El Norte
Page 24
One person willing to take his chances in Texas was Moses Austin. He had been born in Connecticut but made his fortune mining lead in Spanish Louisiana. He was experienced in dealing with Spain, having at an earlier point sworn his loyalty to the Spanish crown. Louisiana’s change from Spanish to U.S. control, coupled with the national financial crisis of 1819 that cost him his fortune, pushed him back into Spanish arms. He had heard that land in Texas was cheap, and he arrived in San Antonio in 1820.11 He tried to meet with Antonio Martínez, the last Spanish governor of Texas, who told him to leave. Unwanted freebooters, like the party that had tried to invade in 1819, had become a threat and an irritant to Spanish officials trying to keep control of New Spain.
Austin, however, managed to wangle one more audience with the governor after running into a well-connected Dutch acquaintance who organized the meeting. He presented his colonization plan, which involved bringing in three hundred settlers.12 This time Martínez took more interest because Austin offered an attractive alternative in the long-running struggle to subdue the Native Americans and fortify the frontier. By early 1821, New Spain changed its policy regarding U.S. settlers, but Austin died that June.
Moses’s son, Stephen, decided to continue his father’s work, though it was a turbulent time in Texas: in 1821 Mexico had declared its independence, which the United States recognized the following year. Austin managed to secure the necessary permissions for the scheme to continue, and by 1824 a settlement on the Brazos River, or the Río de los Brazos de Dios as it was also known, was in place. It was called San Felipe de Austin and located about 150 miles east of the older town of San Antonio de Béxar. Austin had inherited his father’s empresario agreement, giving him the right to parcel out large tracts of land—which were cheap and could amount to thousands of acres—as well as to exact a payment from the settlers for his services.13 The area around the Brazos River seemed ideal. The soil was good and the river could transport crops down to the Gulf. Most of his “old three hundred”—the first group of settlers—arrived by 1824, spreading out in the area between the Brazos and Colorado Rivers.*
Soon, other would-be settlers started traveling to Mexico City to obtain similar contracts. Among them was the spy James Wilkinson, still straddling the Anglo and Hispanic worlds, making plans, and plotting intrigues.14** A U.S. map from this period shows colored blocks of pink, yellow, green, and blue in Tejas, labeled “Austin’s colony,” or “John Cameron’s Grant,” or “Austin & Williams Grant.”15
Although the Anglos did not have to become Mexican citizens, they did have to take an oath of loyalty and profess that they would convert to Catholicism. This initial period of settlement was marked by a degree of social and cultural mixing, and there were even incentives for this, such as giving an Anglo man extra land if he married a Mexican woman.16 Some Tejanos welcomed the new arrivals, and before long there were strategic marriages, business deals, or both between prominent Anglo and Tejano families. English-speakers began to learn Spanish, and Spanish-speakers to learn English. Among the former was Jim Bowie, the famed frontiersman, who married Úrsula Veramendi, the daughter of the vice governor of the state of Coahuila y Tejas, in 1831.17 The following year, a report signed by leading Tejanos in San Antonio de Béxar praised the Anglos for “having made great improvements.”18
The Anglos mostly stayed in their new settlements, while Tejanos continued to live in older towns, such as San Antonio de Béxar.19 As the numbers of Anglos rose—reaching seven thousand people by 1830—the assimilation tapered off. 20 By 1835, one guide for would-be immigrants described the Tejano population as being “completely Spanish, the hospitable inhabitants freely indulging themselves in habits of indolence and ease, in smoking, music, dancing, horse-racing, and other sports.” The Anglo community, however, were the bearers of the “activity, industry, and frugality of the American population.”21
Most of the Anglos were there to grow cotton. The rise of the British textile mills had spurred demand for the sturdy fibers of this lucrative plant, and the Gulf region of Texas, with its warm climate and plentiful water supply necessary to grow the crop, was ideal. The question of who would do the work—enslaved Africans—had not been up for discussion initially because under Spanish rule slavery was legal. However, there was no guarantee that this would continue under independent Mexico.22
The United States began to push harder for more territory near the Gulf, sending Joel R. Poinsett to negotiate the boundary between the United States and Mexico. Poinsett was the first to be appointed to the role of U.S. minister to Mexico, a post he held from 1825 to 1829.* With the arrival of Mexican independence in 1821, some hoped that the Adams-Onís treaty would be rendered void, as it had been negotiated by the Spanish, not Mexicans.23 The United States wanted its boundary to be the Río Grande, not the Sabine River, but despite the willingness of the United States to pay for it, Mexico refused any offers. In addition, Poinsett soon made powerful enemies because of his association with the yorkino Masonic lodges and Liberal politicians, and he was recalled to the United States. Treaty negotiations dragged on for a couple of years more, and by 1831 Mexico ratified the Treaty of Limits, which confirmed the 1819 boundary, giving both sides an agreement but not pleasing either.
