Lone Star Nation (18 page)

From San Antonio de Béxar the expedition headed east toward Stephen Austin's colony. Terán was as impressed as Austin had been by the appearance of the land. “The beauty of this country surpasses all description,” Terán wrote. Yet only the Americans, and not the Mexicans, were taking advantage of what the country offered. Terán almost felt he was in a foreign nation by the time he crossed the Guadalupe. “On the eastern bank of this river there are six wooden cabins, whose construction shows that those who live in them are not Mexicans.” The cabins were of the American frontier style, but modified for the Texas weather. “Though the house is a single piece, it has two rooms, a high one and a low one. In the latter is found the storeroom and kitchen, whose chimney sticks up on the outside, and in the higher part are the bedroom and living room.” Not only were the Americans' houses different from those of the Mexicans; so were their attitudes. The afternoon was hot—25 degrees by the Reamur scale Terán carried, or 89 degrees Fahrenheit—and Terán was tired from the day's journey. “I approached a cabin in hopes that its owner might offer me shelter, but it was in vain. I learned later that the North Americans are not used to making such invitations. One arrives quite naturally, sure of being well received. But if one stops at the door, no one encourages him to come inside.”

The expedition crossed the Colorado River on a ferry operated by an American named Benjamin Beeson. “He is quite urbane, his family very honorable,” Terán remarked, pleasantly surprised. “Their services were very helpful to us.” Beeson and his family had been abducted by Waco Indians, who had also captured some San Antonians. The latter, more familiar than the newcomers with the ways of the natives, managed to obtain the freedom of them all. Mrs. Beeson had learned sufficient Spanish to converse easily with Terán and the other visitors, as had the couple's eldest daughter (whom William Dewees would marry). “Aside from their possessions”—a cabin, its furnishings, a herd of cattle—“Madame says they have 1,200 pesos in savings. They have been on this land for five years, and they speak with great satisfaction of its fertility and good climate. In a word, they seem happy.”

On April 27 the expedition reached Austin's colony. The empresario himself was away from San Felipe, but Samuel Williams, Austin's assistant, greeted Terán and the others and showed them to a house that had been prepared for them. Terán had heard about the industry of the Americans, yet he was amazed at what he saw. He calculated the colony's annual corn crop at the equivalent of 64,000 bushels, and the cotton crop at 240,000 pounds. In addition, the colonists were raising mules for export to the British and French islands of the West Indies. Obviously, this was no subsistence project but, for most of the colonists, a venture in commercial agriculture. If the Americans' self-confidence—which equaled their industry—was any guide, the success of the venture seemed certain.

Terán queried the colonists on various topics, including why they had come to Texas. “The reason for the emigration of the North Americans to Mexican territory, according to the colonists themselves, is the better climate,” Terán wrote.

To the north the freezing temperatures and snows create obstacles to their work for several months and force them to labor harder. In Texas they work year-round and therefore in greater moderation. In winter they clear and prepare the land that they will plant in the spring. They repair the roads for wheels, because the vehicle called wagüin [wagon] is their only means of transportation. . . .

The second reason they mention for emigration is that in the north agricultural production outstrips demand, and the prices are exceedingly low. The colonists hope for greater appreciation in the ports and on the coast of Mexico. . . . They hope to take over the supply of flour, grains, and meats in the ports.

Considering how well they had already done in Texas, Terán didn't doubt that they could achieve their goal, probably before long. Whether that would tighten their attachment to Mexico or merely increase their self-reliance, Terán couldn't say.

Téran would return to Austin's colony, which was the center of American activity in Texas and therefore the focus of Terán's intelligence gathering. But his Boundary Commission had to examine the boundary, and so he pushed the group on east. The humidity thickened the farther they went, and with it the mosquitoes. “I will remember for a long time the suffering I endured,” Terán wrote after one bad night. Two weeks more of torment caused him to moan: “The insects have wreaked great havoc on me. My ears and most of my face are missing skin and continuously oozing lymph.”

This land of mosquitoes was obviously less desirable than the region to the west, and its inhabitants were clearly less well off. After crossing the Neches, the expedition entered an opening in the pine forest. “There is a crudely built cabin, where we found two naked and very pallid North American children. We learned that they were living there alone because their mother had gone to Nacogdoches. This family seems to have been reduced to the utmost misery.”

The poverty of the border region was lamentable, but its lawlessness was shocking. “A great number of the foreigners who have entered the frontier are vicious and wild men with evil ways,” Terán wrote. “Some of them are fugitive criminals from the neighboring republic; within our borders they create disturbances and even criminal acts. . . . Since the laws do not allow for any claims by one republic against the other”—that is, by Mexico against the United States or vice versa—“the inhabitants take advantage of their friends and companions to attack and to defend themselves and cross from one side to the other in order to escape punishment.”

