THE QUARTERLY OF THE TEXAS STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
VOLUME I. JANUARY, 1898. NUMBER 3.
AUSTIN, TEXAS: PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE ASSOCIATION. Price, SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS per number. [Entered at the postoffice at Austin, Texas, as second class matter.]
CONTENTS.
Prehistoric Races In Texas O. M. Roberts.
Thoughts on Economic History C. E. Dutton.
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca Brownie Ponton, Bates H. McFarland.
J. Pinckney Henderson F. B. Sexton.
Sieur Louis de Saint Denis Edmond J. P. Schmitt.
Obscure Points in the Mission Period Walter Flavius McCaleb.
Notes and Fragments.
Questions and Answers.
The Affairs of the Association.
The Texas State Historical Association.
O. M. ROBERTS, President.
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
Dudley G. Wooten, William Corner,
Guy M. Bryan, Mrs. Julia Lee Sinks.
RECORDING SECRETARY AND LIBRARIAN.
George P. Garrison.
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY AND TREASURER.
Lester G. Bugbee.
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL.
O. M. Roberts, George P. Garrison, Mrs. Dora Fowler Arthur
Dudley G. Wooten, Eugene Digges, Rufus C. Burleson,
Guy M. Bryan, Z. T. Fulmore, M. M. Kenney,
William Corner, C. W. Raines, R. L. Batts,
Mrs. Julia Lee Sinks, F. R. Lubbock, Mrs. Bride Neill Taylor.
PUBLICATION COMMITTEE.
O. M. Roberts.
George P. Garrison, Dudley G. Wooten,
Z. T. Fulmore, Mrs. Bride Neill Taylor.
Papers read at the meetings of the Association, and such other contributions as may be accepted by the Committee, will be published in The Quarterly.
The Association was organized March 2, 1897. There are no qualifications for membership. The annual dues are two dollars. The Quarterly is sent free to all members.
Contributions to the Quarterly and correspondence relative to historic materials should be addressed to
GEORGE P. GARRISON, Recording Secretary and Librarian, Austin, Texas. All other correspondence concerning the Association should be addressed to LESTER G. BUGBEE, Corresponding Secretary and Treasurer, Austin, Texas.
Vol. I. JANUARY, 1898. No. 3.
The Publication Committee disclaim responsibility for views expressed by contributors to the Quarterly.
That prehistoric men existed in Texas is made manifest by the flint arrow-heads that may be found in most parts, if not all over the country, wherever the surface rocks are exposed, amongst which they are usually discovered. In some places there have also been found stone knives, scrapers, hatchets, and hammers, especially in Western and Northwestern Texas.
These instruments, even the arrow-heads, required skill in their uniform construction, which makes it probable that the making of them was a vocation of those who were proficient in it, and that they were an object of commerce amongst those primitive people. This is rendered more probable from the fact that the very fine flint rock from which they are made is not found, so far as is generally known, in this country nearer than the flint hills and mountains of Arkansas and Alabama. In all the prairies west and north of the Trinity river, and in the mountains and high plains of the west, there are not, so far as known, any mounds of earth or rocks constructed by prehistorie men, and therefore it is to be presumed that those who inhabited or roamed over those parts of Texas were a nomadic race, not usually confined to any particular locality.
The prehistoric mound builders, probably a different race of people, were evidently located in their habitation, as shewn by the many earth mounds constructed by them, that are to be found in Texas and Louisiana.
During the years from 1842 to 1845, when I attended the district courts at Nacogdoches, in Eastern Texas, there was discovered an earth mound of oblong form fifty feet long and ten feet high, with a large sugar maple tree (then dead) that had grown near the middle of it, and in connection with the mound were four other less mounds, fifty yards apart, located in the line of a large circle, so that each of the small ones could be plainly seen while standing at the large one, indicating that they were constructed for some social purpose, either for habitations or for burial places, or for both, as has been the custom of the primitive races.
Another much larger mound, at least thirty feet high, stood in the edge of Mr. Bradshaw's field, about eighty yards south of the traveled road (then called Old San Antonio road) running from Nacogdoches to Crockett, three miles east of the Neches river, in what is now Cherokee county. Though I often saw the mound when passing along the road, I never stopped and examined it, as I did those at Nacogdoches.
Ten miles north of Palestine there was a set of lower mounds, situated in what was called Mound Prairie, south of which ran a small creek.
The town of Mount Pleasant, in Titus county, Texas, derived its name doubtless from one of those earth mounds in or near its original location.
The large population of mound builders were located in Louisiana, within and near the broad bottom about forty miles wide, formed by the overflows of the Arkansas, Red, and Mississippi rivers. A set of very large mounds, one of them forty feet high, was found near Bayou Tensas above Delhi. They were in a row, like those at Nacogdoches. There was a large one at Monticello, upon which a house was situated, and another one with a house on it in the village of Grand Cane on Bayou Rouge, and others lower down the bottom. None of them, however, could compare in size with the De Soto mound, situated two or three miles to the west of the Mississippi river, thirty miles above Vicksburg. It covered at least two acres of ground at the base, was sixty feet high, and had an area of a square acre on the top, on which had been constructed a fortification that was garrisoned with negro soldiers, commanded by white Federal officers in time of war. That mound was made memorable as the place of a battle on the 28th of May, 1863, in which the Confederates captured a large number of negro soldiers.
However much these mound builders may have wandered to the east or west for temporary pursuits, their permanent habitation must have been in the region where we find their mounds. That must have been their central location for association and primitive government, of which the erection of so many and so large mounds furnishes ample evidence. Whatever was the use made of them, whether as habitations, burial places, or places for worship, or as refuges from attacks of savage animals at night, they were erected under some strong incentive and conviction for their necessity; for they required great labor, regulated by some system in the control of those who constructed them. For instance, the De Soto mound contained many thousands of cubic feet of earth, and the digging and carrying the earth, and piling it up to the height of sixty feet, required an immense amount of labor, directed by some common design.
These mounds were not built as a protection against overflows of the rivers entirely, though they might have served for that purpose occasionally in the Mississippi bottom, for many of them were erected where there were no such overflows. All of them were found near some stream of water, which may indicate their use for fishing, but certainly for domestic purposes. The location of those mounds, at distances apart of easy travel from one to the other, indicated the association of a race of people in some sort of organized combination. It is probable also that this race of people, inhabiting the territory of Texas and Louisiana, were only a part of a very numerous race that extended in association all along up the Mississippi river and to what is now the State of Ohio, where numerous mounds have been discovered since its settlement by the Anglo-American population.
The most important subjects of inquiry about the mound builders are as to how they subsisted, and why they became extinct as a people. It can be well imagined that in their time there was a rank forage of grasses spread over the prairies and forests, and of reeds and canes in the branches, creeks, and rivers, that attracted and sustained large numbers of herbivorous animals, such as bisons, elks, deer, and other less animals, and that carnivorous animals, such as bears, panthers, wolves, cats, foxes, and others, preyed upon those grazing animals. There must have been a continual war for supremacy by those people upon those ravenous beasts. In addition to animals fit for eating the numerous fruit-bearing trees, and the birds and fowls that resorted to them, and the fishes in the creeks and rivers, furnished an abundant supply of food, and the skins of animals served for clothing when necessary.
They may also have had occasionally to contend with other races of people for the protection of their homes and hunting grounds. Daniel Boone, we are told, tried the experiment of such a life for about two years in the wilds of Kentucky, and got tired of it. It made him notorious—perhaps from the singularity of it. “Boone's Lick” is left behind to commemorate his primitive exploit of savagery. This is referred to in order to show that men who know a better way will not endure such life long, except on compulsion. The compulsion of the prehistoric men was their want of knowledge of, and consequently their want of desire for, any better way.
They were somewhat like the Indian chief of one of the wild tribes, who had lived all his life on buffalo meat and pecans, and who was carried by an Indian agent to Washington, and was there asked by some person what he thought of the great houses, steamboats, and railroads, and other fine things that he had seen. His answer, in effect, was that he was not surprised that white man could make all these things, but he was surprised that the white man could first think that he wanted them.
The Indian spoke from his own standpoint, and was mistaken in thinking the white man first thought he wanted those things. For that want was the final product of growing wants during numerous past centuries, from a primitive start upwards from the condition of prehistoric races of men.
Much of what can be said about these prehistoric races is necessarily speculative surmises or presumptions from facts, not leading to conclusions of absolute certainty. But there is one circumstance pertaining to them from which may be deduced a most important moral, social, and political lesson, instructive to the people of this or any other age, and this is their extinction as a race of people, and the reason of it. It is not known, nor is it even probable, that the American Indians were descendants of the mound builders; and if they were, they had advanced but little from the condition, as we suppose it to have been, of the prehistoric races. Their habitual indisposition to labor, and the absence of any works or fabrics requiring it, when America was discovered by white men, rebuts any such presumption of fact.
The reason why those prehistoric races became extinct, if they were not destroyed by succeeding and more powerful races, is that they did not till the soil as one of or the principal means of subsistence. There is no evidence left where they existed of their having thought of or adopted that better way of perpetuating their race. The cultivation of the soil for such a purpose, as from our information of its earliest adoption upon the Nile in Egypt and upon the Euphrates in Asia, draws men closer together, makes more intimate their association, causes the construction of houses and other improvements, and leads necessarily to the claim of rights of person and property, and the establishment of government to protect them; all which puts men in the attitude of combined organization for individual well-being and the common protection of the body politic thus formed. This has been the starting movement upwards in all of the great nations of people that have existed and that still exist. In most if not all of them there has been a period of their growth when rural homes, with their occupations and surroundings were the most cherished and the most honored abodes of men. Then prosperity filled the horn of plenty to overflowing, then patriotism knew no bounds in the love of home and country, and then independent manhood rated honor with life. The nation then, large or small, was intrinsically powerful and happy, and so continued until ambition ran riot after the glittering bauble of national greatness with its costly magnificence, and after national power or superiority over other nations; and then, just as it grew in reputed grandeur in its superstructure, the great mass of people, upon whose shoulders it was reared, sank under the exactions necessary to build up and sustain it; and that is the malady with which all of the great nations of the past have sickened and died, that are no more. Any country whose government allows agriculture with its concomitant interests to be repressed and degraded, to promote the objects of the greed and selfishness or the love of power, is hazarding the prosperity, patriotism, and independent manhood of the mass of the people governed by it.
