For Posterity... and Grimes County Doctors: Part Six

This group was photographed standing in front of Dr. Kilpatrick's Drug Store on Washington Avenue, around 1880. The handsome tall fellow in the middle with the mustache is Dr. A. R. Kilpatrick. He came to Texas in 1861, trying to find a safe enclave from the Northern aggression, and brought all of his family, some twenty persons, and 162 slaves with him. He is a distant cousin and my people (Cushman side) came from his neighborhood in Louisiana to Texas 40 years after. Dr. Kilpatrick was not only a historian but a writer for the science journals of the day, such as Dr. John Bell's Medical Journal in Philadelphia, starting as a young man in 1838.

The following is a directory of sorts. I'm sure its not complete, but perhaps it is a good start in listing the earliest doctors of this area, including Washington on the Brazos, Navasota and Anderson.

Dr. Charles Ballinger Stewart, Member of first Convention 1832, ’33, Secretary to Mexican Supreme Court, 1834, member of Convention at Brazoria 1834, Secretary to Provisional Governor Smith 1835, FIRST to sign Declaration of Independence, 2nd Lieutenant Gov., helped write Constitution, Republic of Texas Army, bilingual, interpreter during capture of Santa Anna, designed Texas Flag adopted 1839, Delegate to Convention discussing Annexation 1845, many terms as State Legislature, lived in Montgomery and Navasota. Died 1885.

Dr. Anson Jones: Surgeon, 2nd Regiment, Battle of San Jacinto, last Pres TX, architect of annexation. (Lived at Washington on the Brazos.)

Dr. James B. Miller: came to Texas in 1836, President during the formation, Secretary of Treasury, ran for Governor. (Washington on the Brazos)

Dr. J. W. Lockhart: Came to Texas in 1839. Author, doctor, early day Indian negotiator. “Being a doctor meant something in those days. It meant long hard rides on horseback, with perhaps all the medicine in that part of the country stowed in one’s saddle bags. It meant treatment of people who knew little about care of themselves or sanitary matters. It meant homespun nursing, the care of the unlettered whites and of superstitious blacks. It meant little pay and long waits for that pay. Often Dr. Lockhart would be called on to follow a black man into the black night- perhaps fifteen miles, often twenty. One night when he could scarce see his hand before his face, he followed for fifteen miles through river bottoms the elusive lead of a white horse.” (Dr. Lockhart lived in Washington on the Brazos and later Chappell Hill.)

Benjamin Briggs Goodrich: Arrived in 1833. Served in Alabama Legislature, Delegate San Felipe 1835, and Washington on the Brazos, signor Texas Declaration of Independence, co-author of Texas Constitution, probably first doctor in Grimes County.

*Dr. Robert Caldwell Neblett: Came in 1840. First doctor in Navasota area.

Dr. Richard Fox Brenham. The City of Brenham was named for Dr. Richard Fox Brenham, soldier of fortune, volunteer in the Mier Expedition, imprisoned at Salado, killed when he led the charge to escape in 1843.

The 1850 Grimes County Census: Showed these doctors to be residents of Anderson: D. C. Dickson, E. W. Belding, Enoch Jones(Dentist), and Edmund Tucker.

1859 According to Dr. Kilpatrick the first doctor in Navasota was Dr. Armitage in 1859. I suppose he discounted Dr. Neblett as he did not live right in the town proper.

Dr. McFall, Dr. Alexander Waugh, and *Dr. Edward Arrel Pye came right after. Pye served in the Fourth Tx Inf, CSA, lost own son, his assistant, in the Yellow Fever epidemic.

1860 *Dr. David Alexander Jameson (fell victim to Yellow Fever while in Galveston, but survived) came to Navasota about 1863, fought Yellow Fever in quarantine camp in Calvert. Physician and surgeon for the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. Moved to Millican 1866 - 1884. County Health Officer, Brazos county; rode a circuit in the Brazos plantation bottom region, often gone for weeks. Camp Physician at convict camps in Conroe. 1884, returned to Navasota. Died in 1903

1861 Dr. Pryor H. Smith, Built Navasota's magnificent "P. A. Smith Hotel," on Railroad St., died in 1867 fighting Yellow Fever.

