it was during the christmas holidays of 1821 that the first settlers, led by austin in person, reached the brazos river and made their camp upon the chosen spot. their christmas and new year’s dinners were not composed of dainties, we may be sure; but there was, no doubt, joyous roasting of wild game over the glowing camp-fires, and there was good honest fun and innocent merriment in plenty among these first texans!
their leader left them at once and proceeded to matagorda bay to meet the lively, a small schooner which had been sent out from new orleans with supplies for the settlement. she had also carried eighteen colonists.
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the lively had not arrived, nor was she ever heard of afterward. it is supposed that she was lost at sea, with all on board. to add to austin’s disappointment, some provisions brought on a former voyage of the lively, and hidden in the canebrakes on the banks of the brazos, had been stolen by the carankawae indians. he returned empty-handed to his people.
they were in no wise cast down by the news he brought. they were already making clearings, cutting down trees, burning underbrush, building cabins, and laying off fields. they were at the same time obliged to keep guard day and night against the indians who prowled about, always on the lookout for a chance to steal or to murder.
austin, cheered by their courage, set out for san antonio to report to governor martinez. there he learned that a revolution against spain had taken place in mexico. his contracts, in the new order of things, might be worthless. he therefore journeyed on to the city of mexico, twelve hundred miles distant. much of the way he traveled with but one companion. the country was full of robbers and cut-throats, and, in order to escape their clutches, the two men disguised themselves as beggars, going on foot, sleeping in the open air, and eating the coarsest food. he found the country in such a tumult that it was over a year before he could get his grant renewed and return to his colony.
meantime, other settlers had come in, some making their way slowly by land with ox-teams, stopping sometimes for a whole season to raise and harvest a crop of corn, and then moving patiently on. “children were born in these movers’ camps,” says one writer, “and the dead were buried by the roadside.” others came in ships from new orleans and mobile, and even from the far new england coast. in 1822 the revenge and the only son came into galveston harbor and landed at bolivar point over a hundred immigrants. they found mrs. long in the forlorn little fort where her husband had left her, still waiting and hoping for his return. it was from these pitying and kind-hearted pioneers that the heroic wife learned of the assassination of her husband. in their company she and her children left the place of so much suffering.
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the first crop of corn—turned into the virgin soil with wooden ploughs—had been gathered; a little cotton had whitened the patches about the cabin doors, and the spinning-wheels were already busy. the familiar low of home-returning milch-cows was heard at sundown along the winding footpaths. one of the settlers (randall jones) had gone to louisiana, taking with him a negro lad. there he traded the boy for sixty head of cattle, which he drove across the country to the settlement. another colonist brought out some pigs and a few goats. these domestic animals gave a homelike appearance to the strange land.
the settlement was thriving in spite of hardships. but these hardships were almost without number. there was neither salt, coffee, nor sugar. meat was to be had only by hunting, and oftentimes deer and buffalo were hard to find and, on account of the indians, dangerous to follow. true, there were great numbers of wild mustangs.
there were no horses in america before the discovery of columbus. the texas mustangs were the product of the cavalry horses brought from europe to mexico by cortez in 1519. they had multiplied, almost unmolested, during the three hundred years they had roamed prairie and forest. these mustangs were always fat, and when nothing better was to be had they made tolerable food.
there were, of course, no stores where anything could be bought; the men went dressed in buckskin; the women in coarse cloth woven by themselves. there was no mail, news from the outer world—from the dear ones left behind in the far-away “states”—came only when a chance traveler arrived with an old newspaper or possibly a letter in his saddle bags. there was neither school nor church.
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but in those rude cabins dwelt honesty, high courage, and unbounded hospitality. in business every man’s “word was as good as his bond.” there were no locks on the doors, robbery being unknown. everything, even to life itself, was ever at the service of friend and neighbor. the nameless traveler, welcomed without question, shared, as long as he chose to stay, the fireside and table of his host.
of such stuff were the first texans.
austin returned from mexico in july, 1823. he was welcomed with affectionate joy by his colonists. he was accompanied by his father’s friend, the baron de bastrop, commissioned by the government to assist him in laying off the town, surveying lands, and issuing titles.
the town was named by se?or de la garza, who had succeeded martinez as governor of texas. he called it san felipe (fa-lee′pā) de austin, in honor at the same time of his own patron saint and of its founder.
other towns soon sprung up over the province; for grants for other settlements had been sought and obtained from the government. austin got permission in 1825 to bring out five hundred additional families. immigrants flocked in, eager to share in this cheap and fruitful paradise. the names columbia, brazoria, gonzales, victoria, san augustine, and other towns and settlements, began to be familiar to the tongue.
some irish colonists founded on the nueces river, near its mouth, a town which they named st. patrick in remembrance of the patron saint of ireland. to the spanish-speaking people of texas it soon became known as san patricio, and so it is still called.
a large tract of land was granted to hayden edwards, a kentuckian, in the neighborhood of nacogdoches, the old gateway of texas history. but things did not go as smoothly there as in austin’s colony. it was too near the neutral ground, which continued to harbor outlaws and adventurers of all kinds.
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the land, moreover, was claimed by the mexicans and others who were already settled upon it. the quarrels between these and the newcomers became in course of time so bitter that the mexican government, during an absence of hayden edwards in the united states, took back his grant and ordered him and his two brothers to leave the country.
edwards had put all of his private fortune into his venture, and this act of tyranny goaded him and his colonists to fury. finding vain all their appeals to the governor, they took up arms and declared they would make of texas an independent republic. they called themselves fredonians; and banding together, they entrenched themselves in the old stone fort at nacogdoches. thence they sent an appeal to austin’s colonists for help. both austin’s colonists and the cherokee indians, upon whom they counted for support, refused to join them. news came that a mexican army was marching against them; their own fighting force was less than two hundred men. they saw the weakness of their position; and the fredonian war, as it was called, ended after a skirmish or two, in the surrender of the fredonians. edwards and his colonists left texas, and returned angry and disgusted to louisiana (1826).
this was a small foretaste of mexican justice. but troubles far graver than the fredonian war were at that moment brewing for texas.