DURING THIS TIME, California remained so remote and unconnected that a year passed before the news of Mexico’s 1821 Declaration of Independence arrived. Officials in Monterey swore their loyalty to Mexico in 1822, though with the enactment of Mexico’s 1824 constitution, problems arose.24 The document categorized California as a territory rather than a state, as it also did to New Mexico. Alongside this, ongoing animosities intensified as the priests struggled to comply with the more secular aims of the constitution.25 The mission Franciscans continued to be loyal to the Spanish crown, unlike the republican Mexicans, while other residents were vocal in their dislike of the new administrative regime, wanting less meddling and oversight.26
More than two thousand miles of land separated Monterey and Mexico City. To the Californios, or Spanish Californians, their fellow Mexicans were almost like foreigners, though they themselves hardly constituted the majority in what they considered their land.27 As late as 1830, California was estimated to have around ten thousand Mexicans, against a Native American population of ninety-eight thousand. Concern about Indian uprisings was constant, especially after a number of serious incidents, including the 1824 Chumash rebellion, involving attacks on the missions of La Purísima, Santa Inés, and Santa Bárbara.28 This was followed by an uprising among the Miwok in the San Joaquín valley, which continued to simmer even after an immediate punitive expedition.29
The Mexican government landed a further blow in 1833 with the Secularization Act, accelerating the distribution of mission land to settlers and assimilated Indians, and carried out in California under the watch of its governor, General José María Figueroa.30 To settle the contentious issue of dividing the land, he stipulated that half of the mission properties should go to Indians, but after his death in 1835 his plan was ignored, and little land passed into Native American hands, going instead to elite Californios who became large landholders, adding to their ranchos.31
The growing irritation with Mexican rule motivated one group of disgruntled Californios, led by Juan Bautista Alvarado—and backed by some enthusiastic volunteers from Tennessee—to declare California an independent state on November 7, 1836. At the heart of the grievances was an ongoing dissatisfaction with the military governors being sent to Alta California, aggravating earlier clashes, in 1831, between Californio ranchers and Mexican officials. Although independence was not forthcoming, the territory was upgraded to a department and Alvarado was appointed governor.32 It is around this time that a clearer Californio identity begins to emerge, one set apart from Mexicanness.
Although the European population of California remained small, trade was turning it into a cosmopolitan place, as ships from New England and Asia called at its ports, eager for cattle hides from its ranchos. Russia
ns, too, had continued their drive along the coast, setting up a colony about one hundred miles north of San Francisco, funded by the Russian-American Company and thought to be built with the help of the Alutiiq people in 1812. Eager U.S. ship captains found it profitable to join the Russians on some of their fur-trapping expeditions, and Native Americans, as well as people from other parts of Mexico, also came in search of work.33
In 1835, a young seaman named Richard Henry Dana arrived in California. He was no ordinary sailor, having been born to a distinguished Massachusetts family. An illness interrupted his studies at Harvard, and as part of his recovery he decided to join the crew of the merchant brig Pilgrim in 1834. After rounding Cape Horn, they made their way to the California coast. Even then, he was one of few people from the East who had gone to California. As they approached, he thought it looked “very disagreeable,” though he soon changed his mind. Before long he was taking a great interest in California and its people, though his observations were not always complimentary. His New England heritage was evident in his complaints about the local economy; Californians were “an idle, thriftless people” and “things sell … at an advance for nearly three hundred percent upon the Boston prices.”34
He had a particular fascination with the appearance of the people he met, describing how the “‘gente de razón,’ or aristocracy, wear cloaks of black or dark blue broadcloth, with as much velvet trimmings as may be, and from this they go down to the blanket of the Indian.”35 He also noted their skin color, observing that “those with pure Spanish blood, never having intermarried with the aborigines, have clear brunette complexions … there are but a few of these families in California,” and adding that from there “they go down by regular shades, growing more and more dark and muddy.”36
The California that Dana observed was changing, and he remarked on the number of British or U.S. traders he saw in Monterey who had married into Californio families and “acquired considerable property,” often running shops.37 Outsiders were attracted by the “five hundred miles of sea-coast, with several good harbours; with fine forests in the north; the waters filled with fish, and the plains covered with thousands of herds of cattle; blessed with a climate, than which there can be no better in the world.”38 To Dana, though, such riches were lost on the Californios: “In hands of an enterprising people, what a country this might be!”39 He returned to Massachusetts in 1836 and published the diary, which became a huge hit and turned the public gaze west, to this little-known Pacific frontier.