1864 *J. N. Baylor, 1st Lt. Surgeon, who ran a Civil War Hospital in Navasota. Covered forty miles square. Known to have stayed and fought the Yellow Fever epidemic valiantly. Elder, Presb Church, Died 1903.

1866 T. Newsom, ?. Beasseley d. 1867 YF, J. Hamilton Jones d. 1867 YF, Paul Smith d. 1867 YF, Ed Cade, J. P. Barnett , also Rx, Hightower, also Rx,

*Andrew Robert Kilpatrick : Active Mason, medical journalist, meteorologist, historian, memb. State Medical Asso., married four times!

1867 Dr. J. H. Kerr worked during Yellow Fever epidemic, J. W. Hill, also Rx

Also died of yellow Fever: Dr. A. Campbell, Dr. J. W. Russell.

1870 Dr. J. T. Montgomery

1871 Alexander G. Beaumont,

1876 Dr. William Goodrich

1878 *Dr. Alfred Huntington Ketchum: “Considered one of the most successful physicians in South Texas.” Graduate from Alabama Medical College with honors, came to “Old Washington” in 1874. Immune to Yellow Fever because he had the disease as a youth. Considered an expert on the disease. Moved to Navasota as Old Washington died out, in 1878. Director of First National bank, Vice President of the Navasota Telephone Company, and a druggist as well. Appointed as a Major and Surgeon of the Texas Volunteer Guards, in 1880, by Governor O. M. Roberts. In 1898, Texas health officers equipped him with a train to swiftly access various population centers during Yellow Fever breakout.

1885 *J. H. Neal: Came to Old Washington in 1866. The graduated from the Medical College of Alabama in 1877. Moved to Navasota in 1885. Died 1924.

A first-hand second opinion of early Texas doctors: Part Four

Those of you who have read a lot of this blog know that I love to quote a Washington County doctor when writing about the Republic days. Dr. John W. Lockhart is another early leader in the region that was also one of our local doctors. He was also a passionate writer, and probably would have been a blogger had he been born in this era. Dr. Lockhart wrote some enlightening passages about the status of the early Texas doctor, which explains this common feature, that of physician-politician, of Republic of Texas doctors.

Evidently, the chasm was so great between the ignorant and unschooled and the learned and degreed, that an educated man was something of a god. I’ll let Dr. Lockhart explain in his own words…

“It was a long way to a medical college then, and no conveyances except horse-back and long stage rides, which consumed many days. It was almost an impossibility for a man to moderate circumstances to obtain a degree. But when he did, and settled in the town or little village, or the crossroads, he was a power in the land. The words which fell from his lips were like so many oracles. He was always profuse in medical terms. These not being understood by the people, made him a greater genius. The old ladies flocked about him to catch the wise words he uttered.

He was considered the biggest man in the neighborhood, not excepting the circuit rider. He had no one to fear, except the crossroad politician; and he could always be bribed with a few bitters, which the doctor knew exactly how to make. Once in his good graces, the doctor could bleed and blister to his heart’s content…

… It was wonderful to see the influence the oracle in the neighborhood had with the people. In all cases of law he was consulted; and to add importance to his opinion, he kept a copy of the decisions of the lower court on hand. The part that appertained to the practice of the justice court was well worn from the numerous references made when settling questions arising in the neighborhood. What he said in the premises was regarded as almost supernatural.

His opinion was sought with equal regard to medicine, religion, astronomy, astrology, and all things appertaining to science. But his greatest genius ran in the way of politics. No man need run for office in the precinct, unless he first obtained the doctor’s consent, or his assistance. To do otherwise, would be to court certain defeat. However, that other wise man of the precinct who succeeded in getting himself elected justice of the peace, was a man to be reckoned with- the only man the doctor need fear.”

Dr. Lockhart went down in local history as a great benefactor of his community, and was seemingly loved and trusted by all and deserved that trust, but even he had trouble treating those whose faith was built on superstition…

“Negroes objected to taking calomel and castor oil more than any medicine. The former they believed was made from the bones of dead people ground to powder, and the latter they believed to be the grease made from the bodies of the dead. These facts were the actual truth to them; and in some instances, force had to be resorted to, to make them swallow it.”

