Mirabeau Lamar’s imperial designs suffered humiliating defeats but also enjoyed significant triumphs, proving that although Texas was no supernation, it was more viable than its economic performance might suggest.
The history of his attempt to invade Santa Fe and bring it into the Texas orbit can be told briefly. 14 April 1840: President Lamar drafts a letter to the people of New Mexico telling them of the glories of Texas and warning them that sooner or later, they will have to join up; the letter is ignored by loyal Santa Fe citizens, who are Spanish-speaking and happy under Mexican rule. 19 June 1841: Lamar personally but not governmentally approves of a convoy of twenty-one ox wagons, with military support and a contingent of 321 eager settlers, which sets out to take over the government of New Mexico. 5 August to 17 August, same year: the expedition, having no guides who have ever been to Santa Fe, becomes hopelessly lost and sends out horsemen to see if anyone can identify anything. 12 September, same year: the would-be conquerors stagger in to a remote Mexican settlement and beg for water and help. 17 September, 1841: the entire expedition surrenders to Mexican troops without having fired a single shot or having been allowed to peddle their promises to a single resident of Santa Fe. 1 October 1841: almost all of the Texians are marched to Mexico City and on to the old fort of Perote in the jungle, where they are thrown into prison. 6 April 1842: most of the Perote prisoners are released, but with bitter memories of their mistreatment.
On the other hand, President Lamar’s negotiations with powers other than Mexico and the United States progressed handsomely, and in 1839, France signed a treaty recognizing the independence of the new nation, thus assuring Texas of full international standing. England, too, made overtures, and the future looked bright. As for the United States, Lamar perceived it as the enemy and refused either to initiate or to participate in talks leading to annexation.
Regarding Mexico, he was generously prepared to offer either war or peace, but he was not prepared for what his neighbor to the south actually did. Its troops marched across the Rio Grande and captured San Antonio, but fortunately for Lamar, they withdrew of their own volition.
So Texas was not an unalloyed success, but the valor of its poet-president did encourage it to make certain sensible moves, chief of which was the incredible decision to shift the capital from Houston, on the eastern malarial fringe of the nation, into Austin, at the edge of the salubrious highlands. On the day the governmental party surveyed the site for the new capital, buffalo scampered down what was to become the main street.
The intellectual life of the new nation also flourished, thanks to men like Martin Ascot, who took seriously his duties as Xavier County’s corresponding secretary of the Philosophical Society. Otto watched admiringly as his friend spent six nights in a row, hunched over the table in the kitchen, drafting by candlelight his first submission to the society, and although Otto could not know it at the time, the resonant success of this paper was to account for an experience from which Otto would profit.
Corresponding secretaries were obligated to report on the ‘scientific, agricultural, historical, political, moral and geographical phenomena of their counties,’ so Martin chose for his topic ‘The Texas Pecan, Salvator Mundi,’ and he wrote with such charm that older members said: ‘There’s a lad to watch!’
He extolled the pecan as a miracle food, a possible source of oil, a tree with unique capabilities and God’s particular blessing on the new nation, insofar as native foods were concerned. What was remembered best was the way he harmonized scientific knowledge about its cultivation with his personal reaction to it:
If corn is our nation’s primary cereal and the pecan our finest nut, is it not appropriate that the two be blended in some perfect dish? My wife, Betsy Belle, has discovered a way of doing this in a pie which has considerable merit. Using corn flour and bear grease, she bakes a fine crust, into which she pours a cooked mixture of syrup made from the boiled stalk of the corn mixed with the finest ground corn thickening. She sprinkles the top so richly with pecan halves, lightly salted, that nothing else is visible. She then puts everything in a flat iron receptacle with a cover and bakes it for an hour until all ingredients combine in what I do believe is the most tempting pie in the world.
The country’s leaders in Houston were so impressed by Martin’s report, and their wives so pleased with Betsy Belle’s recipe, that President Lamar gave Ascot an assignment which required work in Xavier, travel to the new capital at Austin and the delivery of papers back to Houston. Martin, who had a case scheduled before Judge Phinizy, completed the work but turned it over to Otto to deliver at government expense.