LIKE THE COTTON growing along the Gulf, by the mid-1830s the practice of slavery had also taken root in Texas, though Mexico had embraced abolition. As early as 1810, Padre Hidalgo had proclaimed the emancipation of slaves, and this was echoed in 1821 by Iturbide, who freed anyone who fought for the republican cause. As part of Spain’s empire, Mexico had an estimated two hundred thousand enslaved Africans brought during the entire colonial period. However, much of the labor throughout New Spain was undertaken by Indians and was waged. In addition, the overall economy was not as geared toward export monocrop commodities like sugar, tobacco, or cotton as were economies in the Caribbean and the southern United States. By the 1820s, most Africans and their descendants in Mexico had merged into the wider, and free, casta society, leaving slave numbers low by the time of independence.40
Now Mexican leaders wanted to put into law a ban on slavery, though Anglo settlers in Texas made clear they would fiercely oppose this.41 The constitution of 1824, however, would make this difficult for the Anglos, because under it Texas was coupled into a state with Coahuila (Coahuila y Tejas), limiting the level of representation Texians—as the Anglos then called themselves—would receive. On a map, this state had a sledgehammer shape, with Texas being the squarish head, and the north-south axis of Coahuila being the handle, but the larger share of the population lived in that latter part.42
In June 1824, the Republic of Mexico received official recognition from pro-abolitionist Britain—though at this juncture Britain had not actually abolished the practice of using enslaved people in its own colonies; it had ended only the trade in slaves. A short time later, on July 13, Mexico outlawed the slave trade.43 The Anglo settlers in Texas mostly ignored the decree, but tempers flared.44 One Anglo empresario, Haden Edwards, and his brother, Benjamin, went as far as establishing a breakaway state in December 1826. Allied with Cherokee people who had moved to the Nacogdoches area, a number of squatters joined the Edwards brothers, who tried to arrest Mexican officials and declare their independence. Haden even designed a flag and wrote a declaration of independence. He marched into Nacogdoches proclaiming the existence of the Republic of Fredonia, with one part for the “Red People” and another for the “White People.”45
The Edwardses were taken seriously enough that a joint Anglo and Mexican diplomatic mission was sent in January 1827, though it failed to defuse the situation. A report described the plotters as “vagabonds and fugitives from justice” who had “so shamefully debased the American character.” Stephen Austin and other empresarios were worried that their own reputation, as immigrants from the United States, would be besmirched.46 To avoid this, they allied with the Mexican troops who planned to attack the Fredonia colony. This threw the Edwards brothers’ plans into disarray and left them fleeing across the Sabine River into Louisiana.
Around the same time, Coahuila y Tejas began to wrestle over the contents of the state’s own 1827 constitution. Local legislators wanted to abolish slavery but conceded to pressure from Austin and others. The result was a compromise: no one could be born into slavery in Coahuila y Tejas from the date of the promulgation of the constitution, and after the first six months no further importation of enslaved people was allowed. In the place of importation came bondage agreements, which promised freedom but only after an impossible amount of debt had been cleared, more or less ensuring enslavement. The contracts were enough to maintain the status quo on a local level, but national politics soon intervened.47
Texas, while a concern, had been just one of Mexico’s many problems; a far more pressing issue was Spain. It continued to send troops and launch attacks, desperate to regain New Spain. A last-gasp effort was made in 1829, with an invasion at the Gulf port of Tampico, where General Santa Anna, aided by General Mier y Terán, led his men to a resounding victory, driving the Spanish out and confirming that the long-running struggle for independence was over. Spain, however, would not grant official recognition to Mexico until 1836. In the meantime, Santa Anna became a national hero.
As Mexican forces were driving the Spanish from Tampico, farther north along the Gulf the Anglo cotton farmers were enjoying a boom, annually exporting between 350,000 and 450,000 pounds of the crop, which represented a doubling of production from only a few years earlier.48 Around the same time, in September 1829, the Mexican government abolished slavery and granted freedom to existing slaves. The following year, the federal government passed laws to stop the arrival of further immigrants from the United States, though other settlers, such as Germans and the Irish, were permitted, and even encouraged with cash advances.49 The government also pushed for more Mexican immigration to these outlying areas, while calling for the “prevention of further introduction of slaves.”50 This fueled more animosity between the slaveholders and the Mexican authorities but did little to stop more Anglos from arriving. The military in the north was not strong enough to monitor or to stop them, and so the Anglo population doubled between 1830 and 1834, despite the restrictions.51 In 1832, the state of Coahuila y Tejas set a ten-year limit on labor contracts in another attempt to end slavery.52 However, ships from Cuba and other points in the West Indies continued to arrive in Galveston Bay with slaves, while other schemes tried to entice free blacks from the Caribbean to come as laborers, after which they would be more or less enslaved.53
The Mexican government added more fuel to an already volatile situation by trying to collect tariffs along the border, leading to a clash in 1831 at a fort in Anahuac, which bridged
Lake Anahuac and Trinity Bay, north of Galveston. The federal soldiers there annoyed residents with their quibbling over land titles, and then enraged the Anglos when they tried to collect taxes. The result was a short-lived fight put down by the soldiers, but the key issues remained unresolved and so armed skirmishes continued throughout 1832. The Anglos managed to avoid an all-out war by issuing the June 13, 1832, Turtle Bayou Resolutions, in which they claimed they were attacking not Mexico but rather the hated centralist troops of President Anastasio Bustamante, who had come to power in 1830 and whose government had made “repeated violations of the constitution.” Instead, they cast their allegiance with Federalists and with “the firm manly resistance, which is made by the highly talented and distinguished Cheiftan [sic]—General Santa Anna, to the numberless encroachments and infractions, which have been made by the present administration, upon the Constitution and laws of our adopted and beloved country.”54 The Anglos wanted the 1824 constitution to be fully respected and believed Santa Anna did, too, which is why they backed the Federalists.