Sam Houston: A Legacy of Lost Loves

Maybe there was a good reason why Sam looked so sad...

Sam Houston was a son of fortune on the battlefield. But he may have been the most unlucky of men in relationships. He fought bravely and was wounded for life for his beloved mentor General Andrew Jackson against the Creek Indians, only to become a political pariah in Washington. He was married to a beautiful young woman named Eliza Allen in Tennessee whom he unexplainably divorced soon after. He had been elected Governor of Tennessee only to resign in awkward controversy and with threats on his life... by his in-laws! And his trail of tears did not end there.

Houston fled to the Indian Territory, where he took up with the Cherokees. The Cherokees were part of a loose network of Native Americans, known to us as the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes.” There in modern day Arkansas he drank his troubles away and hid for awhile from civilization. As a young man he had lived with the Indians and learned their ways, and had been adopted into the tribe. He adapted quickly to life in the wilderness. About an eighth Cherokee, tall and statuesque Tiana (Talihina) Rodgers Gentry was the half-sister of two Cherokee chiefs, and niece to Cherokee Principal Chief John Jolly and related to the famous founder of Cherokee alphabet, Sequoyah. She became Tiana Houston in 1830. It is thought by many that Tiana was Houston's romantic interest before the Cherokee removal from Tennessee. Near Fort Gibson She ran his trading post known as Wigwam Neosho, and oversaw his interests while he drank hard- and occasionally fought in Washington D.C. for her people. 

 Sam Houston loved the arabesque attire worn by the Cherokees, and drove his detractors crazy with his Indian garb while in Washington D.C.....

Houston's earliest biographers chose to skim over this period in General Sam's life. In fact they often somehow forgot to mention Tiana, his legendary "Cherokee" wife. What could have been so bad about Houston finding love in his darkest hour? In fact those writers probably discovered and tried to avoid a scandalous harem left in the Arkansas Territory, of Native American wives that Texans even today will squirm at.

It was during these years in obscurity when Sam Houston may have woven his most intricate if not tangled web of influence. Houston was a very tall, commanding figure, and known as a powerful warrior from his days of fighting under Jackson against their sometime adversaries, the Creeks. Many historians still contend that Houston may have been assembling an Indian army as a U.S. Agent, intending to invade and secure Texas from Mexico using Native American mercenaries. Either way, Sam Houston became the great white hope for the civilized tribes. Houston refused to speak English, dressed and survived like an Indian. And he still had powerful medicine, especially able to fight in Washington for Native American causes and win the undying devotion of the Cherokees, and perhaps other tribes in their alliance.

 

Bye and bye, and certainly on schedule according to conspiracy theorists, Sam Houston left his idyllic life with the Indians, and followed his star into Texas, where his associations with the Indians would pay off later. He last saw Tiana, (actually Talahina) or Diana Houston at Fort Towson, when he left his adopted Cherokee homeland on a mysterious mission; The liberation of Texas. At the time he supposedly planned for his Cherokee spouse to join him, but she never did... and there may have been good reasons.

Incredibly, he would never mention Tiana or even bother to obtain a legal divorce from her. They had been married and separated according to Indian law. As far as what has been written about them for over a century, there was no issue out of this relationship. Whatever it meant to General Sam, it was in the past. Records show that she later remarried, so it may not be true that she waited faithfully and died of a a broken heart, as the legend goes...

 

But certain clues have emerged over the decades that shed light on Sam Houston's lost Indian loves. It is very possible, maybe even probable that he had other Native American “wives” during that time, from other tribes, as was Native American custom. This is nothing that the Houston family ever publicly acknowledged, but some Native Americans did, and did so discreetly, as they found the reality of it less useful than their white kinsmen. Here are the intriguing facts, and stubborn conclusions about Sam Houston's “lost” loves...

Texans take so much about the amazing Sam Houston for granted. He was the Governor of two states in the United States, a president of Texas, a hero of the War of 1812 and the commanding general in Texas Revolution. At the pinnacle of his illustrious career, he was impeached as the Texas Governor because he refused to join the madness of secession, the Confederacy and war against his beloved mother country. He died rejected and hated by many Texans. His legacy of lost loves is almost impossible to comprehend. That may be why so few have asked some obvious questions...