Otto rode to Austin with Martin’s papers, got them signed, and was told that he could take the new stagecoach down to Houston. The firm of Starke and Burgess had been awarded the right to operate a stage between the new capital and the old, and to accomplish this, had imported coaches that had seen decades of service in Mississippi and two drivers with almost as much experience in Alabama. Otto would ride to Houston in the Thursday coach driven by Jake Hornblow, who had a wealth of beard, a brazen voice and a sulphurous vocabulary. When the six passengers were assembled, four men, two women, Jake instructed everyone where to sit, then glared at Otto and said: ‘You, fetch the pole and rope.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Damn it to hell, if I have to tell you people everything, like you was babies, we’ll never get to Houston.’ Asking around the office, a one-room shack with a heavy iron safe, Otto found the gear, and when he delivered it, Jake studied him contemptuously and growled: ‘I was goin’ to let you work the pole, but you ain’t got the weight to give it leverage.’
It was a scheduled three-day trip, and before it started, Jake assured his passengers ‘If this was July or August, we’d get there in great shape,’ but it was late March, in the rainy season, and when they were only a few miles out of Austin, Otto learned what the rope was for, because they came to a place where a swollen stream had overrun the road, turning it into a Texas quagmire.
‘All out!’ Hornblow bellowed, and when everyone was standing beside the mired coach, he threw Otto the rope and told him to take it to the far side of the huge mudhole, but as Otto started to obey, Jake cursed at him as if he were both idiotic and criminal: ‘Goddamnit, you stupid horse’s ass. You’re supposed to tie one end to the coach.’ So back Otto sloshed, with Jake heaping scorn on him as he bent down to tie the hitch: ‘If you was in the rangin’ company, like they say, the Indians have nothin’ to worry about.’
Then, surveying the male passengers as if they were members of a chain gang, he nominated one: ‘You, take the pole.’ This stout lever was rested upon a pile of rocks with one end thrust under the rear of the wagon, whereupon Jake yelled at the two women passengers: ‘Yes, you, goddamnit, lean on the pole with the gentleman.’ The other men were expected to go into the mud up to their boot tops and push.
In this way, with the horses straining, Otto pulling, the man and the two ladies prizing the rear with their lever, the others in the mud, and Jake cursing God, the rain, the creek and his lazy companions, the coach worked its way through.
The three-day trip took six days, with the rope-and-pole trick being utilized at least four times each day. The cost was fifteen dollars per passenger, not including food, which was invariably cornbread, greasy bacon and weak coffee, three times a day. When the trip ended, Otto and the other men were so outraged by the treatment they had received from Jake Hornblow that they wanted to thrash him, but when they considered his size, they refrained.
The high regard in which Lawyer Ascot was held was further demonstrated when President Lamar appointed him to head a commission with important duties in San Antonio. He was to have in his entourage a company of Texas soldiers and Captain Garner with three members of his ranging company, now known as Texas Rangers. Ascot suggested that Macnab be one, and the party set forth in the late winter of 1840.
As they rode, Commissioner Ascot explained the purpose of the mee
ting: ‘At last the Comanche see the folly of their ways. They want a treaty with us. They propose a wide strip where a truce will be permanently observed, so that maybe now the killings will stop.’
‘What did they say about the white people they hold captive?’ Otto inquired, and Ascot said: ‘If a treaty can be arranged, the Comanche promise to surrender every prisoner they now hold, perhaps as many as a hundred.’ This was joyous news, if true, for the idea that savages held white women and children was repellent.
Captain Garner offered verification: ‘I was assured all prisoners would be released. We wouldn’t talk, otherwise.’
‘What are we expected to do?’ Otto asked, and Garner explained: ‘The army’s in charge. They’ll give the orders. My job is to deliver Mr. Ascot to supervise the legal arrangements.’
‘But what do we do?’ the two other Rangers asked, and Garner snapped: ‘Obey orders.’
‘Whose orders?’ Otto asked, for he did not work well in a confused chain of command.
‘The army’s orders,’ Garner said.
