rode out to visit with Josefina and María, and although Otto took no special notice of this at first, he did later realize that his friend Yancey had a deep interest in the two league-and-a-labor plots owned by the Mexican women.

  ‘Campbell leave any children?’ he asked María, and when she said no, he wanted to know how his land was left, and she said firmly: ‘It was always my land.’ And when he asked: ‘What happens to it when you die?’ she said forthrightly: ‘I have signed it to my brother, Benito.’

  ‘Did Otto’s father leave any papers … about the land, that is?’

  ‘It was never his land. It was always my sister’s.’

  ‘Then it would become Otto’s, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Whenever he wants it,’ Josefina said with a quiet smile at her son, ‘but he told me that General Houston gave him land—up north—for fighting in the war. He said he did not need my land.’

  When Otto moved aside to speak with his mother, Quimper hectored María: ‘Where’s your brother now?’ and she replied honestly: ‘I don’t know. He comes, he goes,’ at which Yancey said: ‘I’ll bet he does.’ Later, Otto asked María the same question, and she gave the same answer: ‘He comes, he goes.’

  ‘Tell him to be careful,’ Otto said. When the company approached Xavier County a scout rode up with devastating news: ‘War up north has turned full-scale. Cherokee on the rampage, and they tell us Benito Garza’s with them.’

  This news infuriated Garner: ‘We’re down south chasing his ghost while he’s up here burning our farms.’ It was quite clear from what Quimper kept threatening that if Garner’s men ever caught Garza, they were going to hang him within the minute, but Otto argued with them: ‘That’s only what they say. I know Garza, and he’s not messing around with Indians.’

  Nevertheless, Otto decided to stay close to Quimper when parleys with the Cherokee began to forestall precipitate action, but this wise precaution proved unnecessary, because when the troop finally reached Xavier County, Yancey discovered that he had important business that would keep him there, so Captain Garner’s men rode north without him.

  They had barely pitched their tents in Cherokee country when Otto was summoned to a night interrogation by the colonel in command, who asked: ‘Son, have you ever heard of Julian Pedro Miracle?’

  ‘I have not, sir.’

  ‘Do you know that we shot him about a year ago?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And have you heard that we found some very incriminating papers on him? That he was attempting to incite the Cherokee to join the Mexicans? To drive us Americans out of Texas?’

  ‘I did not hear this,’ Otto said.

  ‘Well, did you know the Manuel Flores we also killed some time ago?’

  ‘I did not, sir.’

  ‘Have you heard what papers we found on Flores?’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing, sir.’ In the tent the officer thrust a translation in English of the terribly damaging report that the dead Mexican spy Flores had written just before the start of the Cherokee uprising, and they directed his attention to one paragraph:

  I have completed plans whereby the Cherokee will launch a major harassment of the norteamericanos to coincide with the army attack of mexicano troops under Generals Filisola, Cós, Urrea and Ripperdá. At the same time our trusted revolutionary Benito Garza of Victoria will set the countryside ablaze, and we shall expel all norteamericanos and regain control of Tejas.

  Otto was shaken, and in the dark silence his mind flashed pictures of the Garza he had known: the bright young fellow trying to find husbands for his sisters, the gifted teacher of riding, that moment of terrible truth when he had saved Otto’s life at Goliad, and the swamp knifings at San Jacinto when Otto had reciprocated. During all the chases south of the Nueces, Otto had hoped that the Mexican government would see the wisdom of letting Texas have the disputed land. Then peace between Mexico and Texas would be possible, ensuring peace between Benito and himself. Now he saw his dream was futile.

  ‘I am not surprised,’ he told the colonel.

  ‘Is this Garza a friend of yours?’

  ‘My father’s brother-in-law. I lived with him for three years.’

  The officer in charge of the interrogation breathed deeply. ‘I’m glad you admitted that, son, because we knew the answer before we asked the question.’ And to Otto’s amazement an orderly brought into the tent Martin Ascot, who nodded in Otto’s direction and smiled in friendly fashion.