Like: Who was Talahina Rodgers? Who were the Alabama and Coushatta Indians, and why were they somehow overlooked when Texans routed and expunged all other Native Americans under President Lamar? All Indians but the Alabamas and the Coushattas, their kinsmen, relative newcomers to Texas themselves, were completely removed from Texas. But the Alabamas and Coushattas were eventually given a reservation and promises that were sort of kept. What kind of deal had they made? Who made it? Why and how was it enforced to this very day? Why did all of the Indian tribes trust Sam Houston so much, and why could he secure peace with them when nobody else could?

I believe that these and other questions that spring from these questions can be answered by Houston's Indian alliances and possible clandestine marriages while in Indian Territory. There are some intriguing possibilities. Prominent Indians from at least two different tribes have passed on traditions that they were “blood brothers” of Sam Houston. Indians either gave or took his name out of admiration, such as Sam Houston Benge, Houston Shaw, Samuel Houston Smith and Samuel Houston Mayes. Houston may have been the most admired and loved white man to ever mingle among the Five Civilized Tribes.

Cherokee Chief Bowles gave one of his daughters to Houston. This marriage was actually witnessed and recorded by Samuel Maverick. A Wichita woman named Melissa Houston claimed to be Sam Houston's wife as well.

Some of the research that brought these “native sons” to light was done by Dr. Joseph B. Mahan. A vastly pedigreed academic, Dr. Mahan wrote a fascinating book called North American Sun Kings, which fleshed out the complex inter-tribal alliances between the Civilized Tribes, and the religious and cultural core of their kinships. In his book Dr. Mahan reveals the mysteries of the ancient Shawano belief system, as understood by the Yuchi tribe, which included priest-kings and royal families and some mysteries very akin to that of the Masonic Order.

Like the Levites of old, the Yuchi Kings had priests who knew their genealogies going back many, many generations. The Yuchi were the priest class of the civilized tribes, embodied by the Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Creek and Chickasaw tribes. Yuchi shamans were the official keepers of the eternal sacred fire for all the woodland tribes.

When Sam Houston met with these people, he no doubt would have recognized their significance and the similarity of their beliefs to ancient Judaism. He was perceived by them as a noble among nobles, and as he fraternized with many chiefs in the region, he no doubt was honored in many ways that would have been lost on the average Nineteenth Century person. And he may have been inducted into a secret Indian society known as the “Great Medicine Society,” and sealed these relationships through extra marriages. Dr. Mahan interviewed at length one such Yuchi chief, Samuel W. Brown Jr, who had no doubt that he was a grandson of Sam Houston.

Samuel W. Brown Sr., Chief of the Yuchi, always claimed Sam Houston as his real father.

Chief Brown unveiled to Dr. Mahan an elaborate network of spiritual tradition and practice, carried for centuries through many related tribes, from the Great Lakes region to the Smoky Mountains and later to Texas and Oklahoma. Dr. Mahan wrote everything down that Chief Brown said, and then spent the rest of his life trying to understand it all. In the midst of all of the mystic language and complicated tribal relationships, stood the unapologetic fact that Chief Brown was descended from General Sam Houston.

His father, Sam Brown Sr., had been born in Van Buren, Arkansas, in 1833, the son of a Yuchi princess from Alabama, named Suttah. Also known as Polly, she was a direct descendant of the famous Emperor Brim; the daughter of the Yuchi Sun King Timpoochee Barnard. Suttah was also the sister of two prominent Yuchi subchiefs, Tisoso and Fushudgee, both “Birdtail Kings.” All of them were grandchildren of "Cusseta" (Koasati/Coushatta) Birdtail Kings. They were royalty, at the top of their social order.

A fierce Yuchi partisan and statesman, Tisoso was hung by whites in Girard, Alabama in 1836, after Sam Houston had gone to Texas. He and his brothers had petitioned the Secretary of War, attempting to stop “the fraud being practiced upon our people.” These were the purportedly short-lived Indian brother's-in-law of Sam Houston and the uncles of Sam Brown Sr., who was of noble Yuchi blood and served as Yuchi principal chief for almost 50 years. His mother, Princess Suttah was murdered in 1861 by some of Quantrell's Raiders in Oklahoma during the Civil War. Fushudgee was killed the next year fighting under Creek Chief Opethleyoholo at Pea Ridge.