Dr. Lockhart also wrote of the struggle with ye age old wives tales…

“…In Texas- for instance, in the country where there were no doctors, the lady of the house had to do all the doctoring; and would resort to barks, weeds, and all things thought to have medicinal properties. For instance, she substituted the inner bark of the ash for action on the liver and bowels. This she prepared by cutting off the rough exterior bark, using the inner white portion. This she boiled- throwing out the fibre, and when the juice had simmered to the consistency of tar, it was mixed with flour and rolled into pills.”

I’ll offer this one last quote from the good doctor, who won my heart with such balanced skepticism, on all sides... here he comments on a doctor's convention, and he seemed to touch on a timeless argument…:)

“Many specific papers were read before this body which were a credit to the authors and the profession. Diseases were discussed, and their causes and cures. The germ theory also had its advocates. Microbes, bacilli, and the like were ably handled; and if the doctors do not quit finding so many things existing in the air we breathe, and the food we eat and the water we drink, they will starve this nation out.”

[From: SIXTY YEARS ON THE BRAZOS]

Not much has changed and will not, whenever we match man’s capacity against the handiwork of an Infinite God.

I want you to know about the next generation of doctors that flooded into Grimes County after the Civil war, only to be almost decimated by a Yellow Fever epidemic in 1867.

Next time… on the Navasota Current.

Twin Towers, Twin Destinies, hopefully different outcomes...

Go along with me, and you'll find this... interesting at least, if not uncanny. Like the Kennedy assasination, everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on "9-11." I've shared this story before, but it bares repeating.

I was working up on scaffolding on the biggest painting I will ever do... 140 feet of murals at Washington on the Brazos. And in the middle of designing a faithful recreation of Texas' Capital City in 1845, when the planes hit the World Trade Center. As far as I know, no one had ever tried to portray the whole town of "Old Washington" before, three dimensionally, and it was a real challenge that took a lot of research and planning. This was a great honor and I will always cherish this project... and the things that came to me during its creation.

I remember getting pretty choked up at times. I thought of another great city, leveled to the ground by its own corruption and its enemies. When Jesus looked down on his beloved Holy City of God, he cried, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I would have gathered you up as a hen gathers her chicks..." But Jerusalem would have nothing of him.

Most interestingly, I was learning of ominous parallels between the city I was studying, and the one being attacked in New York. In fact there were a significant number of New Yorkers in early Texas. A street in Anderson was called "New York Row," because of its similarity in style and demographics to the great Northern City. New York money and people helped to found the new republic, and even before I had ever really been acquainted with the Twin Towers of New York, I knew of the twin "towers" at Washington on the Brazos. [Seen in the far upper right of the mural above]

Yes, towering over the fledgling Capital of Texas, a veritable empire in the making, were two handsome, three story brick buildings, side by side in downtown Washington. Built of inferior brick however, they proved that Washington County probably did not have the natural resources ready at a hand to build a great city, one that would someday rival Galveston or New Orleans, or even New York. The bricks were made of local clay, and could only be graded as useful for poor earthenware, and not suitable for structures. This spelled the end of progress for the tiny would-be metropolis.

Today, the only thing left of this once optimistic Capital of the Lone Star State is a single water cistern, a humble flat-topped dome made out of that same old dark orange brick. I think it served a boarding house off of the main drag, and was designed to catch rain water, something we could stand to learn from today. In less than fifty years, the town of "Old Washington" as it came to be known, was almost a ghost town. In my research, I found a gigantic magnolia tree on the plots where my own ancestor invested in the town. I'd like to think he planted it.

The towers? The two hotels who stood proudly during Texas' finest hour? They were demolished and the bricks salvaged and taken across the river to help build the town who welcomed the railroad and all it brought with it. Recycled bricks from Old Washington can still be found in walls of Victorian buildings in downtown Navasota, where many of the disillusioned Washingtonians moved after Washington County schemes failed.

As I painted these magnificent "towers" long gone and forgotten, and resurrected this forgotten center of Texas commerce, the ironies began to sink in. Surely those Texians of old never dreamed that all that they had done there would end up for naught, in fact in a scrap heap. They never imagined that another culture, one they considered outlaw and almost detested, would someday buy their various parts and repurpose them in Grimes County.