When they got to San Antonio and saw what a handsome town it was, so much more civilized than their frontier settlements and with buildings so far superior, they had moments of real delight. The beer was good, the Mexican dishes were new to many of the soldiers, the winter vegetables were a surprising relief from the drab food many of the men had been eating, and there was an air of levity unknown in the grimmer, less settled parts of Texas. It was as if the men had come into another country, one of ancient charm rather than new rawness.
The job of Garner’s three young men was to stand watchful guard at the courthouse in which the important meetings with the Comanche were to be held, and they were attentive to the plans the army officer outlined: ‘Don’t frighten them when they ride in tomorrow. Try to accept them as neutrals. And for God’s sake, make no move toward your guns. Just let them come at us, and pray for the best.’ When there was a rumble of apprehension, Garner whispered to his men: ‘If trouble starts, give ’em hell.’ The Rangers nodded, indicating that they understood.
Macnab and his two companions staked out a corner of the public plaza where they could stand by next morning as the Comanche braves rode in with their prisoners. ‘They say there may be as many as a hundred white women and children delivered,’ Otto told the Rangers, and one asked Captain Garner if he could be detailed to help these unfortunates, who might be in pitiful condition if frontier tales could be believed, but the captain pointed to a small building in which the women of San Antonio would care for the captives.
‘You stay where you’re put,’ Garner said with unexpected sternness, emphasizing the seriousness of this assignment.
That night an old scout who had prowled the frontier with Deaf Smith told the young army men who the Comanche were:
‘They came to Texas late, maybe 1730, not much sooner. Come down acrost the prairie from Ute Country. Mountain Indians movin’ onto the plains. And why? Because they got theyselves horses, that’s why. Yep, when them mountain Comanche got aholt of some good Spanish horses, they went wild. Now they could ride a hundred mile for buffalo, two hundred to find and burn a Mexican rancho.
‘They took no prisoners, except women and children as slaves. Well, they did keep the eight or ten strongest men alive temporary. Me and Deaf Smith had a pact. “If’n I’m wounded and cain’t ride and the Comanche is comin’ at me, you got to shoot me, Deaf.” And he said “Same with me, Oscar.”
‘Well, when they hit Texas, about 1730 like I said, they like to tore this place apart. Terrified the other tribes that didn’t have horses. You know how the old-timers was scairt of the Apache? The Comanche treated the Apache like they was nursin’ babes, that’s how they treated the Apache.
‘These is the savages that now say they want a treaty with us. You know what I think? I think it’s all a trap. Tomorrow in that building and out here on this square somethin’ terrible’s goin’ to happen. With Comanche it always does.’
Apparently Captain Garner and his army superiors had the same fear, because about midnight Garner told Macnab: ‘Tomorrow may be touch-and-go. If at any time I rush out that door waving this handkerchief, I want you three to dash in, right past me, guns ready. No Comanche is to escape alive … that is, if they start something.’
There was great excitement that Thursday morning, 19 March 1840, when from the west the awesome Comanche rode in, for they were ghostly figures from some gruesome fairy tale. Taller than the Cherokee, thinner, with hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes, they wore battle finery that made them seem even more imposing, and by some trick they kept their horses stepping nervously sideways, as if the animals, too, were aching for a fight.
But there was also the gravest disappointment, for when the troop of about sixty-five neared the entrance to the town, it was obvious that only one captive was being led in, a girl of about fifteen whom someone recognized as Matilda Lockhart, captured two years before. When people saw her pitiful condition, sobs of the most deep and painful grief welled up, and many had to look away as she rode silently past.
The Comanche were led by an elderly wizened chieftain named Muguara, veteran of a hundred raids and killings, but one now apparently desirous of peace. Looking eagerly about, like a scout on the trail, he studied each element that faced him in San Antonio as if to satisfy himself that he was not heading into an ambush, and when he felt that the meeting could proceed, he signaled his women to remain behind, guarded by most of the braves, while he, twelve others and an interpreter dismounted and marched to the council house, almost dragging the mute Lockhart girl with them.