The fact that Sam Houston was the Senior Brown's father was a mere fact, nothing to be proud of, in fact it was rarely mentioned. In Creek and Yuchi tradition, royalty was passed down through the females, as in ancient Hebrew custom. Other Creek customs were unusual if not quite liberal to our Western, Victorian standards. Creek girls were expected to be sexually active before marriage. These were matrilocal societies, where polygamy was common, and chiefs encouraged favored candidates to bed with their daughters. Mixed-blood was actually desired. To add to the genetic pool of confusion, the Creeks were also exogamous, forbidding the marriage of individuals within the clan. Sam Houston would have been almost incidental to Sam Brown Jr.'s story, since his power and authority came through his grandmother Suttah. Still, Brown Sr. had admitted to his son that “...My father Sam Houston made two crops- and I rode on the horse's back...”

 Samuel W. "Billy" Brown Jr.

Billy Brown looked more like Sam Houston than his father did.

Old Chief Brown's contention that he was somehow spawned by General Sam Houston has its problems. It is doubtful that Houston made “two crops”... unless this was a euphemism for two conjugal visits, or even two children. Perhaps he might have once met Sam Houston later and “rode the horse's back,” the “horse” better translating into English as sire. Sam Brown was born in June of 1833, after Sam Houston abandoned his “Cherokee” wife Tiana and bought over 4000 acres on Karankawa Bay in Texas. In October, Nine months before, was exactly when Houston had settled his accounts and given the trading post and slaves to Tiana, and left forever. Intriguingly, Chief Brown would have to have been conceived during this last return to the Indian Territory and right before Sam Houston's legendary departure to Texas. So even though this relationship seems sketchy and improbable, it could have happened.

Houston filed his claim at San Felipe as a married man. If he had multiple wives in the Indian territory, he faced a real cultural dilemma. Which wife would he bring to Texas?

 Several Native American women insisted to their deaths that they were once wives of the famous Texan, and bore him children. This was nothing to brag about, as Texans were generally despised by Indians. Later the confusion led skeptics to allege that even youngest son Temple was one of the Indian offspring.

Houston did go back and forth in the early months of his adventure, offering opportunity for a tryst while reporting on his progress with the Comanches to American authorities. The Comanches were considered by the Americans as a possible natural military barrier to the Mexicans if they would cooperate, and Houston effectively placated them. If Houston had so many neglected and jealous lovers awaiting him back in the Indian Territory, no wonder dealing with Comanches seemed like a reasonable if not safer endeavor!

Sam Brown Sr. seemed to suggest that Sam Houston lived with his mother Suttah for at least two years, since “he made two crops.” He also suggests that he rode on the plow horse used on their farm, when just a toddler. It is not absurd to imagine this scenario, when we consider Houston's chronic alcoholism and escapism, and his popularity with the Cherokees. But a farmer he wasn't. Whatever strange fiefdom Houston had created, he could not sustain it.

 This portrait of Sam Houston reveals the similarity between Billy Brown and his alleged grandfather. Even Brown's daughter has Houston's eyes.

And there may have been a second, older son from this union, or a cousin or "half brother" out of an aunt of Brown's. No dates are known for a brother of Sam Brown's, but in the 1840's Brown's so-called “half brother” was kidnapped by the Osages, to be raised as one of their future chiefs! Houston had been instrumental in negotiating a successful and effective Treaty between the Osages and Creeks in 1831. This child may have been stolen when that treaty went sour. The stolen Yuchi boy was called Tsa pah ki ah, and became a major chief of the Osages. He was never rejoined to his Yuchi family. 

 Sam and Osage Chief Tsa Pah Ki Ah

The stealing of Indian children of royal blood was considered an intelligent thing to do! Is it possible that even a child of Sam Houston was considered powerful medicine? Or more likely, a great prospect for a huge ransom. There is no way to know what the Osages saw in the little Yuchi boy, but one look at him as a man and there is the instant impression of Sam Houston. Skeptics argued that Sam Brown Sr. did not look anything like Sam Houston, but then neither did Temple Houston, the last off-spring from Houston's most famous marriage... and yet Sam Brown Sr. could easily have been believed to have been Temple's brother.