Nor is this merely pessimistic imaginings, but simply the calm interpretation of human destiny, when the Cincinnatus-like homely virtues of practical life are lost in the aspiring evolution to attain to higher civilization and national fame, as it has been illustrated in the history of the past, ever since mankind struggled up from the condition of the prehistoric races.
It needs but the most superficial knowledge of history to realize that the material or economic condition of the civilized nations has through many centuries been improving, and at no period so rapidly as during the Nineteenth century. During the decline and dismemberment of the Roman empire, and for three centuries after its fall, there was undoubtedly a general economic deterioration, reaching its lowest depths in the Eighth and Ninth centuries. But when the feudal system became established and comparatively settled, the first signs of recuperation began to appear. They were faint indeed, and were confined to a few localities. They might be regarded as the premonitions rather than the reality of improvement; valuable more for what they promised than for what they actually effected. The recuperation was at first exceedingly slow, and it requires close scrutiny and comparison to see that the condition of men and of society was better in the Tenth century than in the Ninth, and better in the Eleventh than in the Tenth. But after the Eleventh the signs of real improvement were plain enough. From that time onward not only was the progress continuous, but it is certain that in each century it was more rapid than in the one which preceded it, until we come to the Nineteenth, in which the advancement has been so rapid that we seem to be separated by a great gulf from all anterior time, and to be living in a new world.
We are accustomed to attribute this progress to the continuous improvement in the arts, whereby man's power to command the resources of nature and to convert the forces and materials of the earth to his uses is greatly multiplied. That this is the proximate means is obvious. But back of it is the slowly acquired and cumulative knowledge of nature and her laws which renders such arts possible to us. Still further behind is the slow growth of mental habits, logical processes, methods of thinking and reasoning, which are necessary to the acquisition of such knowledge, and which we term scientific philosophy. So that, after all, this wonderful material progress is but a phase of the growth of human philosophy, of ideas, of mental culture. So, too, is the political and moral progress of the world. In truth, all phases of our civilization, whether social or individual, whether moral or material, whether economic or political, are interwoven so closely and are so interdependent that we can not separate them except ideally. Every phase of it implies the others. Yet they all reflect certain central ideas, and these ideas are the moving forces of the whole.
In turning our attention to the subject of economic history, it is obvious that in an hour's discourse only a few thoughts can be offered, and these must be of a general rather than of a specific character; and it has seemed to me that the most suggestive thoughts would relate to the growth of economic ideas rather than to economic incidents, though incidents must be referred to for purposes of illustration. I know of no study more interesting than the research into the condition of peoples of past ages, to learn how they lived, what was the scope and interest of their daily life, what kind of food did they eat, what sort of clothing did they wear, how were they housed, and what was the degree of bodily comfort or discomfort which they enjoyed or suffered. Above all, it is interesting to inquire what were their thoughts and opinions on each or any class of subjects. These questions engage the attention and labor of present historical writers far more than the older ones. In fact, it is only in comparatively recent years that historians have given such questions much thought. Such information as we possess has not been handed down to us in any one book written by a contemporary writer, giving a systematic, fairly complete and detailed account of such matters in a single volume. It is gathered in numberless fragments from numberless sources, and pieced together by comparison. Much of it is inferential, though the inferences seem to be well sustained. Not merely histories, but poetry, dramas, treatises on all subjects, laws, church canons, inscriptions, books of controversy, and finally old letters abound in materials of this fragmentary sort, which, when collated and carefully compared, throw much light upon the condition and customs of past generations. This information, however, is much fuller and more circumstantial with respect to the condition of the higher classes than of the lower, as might be expected, for their doings and their relations to the world around them were more conspicuous, and they alone as individuals performed the leading parts in the dramas of history. Yet I fancy the condition of the lowest and poorest classes has been much the same in all ages of the past, and there is little to tell that we do not know already. But the point on which positive information is most needed is a somewhat precise and definite knowledge of what proportion of the peoples in the various ages were absolutely destitute and dependent upon charity or rapine in order to keep soul and body together; what proportion were self-supporting, what proportion were well-to-do or rich. Though absolute figures are scanty, we still know that the farther we recede into the past the greater was the proportion of destitution and misery, and the smaller the proportion of those who enjoyed a comfortable living. We also know that in all classes the scale of living becomes lower the farther back we go, until we reach the dark ages, when even feudal lords and princes lived in a manner that we should consider insufferable, when a middle class hardly existed, and when the vast mass of the peoples lived in a way compared with which the living of the Mexican palado is sumptuous.
Yet there are those who are ever contending that the tendencies of the present day are to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. History gives us a very different state of facts. It teaches us that in the progress of the last ten centuries, and especially in the present one now expiring, the material condition of the civilized world has enormously improved; that the rich indeed have grown richer, but that the poor have become better off in still greater proportion; that absolute poverty and dependence upon charity has become incomparably less, and is in general still decreasing; that the great masses of the communities have become self-supporting, and that the scales of living among all classes have been immensely raised, and in the largest proportion among the poor.
We are accustomed, as I have said, to attribute this growth of material wealth to the development of the useful arts, and this in turn is a result of increased scientific knowledge, which is in a general sense an evolution of mind and ideas. It is to these ideas, and their long, slow evolution through thousands of years, that I would ask your attention, although time will allow us only a hasty glance at them.
Looking back to antiquity, the great economic fact which looms up before us in ancient Rome was its gigantic system of slavery. It inherited it from time immemorial, from periods far older than the earliest twilight of history. It had never been nor heard of otherwise Nor was it peculiar to Rome. It was universal among the Greeks and Persians, the Phoenicians and Egyptians, the Germans and Gauls, the Carthagenians and Iberians. The idea of it was ingrained among all races of antiquity. They could not even conceive of the absence of it, and they never questioned either the right or the expediency of it. Generous and kindly men, indeed, often pitied the hard lot of the slave, but it no more suggested to them the idea of a general emancipation than an overworked horse or mule suggests to us the idea of turning all of them loose and giving them the suffrage and postoffices. Plato, in the Republic, where he sets forth his conceptions of a perfect society in the form of extreme communism of property, relegates the manual labor to slaves. Aristotle, whose philosophy was as materialistic as Plato's was idealistic, while repudiating any such socialism as Plato conceived, held the same general opinion on the subject of slavery. To him it was in the due course of nature, and inevitable. Along with these ingrained ideas was another, which pervaded the ancient minds and bears an intimate relation to it. Manual labor they looked upon as degrading, unbecoming a freeman, and the proper occupation of slaves and menials. And as a matter of fact, a large part of the artisan labor was by slaves. The great patricians of Rome owned thousands of them, and among them were blacksmiths and carpenters, masons and bricklayers, potters, saddlers, shoemakers, tailors, weavers, dyers, and millers. Their products, too, were sold in open market in competition with those of free artisans. The result was that the condition of the free laborer was most miserable. Except that he had his liberty, his condition was worse than that of the domestic or house servants, whom the master was constrained by custom to dress and feed well, out of regard for his own dignity. In general, the poverty of the free laborer, and the hardship of his struggle for existence, was such that he often preferred to become a proletarius, even when not driven to it. Thus, there was no great middle class of industrious, energetic men, supporting themselves in comfort and leading lives of honorable industry, and recognized as the bone and sinew of the land and the main support of the state. We can not wonder, then, that in the times of the republic Rome was an almost constant scene of turbulence and riot; that under the empire it took an army of Pretorians to preserve even a faint outward semblance of order; that its streets swarmed with vagabonds, loafers, sharpers, and pluguglies; that its long streets of six-story tenement houses were densely packed with vice and vermin, filth and wretchedness, and exhibited phases of life as horrible as a Chinese opium-joint.
In the middle ages, the state of labor presents different aspects. In place of the slave, we find the serf or vilein. The serf had some rights, the slave had none. The serf could marry and have legitimate children, the slave could not. The serf could have personal property, the slave could not. On the other hand, the exactions of his lord were at first severe, and though they seldom took all, they often took the greater part of what he had or might produce. In process of time, the rights of the serf grew larger, and the rights of his lord over him grew less, and in passage of centuries serfdom slowly died out. It would be interesting, if time permitted, to go over the incidents of this transformation, and study the changes of ideas which led to it. But it appears so clearly, and the facts are so well described in Hallom's History of the Middle Ages, that a reference to that work must suffice. Yet there was one agency to which brief reference may be made. It was the rise of the free cities of France and Germany, whose importance has been made so clear and conspicuous by Guizot. It was in the early free cities that manual labor became honorable, and at the same time secured some degree of protection from robbery and immunity from the competition of the slave. The laborer now could support himself, and hold up his head as a man entitled to respect. He could cultivate thrift and accumulate something, and life could offer him something to strive for. Here is the real beginning of modern civilization as distinct from the ancient.