When he brought her into the room where the negotiators waited, with Commissioner Ascot prepared to offer clemency if only peace could be established, the Texian delegation gasped and one man clutched Ascot’s arm: ‘Jesus Christ! Is that a human being?’ It was a fair question, for when Ascot moved forward to give her comfort, the girl quivered like some tortured animal and looked at him with wild, uncomprehending eyes.
It was with difficulty that Ascot prevented a break right then, but with great fortitude and holding back his own tears, he counseled patience, reminding his negotiators that they were dealing with savages who would have to be tamed by time, and he took the Lockhart girl, who would have been an attractive young woman had she been allowed to grow up on her ranch outside of San Antonio, and delivered her to the women waiting in the adobe house where they had hoped to welcome at least a hundred more. When they saw her, they began to weep, and the Rangers outside heard their cries of rage.
‘Let’s go in and get them now,’ one shouted, but the others calmed him, and the soldiers waited, fingering their guns.
With the dreadful evidence of the Lockhart girl removed from the council house, it was possible to start serious discussion, but first Ascot and his team had to know the whereabouts of the other prisoners. However, when they asked, Chief Muguara lacked the English words for a conciliatory answer: ‘Not my prisoners. Other tribes. You pay enough, you get them.’ Then he added a most unfortunate phrase: ‘How you like that for an answer?’
Even Ascot, who had vowed not to be unnerved by anything the Comanche did or said, blanched: ‘Interpreter, tell Chief Muguara that he and his dozen warriors will be our prisoners until he arranges for the other captives to be brought in.’
The interpreter, knowing that such an ultimatum must mean war, shouted the words in a jumble, then bolted through the door, right past Captain Garner, who stood guard, and shouted to the Indians in the plaza: ‘War! War!’
Garner, recovering from the shock of having the interpreter knock him aside, waved his handkerchief, at which Macnab and half a dozen others dashed into the council hall, where a general melee had erupted. Otto arrived just in time to see one of Muguara’s braves leap upon Ascot and drive a long knife into his heart. The astounded commissioner gasped, and with blood gushing from his mouth, fell dead.
This so enraged Macnab that he began firing coldly at any brave who could b
e separated from the white men, and the room became a miasma of gunsmoke, screams and death. Macnab and others kept firing with relentless accuracy, and within a few minutes all thirteen of the Comanche inside the hall were dead.
Outside, in obedience to army commands, the soldiers stationed about the plaza killed thirty-five more Comanche before the others fled. Six white men lay dead.
It was a ghastly affair, a ghastly mistake, and it terminated any efforts to bring about peace with the Comanche. Captain Garner and his men saddled up to join the army in pursuit of whatever Comanche tribes might be in the vicinity. They came upon campfires recently abandoned where corpses testified to the fact that the Indians, enraged by their betrayal in the council house, had savagely executed all their white prisoners.
Macnab came upon one site where the rampaging Comanche had assaulted a Texian ranch; two wagons had been placed beside a fire, their tongues projecting over the embers. To the tongues, face down, had been lashed the living bodies of the men running the ranch, and the wagons had been adjusted so that the men would slowly burn to death.
‘Well,’ Otto said, ‘Martin met the Comanche.’
That happened in March, and for the next five months the Comanche retreated deep into the plains, tricking the Texians into believing that the massacre had been so devastating, there would be no further raids.
But two days before the August moon, one of the largest bands of Comanche ever gathered for a single raid assembled well west of San Antonio, and under the leadership of skilled chiefs, prepared to spread fire and terror across Texas. Cunningly, they slipped past military outposts, keeping well to the north of Gonzales, and fell with great fury upon the unprotected town of Victoria. They captured the entire town, burning and raping and killing. Corpses were scattered about, and more than two hundred horses were herded off. On they went, down to the little town of Linnville, where Finlay Macnab’s Baltimore wife had landed with her two daughters, and here, at the edge of the sea itself, they rampaged unmolested all through the day, burning more, killing more, and stomping in fury at the shore as certain clever townspeople took refuge in boats, standing well out into the bay without food or shelter until the savages departed.
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