The elder Brown took the name Brown from an Indian educator he admired. S. C. Brown took him under his wing and shared his love for education, which led to the founding of several Indian schools. If Sam Houston was his blood father, S. C. Brown was Brown's intellectual mentor. Still the acorn does not fall far from the tree. Sam Brown Sr was an original member of the Creek House of Kings, the Treasurer of the Creek Nation, a 32nd Degree Mason, and ultimately the last surviving Union Officer in Oklahoma. His integrity was unquestioned. Upon his death, Sam Brown Jr obtained a death certificate from the State Department of Health (Bureau of Vital Statistics) which verified that his father was indeed General Sam Houston.

According to Chief Sam Brown Jr., the Yuchis maintained close ties to many Indian brethren throughout the southeast United States, including those living in Polk County, Texas. These would be what we know as the Alabama-Coushatta Indians, once neighbors in Alabama over a century ago. Brown said that the “Cussettas” were the only tribe outside of the Yuchis who had ever been given all of the secrets of their elite religious order. The Cussettas (Koasati/Coushatta) were descendants of the Muscogee and Natchez tribes of the lower Mississippi Valley, and closely kin to the Creeks. They came to Texas around 1810. They brought the secrets and the alliances of the Birdtail Kings with them to the new land. Perhaps this ancient religious society was the nucleus of an blood covenant between General Sam Houston and his Indian kinsmen, which spanned from the Indian Territory to east Texas, and somehow protected these Native Americans from expulsion.

Whatever the reasons for it, kinsmen of Chief Sam Brown's seemed to enjoy the proverbial “king's X” in Texas. All other tribes were driven or burned out from east Texas before 1850. But even President Lamar, a veritable Indian exterminator, and the Texas Legislature passed laws and set aside large tracts of land for the Alabamas in Polk County, and they shared their good fortune with the Coushattas, and both live in peace in Texas to this very day.

It's time to forgive our heroes.

The other day, a friend of mine and I were riding somewhere and talking about Sam Houston, and he said, "Wasn’t he just a drunk?" And stunned and a little surprised, I gave some kind of lame defense. Yes he was a drunk. A big one, during a large part of his life. 

He was also a fearless young soldier, wounded in the War of 1812. Before that he had lived for a time with the Cherokee Indians, and was considered a member of their tribe. He was a school teacher, a U. S. Congressman and then the Governor of Tennessee. The General of the Texas Army who pulled off one of the most celebrated upsets in military history, winning independence for his new nation, the Republic of Texas. He would be elected President and later serve as Governor of his beloved Texas. And yes, he got drunk, and divorced, like most men did in those days.

And yet, it is none of these accomplishments which have captured my heart, as much as the one that got him in so much trouble at the very end of his career. All of Texas was eager for war against the United States, her own wet-nurse. Houston stood nearly alone, arguing against the War Between the States. When Texas went for secession, and war, he stepped down as Governor. John F. Kennedy was so moved by his costly and unpopular stand, he told of Houston’s convictions in his book, Profiles in Courage.

Like all great men, Houston had his rivals, who never missed an opportunity to find fault with him. Many were officers who fought under him during his battles, and knew just how kind history had been to Sam Houston. They could not enjoy the fact that some GREATER FORCE had delivered him and smote his enemies. An All Star cast of jealous malcontents and lesser generals nipped at his heels his whole career.

What might have happened, to have turned the brawling, barbarian drunkard into such an unparalleled man of history? Certainly Houston was a man of his times, and that explains his remarkable contradictions to some satisfaction. But he was much more complex than that. There were traits of character that even demon alcohol could not drown. When he became a man and left home, his mother presented him a ring, with the word HONOR inscribed in it. That was the building block of the man that history has failed to do justice. Sam Houston had been in Texas years when a preacher finally counseled with him and satisfied his doubts about Christianity. Sam Houston, the hero of Horseshoe Bend and San Jacinto, the Cherokee known as Colonneh, the Governor of Texas, walked down the muddy banks of a spring-fed creek near Independence, Texas and submitted himself to baptism. He became a follower of Jesus.

No doubt the angels sang an extra verse of Halleleuia. And ol’ General Sam put away the bottle and other childish things, and became the man his last and most influential wife expected him to be.

When the State began to rumble about secession, and whipping the Yankees, Houston went on a whirlwind tour, warning and beseeching Texans to show restraint. In the end, Houston died of pneumonia during the conflict, his son fighting for a cause he refused, his friends numbered on one hand, considered a "traitor to Texas" and the South.