Let us now glance at another economic order of facts in the Roman commonwealth, the tenure of lands. Here the conspicuous feature is the great number of large landed estates owned by rich patricians and operated principally by slave labor. They were scattered all over the empire, though more numerous in some provinces than in others. Not all the agricultural land was in the latifundia, as these great estates were called, nor probably was even the greater portion of it, for there were great numbers of small farms and homesteads as well. But the general tendency usually was for land to drift into the great estates, especially during the first two centuries of the empire. There had never been a time when the latifundia did not exist. They often broke up, but new ones took their places. The ownership of land was as absolute with the Romans as it is with us in fee simple, and the original theory of the Roman law was that every citizen should be a land owner, though the theory stood in strong contrast with the facts. It was, however, the spirit of the law to encourage in every possible way the acquisition of small farms by the lower classes of citizens, and under the republic many vigorous attempts were made to do so. The agrarian laws were for that special purpose, and though they produced for a time some relief, they were fruitless in the end. In a few years the great estates had swallowed the little ones, and the laws were disregarded, and became obsolete.
It may be permitted to diverge here a moment to say that the modern conventional meaning of the word agrarian is very different from its meaning among the Romans. It is usually supposed to imply legislation or agitation adverse to private property in land. Not so among the Romans; for, however lax their observance of law might be in other respects, no laws were enforced with more rigor, certainty, and justice than those which guaranteed property rights in land. But agrarian lands were not private property at all, but public property, and their titles vested distinctly in the state. If the state granted them away, they ceased to be agrarian, and it often did so to newly created citizens and to discharged veterans of the army. Whenever new territory was conquered, large tracts—never less than a tenth, and often much more—were taken by the state and appropriated as public land, and as the spoil of war. It thus came under the agrarian laws. It then granted permits to settle upon these lands, but still retained the title, so that the occupants were virtually tenants at will, and were required to pay a tithe of their produce to the state as the price of tenancy. No person could be granted more than 500 jugera (330 acres). The right of the state to resume these lands and dismiss its tenants at any time was unquestioned by the Roman jurists. But long tenancy naturally begets in the mind of the occupant a feeling equivalent to that of ownership, and that he has a natural right to it. The latifundia had encroached upon the agrarian lands and occupied thousands of acres of them; the people clamored for their resumption, and sometimes secured it. The celebrated Licinian and Sempronian laws embodied resumptions of this character and a redistribution, but they never touched the private property owned and held under a clear title, whether in large estates or in small ones. This view of ancient agrarian legislation was ferreted out in the early part of the present century by the great German jurist Heyne and the Danish historian Niebuhr.
The state of the latifundia was often a source of the gravest anxiety to intelligent, patriotic Romans of all classes. Juvenal thunders against them in his satires, Seneca and Quintilian sound frequent notes of warning, and the saying, “Latifundia perdiderunt Romam” (the great estates have been the ruin of Rome), was often repeated. But remedy was impossible. No earthly power could break them up without destroying all that was left of Roman power and greatness, and breaking society not merely into fragments, but even into dust and molecules. For at that time there was nothing which could be put in the place of them. They existed by forces incomparably more potent than imperial power or decrees of the senate.
Let us for a moment turn our thoughts, for purposes of comparison, to some facts connected with land property in the present century. Whoever has visited southern France, and especially southern and middle Germany, must have been much impressed, and perhaps amazed, by the minute way in which the farm lands are divided up. As many of you have probably seen them, I will not take time to describe them. So far in many of the German states has this subdivision been carried at times, and so burdensome had it become, that the state has repeatedly been led by common consent to intervene, wipe out all the existing subdivisions, and reapportion the land as equitably as possible among the proprietors, in subdivisions of greater convenience. Laws have been passed which fixed the minimum amount of cultivated land which could be sold, in order to check the tendency to break up into absurdly small pieces. Some of these rearrangements date as far back as 1617 in Bavaria, and in the same kingdom there have been no less than five redivisions in the present century. In Prussia, Hanover, Wurtemburg, Nassau, and Baden there are, or formerly were, permanent statutory provisions for this process of “koppelwerthschaft,” by which it could be carried out in a regular, legal way, and under due forms of law.
Here we see an exactly opposite tendency to that which prevailed in Rome. What should cause such an extreme difference? Is there any principle, or group of principles, under which both can be brought? The answer in full is a complex one, and I can not enter into it at length here. It must suffice to say that it is primarily a question of the profit of farming on a large and small scale respectively. In a country where labor is free, the profit is in a large majority of cases in favor of the small farm, but when the labor is by slaves the reverse is usually the case. There is, however, another condition which is to be considered. In despotic and aristocratic countries, where there is a class raised to high rank and enjoying great privileges and dignities, great landed estates have always been deemed necessary to maintain their social rank and perpetuate it in the family through succeeding generations, and this idea may even overrule the dispersive tendency of greater profit. In conformity with this idea is the system of primogeniture and entail. In Rome, greater profit and the aggrandizement of the patrician class both conspired to form larger estates. In Germany, the greater profit was on the side of small farms, and the German bauer is just as anxious to perpetuate his estate as the German noble.
It was not the latifundia that ruined Rome. The cause lay much deeper. They were effects, and not causes; the symptoms, and not the disease. During the decline of the empire, the imperial policy by slow degrees undermined them, and at length broke up the greater part of them. But it only made a very bad matter still worse. Instead of replacing large estates with small ones, whole provinces were depopulated or turned into pastures and forest. The empire became impoverished, so that it could no longer support armies, or even strong civil government. The barbarians broke in, and soon made an end of it.
Historians have been in the habit of attributing the break-up of the Roman empire to moral and political causes, which is certainly true. And yet, if they had carried their analysis as thoroughly and masterfully along the economic line as they have along the moral, political, and social ones, they would, I fancy, have made this mighty subject still clearer.
After the dismemberment of the empire, the tenure of lands was radically changed in western Europe. In most of the ancient Germanic tribes, the social unit was the clan living as a village commune and enjoying the land as common property. When communes became knit into tribes, and tribes into nations, the communal idea underwent a corresponding change. It belonged still to the people and the nation, but the king or chief distributed it in behalf of the nation to the tribes, and the heads of tribes distributed it to their people. In each case the grant was conditioned with the requirement that military service, or equivalent produce, should be rendered in consideration of the grant. In theory, then, the land was communal still. But history presents us with only two conditions in which the communal tenure of agricultural lands is the normal tenure fitting the actual state of society. The first is found in a low order of barbarism, and the second is in a state of caste, like India; and caste is the final result of despotism run to seed. Civilization, carrying civil liberty with it, is sure to destroy the communal tenure sooner or later. The theory of feudal tenures soon became a mere legal fiction from natural causes, and as civilization slowly advanced the lands became private property, much as they were under the Romans. But though these forms of tenure have become fictions, they have left a profound impression upon modern Europe. The history of the middle ages is in a conspicuous degree the history of a number of landed aristocracies, whose destinies have been different in different countries. Those of Germany gradually became a host of petty princes or kings, whose tendency was towards the formation of numberless small principalities, each independent or highly despotic, thus weakening the bonds of national unity. The tendency, also, was towards hard, impassable lines of class distinction, separating the nobility from the people. This alone would have drifted towards caste. But such a people as the Germans, of all races, could never be dragged in that direction by any nobility, however absolute or despotic. In France, the nobility either voluntarily or by compulsion gathered around the throne of the nation. The strong, masterful policy of Richelieu cemented that union, but unhappily at the expense of the people, and at terrible cost alike to their liberties and their material welfare. Under the absolutism of the monarchy, and the unjust privileges of a landed aristocracy, France showed even a stronger tendency towards caste than Germany. But the French people could no more be dragged that way than the German, and when the tension became insupportable the bonds of society snapped everywhere, and its fabric was shaken to pieces by a social earthquake.
In England, the course of evolution was in strong contrast with that of the continent. There the landed nobility from an early period identified their interests with those of the people, and made common cause with them. They have never, since the days of Magna Charta, contended for any increase of privileges at the expense of the people, and have by degrees yielded ancient privileges without serious contest, when the advanced state of the people made it for the general good. They have in past centuries borne the principal burden of taxation, and never attempted to lay cruel burdens upon the backs of the people. They have always been found on the side of civil liberty. No hard and fast line separates them from the people, for their ranks are constantly replenished from the commons, and into the commons all but their eldest sons must descend. Thus the English aristocracy has always been sustained and upheld by the English people, and instead of becoming their oppressors have become their natural leaders and the embodiments of their social aspirations and ideas.
We see, then, how these ideas interweave, economic, moral, political and social, all forming that almost infinite complex which we call civilization. It is only by an imaginary process that we can unravel and study its innumerable threads.
Of capital in ancient times we may speak more briefly. As regards fixed capital, it played a far less important part, both absolutely and relatively, than in the present age, as must follow from the fact that the industrial arts were rude and primitive, machinetools unknown, and the only source of mechanical power being men or beasts. The relative importance of circulating or money capital was much greater, and the ideas of antiquity on this subject are interesting. Among all the nations of western Asia, and Asia Minor, and among the ancient Greeks, usury and interest on loans was regarded as wrong, unjust and highly iniquitous. The aversion to usury, however, was a very qualified one. The practice of it between members of the same gens or clan-family was regarded with almost universal abhorrence, and the usurer was practically outlawed or boycotted by his own people. Between members of different gentes classes or clans, its disapproval was speculative rather than practical. But between different nations, religions, and cults, it was hardly a moral question one way or the other. The idea of a common brotherhood of mankind had no existence until Jesus appeared. Among the Romans, usury was at first regarded in much the same way; but after the conquests had become extensive, Rome became heterogenous in its population, and usury came to be regarded as a necessary evil by the people, though many of the most enlightened Romans who studied Greek philosophy contracted the Greek ideas upon the subject. Usury was practiced on a large scale at Rome. The objections to it, and even abhorrence of it, were natural and inevitable. In the first place, interest was seldom less than one and a half per cent a month, and might be anything more than that. In the second place, really good security was out of the question. The machinery for handling loans was crude and cumbrous, and only the rudiments of modern banking or loan and trust existed. The business, therefore, in great part, fell into the hands of the most rapacious, cruel, and merciless class of men, who lay in wait for victims like the spider for the flies. Woe betide the poor wretch who was caught in the usurer's web. His blood was quickly sucked, and it was well if his body were not sold into slavery. Christianity denounced it from the beginning, but at first made it binding only on the clergy by exacting severe penances or excommunicating for it. It was not until the Eighth or Ninth century that the church made it binding upon the consciences of the laity by requiring them to answer for it at the confessional. In the reign of Charlemagne, the prohibition of usury became a substantive part, both of the canon law and of the civil law, which prohibited it under severe penalties, and for several following centuries these prohibitions multiplied.