Buildings go up and they go down. Cities rise and fall. Nations rise and fall. Texas only existed as a Nation for 9 years. Cultures rise and fall. And usually, those who live and work in these places never could imagine... destruction or even nonexistence.

As each day the televison replayed the horrors of the World Trade Center being reduced to ashes, and reported unimaginable horrors and fatalities, I could only find comfort in knowing at least that Washington on the Brazos suffered an economic disaster, with no loss of life. But the end was more final. I wondered if this was not just the beginning of a just as unimaginable dismantling of my beloved Country. Would they keep coming at us just like the Mexicans did here, until finally, as in the Mexican War, we took the battle to their soil, and shut them up for good?

Uh,yeah.

But Washington on the Brazos never recovered. Today the graveyard of these intrepid pioneers is overgrown and neglected and speaks of empty visons and the shame of failure. I wondered if this great attack on our American economic center was not a warning. Sure it was a statement of intolerance and hatred from the Saudis who executed the attack, but our God allowed it, He looked the other way as they did the deed. He let Satan's messengers have their say, and He let us ponder our vulnerablity, and our standing with Him.

When Washington on the Brazos was humbled, it was the kind of place where gamblers, whores and con-men ran the town, and preachers were tormented and harrassed until they fled. Texas Rangers, the deadly arms of the law, hung out all night at the pool hall and staggered around drunk in the day. The President was a famous drunkard and hell-raiser. Many of the founding fathers of Texas were men with dubious reputations, and some were known cutthroats and brawlers. They built their town on the sands of lust and greed. They refused to acknowledge real threats to their very existence. Today there is very little there to remind us they were there, were it not for Texas Parks & Wildlife who constructed such nice facilites to celebrate the Godless town that hardly ever was. It had precious few distinctions: It was in Texas, where her Declaration of Independence was signed, and Sam Houston had slept there. In fact it had been the Capital City of a failing government who could not pay its bills, or protect its borders or its people.

You all know (I hope) that I am a proud sixth generation Texan, a descendant of some of those wonderful founding renegades, and yet I have to call a spade a spade. And I keep one of those worthless soft bricks around, just to remind me, of what can happen to an arrogant, corrupt and irreverent people. Hopefully, America is learning her lesson as well. And learning it in time.

A golden evening... with an ox driver!

My friends Larry and Claudia Heidbreder invited me to photograph them in their authentic Texian garb, complete with Liberty and Justice, their Longhorn oxen, who pull a very cool wooden cart. Larry has trained them beautifully, and they perform good naturedly, sharing a huge, extra long yoke, made just for them and their wonderful long horns. Larry speaks softly and carries a big stick, but hardly has to use it.

After taking a bunch of shots of them posing in front of the old Brown Plantation home near Old Washington, Larry obligingly circled the oxen around to the other side of the road and these shots in the setting sun... which are magnificent, if I must say so myself.

Another Washington Cemetery...

The events last Saturday in Houston at Glenwood Cemetery and our subsequent family visit to the Washington Cemetery next door got me to thinking. Such a beautiful, well manicured place, the idyllic resting place for so many of our Texas fathers and mothers...

Tuesday I was off to visit the Washington Cemetery in Washington County... knowing full well what I would find. Every ten years or so I go... hoping I will find a different result.

It was in the 1970's that descendants of our Texas founders shored up their concerns for the markers of their loved ones... and much was done to protect our cemeteries. But not in Old Washington, the final place for the very fathers and mothers and children and infants of a Nation once called The Republic of Texas. It was a somber, shameful skulk through a thicket, strewn with fallen tombstones and rotting trees, on what was once the hallowed ground of our fallen pioneers.

Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.

UPDATE: GOOD NEWS A YEAR LATER! I recent visit to the Old Washington Cemetery gave me great satisfaction, as someone has done a lot of work clearing the brush, trash trees, vines and whatever from this ancient Texas burial ground. Good job! If I knew who they were, I would sure volunteer to help. There is still a great deal more to do, but it is a very promising start on reclaiming this special historic place.

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.