Of course history proved him correct on all counts. He predicted the South would lose, and it would be decimated because of the war, and the price for the institution of Slavery was too high, and Texas should lead the way to Southern Abolition, or be forever punished for her part in the Confederacy. The man that stood against the winds of war, trying to save a State that he had shaped with his own hands, and losing every worldly status he had earned with blood sweat and tears, was not the famous drunk known for laying around with Chief Jolly in Arkansas. He was the man who had the guts to take a dip in the spring-fed creek at Independence, Texas, where he learned the true measure of a man, and his real potential for greatness in God’s eyes.

Even Dr. Lockhart, who undoubtedly had sympathies towards the South, spoke fondly of Houston as the “noblest of men,”:  "…But Texas was then a weak and very unpromising child, and was threatened many times with collapse; but when that grand old man, Sam Houston, would put his fingers on its pulse the arteries would commence to flow with renewed vigor. By his great wisdom and judgment Sam Houston brought the tottering child through the many trials which it seemingly had to pass..."

It is hard today for us here in Navasota, who live our mundane lives without much drama or excitement, to imagine that just across the river, less than ten miles as the crow the flies, a nation was born and a man like Houston lived and worked there for a legendary empire, that has inspired the world. When you live here in the Center of the Universe, you take things like that for granted.

I have written recently about our faded cultural memory, the loss of giants in our cultural identity like King Robert the Bruce, how their lives and accomplishments are all but erased from our books and stories and collective consciousness. And I fear that old General Sam will devolve from the old drunk to nothing at all. The fact that we so easily berate our national heroes only feeds the cynisism we suffer from these days. We need to forgive them for their human failures as we study their magnificence. As best as I can tell, our generation is not doing any better, and a man like Sam Houston, someone of vision, courage and unwavering conviction, would be a welcome addition to the political scene today.

When we do not care enough for history that we ignore it, or even scoff at it, we are doomed to repeat it.

What it means to be a Texan.

Young John Farrell from Washington on the Brazos, Texas, was just a kid when he served in the Texas Army at San Jacinto. Exhausted and half- crazy from the carnage, he wandered around the next day needing a little "counseling," as we would say today. The Mexican arms had been confiscated and piled almost chest high. Every kind and description of weapon was thrown onto the pile, to be sorted and dealt with later. Some guns were still loaded and there were hundreds of powder horns, mini-balls, swords, short swords, daggers, and other weaponry in an unorganized, dangerous pile.

John spotted an intriguing relic among the rifles. It was an ancient flintlock blunderbuss, like the ones pirates are seen brandishing in the movies. Now young John had never seen a pirate or a movie, but he still had to hold the wacky looking thing… with its stumpy, funnel-like barrel… and cock it, and what the heck, dry- fire it… not noticing the gray sand he was standing in was really an army’s worth of gunpowder. The old flint-on-steel lock slapped and exploded instantly, throwing sparks in e v e r y explosive d i r e c t i o n, and in a split second, the whole magazine spit and whoofed and baLOOOEY. Uniformly blackened, Young John Ferrell was taken into custody, lucky to still be alive.

Brought before General Sam Houston, a strong case for treason, espionage, and unbelievable stupidity could have been made. General Sam, freshly wounded and suffering terribly, looked upon the young man as if he were the cause of his misery. “Are you the young man who blew up the m a g a z i n e?”

“Yes Sir, General, I did it… but it was an accident.” Farrell breathed each word as if it were his last.

“Then sir” Houston concluded very unamused, “I will have you shot tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

Young Farrell was taken away. He spent the worst night of his life, waiting for his execution. He had failed as a soldier, as a son of the Republic, and brought eternal shame upon his family. He was ready to die. General Houston was feeling so bad, his wounds nearly killing him, he could never expect mercy. There was not even a scrap of paper to write down a note to his mother.

The next morning, he was brought before General Houston about thirty minutes before the scheduled end of his Texas citizenship, and the beginning of his Heavenly one. General Houston, having slept and shaken off the effects of the morphine that gave him some badly needed rest, looked at the boy with different eyes. “Well young man, how did you rest last night?” Houston queried, knowing full well the answer.

“N o t m u c h, General” John choked, fighting back Texas-sized tears, wondering how he might go about begging for his life, to a man he idolized so much.