But borrowing and lending can not be prevented in this world, though it may be restricted and reduced to very narrow limits. Civilization, as we understand it, can not go on without it. As industries in the feudal and middle ages began faintly and slowly to revive, the necessity for it became stronger and stronger, and the canons and laws were not only disregarded, but the disregard was often winked at. At length the princes of Europe began to grant special licenses and exemptions to Jews to loan money at usury, and of course the Jews soon had a monopoly of it. Meantime, ideas on the subject of usury began to undergo a slow change. The controversies and discussions of the subject which have come down to us from the middle ages were almost exclusively by theologians, for they were almost the only scholars and writers. First, it began to be urged that there were a few very exceptional cases in which usury might be just and not sinful. Gradually these cases began to multiply. Then the exceptions began to be more numerous than normal cases. But there was a reluctance on the part of controversialists to give up the idea that the principle involved in usury was unjust, sinful, and deleterious. The general notion was that the restitution of the principal was full compensation for the loan, and to demand more was plainly to demand more than had been given. And this view was as old at least as Aristotle.
At length, in the Sixteenth century, one government after another made laws expressly authorizing interest on loans, but in most cases fixing a maximum rate, and making any rate in excess of it unlawful, and working a forfeiture of the claim. And finally a series of decisions by the Holy See, in the first half of the present century, require confessors not to trouble penitents on the matter of usury per se pending the further consideration of the subject. The modern view is simple enough. Interest or legitimate usury is the difference between present and future values. One hundred dollars cash in hand and a promissory individual note for the payment of one hundred dollars in future have not the same value. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. The difference between the two values is interest. To make them equal, and to make the interchange a strictly just one, the borrower is in duty bound to allow a deduction from the money he receives or else make an addition to the amount he promises to pay.
And now let us glance for a moment at the results which have attended this change of ideas on the subject of interest or usury. Ancient usury was often employed to ruin the debtor and gain his property without giving him a full equivalent. No doubt there were many honorable and just men among usurers, but the unjust and rapacious ones were so numerous, and their cruelties so frequent, that they were regarded as types of the whole system. Modern interest, on the other hand, is an essential part of a system for benefitting the borrower and not for destroying him, to build him up and not to break him down. The typical modern usurer is the banker. His interests and those of his customers are one and the same. They are bound up together by the strongest possible tie. If they prosper he prospers, if they languish he languishes. If they are broken he is mulct. He must seek his profit by profiting them. If he would protect himself against loss, he must protect them also.
But we are only at the beginning of this theme. Interest lies at the foundation of modern credit and is one of its corner stones. Of all institutions controlling or animating the economic affairs of men, the most impressive is modern credit. Behind labor, behind capital, it is the most vital and subtle animating force.
Credit, indeed, in some of its aspects, has existed at all times among civilized peoples; but no credit system such as exists to-day. It is not my intention, however, to enter into this great subject further than to indicate that interest is an essential factor of it, without which a credit system would not exist.
I have selected the subject of usury or interest as an illustration of the change and evolution of ideas which mark the difference between old civilizations and the new. It is only an instance and example. Correlative changes have taken place in many other economic ideas, and each category presents a world of interest and instruction. The ideas which people hold concerning such farreaching subjects as the tenure of land, of the dignity and moral value as well as the economic value of labor, of the nature and functions of money, of taxation, of commerce, of fiscal policy, all these have had their changes and evolutions. Yet all of them are interdependent, and their changes have moved along slowly through the ages, seeking an adaptation to and a coördination with each other. Interwoven with them, and really an inseparable part of them, are our fundamental political and moral ideas. These, too, have had their changes and progressive development, and have been more frequently studied than the economic ideas, but not more deeply. The whole constitutes the basis of modern civilization.
But as I approach the limit of my time-allowance you see that I have only reached the beginning of modern economic history. I have been following two or three roots of it deep down, geologists' fashion, into the palaeozoic strata of human history. Of that great organism, that giant sequoia of modern economics which towers so high and spreads so wide, I have said almost nothing. How could I in a few brief sentences even outline its many branches or even its general contour? And how could I in such limits describe their unfolding and growth through ten centuries? And yet history has much to tell us about it that is thrilling in its interest, solemn and awful in its instruction. If we were to make research of that progress we should find that it has not been made without manifold bitter experiences; that under the influence of false ideas it has often been checked or even turned back for a time towards barbarism again. We should learn how, under mistaken notions of economic relations of labor, oppressive laws have been passed, working new and rank injustice and entailing untold misery when the real object was to benefit all; how under mistaken notions of commerce ruinous commercial policies were adopted; how under mistaken ideas of the nature and functions of money, disastrous measures were resorted to which brought increased poverty and misery where they were expected to bring prosperity. And the most singular thing about it is that the same errors were committed over and over again in succeeding generations. As they did not foresee the results, so did they fail to attribute the results to the true causes. The next generation or two forgot the experiences of the preceding one, and like the moth flew again and again into the same candle. But in the course of time experiences began to have some effect. The world was growing both in knowledge and wisdom. Men became more and more numerous who studied these matters deeply, and by degrees worked out the causes and the true relations, and made the real nature of economic laws gradually apparent by sifting the false from the true. Not that a complete system of economic philosophy was suddenly created, but step by step and with increasing pace through the centuries.
At length the time came when the results of human experience acquired by many generations, analyzed by hundreds of the acutest and profoundest thinkers of their times, and subjected to the sharpest controversy and criticism, could be gathered together into a single or collective body of philosophy. Adam Smith's great work, The Wealth of Nations, appeared in the year 1776 and marks a great epoch in human thought. A similar attempt had been made by Quenay in France about ten years before; but Quenay's work, though arousing great interest and stimulating thought greatly at the time, proved otherwise barren, and the world has rejected his system. But Adam Smith's work grew in importance with time, and is still growing. And yet there is hardly a chapter or section in that work which the growth and knowledge of philosophy has not more or less modified. Some minor portions of it have been completely and definitively rejected. The value and importance of the work lies in the fact that it constitutes a system. It gathers together all the great factors of the economic machine and shows their mutual dependence, how they act, react upon, and condition each other, and gives us an intelligible view of the actions and functions of the economic organism as a whole.
The work was slow in sinking deeply into the convictions of men. Two generations passed before the leading philosophers had with general unanimity accepted it as the basis of the science of political economy. Its diffusion after that was much more rapid, and its doctrines soon became a part of an ordinary liberal education. They became at the same time a part of the convictions of the leading men among the ruling classes of England, and were soon made operative in the laws which affected the economic affairs of the nation.
The doctrines of political economy, however, are slow in reaching the minds of the people at large. The reasons are obvious. From the nature of the case the system is a very complex one, requiring long and earnest study to fully comprehend it and absorb its real spirit. It has always been known as the dreary science, and its special votary bears the name of Dr. Dryasdust. To the popular mind it is usually without the sympathetic attractions of the novel and drama and the sensuous or aesthetic attraction of art. Moreover, it is a field of thought adapted to mature minds and well disciplined faculties, and not to youthful ones unless they are precocious. By the time the mind and its experiences have reached sufficient maturity habitual and hereditary ideas have become settled and are hard to modify or displace. But the importance of sound economic ideas is rapidly becoming so great, and the interests which depend upon them are become so momentous, that the public welfare and the public safety demand that no effort be spared to make them a part of the intellectual equipment of the people at large.
Outside of the Arabian Nights and the realms of fairy tales and fiction, there is perhaps no stranger story of adventure than that of Cabeza de Vaca's ten years wanderings in Texas and Mexico.
The first that we hear of this interesting Spaniard is in 1527, when he was made chief treasurer of an expedition under Pamphilo de Narvaez, bound for the Gulf shores of the New World. “Notwithstanding,” says Buckingham Smith, “the most zealous devotion of scholars, and the ceaseless delvings of antiquaries, the place and period, both of his birth and decease, have evaded their research.”
But as he was a man in 1527, his boyhood, youth, and early manhood must have been spent in one of the most wonderful periods of time—the age in which the Old World found the New,—the age in which the warm southern blood of Italy, Spain and France, as well as the cold northern blood of England, was being intoxicated with the love of adventure, with the dream of untold wealth. Every explorer believed that in this new land lay his Mexico, his palace of Montezuma, waiting for him its Cortez.
One of the many expeditions bearing the Spanish flag was that of de Narvaez, with whom as we have said went Cabeza de Vaca as treasurer. The tract which had been granted to Narvaez stretched from the southern part of Florida to the Rio de las Palmas, which has been identified with the Rio Grande. As was usual, the expedition first stopped in Cuba. While waiting here, two vessels were sunk by a terrible storm and sixty men were lost. Terrified by this, Narvaez waited here until the following spring, when, a pilot having been found, he sailed for his grant. When only a few days out, a strong westerly wind arose, and, beaten out of their track, the ships were driven off the coast of Florida. The pilot assured the Spaniards they were near the Rio de las Palmas. Narvaez then, strongly advised to the contrary by Cabeza, divided his men into two parties, one to sail the vessels along the coast, the other to make an inland expedition, of which he himself was to be the leader. These two parties, he said, would unite at some good harbor; and taking with him some three hundred men with whom was Cabeza, he started inland. Let me anticipate here, and say that after a year's fruitless searching, those aboard the vessels returned to the islands, bearing the sad news that Narvaez and his men had perished on the mainland.
