Gone to Texas (An Evans Novel of the West)

by Don Worcester

  In early August, while Ellis rode blissfully up the Camino Real, a man named Martin Allen testified in San Felipe. He’d known Ellis in Arkansas Territory and in the Nacogdoches district, he said. Ellis had a wife when he first saw him in Arkansas; he thought they had been married in Tennessee. The universal belief, he said, was that they were legally married. Ellis’ father-in-law, Isaac Midkiff, was well known and had the character of a respectable and honorable man. Allen doubted that he would have permitted Bean to live with his daughter unless they were legally married. “This deponent thinks Bean to be an honest man,” Allen concluded. “He is fond of boasting and telling large stories about his exploits in the Mexican revolution, and said he was a colonel in the army.”

  Candace meanwhile had been called before the alcalde of the Neches district. She feared that Ellis must be dead, and in that case, she wouldn’t inherit his property if she admitted being his common law wife. “I was married to Ellis P. Bean in White County, State of Tennessee,” she declared, “and I have two children by the aforesaid Bean. Their names are Isaac T. Bean, born in Arkansas Territory on March 5,1821, and Louiza Jane, born on August 15,1823, in the Province of Texas.”

  Ellis Bean whistled happily as he rode into San Antonio early in December. At forty-three he felt satisfied with the world and with his place in it, for he was not only a colonel in the Mexican army, but Indian agent for Texas. In Saltillo his application for an empresario contract seemed certain to be approved; his friends from revolutionary days were in power in Mexico City, and he swelled with pride at the thought of becoming another Stephen F. Austin. He wouldn’t have felt so contented if he’d known that claiming Magdalena as his wife had ruined his chances of becoming an empresario. Empresarios were expected to lead exemplary lives. Bigamists failed to qualify.

  In San Antonio Ellis learned that in November, Benjamin, the brother of empresario Haden Edwards had ridden into Nacogdoches with a party of followers and ousted Alcalde Samuel Norris, who had used his office to block Haden Edwards in ways that weren’t legal. Knowing nothing about the Edwards colony, which had been established during his absence, Ellis was unconcerned. “I’ll bet twenty-five pesos the alcalde won’t be kept out of office for long or hindered in his work,” he said to Saucedo. The political chief shook his head.

  “Haden Edwards had a contract to bring eight hundred families to his grant around Nacogdoches,” he said. “It took him three years and cost him much money to get it, and he wanted only wealthy colonists. But many poor families have lived there for several generations, and their rights had to be respected. Edwards ordered all who claimed land within his grant to produce titles. If they didn’t, he threatened to sell their property. The old families naturally resented having a foreigner dispossess them just because their titles were never completed through no fault of their own.” He paused.

  “Edwards had no right to demand their titles or to sell any land at all,” Saucedo added grimly. ‘‘I explained this to him and ordered him to desist, but complaints against him made it clear that he ignored my orders.” Ellis looked shocked, for he knew that the other empresarios—Austin, León, and DeWitt—had been careful to follow instructions and obey Mexican laws.

  “The Edwards brothers have shown only contempt for Mexican officials, even the governor,” Saucedo continued. “From their actions I suspected they planned to secede one day, and I warned the governor. He has canceled their contract and ordered them expelled, but we have no troops in Nacogdoches to expel them. If you were there, what would you do about that? They’re your former countrymen.”

  Ellis tugged at his earlobe as he pondered the question. “I’m a Mexican officer,” he replied, “and I know my duty. I’d hate to have to fight Americans, but if they’re in the wrong I’ll do it.” Saucedo stared at him, wondering what he’d do if he thought they were in the right. He left the question unasked, but he doubted the loyalty of all Anglos, except, perhaps, Austin and maybe DeWitt.

  “It won’t be necessary for you to expel them,” he told Ellis. “In a few days Colonel Ahumada will march there with his troops, and I plan to accompany him.” Ellis left immediately for San Felipe to talk to Austin.

  When he reached the little village, he was shocked to learn that in mid-December a party of Edwards men had seized the Old Stone Fort, proclaimed the Republic of Fredonia, and ordered all Anglos to join them. He also learned that Hunter had returned from Mexico City without the promised land title, and the Cherokees were furious. The government would give them land as individual colonists, but not as a tribe.