“Did you think that I would’ve had you shot?” The General asked as if it was the most important question of the day.

“I did not know sir.” John was not a big talker, especially when his life was at stake. He might just as easily say the wrong thing. Better to keep it simple.

“Well sir, young men are too scarce to be shot like dogs.” Houston reasoned as if someone else had ordered his execution. “Officer of the Guard, turn the young man loose.”

For once, a Texan was thankful that Sam Houston was not always a man of his word.

But Sam Houston was in many ways sitting in a position just like God. He was the ultimate Judge, and obligated to judge with blindness and fairness. And he was, in a backwater battlefield of a fledgling Republic, the momentary dispenser of Grace.

God does not want any of his children to perish, any more than General Sam wanted any young Texan to be shot like a dog. I love this story, because it is true, and because it is a perfect illustration of God’s Grace. And how people on this earth can learn to give it freely. If General Sam Houston, with all of his worries and concerns and personal discomfort could reverse himself, swallow his pride, then take the time to teach a boy about accountability, AND about forgiveness, then every mother’s son should try to do the same. And so should every arm of government.

That’s what being a Texan is about. The Law. The letter of the law, and more importantly the SPIRIT of it, and the wisdom to use common sense, led by God’s Mercy and Grace, to stand for what is right. And sometimes it’s just not in a book somewhere. Sometimes the book calls for something... as in this case, that would have been abominable. Sam Houston saw the young man as a resource too valuable to throw to the lions of the Law. And actually, every citizen is. Sam Houston would have been the first to make sure the wicked were punished. But he knew the difference between his children and his enemies.

What made Sam Houston so unique in the annals of history, was that he was a true leader, unafraid to stand for what was right, regardless of public opinion or law books, or special interests, or political correctness, and forces that usually win today. He made some mistakes, but Texans always respected him whether they agreed with him or not, because he was a man of conviction.

Our government today seems to mix it up more and more, discarding common sense and unable to, or not caring to discriminate her children from her ememies. Americans have traded trust and wisdom in their leaders for objective, almost clinical fairness. Everything is so PC, we are finally going to "make life fair." That of course is a relative matter and a delusion. It will only bring more contention as everyone tries to get satisfaction, and once again the social warfare will commence. And young goobers like John Farrell will be lost in the crossfire.

General Sam and the Indians Part II

Most of what I relate here, and in the previous entry, has been stolen from Dr. John Lockhart's published letters. Just a lad, He was an early day resident of Washington on the Brazos and "knew how to cipher"... and this made him an official scribe for the Republic. His complete writings can be found in Sixty Years on the Brazos.

The Waco crybaby Red Bear was not gone long when President Houston decided to send some emmisaries to the Comanches. He picked some capable men, accompanied by Aquaquash, the trusted Waco Chief and a Mexican who could speak the lingua franca of the West, and they disappeared into the Texas plains. Soon a rumor came that they were bringing the Comanches in... to Torrey's Trading Post one hundred miles north near the Waco village. Houston sent another group there to meet and officially receive them, and now considered invaluable, Young Lockhart was taken along.

But the group sent to fetch the Comanches had a little setback. They had not been in camp with the "Lord's of the Plains" long when they were beginning to perceive that they were about to be tortured and executed. But thankfully Chief Aquaquash intervened and threatened that if the Texans were harmed, he and his Wacos would go down fighting. The Comanches reconsidered, but were not real excited about a trip across the plains to meet the Great White Father. He would only ask for what they could not give.

Meanwhile the second party made their way north. John W. Lockhart's virgin eyes saw amazing things. An equally virgin wilderness. He saw a veritable petrified forest, laying down in the ground, as if some ancient atomic blast had decimated and flattened a prehistoric woodland of trees greater in diameter than any alive. Everywhere, he looked and wondered if any White man had ever seen that thing before.

It was Nature with a capital N, in its purest existence. He mused: "If these rocks, trees and shrubs were endowed with the power of sight, speech and reason, would they say, 'Welcome here,' or 'Depart thou destroyer of nature's beauty. By thy cunning hand thy destroyeth the forest and upturneth the rocks. Our solitude and quietude are gone forever. No more will the wild beast roam at will, nor will nature's flowers ornament and bedeck the bosom of Mother Earth, but rather will the White man bring the ax and plow, the reaper and the rifle, and all will be changed...'"


