Читать книгу The History of Texas - Robert A. Calvert - Страница 65

As one would expect, the number of towns in Texas increased–from three in 1821 to twenty‐one by 1835–most of them inhabited by the Anglo newcomers. The principal towns included San Felipe de Austin, in Stephen F. Austin’s first colony, Gonzales, in Green DeWitt’s grant, Velasco, on the Brazos (near present‐day Freeport), and Matagorda, on the mouth of the Colorado River. Figure 3.5 shows the settlements in 1836 by ethnicity.

For all Texans, life consisted of a battle for survival, largely against the same odds the pobladores had faced before 1821. Basic goods such as clothing, blankets, and footwear were not readily available in Texas, but many immigrants had known enough to bring such items with them. Material for homemade apparel came either from animal skins or from cloth made on spinning wheels, devices some people had managed to import. Necessarily, the colonists used local resources such as stones, mud, or timber to construct log cabins or other types of shelter that ordinarily consisted of no more than two rooms (with dirt floors). Pioneers similarly lived off the land, hunted wild game, fished, planted small gardens, and gathered natural produce such as nuts and berries.

Figure 3.5 Ethnic settlements, 1836. Terry G. Jordan, “A Century and a Half of Ethnic Change in Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 89 (April 1986).

Courtesy Texas State Historical Association, Austin, Texas.

Anglos managed to convert parts of their grants into farmsteads, though agriculture as a gainful enterprise in Texas developed sluggishly. Early on, farming earned one barely the minimum standard of living, but by the late 1820s, cash‐crop farming in Austin’s colony and sections of East Texas began to reap better rewards. With slaves and imported technology at their disposal, some Anglos planted and processed cotton for new markets outside the province. One prominent scholar estimates that Anglos’ farms by 1834 shipped about 7000 bales of cotton (to New Orleans) valued at some $315,000.

Because hard currency did not circulate in the province, people bartered to obtain needed commodities and services, using livestock, otter and beaver pelts, and even land to complete their transactions. Improvising, Anglos found numerous ways to earn an income, among them smuggling. The tariff laws that exempted Anglo products during the 1820s had not applied to all imports (generally, codes excluded household goods and implements), so Anglos brought merchandise illegally into Texas. From there, some even brazenly shipped the products south to Mexican states or west to New Mexico.

Goods moving out of the province included corn, the skins of deer and bears, salted meats, and even timber from East Texas. The latter enterprise amounted to little more than a local activity undertaken to meet the needs of the people around Nacogdoches, but some of the lumber found its way to buyers as far away as Matamoros.

To further their education, the foreigners established numerous schools in the 1820s and 1830s. They patterned the schools after institutions similar to ones they had known in the southern United States. Private enterprise provided the funds for children’s education (public schooling did not exist during that era), both at the elementary and secondary levels. Older students attended academies or boarding schools, which were private institutions established by religious groups, local residents, immigrant teachers (often women) of certain communities who wanted a place in which to practice their profession, or by individuals seeking a profit. In Texas, education suffered the limitations of the frontier. Instructors were never plentiful, private homes usually had to serve as makeshift educational facilities, and schoolhouses, where they existed, were often little more than simple structures constructed from pine logs. Colonists who could afford to do, so sent their children to schools in the United States.

Printing in Texas had started in the 1810s with the first and probably the only issue of La Gaceta de Tejas, printed to spread republican ideas that might help Mexico liberate itself from Spain. But the first successful press in Texas was established in 1829 in Austin’s colony by Godwin Brown Cotten. His newspaper, named the Texas Gazette, served Austin in his determination to assure the host country of Anglo American loyalty and to remind the colonists of the gratitude they owed to Mexico. The Gazette ceased publication in 1832, but other papers continued to spread the news to Anglo Texans.

Although Anglos had agreed to observe the Catholic religion in order to qualify as Mexican citizens, the Church neglected them because of, among other things, a shortage of priests. Hence, many Anglo settlers held illicit church services and (religious) camp meetings. Lacking priests, the people in Austin’s colony conducted their own civil ceremonies when necessary, though in 1831 and 1832 the Irish‐born Father Michael Muldoon did tend to the community as the resident clergyman. He reported the colonists as faithful to Catholicism, but he wed couples who had already been living together outside of church‐sanctioned marriages. For a brief time after 1834, the settlers did not have to be so cautious about their religious practices, for the state government conceded them freedom of conscience.

Anglos defended themselves by organizing local militias, ready volunteer companies authorized by the Mexican government as alternatives to standing armies. These were necessary, given the government’s inability to provide the settlers adequate protection. In 1825, the garrisons at San Antonio and Goliad had only fifty‐nine men; by 1832, the government had managed to raise that number to about 140, but only half of these Texas soldiers were formally prepared for military action. Unlike Austin’s, most of the colonies failed to establish their own militia as was prescribed by law. Instead, they relied on volunteer companies of a temporary nature; such units evolved into the Texas Rangers, so organized in July 1835.