Lone Star

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  In the 1850s, the border towns of El Paso and Brownsville, and San Antonio itself, were dominated by a handful of leading merchants or financial men, none of whom were born in Texas or the South. This peculiar politico-social system, in which ethnic Mexicans usually possessed numerical superiority but remained politically inert as individuals, became a lasting feature of south-Texas life. It was a logical outcome to centuries of Hispanic-Mexican tradition, in which the Indian and mestizo base were allowed no function in politics, and in which even the Spanish landed elite possessed no initiative beyond being permitted to sit on local municipal councils. Another feature of this developing society was that the American or Americanized newcomers acquired extensive lands; the early entrepreneur, if he stayed, became a rancher. In this way Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy, who with a few others at one time dominated all Texas south of the Nueces from Brownsville, became two of the largest landowners in the South. In the 1850s the nucleus of the immense King Ranch was formed.

  In this way, also, much of the old caste and class structure of Mexico was perpetuated in south Texas. An Anglo-Saxon, or mixed Anglo-European-Spanish caste replaced the old Spanish land grantees at the apex of society. Although the new structure was American-oriented, English-speaking, and politically aware, it unconsciously adopted much of the patronizing attitude of the rancheros, whose ignorance of and impatience with the vagaries of American law and political practice completed their decline. Many Spanish landowners could never adapt to the American practice of taxation, where lands were taxed on assessed values, rather than merely on what they happened to produce from year to year. Each party—American and Spanish—considered the other system immoral, but the older owners' failure to exploit their lands cost them many titles through public sales. Further, the vast majority of Mexican inhabitants of the border regions could never make up their minds as to citizenship—American or Mexican—for almost one hundred years. This left them able to enter Mexico any time they chose, and many Texas-born Mexicans became prominent in Mexican government over the years, but it left them at a disadvantage at home.

  Just as the Mexican presence that clung stubbornly to the fringe areas of Texas was outside or beyond the Anglo heartland, the great part of the European immigration avoided the Anglo regions. In 1860, there were slightly more than 30,000 European-born citizens in Texas. The vast majority were settled in the south-southwest, somewhere west and south of the Colorado. Unlike much of the foreign immigration that was now pouring into the northern United States, these migrants were almost entirely rurally oriented and agricultural.

  During the 1820s and 1830s a number of French and Germans (Austrians and Swiss were among these, but usually called themselves Germans) entered Texas, but these men or families came individually. They either took up farming or sought employment as mechanics or artisans in the settlements, almost always founding their own businesses, since none existed before they came. The early immigrants joined in with the people of Anglo-Texas and almost invariably lost their European cultural identity quickly. The people who arrived in the 1840s and later did not, because they came en masse and formed enclaves. Meanwhile, the Irish colonies in south Texas had thrown in their lot with the Anglos politically in 1835, and except for a lasting Catholicism in some families, were hardly distinguishable from the Anglo mass. In Texas, no potato-famine Irish ever arrived.

  The first successful non-English-speaking enclave was founded by Henri de Castro, on the Medina River fifty miles southwest of San Antonio in September 1844. Castro's empresario grant, which included lands far south and west to the border, was in the path of the Comanche raiding trail to Mexico. He placed his town of Castroville in its safest, far northeastern corner. This was beautiful, rolling country, on the fringes of the Balcones Scarp, with a band of tall cypresses rising along the clear Medina. The region had stretches of fertile, river-valley soils, much like the area immediately surrounding San Antonio, though the general tenor of the landscape was rock and brush. Castro began with 300 colonists, most of whom were French citizens of Alsatian origin.