At Nacogdoches Terán reflected on what he had seen crossing Texas, and what it meant. “As one travels from Béxar to this town, Mexican influence diminishes, so much so that it becomes clear that in this town that influence is almost nonexistent. But where could such influence come from? Not from the population, because the ratio of the Mexican population to the foreign is one to ten; nor from its quality, because the population is precisely the contrary: the Mexicans of this town consist of what people everywhere call the abject class, the poorest and most ignorant.” The Americans in Nacogdoches operated an English-language school for their children. “The poor Mexicans neither have the resources to create schools, nor is there anyone to think about improving their institutions and their abject condition.”

Terán's visit to the border made him appreciate what Stephen Austin had accomplished in his colony. On his outward journey Terán had been inclined to consider the success of the Austin colony a potential threat to Mexican rule; now he deemed it a bulwark against the rabble of the frontier. Terán characterized Austin's colony as “the only one where they try to understand and obey the laws of the country and where, as a result of the enlightenment and integrity of its empresario, they have a notion of our republic and its government.”

Yet one couldn't be too sure. Terán could accept the sincerity of Austin's attachment to Mexico and still wonder if he had set something in motion that neither he nor Mexico could control. Traveling down the Trinity River to Atascocito, Terán discovered a thriving settlement of fifty-eight North American families engaged in raising cattle and sugar. “It should be pointed out that this colony has been created without the authorities' knowledge,” Terán observed dryly. There seemed to be no stemming the American tide. Returning up the Trinity, Terán encountered a small but telling bit of evidence as to what the Mexican government was up against. “Traveling ahead of us—on foot, with neither provisions nor weapons—is a North American who has come from the state of Mississippi to visit the country, with the idea of settling there. He has gone as far as the Guadalupe River and says that he is heading back to bring his family.”

Terán couldn't avoid the conclusion that there was something about the North Americans that simply made them better colonizers than the Mexicans. Visiting Austin's colony again, he stopped at the plantation of James Groce, the wealthiest of the Americans. Groce's land produced huge crops of cotton; Terán guessed that he currently had 30,000 pounds ready to ship to New Orleans. Groce had his own cotton gin and grist mill, and more than a hundred slaves. (Though slavery became illegal in Mexico following independence from Spain, the ban went unenforced in the American settlements in Texas.) The fields already under cultivation were fenced by wooden rails; other fields were being cleared to expand the operation. Groce could easily have afforded luxuries—and had he been Mexican, Terán thought, he probably would have indulged himself. But he didn't. “This settler, despite the vast assets he enjoys, seeks very few comforts for himself. He lives with a young man, his son, and another white man among the huts of the negroes.” Terán thought it telling that even Groce's slaves seemed to prosper. “The latter appear well dressed, with indications that they enjoy abundance.”

This made the contrast with another settlement all the more striking. From Austin's colony Terán proceeded west and south; on the banks of the Guadalupe he encountered a colony of Mexicans from the state of Tamaulipas, planted by the empresario Martin de León. These settlers seemed a sober, responsible bunch—“well-behaved people from the decent laboring class who have brought livestock of every kind to the new settlement.” But the energy and acquisitiveness that distinguished the Austin colony were conspicuous by their absence.

Since they have no notion of internal or external commerce, they do not aim their efforts at cotton, sugar, or other exportable products that have begun to appear in the Austin colony. They limit themselves to raising many cattle and tilling good fields. They also have little knowledge of the economy and settlement system of the North Americans. They lack the variety of industries which the latter usually have and which makes it so easy for them to establish themselves with no more help than what they bring with them. Among the North Americans who live in the countryside, it is rare not to find carpenters, locksmiths, blacksmiths, and bloodletters. Even in a gathering of a few families, artisans of this type are hardly ever lacking. In the Mexican colony . . . all this is missing.

A minor feature of life in the Mexican colony, contrasting to that in the North American colony, revealed a major difference. “The Mexicans escape from the solitude of the country and instead devote themselves to forming a populated body, rather than establishing themselves independently on the lands they cultivate. In the Austin colony, with more than 300 families, no more than 15 or 20 are found in the town, while in the Guadalupe colony all those who constitute it are in a rectangle around a plaza.” This contributed to social cohesion and perhaps communal happiness, but it diminished the colonists' productivity. “The fields are 4 and 5 leagues away, which means that a great deal of time is spent traveling.” At Austin's colony Terán had predicted that steamboats would soon be running on the Brazos to transport the colonists' produce more efficiently to market; Terán saw no steamboats in the future of the Guadalupe.