What, in truth, was the fate of this luckless expedition? Necessarily unable to carry but a few days' provisions, they soon began to suffer from hunger. True, they found Indian villages, but in them there was little food, and no treasure. Farther on, the Indians said, in the village of Appalache, there are treasures, and all those things that white men desire. Weary and worn, they pushed on. Twice they went to the coast, but could find no harbor; no welcome vessel came in sight. At last they came to the village of Appalache, which proved a bitter disappointment. No treasure was found, and the Indians were treacherous and hostile. However, they stayed here several months, living chiefly on maize. The Indians here told them of another village, Aute, nine or ten days south of there, on the seacoast. Toward this point they directed their course.
They reached Aute in the last stages of despair, after fighting their way through swamps and forests, frequently in water that came above the knees. The Indians were hostile; there was little to eat. Weak and emaciated from hunger and travel, hampered by the sick and dying, threatened with mutiny, the outlook was dreary, not to say hopeless. To march inland was to march to certain death; on the sea lay their one chance for life.
With rude implements of their own manufacture they made five rough boats, their spurs and the stirrups from their saddles furnishing the nails. Their few remaining horses were killed, the flesh eaten, and the skins from their legs made into bags, which served as the only means of carrying water. Forty-nine men or more were crowded into each boat. The instinct of self-preservation was to be their only guide, for they knew but little, if anything, of the art of navigation. From a strange land they sailed out on strange waters.
Not daring to trust themselves far out at sea, and in the vain hope of finding some Spanish settlement, they kept close to the shore. For thirty days or more they sailed along in this manner. Then the water bags rotted, and many of the men, delirious with thirst, drank the briny water of the sea, and died in agony. While a like death seemed inevitable to all, they came to an Indian village, where was food and water. After a day and night's stay, during which they were attacked by the Indians, they re-embarked and sailed on. In this manner they continued for many days, suffering all that men can suffer from want of food and water.
At length they came to a broad river, at the mouth of which were many little islands—a river which, for several reasons, is supposed to have been the Mississippi. The current being too strong to allow them to land, they were borne out to sea, and, in the darkness, separated from each other. The captain's boat finally reached land, but two others, one of which was Cabeza's, drifted out to sea, for the men were too weak to row. For several days these two boats stayed together, but a storm arose, and they, too, drifted apart.
Cabeza's boat was finally cast ashore on an island, which, for reasons to be given later, we believe to have been Galveston island. The Spaniards named it Malhado, meaning “Ill-luck.” The Indians came down to the shore, gave them fish and roots, and treated them kindly. In an endeavor to launch the boat on the following day, it was capsized and borne out to sea. They were now entirely at the mercy of the Indians. These, however, were kindly disposed, and took them to their village. In a few days they were joined by a party from one of the other boats, which had been wrecked at another part of the island.
They now numbered forty; but to go on in such weather was impossible, as those of the first boat had even lost their clothing. It was, therefore, agreed that they should remain on the island, while four of the men should go on in search of the Spanish settlement, which they supposed to be very near the west. Soon after the departure of the four, a plague broke out on the island, and the number of the Spaniards was reduced to fifteen. These were separated by the Indians, who had practically enslaved them; some were being taken to the mainland, others left on the island. The weather was very severe and food scarce. In the springtime the Spaniards, except Cabeza and another, who were too sick to travel, escaped from their masters, and started westward down the coast. Nothing had yet been heard of the four who had previously set out.
For six years Cabeza led a slave's life, sometimes on the mainland, sometimes on the island. From October to February they stayed on the island, living on a certain kind of root. At the end of this time they went into other parts, for the root was then beginning to grow, and not fit to eat. “I had,” said Cabeza, “to get roots from below the water and in the cane, where they grow in the ground, and from this employment I had my fingers so worn that did a straw but touch them they bled.” Later on he fared better, for, getting in the good graces of the Indians, he was allowed to become something of a trader, going far inland on his trading expeditions. In this way he became acquainted with the surrounding country.
At the end of these six years, he and his companion, Lope de Oviedo, escaped from the Indians, and started down the coast. After having crossed four rivers, of which we shall speak more definitely, they came to a bay, most probably Matagorda bay. On the farther side of this bay they met a party of Indians coming to visit the Indians on the island. These told them that beyond were three men like the Spaniards. The Indians also said that if Cabeza wished to see them that in the next few days they would be at a walnut grove not far distant. At this point Lope de Oviedo, terrified by the Indians' tales of cruelty, refused to go farther, and returned to his former masters.
Two days later Cabeza joined the other three in the walnut grove. They were three of the party who had left the island six years before. Their companions had been killed by the Indians or had died from hardships. Of the powerful force which, not long before, Narvaez had led into the swamps of Florida, there now remained only this mere handful of wretched creatures, who maintained a precarious livelihood as slaves of the Indians.
We believe we can identify the vicinity in which this meeting occurred. But of this we shall speak more at length in another place; it is sufficient to say here that the Spaniards were most probably in the neighborhood of Matagorda bay, and, perhaps, near the mouth of the Colorado river. They remained quietly here for six months, waiting until the Indians should go to the prickly pear region, at which time, many tribes being gathered together, they thought they could best make their escape. For three months in the year the Indians in that part of the country lived entirely on the fruit of the cactus. So luxuriant and thick is the growth of this plant in southwestern Texas that we can safely say it was to this region that the Indians came yearly.
As the Spaniards had anticipated, they were taken in due season to the prickly pear region, where they planned their escape. On the day settled upon for their departure the Indians quarreled among themselves, and the Spaniards were separated. After a year's weary waiting, at the next prickly pear season they were again brought together, and again separated before they could escape. In despair they appointed a meeting place, and each pledged himself to elude the vigilance of his master, and join the others at the appointed time. This time they were successful, and the four men began their desperate journey to find the Spanish settlements in Mexico.
For the first few days they travelled very rapidly, fearing greatly lest the Indians should overtake them. They soon came to another Indian tribe, where they were kindly treated. From here they went on to another tribe, where they stayed eight months.
At this point, their social position, if such it may be called, was exalted beyond their wildest hopes, and they entered upon a career that probably has no parallel in all history. As far back as Cabeza's slave residence on Malhado island, he had on occasions been called upon to perform cures after the Indian fashion; he had done so with seeming reluctance, not dreaming of the tremendous power over the tribes which lay within his grasp. However, he and his friends had scarcely begun their journey towards civilization before the Indians forced this unexpected greatness upon them. “That same night of our arrival,” says Cabeza, “some Indians came to Castillo and told them they had great pain in the head, begging him to cure them. After he had made over them the sign of the cross, and commended them to God, they instantly said all pain had left, and went to their houses, bringing us prickly pears, with a piece of venison, a thing little known to us. As the report of Castillo's performances spread, many came to us that night sick, that we should heal them, each bringing a piece of venison, until the quantity of it became so great that we knew not where to dispose of it. We gave many thanks to God, for every day went on increasing his compassion and his gifts.” 2
New hopes were thus kindled, and the Spaniards continued with deliberate purpose the practice which had accidentally opened a new career to them. Their fame spread, and from this time forward their march was the progress of triumphant medicine men, often attended by hundreds, even thousands, says Cabeza. The Indians surrendered all their earthly possesions to these children of the sun, and served them as willing slaves. The sick were brought to them from far and near, and often they were importuned to go out of their way to relieve the afflicted. We must no doubt make some allowances for exaggeration in Cabeza's account, but on the whole he probably gives us a fair idea of what really happened. We find, for instance, when Coronado crossed the route of the wanderers, the Indians again brought their possessions to these other children of the sun, saying that in such fashion they had received the four whom we are following.
Our faith in the efficacy of Cabeza's cures, however, must stop at certain limits; it taxes our credulity too much when he tells of reviving the dead. As regards this, he says: “Coming near their huts, I perceived the sick man we went to heal was dead. Many persons were around him weeping, and his house was prostrate, a sign that one who dwelt in it is no more. When I arrived I found his eyes rolled up and the pulse gone, he having all the appearances of death. I removed a mat with which he was covered and supplicated the Lord fervently as I could that he would be pleased to give health to him and to the rest that might have need of it. After he had been blessed and breathed upon many times, they brought me his bow and gave me a basketful of pounded prickly pear. The next morning the report came that he who had been dead had got up whole and walked, had eaten and spoken to them. . . . This caused great wonder and fear and throughout the land the people talked of nothing else.” 3
In a very interesting chapter Cabeza also tells us of some of the queer customs of the tribes through which he passed. In one tribe, when a child died it was mourned for a whole year, the weeping beginning in the morning and lasting until sunset. If a brother or a husband died, none of that family would go in search of food for three months, but would starve to death if not provided for by the rest of the tribe. In war they were keen and vigilant. The warriors dug ditches in front of their huts, and lying down in them, completely covered themselves with brush and twigs. Thus concealed, they could do much damage. They drank a liquid, made by roasting a certain kind of leaf, upon which water was then poured. This had an intoxicating effect, and for three days at a time they would take nothing else. From the time it was ready to be used until it was consumed they cried continually, “Who wishes to drink, who wishes to drink?” When a woman heard this she stopped instantly whatever she was doing. If she moved, it was thought an evil spirit went into the liquid and it was thrown away and the woman was beaten with sticks. The mesquite bean, an important article of food with them, was prepared for eating in a peculiar manner. A hole was dug in the ground and in this the beans were placed and pounded with a club. Dirt and water were poured in on them and all stirred up together. Then the Indians gathered around and ate out of the hole. If it did not taste right, more dirt was stirred in.