  Now aware that the situation in Nacogdoches was far more serious than he’d imagined possible, Ellis asked Austin for some of his militiamen and set out immediately with thirty-five of them. A few miles from Nacogdoches they met a grizzled frontiersman in greasy buckskins, who stopped his mustang pony.

  “What’s goin’ on in town?” Ellis asked, wondering if he was an Edwards man. The rider frowned.

  “Damned lot of foolishness, if you ask me,” he replied. “Some Edwards men are holed up in the old fort, and right now they’re dickerin’ with the Injuns to get their support. They’re offerin’ to divide Texas into Injun and white territories along the Nacogdoches-San Antonio road.” He squirted a stream of tobacco juice out of the corner of his mouth. “A lot of folks figger the Injuns would as leave lift white sculps as Meskin, and most are gettin’ ready to head for the Sabine if they ain’t done so already.”

  “Can’t say I blame ‘em for leaving,” Ellis said. “There’s at least a thousand bucks in the area and none of them have any reason to like Americans. How many Fredonians are there in town?”

  “At first there were about two hundred, but they forced some of them to go with ‘em, and those men left at the first opportunity. They’re sure every American in Texas will gladly join them, but it seems folks around here don’t cotton to that. Most are dead set agin ‘em.”

  “Same with Austin and his people,” Ellis said. “They’re goin’ to join the troops when they march this way.” He glanced at his thirty-five men and shook his head. “If there’s as many as you figure, we’d better find us some reinforcements before we go after ‘em.”

  Knowing that if the Indians supported the Fredonians, whites would be killed or driven from East Texas, Ellis sent a man with messages for Fields and Hunter, who were both in Nacogdoches. He urged them not to get involved with the Fredonians, for that could lead to serious trouble for their people. While waiting for a reply, he penned a note to warn Austin. On the spur of the moment, he decided it sounded better to reverse his given names.

  “There is one express rider going to your colony to make it rise up in arms, and today another will start,” he wrote. “I hope you will keep a good lookout, for those villains count on you and your men. But I know you have more knowledge of things than to be led astray to save men from their crimes. They find themselves lost and will swim against the stream as long as they can. I have divided them so that I now have seventy men coming from Ayish Bayou to attack those that are in Nacogdoches. I have as yet no reply from Fields, but am waiting hourly for an answer. If I succeed in breaking him off, then the fire is out instantly, and I have little doubt but that I shall succeed. Watch out, for they are trying to seduce your colony. Your most sincere friend, Pedro Ellis Bean.”

  He anxiously sent another message, this time to war chief Bowles at the Cherokee village northwest of Nacogdoches. “If you try to set up an Indian state,” he warned, “both the U. S. and Mexico will feel threatened, and they won’t stop until they destroy it. This alliance could be the ruin of your people.”

  Soon after Ellis had reached the outskirts of Nacogdoches, he met Micajah. “We had a report from Mexico that you were dead,” he told Ellis. “You were gone so long everyone was sure it was true. I believed it, and Candace believed it. Three days before we heard you were coming, she married Martin Parmer. He left as soon as he knew she wasn’t a widow after all.”

  Ellis’ face turned
white, then red. “Parmer? I don’t know him,” he growled.

  “He’s one of the main Fredonian leaders,” Micajah told him, “and he’s one tough customer. Calls himself a ring-tailed panther, and I’d say that’s about right. I’d hate to tangle with him, at close range, anyway.”

  Ellis was mumbling, “damned faithless woman,” when Micajah stopped him.

  “Think about it, my friend. You’ve been with your other wife, and you knew you weren’t a widower. Candace thought she was a widow, on her own with two small children. She did only what she had to do. I say forgive her and put the whole thing out of your mind.” But Ellis continued muttering to himself.

  He left Micajah and grimly rode to his ranch, where a pale-faced Candace greeted him apprehensively.

  “I know all about it,” he growled. “I suppose his pecker is a lot bigger than mine,” he added, his face turning red. “Made you wish I really was dead, didn’t it?”

  Candace brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I was so lonely and desperate,” she sobbed. “I thought you’d decided to stay with your Mexican wife, then a man who’d been in Mexico said you had died. The children and I were having such a hard time. How could we go on without a man?”