  Though Henri de Castro himself went bankrupt in the process, he advertised widely in France and the regions of the Upper Rhine in Germany. He acquired many colonists. Medina County, which grew from this settlement of Castroville, spread for some miles along the river on either side of the town, which retained a certain Old World charm, blended with the starkness of the New World frontier. In three years, Castro brought a total of 2,134 settlers in through the Gulf of Mexico. The majority of these were listed in old censuses as French, but this tended to be confusing. They were primarily ethnic Alsatians; they spoke a Germanic tongue, and in Texas they generally described themselves as "Germans." A number of the Castroville people were also Swabians, Württembergers, and Swiss. They were heavily Catholic, and built one of the first non-Hispanic Roman churches in Texas. This colony clung, grew, and spread north and east until it merged, almost imperceptibly, with spreading German settlement coming down from the Balcones Scarp. The Castroites, however, kept their own historic and sentimental identity; in the 20th century thousands of south-central Texans, who could no longer speak a foreign language, referred to themselves as "Alsatians." They held annual mass reunions, but more from historic sentiment than cultural aloofness, for they had become indistinguishable from most Anglo-Texans.

  There was a French colony, founded on the socialist principles of Fourier, established not far from Dallas in 1855. Here, 500 people gathered, cooperated briefly, quarreled, and drifted away. This colony, La Reunion, failed, but many of its educated French zealots stayed within the state. Small Scandinavian and Czech groups arrived in the 1840s. The Czechs (listed under Austrian nationality) were mainly intellectuals, fleeing the turmoil and repressions of 1848. They achieved, because of their level of culture, a remarkable influence in the skimpy intellectual landscape, though they merged quickly with the frontier population. Bedicheks and Nowaks soon sat comfortably in the pews of the Baptist Church.

  English and Scots entered Texas. Forty-odd men born in the British Isles died in the Alamo, but since none of these came in bunches, and merged rapidly, they left no lasting mark, except Scots names on many of the places along the frontier. Cameron County, where both Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma were fought, was named for a Scot in the Texas service.

  In Texas, however, the German people planted what was to be their only successful colony overseas. Other Americans, and Germans touring Texas, are often startled to hear German speech, and to find wholly German townships scattered through the scenic plateau on a diagonal stretching northwest above San Antonio from Cibolo–New Braunfels to the town of Fredericksburg, and to find almost a dozen counties in this hill country, so typical of the American Western frontier, where Germanic surnames predominate. Germans in Texas, not Indian-fighting pioneers, made the first permanent settlements above the Balcones fault.

  This came about because of a tragicomic-romantic dream of a group of German noblemen, whose princedoms for the most part had been mediatized by Prussia. The vision and idealism of these princes is hard to fault, but the manner in which their ideas were implemented almost produced tragedy. It did result in one of the enduring legends of the Texas frontier, and in the end, sank German seed in Texas soil.

  In 1842, these Prussian nobles formed the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas, called Adelsverein in German for short. The purposes of the Adelsverein were several: to create a new German fatherland in America, where the German working classes and peasantry might emigrate and prosper, thus opening new markets for the industry at home, also developing German maritime commerce. The concept was thus the usual mixture of paternalistic idealism and mercantile colonialism that permeated many European circles. It is certain that some of the men involved genuinely wanted to offer the crowded and oppressed peasantry in the industrializing Germanies a better life; others were seeking an opportunity to plant German influence, if not the flag, overseas. The Republic of Texas was chosen a
s the colonial base, for three reasons. It had the reputation in Europe of having a healthful climate and good soils; it lacked the tariff and other barriers erected by the United States and other American republics; and last, Texas was small and emerging, and the princes hoped the German immigrants would be able to take and hold an influential, if not dominant, place in the Republic.

  The Society sent one of its most energetic members, Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, to Texas in 1844, while thousands of emigrants were recruited in the north-central German states. The Society offered the following bargain to each willing head of household for $240 and a promise to cultivate at least 15 acres for three years: free transportation to Texas, free land (320 acres per family), a log house, financing through his first crop, and a system of public services, such as mills, gins, hospitals, churches, asylums, and the like built at Adelsverein expense in the community. Only some $80,000 was raised by the noble members to finance these services. This was extremely optimistic, but the Society was mistakenly convinced that huge profits would be made soon by the sale of Texas lands. The Adelsverein had acquired the old Fisher-Miller empresario grant and proposed to settle half and sell the other.