Among these tribes Cabeza and his companions wandered for many days, always followed by a great number of Indians. On approaching a new tribe, the Indians came out to meet them, laying all their possessions at the Spaniards' feet. Cabeza then turned over these goods to his followers and dismissed them. The Indians who had thus given up all they possessed followed the white men to the next tribe, where they were reimbursed for their loss, and so on, indefinitely.
At last they came in sight of mountains. They travelled along the base of these for some little distance, and then struck inland. After traveling many days, they came to a village, on the banks of a very beautiful river. The people here lived on prickly pears and the nut of a certain kind of pine tree, the nut being beaten into balls when it was green, and when dry pounded into flour. “We left here,” says Cabeza, “and travelled through so many sorts of people, of such divers language that the memory fails to recall them.” Then they crossed a large river, coming from the north. 4 After crossing this river, their journey lay for some time through a desert, mountainous country, where they suffered much from hunger. Again they crossed a river, flowing from the north, and from this time many of the Indians sickened and died on account of the great privations. That the Spaniards survived is a matter of marvel. But from this time on they found fixed habitations and cultivated fields.
On desiring the Indians to take them on toward the west, they found them very reluctant to do so. However, on the Spaniards showing their displeasure, the savages yielded to their request, and, having sent out women as scouts, they went on.
From this time, they were loaded down with buffalo skins, and Cabeza called the people the Cow-Nation. 5 They lived largely on beans and calabashes. Whenever these people wished to cook anything, they heated large stones and dropped them into the half of a large calabash, which had been filled with water. When the water had been thus heated, whatever was to be cooked was dropped into it.
As they went on, food became more plentiful, and settled habitations more frequent. In one town they were presented with six hundred hearts of deer, on account of which they called the town Corazones. This town was the entrance into the South Sea provinces, or the provinces on the Gulf of California. While here the Spaniards saw on the neck of one of the Indians the buckle of a sword belt, to which a nail was fastened. It came, the Indians said, from white men, who wore beards, and who had gone to the south.
Hope rose in the hearts of the Spaniards. Were they at last near the Spanish settlements, or had these men been but passing explorers? But as they went on, they found the Indians fleeing on account of this party. The villages were deserted, the fields untilled. The people were living on the roots and barks of trees, and to a like means of subsistence Cabeza and his companions were forced to resort. A few days' journey more, and the tracks of the Christians were visible. They were in the neighborhood of a party of Spanish slave hunters. Day by day they gained upon them, and at last Cabeza, leaving the others some little distance behind, came up with four Spanish horsemen. They took him to their leader, and to him Cabeza told the story of his marvelous wanderings.
Through the influence of Cabeza, many of the Indians were persuaded to return to their villages and bring out food, which they had concealed. The slave hunters, unable to find the Indians, had been hard pressed. The Indians could not be persuaded to believe that Cabeza and his companions were also Spaniards, of whom they were very much afraid.
These Spaniards gave Cabeza two guides, who should lead them to the Spanish settlement. The guides, according to their orders, took them in such a way that they should not again see the Indians, whom the Spaniards, contrary to their promises, seized as soon as Cabeza had gone. All of Cabeza's party came near perishing from hunger and thirst, and many of them did. But at last they reached the town of San Miguel, April 1, 1536, the first Spanish settlement they had seen since they left Cuba, nearly ten years before. They stayed here some time, and letters written by them to the Spanish king have been of some value in determining their route. On the ninth of August, 1537, Cabeza de Vaca, having passed through almost incredible adventures, landed at Lisbon, Spain.
That four men should thus travel through an unexplored region is a matter of marvel, and as the first Europeans to traverse this country, their route a matter of great interest.
The only data for determining this is Cabeza's account, necessarily unreliable as to dates and definite information. It is a question that has excited great interest and one that has been discussed with widely varying results. To make positive assertions is under the circumstances impossible; to make approximate ones difficult. Were proof of this needed, it is conclusively shown in the fact that after careful study on the part of three or four of our great historians, Buckingham Smith, H. H. Bancroft, A. F. Bandelier, and others, men too well known to need comment, they have each settled on a different route.
We believe it is possible to determine definitely, at least within certain limits, two points in the route of the Spaniards. Cabeza's description mentions certain physical features of the country, and dwells particularly on the plant and animal life. Certain plants that he mentions, such as the cactus and the piñon, are characteristic of limited regions of our country, and it is from considerations of this kind that we have reached our conclusions.
The place where Cabeza met his friends was probably some point on the Colorado river a few miles above its mouth, where there was a walnut grove. This conclusion is based on the following data given by the Relation.
First, Cabeza says that he crosed four rivers shortly after leaving Malhado. We know that at least one of these flowed directly into the Gulf; for in crossing it one of the Spaniards' boats was carried out to sea. 6 From his description it is also perhaps a fair inference that the other three flowed directly in, as no bays are mentioned. There is only one locality on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico where even one river flows directly into the gulf without a bay. East and west of the Brazos, we can count four such streams, at distances varying slightly from those mentioned by the Spaniards. 7 These are Oyster creek, the Brazos, the San Bernard, and Caney creek.
Cabeza says that shortly after crossing the last river they came to a bay about a league wide, which he crossed, and a few miles up a river found his friends. As they were keeping close to the coast, they probably did not notice Matagorda bay until they had gone some distance down the peninsula of that name. This is one instance in which Cabeza's distances tally very closely with the facts. He says the bay which he crossed was a league wide, and Matagorda bay is uniformly about that wide. If he crossed this bay about half way down the peninsula, he landed in the vicinity of the Colorado. He does not say he was on a river; but we know he must have been from the fact that the Indians told him he would find other whites “up the river.”
Second, we know that when the Spaniards met they were in a few days travel of certain sand hills which were sufficiently high to be seen “from a distance at sea.” This we gather from the account afterwards given by the Spaniards. Some distance along the coast at the mouth of the Guadalupe are some very high sand hills standing seventy-five or eighty feet above the bay. 8 They form one of the most remarkable features of that coast, and the surroundings coincide very closely with the Spaniards' description. East of this point on the coast there are no sand mounds worthy of notice; west of it they are numerous but insignificant.
Third, according to Cabeza's account one of the most prominent characteristics of the country through which they travelled was the abundance of the prickly pear, the fruit of which constituted the chief food through a long part of the journey. 9 Six months after their meeting, the Spaniards were taken by the Indians some thirty leagues to where they gathered this fruit, and where they remained several months living upon it alone.
The Spaniards then must have met at some point about thirty leagues distant from the prickly pear region. The cactus is a
widely distributed plant occurring in the west, northwest and south-west of Texas and in many parts of Mexico, particularly in the northeast; the region, however, in which it grows in such abundance as to constitute a food plant is limited to the country west of the Guadalupe river. The region of abundant cactus where the Indians would be likely to congregate for the purpose of living on it begins about ninety or a hundred miles west of the spot we have settled upon.
10 The migration of the Indians to this cactus region was an annual occurrence.
Fourth, Cabeza says “Cattle came as far as here.” 11 The buffaloes in Texas, according to J. G. Shea and others, probably never ranged east of the Colorado, at least not in the southern part of the state. 12 The range extended from near the point we have reached westward and northward over the great elevated table land and the Llano Estacado. 13
The point where Cabeza met his friends, then, according to the narrative must have been a short distance west of four rivers that flowed directly into the Gulf without passing through bays; it must have been within a few days journey of sand hills on the coast which could be seen some distance at sea; it must have been within about thirty leagues of the prickly pear region; finally, it must have been near the eastern limit of the range of the buffalo. These conditions are all satisfied by the locality mentioned, viz: the vicinity of the mouth of the Colorado. No two of these, moreover, are satisfied by any other point on the Gulf coast.
Furthermore, if we are correct, some thirty or forty leagues east of the Colorado we are to look for the Island Malhado on which the boats were wrecked; to satisfy the conditions of the narrative, it must be some five leagues long by one wide. We at once think of Galveston island, which fits the description with a considerable degree of accuracy.
We have studied in this connection the routes proposed by three eminent historians, Buckingham Smith, H. H. Bancroft, and A. F. Bandelier. None of these seem to us in accordance with the facts given by the narrative. We confess we can not mark exactly the path of the wanderers; but we believe we have succeeded in fixing as definitely as may be done the limits in which certain conditions alluded to in the narrative can exist. Thus we so restrict the possible variation of their path as to get at least its general direction. It is by these same limitations of physical aspects and plant life that we expect to show the incorrectness of the other theories.
Buckingham Smith died before his revised translation was published, and it lacks the two maps by which he intended to show his idea of Cabeza's wanderings. His first theory was as follows: Cabeza started on his wanderings from somewhere near Mobile bay. The long sand island near the mouth of that bay he identified with Malhado. From here, he thought, Cabeza went to Mussel Shoals on the Tennessee river, thence across the Mississippi to the junction of the Arkansas and Canadian. Then up the Canadian through New Mexico to the Pacific near the Gulf of California. 14
Everything in the narrative goes to show that the Spaniards could not have been east of the Mississippi after their shipwreck. Mr. Smith is the only one of those who have written on the subject who ever held this opinion. In the first place, it is almost certain had Cabeza crossed a stream of such magnitude, he would have described it in terms admitting of no misconstruction; still we can not be positive that he would have done so. But he does not mention crossing a single river, after starting on his inland journey, where it was necessary to use a raft. But he does call some rivers very large, which they were able to cross, the water coming only as high as the breast.
But there is abundant disproof of this view without reference to the Mississippi. It would be impossible to find the four rivers, or the cactus in the vicinity of Mobile. All the rivers in that region flow through bays before entering the Gulf. If there is any cactus in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, it is only in isolated bunches, and could not be looked upon as a food plant. Mr. Smith himself afterwards abandoned this theory, and in his last edition inclined to the view that Cabeza crossed Texas from the neighborhood of Espiritu Santo bay. 15
Bancroft says the meeting place of the Spaniards was the Espiritu Santo bay, in Texas. 16 But he simply makes the assertion, without giving the reasons which led him to adopt it. In fact, he is very brief on the whole subject of Cabeza de Vaca, dismissing it with a few pages.