Interesting that young Lockhart would ascribe to the voice of Nature an Old English vocabulary. But still, his meditations are as haunting today to me as it was to him.

Finally, after days of that kind of gentle heartbreak, the little presidential peace commission straggled into Torrey's Trading Post. Old Torrey had set up an Indian kingdom, trading with the Wacos and Caddoes and Wichitas and even the Comanches, the only source for highly desired American goods near the northern plains. It was a Texas version of the Heart of Darkness. The village had no real law, or legal autority, and Torrey was the closest thing to a sheriff. No doubt Native American traditions weighed heavily on the frontier, in such a place as this, where they were the overwhelming majority. Young Lockhart, anxious to see his new Indian associates, arrived with the rest of the government delegation to find no Comanches, and the ornamented grave of Chief Red Bear, buried near the Post.

Someone, perhaps Torrey, had labeled the grave so that no one would have doubts about who laid there. A little crude fence post rail had been erected around the grave, and a curiously notched and painted timber had been planted to mark Red Bear's final bed. One wonders if he was wrapped in his favorite buffalo robe, that had given him so much security in life. A great bit of trouble had been expended to give the old cranky Waco a fit burial. There was no mention however about the great new percussion rifle President Houston had given him, nor the way he had met his demise. It is not hard to imagine that his new rifle made him a target for those who had more sinister uses for it. Young Lockhart was deeply touched by the unexpected death of the old Indian. Somehow his faults made him more lovable and his death more tragic.

After several days of swatting mosquitoes and gambling and losing with the trading post sharks, the Houston delegation gave up, and went home. Lockhart began to see a very different land before him. He suddenly realized that the buffalo they were nibbling on would soon be exterminated, and the other Indians would go the way of Red Bear. The land had already warned him, as he had passed through it.

It's nice to know, after so much senseless tragedy in the making of our country,that there were young people like young John Lockhart, feeling so much poetic anxiety over the inevitable changes and sacrifices that were to come. I hope what we have done, was worth it.

"

When General Sam lived just across the river... ...and #1 in my Top Ten in Texas

The year was 1842. Fellows like the one above were terrorizing central and even east Texas, burning, killing and doing unspeakable things to the women folk...

Washington on the Brazos was a crude, sprawling village of log huts and tents and some new clapboard cabins. It was also the Capital City of the Republic of Texas. The heartbeat of a Nation had chickens and pigs wallowing in the mud streets and homeless wanderers reclining on tree stumps, while Texas Rangers swaggered around half drunk at the pool hall. General Sam Houston, the popular president of Texas, had no problem standing out in the crowd. Tall and straight, he appeared like a man with a mission as he and a few Texas soldiers mounted up and formed an official government delegation to the wild tribes of Texas.

It wasn’t that exciting, for the tribes were camped on the edge of town. But it was just too far to walk. The tribes had been invited to the Texas Capital, or maybe summoned, to talk peace, what some of them called the “white trail.” Native Americans associated the color red with war and white with peace. Unfortunately, the Comanches preferred to continue the red trail, and did not attend.

But there the rest were, camping on the edge of old Washington; Waco, Tonkawa, Kickapoo, Delaware, and Iowa Chiefs napping under their tents, wives cooking over the fires, youngsters play-hunting, discovering how to make harmless arrow points out of corn cobs. Houston rode up with as much military fanfare as his cotton republic could muster, and dismounted with military formality… but he could not hold his straight face as several Indians greeted him with bear hugs. The Texas Army got to see their Commander in Chief swarmed, squeezed and slapped like a pet pig.

They sat in a circle around a campfire and smoked a funny homegrown Indian mix… out of a monster ceremonial pipe, which was accessed by a huge hollow cane. There was supposedly some tobacco in it. But they were not singing Cum Bah Yah, yet. Witnesses said it smelled like sumac, and as each took his turn, he threw his head back and let the smoke roll out of his nostrils, and the smoke all melted together, joined in the sky, much like their hopes for peace… That’s how one witness, an official government scribe described it.