  ‘They arrested me this afternoon.’

  ‘You were not arrested,’ the officer corrected. ‘You were interrogated.’

  ‘And I told them “Of course Macnab knows Garza” and I told them about the incident in the swamp at San Jacinto when you stopped me from killing him. You see, Otto, they had a letter …’

  ‘I saw it. The one they captured when they shot … what was his name?’

  ‘Flores,’ the officer said. ‘Manuel Flores. But that is not the letter Ascot speaks of.’

  ‘Someone who knew you in Xavier County—didn’t sign his name—sent a letter,’ Ascot said, ‘which charges you with complicity in this affair.’

  The anonymous letter was produced; its ugly charges were ventilated; and Otto had to deny on the Bible that when he stopped at the Zave Campbell dog-run on the return from the Nueces, he had consorted with the renegade Benito Garza.

  ‘Why did you save his life at San Jacinto? If you knew at that time that he was an enemy?’ Silence. ‘Well, you knew he’d joined Santa Anna, didn’t you?’ Silence. ‘You better speak up, son. You’re in trouble.’

  Very quietly Martin Ascot, the young lawyer, counseled his neighbor: ‘You must tell them what you told me that evening.’

  Standing very straight, the youngest and shortest in the tent, Otto recounted his adventures at Goliad, his surrender, the march out from the presidio that Sunday morning, the dreadful execution of his father, his fight in the woods with the Mexican swordsman, the cut across his face, the gunfire of the two foot soldiers. At the conclusion he said: ‘I stand here today only because Benito Garza, under risk to himself, helped me to escape.’

  The silence in the tent was overpowering. Finally the officer in charge asked: ‘Macnab, what would you do tomorrow if you encountered Benito Garza on the battlefield? These papers prove he may be there.’

  ‘I would shoot him,’ Otto said.

  Next day the battle was brief, and terrible, and heartbreaking. The Cherokee Nation, which had been so pathetically abused by the American nation, brought eight hundred braves onto a rolling, wooded plain near the Neches River, where they faced nine hundred well-mounted, well-armed Texians led by men skilled in such fighting.

  The Bowl, eighty years old and white-haired, friend of Sam Houston and honorable negotiator with Spain, with Mexico, with the United States government and with the emerging nation of Texas, saw through copious tears that any hope of living in peace with these harsh newcomers to his land was vain. Indian and white man could not coexist in Texas, not ever.

  Dressing on the morning of 15 July 1839 in his finest elkskin robes and wrapping about his waist the golden sash General Houston had given him as proof of their perpetual friendship, he girded on the silver-handled sword which Houston had also given him, mounted his best horse, and led his men into a battle he knew he could not win.
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br />   All that day Texians and Indians blazed away at each other, and at dusk it was clear to General Johnston and Vice-President Burnet that if equal pressure was applied on the morrow, total victory must be theirs. That night the confident Texians slept well, all except Martin Ascot, who had tormenting doubts. Shaking Otto awake, he asked: ‘Why can’t we find some kind of arrangement to let them live off to one side?’ and Otto gave the answer he had developed while chasing Mexicans along the Nueces: ‘Texians and Indians … impossible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Martin,’ Otto said like an old campaigner to a raw recruit, ‘go to sleep. We got work tomorrow.’

  Next day the fighting was brief, concentrated and brutal. There was a violent chase all the way into another county, where the troops cut The Bowl off from his braves, shot him from his horse and shot him again as he lay on the ground, his white hair caked with blood, his silver-handled sword a trophy to be cheered.

  Without their leader, the Cherokee were lost, and well before noon they surrendered. They asked if they could go back and gather their still-unreaped crops, for they had no food, but the victorious Texians said they should just continue north and get the hell out of Texas.

  So they went, honorable wanderers who had known many homes since the white men began to press down upon them. East Texas would know its Indians no more, save for one minute enclave.