A. F. Bandelier, whose reputation as an archaeologist gives his statements more importance than those of the two historians mentioned above, thinks the four wanderers started from some point in Western Louisiana or Eastern Texas. On his map he makes it the coast region around Sabine lake. The wrecking of the boats, he says, took place near the Mississippi delta. The only reason he gives for this conclusion is a rather indeterminate one. He thinks he can positively identify a certain point farther along in Cabeza's narrative. He then counts the rivers the Spaniards have crossed and identifies them with Texas rivers. Thus he gets back to the starting point. 17
We object to Mr. Bandelier's reasoning, first on this very point. If we take a definite point in western Texas and Mexico and count a certain number of rivers to the east, we will arrive at different results according as we cross the northern or southern part of the State. That is, we would cross more rivers near the coast. But we do not think Mr. Bandelier's theory will hold for other reasons.
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First, it is too remote from the cactus region, whose limits we have already mentioned.
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Second, it does not agree with Cabeza's statement about the buffaloes. They probably did not range so far east.
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Third, we can not reconcile Sabine lake region with the description of the four rivers which were crossed just after leaving Malhado. There is not even one river, as we have already stated, anywhere near Sabine lake, east or west, which flows directly into the Gulf. We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that the Spaniards were never in the vicinity of Sabine lake.
But in proceeding with the discussion, conclusions are not so safely drawn. There is only one other point to which we feel we can safely assign any definite location. This is the southern portion of New Mexico or the western portion of Texas. This opinion is based on the following facts, taken from the Relation. Cabeza thus refers to a tree, the nut of which was used by the Indians for food. “There are in that country small pines, and the cones of these are like little eggs; moreover, the seeds are better than those of Castile, for they have very thin shells.” 18 Elsewhere, the trees are thus described by the Spaniards: “And they gave them a great number of pine nuts as good and better than those of Castile, for they have shells of such nature that they eat them with the rest of the nut; the cones of these are very small, and the trees thick in those mountain ridges in quantities.” 19 Compare with these descriptions the botanical description of the pinus edulis: “A low, round-topped tree, six to nine metres high; cones subglobose, five centimetres long; seeds brown, wingless, and edible. In mountains of western Texas and westward.” 20 The shell of this nut is so thin that it may be easily eaten “con lo demas.”
These three descriptions coincide so nearly that there can scarcely exist a doubt that the piñion of Cabeza is the pinus edulis of New Mexico and Western Texas. 21 The region in which this pine grows covers nearly all of New Mexico; but is found in Texas only on the mountains west of the Pecos river. 22 This indicates that Cabeza and his friends mush have been at least as far north as these mountains; that is, nearly as far north as the litutude of El Paso. 23
Furthermore, there is evidence of the strongest character that the Spaniards crossed the route traversed only a few years later by Coronado, which, according to the monograph of George Parker Winship, published in the fourteenth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology, at no point east of the Rio Grande extended further south than the 35th parallel. If this be true, Cabeza must have been well up in central New Mexico. The evidence on which this assertion is based is an extract from the narrative of Pedro de Castañeda, who accompanied Coronado on this expedition. It reads as follows: “The general sent Don Rodrigo Maldonado with his company forward from here. He traveled four days and reached a large ravine like those of Colima, in the bottom of which he found a large settlement of people. Cabeza and Dorantes had passed through here, so they presented Don Rodrigo with a pile of tanned skins and other things, and a tent as big as a house. * * * When the general came up with the army and saw the great quantity of deer skins, he thought he would divide them among his men and placed the guard so they could look at them. But when the men arrived and saw the general sending some of the men with orders for the guards to give them some of the skins, and that these were going to select the best, they were angry because they were not going to be divided evenly, and made a rush, and in less than a quarter of an hour nothing was left but the empty ground. The natives who happened to see this also took a hand. The women and some others were left crying, because they thought that the strangers were not going to take anything, but would bless them, as Cabeza and Dorantes had done when they passed through here.” 24
It will be remembered that the Indians who followed Cabeza and his friends were so thoroughly under his influence that they surrendered to him all their earthly goods, and even dared not eat or drink until he had given them permission. When Coronado appeared, their remembrance of the four caused the Indians to act as above. Certainly, then, Coronado met at least one tribe that had seen Cabeza. But might that tribe not have seen him at another place further south? This is possible. Castañeda, however, when he wrote the passage quoted above, evidently believed and explicitly stated that such was not the case, but that “Cabeza and Dorantes had passed through here.”
But in tracing their route from the starting point to this place, we meet with difficulties. After traveling for some time from the cactus region, Cabeza says they came in sight of mountains. Most probably they were going up the San Antonio river, which flows down through the cactus region. This river has its source in the hills which form the southern limit of the Edwards plateau. These, it would seem, would be the first “mountains” of which he speaks. At this point, however, Cabeza states that they are still near the coast, within fifteen leagues.
Furthermore, after traveling along the plains at the foot of the hills, and inland some fifty leagues, they find themselves in the piñon region. The distance from the Colorado to the piñon region of New Mexico is more than twice as great as that given by Cabeza. This is one difficulty we have not been able to conquer. The fact remains, however, that he ate the pine nuts and came near the route subsequently followed by Coronado, and so must have been as far north as New Mexico. These facts we regard as fundamental, and matters of time and distance, recorded many months afterwards, must yield to them when found in conflict. 25
It must be remembered that the Spaniards were without means of carrying water, so their route was necessarily determined by natural water courses and a due regard for the food supply. The most favorable route, then, from the San Antonio or Guadalupe river, where they probably ate the prickly pear, to New Mexico, would be up the San Antonio river to the escarpment of Edwards plateau, thence west across the various creeks which run into the Nueces to the Pecos; then up the Pecos to the first rivers flowing into it from the west, which would offer the wanderers an opportunity to cross the desert mountains to the Rio Grande.
The probability that this was the route pursued is further strengthened by the fact that the Indians were conversant with the least difficult ways of passing from one tribe to another, and would so direct these men, who, in the eyes of the savages, had become little less than gods. Such a route we believe they pursued.
But another difficulty arises here: they do not mention ascending a river before reaching the piñon region, which is an omission hard to account for. Still, the fact remains that it would be an impossibility to reach the piñon region without carrying large quantities of water, unless they did ascend some river. 26
Still another difficulty confronts us. After leaving the tribe where they first found piñones they traveled an unrecorded distance, then crossed a great river coming from the north. Then, again, crossed thirty leagues of plain, or most probably went up the valley of some tributary from the west, then traveled fifty leagues of desert mountains to another great river. The descriptions given in the Relation fit the Pecos-Rio Grande country in southern New Mexico or Western Texas with a considerable degree of accuracy. But if that is the country described, it would transfer the piñon region to the east of the Pecos, which is not in accordance with the facts. 27
But since other data also identify this New Mexico region, we feel justified in still maintaining that his route lay in that country. The piñones, buffalo range, and Coronado's expedition, are facts so essential in this discussion that we can not set them aside for facts less essential.
Bancroft believes that, after leaving Espiritu Santo bay, the Spaniards went northward, following the general course of the Colorado river as far as San Saba. From here they went westward to the Pecos, and crossed it very near the southern boundary of New Mexico. From this point, Bancroft's description is marked by a great deal of uncertainty. He suggests two routes. One goes southwestward to the Rio Grande near the mouth of the Conchos; then up the Conchos some distance; thence across the mountains to the Yaqui, and down that and the coast to Culiacan. The other route proceeds from the Pecos due west along the southern boundary line of New Mexico to the Rio Grande near El Paso; thence almost along the United States boundary line to the upper waters of the Sonora; from here down the coast to Culiacan. 28
The theory advanced by Bancroft, at least the one which takes Cabeza very close to New Mexico, is the most reasonable one so fas as published. It is, however, exasperating that no reasons are given for the positions taken. The great objection to the route is that in following up the Colorado the Spaniards are kept out of the cactus region until they strike the Pecos. Then, too, the country from San Saba mountains west to the Pecos is dry and barren and almost impassable. It is, therefore, unlikely that they crossed it. Both routes suggested by Bancroft are, perhaps, a little too far south to pass through the edible pine region; and through this we feel sure they passed. 29 The hypothesis that they went from the Pecos to the mouth of the Conchos and up that river is entirely untenable, as it would keep them out of the piñon region. 30 Both routes are also too far south to agree with Castañeda's statement that Coronado crossed Cabeza's path in New Mexico.
We have already shown that Bandelier blundered in making Sabine bay the meeting place of the Spaniards. We believe that in his suggestion of the latter part of the route he has settled upon the impossible. He states that the Spaniards crossed the Trinity not far from the coast, thence westward to the Brazos, and up that stream for a considerable distance. Crossing this, they journeyed to the neighborhood of San Saba, where they crossed the Colorado. Then turning southwestward, he believes they crossed the Rio Grande near its junction with the Pecos. The line of march from here follows the bend of the Rio Grande to the mouth of the Conchos, thence to the mountain region westward and southward to San Miguel. 31
As we have said, there are well-founded objections to this route.
First, he excludes the Spaniards from the great prickly pear region. This plant is not to be found along the route thus marked out in sufficient quantities to serve as a food supply.
Second, if Cabeza's route lay so far to the south, Coronado would probably never have heard of him on his journey.
Third, the passage along the bend of the Rio Grande was an absolute impossibility. From the Conchos to the Pecos, the Rio Grande does not receive a single tributary, and flows through a series of rocky cañons, often as deep as two thousand feet. 32 When the boundary line between Mexico and the United States was first surveyed, long detours were made to avoid the difficulties of this route. 33 It is hardly probable that Cabeza, without any means of transportation, should have attempted this route, where not a drop of water was to be had.