  She looked so sad and contrite Ellis was touched. You’re being an ass about this, he told himself. What she says is true and you know it. But try as hard as he might to forget and forgive, the thought of burly Martin Parmer in his bed enjoying the doll-like Candace couldn’t be banished from his mind.

  Chapter Ten

  The Fredonian revolt gave Ellis no time to brood over domestic affairs, for if an Indian war came, they might all be killed. A few days later, he wrote Austin concerning a letter he’d received from Elisha Roberts of Ayish Bayou. All of the men of the district, Roberts said, had planned to help put down the Fredonians until they learned that the Indians had joined them. Being so badly outnumbered by the Indians, married men of Ayish Bayou had taken their families across the Sabine.

  “I wrote again to Richard Fields and Dr. Hunter,” Ellis added. “Fields finally sent word it was too late. If he’d seen me a month sooner, he said, perhaps we might have come to terms. That is all the satisfaction he gave me.”

  In another letter, Ellis told Austin what he’d learned about the meeting of Indians and Fredonians in Nacogdoches. A man who attended it said that Hunter “pictured in strong and glowing language the gloomy alternative of abandoning their present abodes and returning within the limits of the United States or preparing to defend themselves against the whole power of the Mexican government by force of arms.”

  Chief Fields spoke next. He told of traveling to Mexico City to beg some land on which to settle his poor, orphan tribe. He stayed there a year, he said, and was promised the land. He returned and waited, but nothing was done. Recently he sold his cattle to raise money to send John Dunn Hunter to Mexico. “They said they knew nothing of this Richard Fields and treated him with contempt,” he added. “I am a Red man, and a man of honor, and I can’t be imposed on this way. We will lift our tomahawks and fight for land with all those friendly tribes that wish land. If I am beaten I will resign to my fate, and if not, I will hold our lands by the force of my red warriors.”

  “So, my dear sir,” Ellis added, “the only way to stop this is to come forward and give them lands, or the country will be entirely lost. If we can break off the Indians, the thing is settled. Hurry Saucedo here and let him know what I write you.”

  Ellis also enclosed a certificate and asked Austin to translate it into Spanish. In it Candace, under oath before an alcalde, declared that she had claimed she was married to Ellis “to save the property of Ellis Peter Bean in her hands as she supposed that he would never return.” When asked, “Were you ever lawfully married to Ellis Peter Bean?” she answered, “She never was.” Ellis had insisted on her testifying because on her marriage to Parmer, her property became his. Ellis had learned about the inquiry into his marital status, and he hoped that the certificate would also revive his chances of becoming an empresario.

  Greatly concerned over the threat of a devastating Indian war, Ellis continued to send men with conciliatory messages to the chiefs of the Shawnees, Delawares, Kickapoos, and Sacs, as well as the Cherokees. His warnings convinced war chief Bowles that it would be folly to join the Fredonians, and only thirty young Cherokee warriors joined the Edwards men. Perhaps on Bowles’ orders, the Cherokees killed both Fields and Hunter for trying to involve them in a war with Mexico. The Kickapoos and other tribes hated and distrusted Americans too much to consider cooperating with the Fredonians, even though they were irate at Mexico for denying them land. But Ellis had no way of knowing this immediately.

  On January 4, 1827, Ellis wrote again to inform Austin that he’d entered Nacogdoches “and found out those rascals were leaving. At this time there is only a guard of twelve men in the stone house. Hurry the troops on as fast as possible, for now is our time, before the Indians gather. I learned today that the Indians are divided, and it appears they won’t be here very soon, but the troops must hurry all they can. Let the commander know the contents of my letter. Your friend and servant, Pedro Ellis Bean.”

  Saucedo, Colonel Ahumada, and the troops had been delayed in San Felipe for three weeks because of heavy rains that made the road a quagmire. Saucedo wrote Edwards that he was coming to Nacogdoches for the purpose of restoring order and hearing complaints against local officials. Although Edwards’ contract had been canceled, he added, his colonists wouldn’t be molested, and all who had taken part in the revolt would be pardoned if they laid down their arms. He sent this conciliatory letter to Ellis to deliver. Ellis added a note of his own.