After the stupor wore off, the chiefs all stood one at a time and spoke about their desire for peace, and President Houston invited the chiefs to move into town, into an unoccupied cabin. Later he met with them again, where he planned to give a couple of the most esteemed chiefs Presidential gifts. Houston was famous for giving his Indian friends weapons, which Texans of later regimes had to face. He had ordered two percussion rifles, “cap and balls,” but two new rifles of that description were not to be had in all the stores in the Capital of Texas. Neither one of them. The Government assistants, you know press guys, had come up with two rifles, but one of them was the old fashioned type. A flintlock rifle. The kind used during the Revolutionary War. In 1776!

President Houston gave the flintlock first, to a Waco chief, Aquaquash, who had always been a favorite, and would understand. He would be glad to get whatever he got. The President would give the less predictable chief the newer rifle. He understood this man. Chief Red Bear had often been like President Houston: a troublemaker. Thinking they probably would not know the difference, he gave the flintlock rifle to Chief Aquaquash, as a token of his esteem, for all of his assistance in getting the other tribes to cooperate. Everybody was all smiles. So far so good. But you have to ask, what had Houston been toking, thinking they could tell no difference? When he handed the latest technology in American warfare to the other chief, he stormed away. He was mad. Red Bear disappeared into the Presidential guest cabin. Everybody laughed and went their separate ways.

President Houston waited awhile, then made a surprise visit to the chief’s impromptu bunkhouse. When he entered, it was so dark he could not make out anything. He couldn’t tell, but mad old Red Bear was balled up like an armadillo on a bunk covered with a buffalo robe, looking like a bundle of hides. Appearing like a giant in the little log hut, Houston calmly set his six foot frame on the fireplace hearth. He closed his eyes and dreamed up what he might say. Chief Red Bear was nowhere to be seen. By covering himself, he had effectively flown away in a rage, to a faraway place, he no longer was there. The others sat and looked around respectfully. A couple had smirks on their faces. And the big white man who had been a U. S. Congressman and Governor of Tennessee, who had led a successful revolution, against incredible odds, whose battle tactics are still studied with amazement, who deftly saved his worst enemy, Santa Anna, and kept him from being lynched, who had parleyed with presidents, Texans and several wives, sat in a dark wooden room with a dozen aboriginal warriors, any of whom could throw a hatchet a few feet and end the conversation. And he began to taunt.

President Houston began to pick at the missing Waco chief, as if he were not there. Unlike most Anglos, Houston had lived many years among Native Americans. He knew and loved them. But his attachment of government officials, some able to squeeze in the room, some tip-toeing on the outside, were beginning to sweat. Houston abused the man, basically calling him a big baby. There were some sniggers. The other chiefs seemed to find the whole exchange quite entertaining. The bundle of buffalo hides in the corner began to come to life. Red Bear was beginning to sweat as well.

“Red Bear is just a… SQUAW” Houston jabbed with a chuckle. Right now, in many cultures, is where the great General Houston gets a tomahawk right in the Adam’s apple. But everyone had a good laugh at Red Bear’s expense. Then, finally, he had enough, and Red Bear came out of the robe as fast as he had curled up in it. He lunged like a bobcat at President Houston. Unfortunately, none of his aides had time to react. Before they could stop the humiliated plains warrior, he was hugging President Houston, a pitiful baby, begging for friendship, promising to cherish the gun after all. Talkin’ about wisdom! Who knew? Only one man in the country would’ve known what to do at that moment. And God had put him right there to do it. That was the way it was, here at the cradle of Texas.

And THAT’S a true leader, a man worthy of the presidency. A crazy man, but a worthy one. Houston took it all in stride. Another day in the Republic of Texas. It turns out that Red Bear was mad because, where he would make use of a rifle, out on the Texas plains, he would have no source for the percussion caps necessary to shoot the firearm. He would eventually run out, and the rifle would become a tipi pole. Or maybe a club, a useless reminder of the time he met and toked Peace with the Great White Father at Washington on the Brazos. He only wanted a rifle he could actually use, and shoot his food and shelter, for the rest of his life, and remember the one who gave such a treasure. But he got over it.

Soon the chiefs were offering to trade their guns or horses or whatever for some of the lovely white women in town. Even President Houston must have blushed on that one. Politics is a nasty business.

But because he constantly rose above it, Sam Houston is number one in my "Top Ten in Texas" and that makes one thing that John F. Kennedy, American President and author of Profiles in Courage and myself would have agreed upon.

Note: You can search on the main page for Top Ten in Texas to read about the others who have since been placed on this stellar list.