From the piñon region in New Mexico, or Western Texas, somewhere reasonably near the path of Coronado, to the settlements in Mexico, we are not yet prepared to definitely locate the route of the four wanderers. Perhaps they reached the upper course of the Gila and followed that river until they could cross to the watered country to the south; or perhaps they found their way more directly to the south. Of this, we shall have more to say on another occasion.
In conclusion, we believe we have established the following points:
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First, Cabeza met his friends, after their long separation, somewhere near the mouth of the Colorado. This is the only place on the Gulf coast which satisfies all the conditions given in the Relation: (1) It is about thirty leagues from the great cactus region; (2) it is within a few days' journey from a group of sandhills seventy-five feet high, an uncommon feature on the Texas coast; (3) the buffalo range extended to this point, and probably no farther; (4) there are four large streams, east of Matagorda bay, which flow directly into the Gulf.
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Second, he passed through the southern part of New Mexico, and probably ascended the Pecos or Rio Grande to near the central part. This we believe, (1) because the piñon region does not extend into Texas beyond the Guadalupe mountains, and we know that Cabeza traveled many days north after entering this region; 34 (2) there is also positive evidence that Coronado, who did not come farther south than the 35th parallel, found traces of Cabeza and his friends.
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Third, between these two points, he probably followed the natural route indicated on the map. The evidence as to the exact route is not so conclusive, and the results not so positive as it is in regard to the two points mentioned above. But these seem to fix the general direction of the route, and nothing is found in the narrative which is contradictory; but, on the other hand, much of the description serves to strengthen this conclusion and render it fairly probable.
Ladies, Fellow-Citizens, and Brother Masons:
The wisdom, no less than the goodness and mercy, of Almighty God, are eminently exhibited in the varied and numberless forms in which the solemn thought of death is presented to, and withdrawn from, our consideration. It is continually before us, yet ever absent from us. Decay and death are written upon every falling leaf and faded flower, while every joyous spring-time, every bright rosebud that lifts its gilded petals to the morning sun, speaks to us of life—hopeful, expansive, unending life. Were it otherwise, and were the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the cares and delights, the ambitions and disappointments of this life the only objects which claimed our attention, or awakened our interest, we should be but illy prepared for the great change which is to sever our connection with all of them; while, on the other hand, were the pathway of our terrestrial pilgrimage entirely walled in with tombs, and spectres and winding sheets, were all our wreaths of laurel transmuted into wreaths of cypress—the atmosphere of our being would be so overcast with gloom, our reflections would take such pallid and sombre hues, that we could never fulfill the practical duties of life; we could never consummate the useful, benevolent and glorious purposes to which, in the economy of the Grand. Artificer of the Universe, we have been dedicated. Truly, we should say with the Royal Psalmist of Israel, “Oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!”
Yet it is strangely and remarkably true that, amid the equal distribution of attractions to life and memorials of death, men are prone, with a perversity nearly amounting to madness, to reject or postpone all considerations of the latter. While we know that the dazzling visions and alluring pleasures of time are but transient—that they must end at the dark valley and shadow which connects it with endless futurity — it is wonderful that we fasten all our thoughts, affections and cares about them, with ligatures than can not be dissevered until rudely broken, and with energies exhausted, and spirits broken down in their pursuit, leave to
“* * * a day, an hour, The vast concerns of an Eternal scene.”
In the impressive language of the Masonic burial service, “notwithstanding the various mementoes of mortality with which we daily meet—notwithstanding death has established his empire over all the works of nature, yet through some unaccountable infatuation we forget that we are born to die.” But if there be a future—and who, that feels the spontaneous throbbings of immortality in the soul which God has breathed into him, can doubt it?—if there be a future, we shall have no ground to complain that this important and serious change came upon us without previous warning. No; we shall rather reproach ourselves with our inexcusable neglect of the many admonitions which were given us, for they hang thick upon every column that supports this vestibule of Eternity. We are reminded that we must die by every tree that falls, and every blade of grass that dies — by the desolate cities, ruined palaces, fallen columns, overgrown gardens, and broken-down walls, which make up the pages of history—by the ten thousand monuments which overlay the bones of Earth's renowned ones, and herald what they were, or “what they should have been”—by the ten thousand times ten thousand more unmarked graves, to whose occupants the “tribes that tread the earth” “are but a handful”—by the “pestilence that walketh in darkness,” from before which our brother-men fall, as grass before the reaper's scythe—by the pale forehead, the wan cheek, the sunken eye, the hectic cough and stooped form of our fellow-beings who walk among us. We are to-day most forcibly reminded of it by the absence from among us of our distinguished fellow-citizen, our friend, our neighbor, our brother, James Pinckney Henderson, whom, if integrity of character and purity of purpose, if the confidence of his friends and neighbors, the admiration of his fellow-citizens, the respect of his senatorial peers, the attachment of his brethren of the “mystic tie,” and the love of an affectionate family, could have retained on earth, “he had not died.”
Gen. Henderson was born in Lincoln county, North Carolina, on the 31st March, 1809. He descended from an ancient, an honorable, family. His father was a prominent leader of the Federal party, and his name is yet much revered by the older citizens of the “old North State.” I have not been able to collect as many incidents of the early life of Gen. Henderson as I desired, or as I could have done had more time been allowed. In his boyhood a strong affection for his mother was manifested—a development which is discernible in the character of most distinguished men. His mother having once been asked if he had not been refractory, replied: “No, some of my other boys were headstrong, but Pinckney was always a good boy.” As a youth he was far more than ordinarily intelligent, and gave promise of the brilliant career he afterwards attained. He was a student for several years at the University of Chapel Hill. He studied law, and was admitted to practice in North Carolina before he was twenty-one years of age. While preparing for his profession, his application was most intense; for, as he himself has told me, he often studied eighteen out of the twenty-four hours. Such injudicious labor injured his constitution, and, it is to be feared, laid the foundation of the fatal disease from which he never entirely recovered. At the age of twenty-two he was appointed aid-de-camp, with the rank of major, to Maj. Gen. A. McDorrett, of the Fifth Division of the Militia of North Carolina, and later was elected colonel of a militia regiment.
In the autumn of the year 1835, Gen. Henderson removed from North Carolina to Mississippi, and having settled in Madison county, in that State, commenced the practice of law with the brightest prospects for success. He had, however, not more than located himself in his new home, when the struggles of the then province of Texas to throw off a degrading and oppressive pupilage, begun to attract the attention and enlist the sympathy of the noble and generous in every land. As I have observed before in speaking of him, he at once resolved to make the Lone Star the star of his destiny. In the spring of the year 1836, he aided in raising a company of volunteers in Mississippi for service in Texas. He came to Texas himself in 1836, reaching here before that company. Soon after his arrival, he was commissioned by the them President, David G. Burnet, to return to the United States, and recruit for the Texas army. One company raised in North Carolina was brought to Texas at his own expense. Gen. Henderson returned to Texas in November, 1836, and so soon as he arrived at the seat of government was appointed by President Houston Attorney General of the Republic, which position he held until the month of December following, when he was appointed Secretary of State, that office having become vacant by the death of the venerated and lamented Stephen F. Austin.
In the early part of the year 1837, Gen. Henderson was appointed minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary from the Republic of Texas to France and England. He was commissioned to solicit the recognition of the Independence of Texas, and was invested with plenary powers as ambassador, also to conclude treaties of amity and commerce. During his term of service the independence of Texas was recognized by both England and France. Amid the brilliant array of statesmen and diplomatists, which is always presented at the courts of St. Cloud and St. James, and which, at that time, too, was adorned by talent of the first order from both continents, our worthy and lamented senator commanded respect for his fidelity to the objects of his mission, and esteem for the sincerity and true nobility of his nature. He acquired for Texas—then weak and with difficulty maintaining a bare existence as a separate nationality—a position of respectability and dignity. Texas should ever be grateful for his services, and proud of her adopted son. His success as minister is one of the strongest evidences of the native superiority of his mind. He was only in the twenty-ninth year of his age when he negotiated commercial treaties between two of the greatest governments of the world, and the then infant Republic, without money, resources, armies or navies; in short, with nothing but the justice of her cause and the favor of Heaven. None but a mind of the greatest vigor, and a soul of the highest firmness, one which could not be discouraged by disappointments, or driven back by obstacles, could have succeeded in the delicate and difficult mission with which he was charged.
It is proper to state that Gen. Henderson, on all occasions, in public and private, expressed without reserve his sense of obligation to Gen. Cass for valuable aid in accomplishing the objects of his mission in France. Mr. Cass was then the resident minister from the United States at the French court. He was not only interested in the fate of Texas, but was attracted toward Henderson by his talents, and his noble manly bearing. From him Gen. Henderson frequently received distinguished attention, and often shared his confidence. The good opinion of that eminent and venerable statesman, thus early acquired, was never lost. Not more than two years since some citizens of Texas in Washington City were speaking in his presence of the probable election of Gen. Henderson to the United States Senate, when he expressed his warmest gratification at the intelligence, and spoke of him in the highest terms of commendation and friendship.
While in Paris Gen. Henderson became acquainted with Miss Frances Cox, of Philadelphia, who was residing in that city with her father, Mr. John Cox. Mr. Cox was then in Paris for the purpose of educating his children, two daughters and a son. Gen. Henderson and Miss Frances were married in October, 1839, in the city of London. Mrs. Henderson lived for sixteen years in our village, and her intelligence and private worth are well known and appreciated by our citizens. Her loss calls forth our deepest sympathy; but private grief, while it is great, is sacred from public intrusion.
General Henderson returned from France to Texas in the beginning of 1840, and was everywhere welcomed by the warm gratulations of his countrymen. At Galveston a complimentary dinner and ball were given him; invitations to accept public demonstrations of