  “It is not too late,” he wrote, “and we are able to forget past mistakes. You can gain much more by conciliation than by hostility.” Edwards, who regarded any compromise as unmanly, spumed the offer.

  At the same time Saucedo wrote Edwards, Austin wrote to Burril Thompson, a friend from Missouri who had settled on Edwards’ grant. He again urged the Fredonians to meet with the political chief and respectfully explain their grievances against Norris and the others. Austin knew that Edwards had legitimate reasons for complaint, but his attitude and approach were wrong. He warned Thompson that two hundred troops were coming, and that two hundred fifty of his colonists were with them. “I am a Mexican officer,” he concluded, “and I will sacrifice my life before I will fail in my duty or violate my oath of office.”

  After recruiting a force of seventy men, Ellis rode into Nacogdoches, and grimly searched for Parmer. He failed to find him, for the Fredonians were safely across the Sabine. When the troops and militia finally arrived, Nacogdoches was quiet. Colonel Ahumada and Saucedo both praised Ellis warmly for his success in restoring order. If Saucedo felt a little guilty about his earlier doubts, he discreetly refrained from revealing them. With the senseless revolt over, he issued a general amnesty proclamation, excluding only Parmer, who had been president of Fredonia. He also removed Norris from office, for his illegal acts had helped bring on the crisis. The outcome of the Fredonian affair revived state officials’ confidence in the loyalty of the settlers, but to some in Mexico City the uprising was what they had expected, and they remained apprehensive about the rapidly growing numbers of Anglos in East Texas.

  No matter what he was doing, Ellis couldn’t keep his thoughts from returning to Parmer. “Just because I had business in Mexico was no excuse for you whoring with that man,” he flung at Candace.

  “You were gone so long,” the diminutive Candace tearfully replied, ‘ ‘everyone said you were dead. I meant nothing wrong, and I couldn’t be sorrier. He was here only two days. Why can’t you forget about it?”

  Ellis thought of Micajah’s advice, and knew what he’d said was true. All widows, especially those with young children, needed to marry a man who would protect them and see to it they didn’t go hungry. What kept him feeling tortured was the thought that his manhood had been exposed as inferior, and for that he�
��d like to kill Parmer. His injured pride was like a livid brand on his forehead for all to see, and that he could never forget.

  In late January 1827, about the time it was clear that the Fredonian revolt wouldn’t erupt into an Indian war, Ellis received a letter from nephew Edmund Bean of Nashville. Times were hard and money scarce in Tennessee, he wrote, and he wanted to bring his family to Texas. What made him hesitate was that the papers were full of rumors of warfare between American settlers and Mexico. He asked about his prospects for acquiring land in Texas, and he wanted especially to know if Ellis expected war. Apparently aware that Ellis and Candace weren’t legally married, he concluded by discreetly asking about Aunt Candace Midcalf. Spelling wasn’t a Bean family attribute.

  Ellis replied that Edmund could acquire a league (4,428 acres) of grazing land and a labor (177 acres) of farmland by paying fees that amounted to the modest sum of about two hundred dollars. American settlers had been well treated, he said, and most were content to live under Mexican rule. Except for the misguided Edwards and his men, who brought on their own troubles by scorning Mexican authority, there had been no friction between the Texians and Mexico. The vast majority of the settlers had opposed the Fredonians. Unless conditions changed drastically, he said, he foresaw no likelihood of conflict. “Mexico has been generous to them in every way, and they know it. As for me, after so many years in Mexico I’m as much Mexican as American. Your Aunt Candace is well,” he concluded.

  Before Saucedo and Ahumada returned to San Antonio, Ellis accompanied the colonel on a tour of the border area. They counted 168 families that had settled illegally in the twenty-league (about sixty miles) border reserve, where aliens were banned. Some families lived a hand-to-mouth existence in one-room cabins with dirt floors, but many had well-cultivated, prosperous plantations and comfortable houses. They saw a surprising number of cotton gins and grist mills, as well as wagon roads. Greatly impressed by the settlers’ industry, and aware that they had opposed the Fredonians, Ahumada promised to recommend that a commissioner be sent to grant them titles to the lands they’d developed.