  This was one of the great and unheralded land swindles of the century, because Fisher and Miller not only had no right to sell the land, as the Germans thought, but when the transaction took place, they had already forfeited their empresario contract through failure to implement it in time. The fact that the entire grant lay inside Indian country, was far removed from all Texas civilization, and possessed only thin and stony soils without much rainfall were not understood by the Adelsverein until 1847—when 7,000 or more German settlers had already arrived in Texas. The two noble agents who investigated Texas in 1844 naïvely assumed that the geographical characteristics of the state were similar throughout. They never set foot on, or went near, the 3,000,000 acres the Adelsverein believed it had acquired.

  Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels was thirty-three, handsome, and a first cousin to Queen Victoria. He was also something of a monumental fool, though he undoubtedly meant well. In Texas, he rode up the Colorado bottoms, displaying both aristocratic snobbery toward the rather rough-cut planters and intolerance toward the system of Negro slavery. This, his appearance in full uniform with sword and decorations, and his retinue of

  servants, valet, architect, cook, secretary, and someone hired as a "professional hunter," strained even the famous Texas hospitality.

  Solms-Braunfels realized that the Fisher-Miller lands were too far from the coast to be reached at once by the emigrants who had already set sail behind him. Therefore, he set out to acquire nearer tracts, to be used as staging areas. After some difficulty, twice making deals with men who didn't own what they sold, he did secure some broad lands just above the sharp rise of the Balcones fault. The Prince was delighted with this country, which lay partway on the route to the Fisher-Miller grant. The fraying limestone had spectacular scenic beauty; the creeks and rivers ran clear, their beds green with watercress; the giant cypresses growing incongruously this far west along the waters and the pecan trees sprinkling the valleys made it seem fertile and rich. The Prince ignored miles of unpreempted black, rich soils below the scarp, and chose a site near a waterfall on the Guadalupe. He called this townsite New Braunfels. A large log house was thrown up and named Die Sophienburg, in honor of a light o'love.

  But now crisis was crowding the Prince of Solms-Braunfels. Several thousand German peasants, recruited mostly from the Hesses, Hannover, Brunswick, and other central German states, were piling up on the docks at Galveston. They were transshipped to the Adelsverein base at Indianola, a landing point on the Gulf. These people were arriving with stars in their eyes; Texas was described in German newspapers as the land of milk and honey, full of Biblical promise. In crowded Germany, where farmers were used to working their lives out on fractional plots, the concept of 320 acres was almost too much to bear. Geh mit ins Texas (Go with us to Texas) they told each other, and the Adelsverein had almost 10,000 recruits.

  It was also almost bankrupt. The Fisher-Miller lands could not be exploited, at least for years, and many promises were not to be kept.

  The Einwanderer or immigrants were left camping on the fever coast, while plans were changed. Miserable, hungry, wan after weeks on shipboard, these stolid families sickened; infants died, and the great exodus quickly turned into a nightmare. Typhus broke out, and Texas was becoming a German grave.

  At about this point Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels resigned his commission and went home. He turned over the project of settling these countrymen to his deputy, Otfried Hans, Freiherr von Meusebach. Fortunately, Von Meusebach possessed the most important requisite of the true pioneer: he was adaptable. With great good sense, he began to call himself "John O. Meusebach" among the Texans; he took Texan citizenship, and to the people of Texas he was always known as John Meusebach, a good man to do business with all around.

  He tried desperately to get the Germans off the unhealthy coast, but due to war conditions in Texas it was impossible to hire enough freight wagons. The immigrants set out on foot, for a journey of some 300 miles. It was again a time, of unusual storms and rains in east Texas. The ragged stream of humanity had to cross swollen rivers and toil day after day through endless mud. Then, the sun burned out, as they crawled westward. Along this march from Indianola to New Braunfels, many immigrants peeled off; exhausted or sick, they stayed behind and settled where they stopped. But the main body toiled on; soon, the Germans were leaving a trail of dead in their wake. The pitiful letters sent back to Germany reveal that the most fervent wish of many on this trek was that they be buried if they fell. A pillar of circling vultures followed the column for many days.

  They came into the New Braunfels region and founded their town in 1845. Here, at least the climate was healthful and the country fair, though the farmers looked with some dismay at the hardscrabble rocks and flinty soils. Prince Solms-Braunfels had chosen lovely country, but not one in which pioneers could easily make a living. But the Germans spread through the valleys, and here and there they discovered sufficient meadow plots and plowable fields.

  Meusebach realized that the New Braunfels community could not support all the thousands on the road. He needed more lands further west, toward the grant. He sought out the Penateka Comanches, who owned this country, and began to parley. His great point was that his people were neither Texan nor Mexican, two tribes the Comanches hated. The Penateka councils agreed to share their hunting grounds with los Alemanes, whom they recognized as a separate tribe. Meusebach offered the Indians about $3,000 worth of gifts, and in March 1847, a deal was made. Meanwhile, during the parleying, the town of Fredericksburg, some eighty miles northwest of New Braunfels, had already been founded.

  This Comanche–German treaty was never broken, but there was bloodshed when the Indians became embittered by other white aggressions in later years. Indians could not easily distinguish one Caucasian from another, and after 1860 much German hair adorned Comanche lodge poles.

  The Germans founded a series of communities, in a long, fragmented stream reaching west from New Braunfels. Sisterdale, Boerne, Comfort, and several other small towns were planted through the hills. A handful of Germans even reached the Fisher-Miller lands, in the future Mason County, but the rainfall and the Indian attitude was too uncertain for the main body. During 1844–46 the Adelsverein brought 7,380 Germans into Texas, and most of these, and the thousands who followed later, settled along the Balcones Scarp just above San Antonio. Though the Society went bankrupt in 1847, Meusebach stayed in Texas, working for the cause. The Germans underwent terrible hardships, but they were peasant-tough; they had avoided trouble with the Comanches, and they survived.

  After 1848, a number of German intellectuals fled to Texas. There was one German utopian colony in the Fisher-Miller grant, called the "Latin Colony" because, although none of these people had ever farmed before, they were well educated. Although all the Germans were c
onfirmed by the state in their lands, this colony went the way of most utopian communities on the frontier.

  The Germans farmed intensively, on small plots, and they created a lasting impression of being better agriculturists than Anglos. But their influence on Texas farming has been overestimated. They settled in poor soils, compared to the heartland regions, and they adapted to the Texas frontier, rather than attempting to create a transplanted European way of life.

  Along the Pedernales and other central Texas streams, the Germans farmed and ranched next to the Alabamans and Tennesseeans filtering down the same valleys; and the two soon became almost indistinguishable. Although the Germans clung to their language in these hills, they adopted Texas agriculture. They abandoned wheat and rye for corn, and they soon let their stock run wild as the Southerners did, although such a custom was unheard of in Europe. The first German log cabins looked like Anglo cabins, and the small, limestone houses that followed them and soon weathered to a rich beige were Southwestern in style. This architecture, like the Victorian mansions along the San Antonio River the German patricians were soon building to the south, was not German; rather, it followed the dominant style of its place and time. Only the early churches looked European; they were transplanted cultural influences, like the Lutheran and Catholic creeds themselves.

  Outside of the German tongue, which remained primary for about one hundred years, the other cultural differences, such as women working peasantlike in the fields, soon passed away. The one big difference between the Anglo and the German farmer was that the latter was less mobile. When the German put down roots, he did not leave. This trait later was praised extensively, but the 19th-century Germans who stubbornly clung to their small rocky farms in the Hill Country fell into a kind of trap. They farmed intensively, in a day when land was open and could be acquired extensively by men of enterprise or vision. Those Germans who left the enclaves and entered the plantation economy did remarkably well, and those, like the Kleberg family, which intermarried with the Kings and eventually came to own the vast King Ranch, showed ability equal or superior to the Anglos at empire-building.