Texas by James A. Michener
Then the carriage moved forward again. Each man kept his head turned toward the other until dust intervened. The war had ended.
It was a perplexing war, which few had welcomed except President Polk and the expansionists, and its significance is revealed only when viewed from three aspects.
First, it was an inescapable prolongation of the 1836 Texas revolution. Since Mexican leadership had never accepted the loss of territory resulting from that struggle, and since Mexico had as many superpatriots as Texas, it was inevitable that continued attempts would be made to recapture the lost province. Arrival of United States power put a stop to such plotting.
Second, the war was an application of the new slogan of Manifest Destiny. American patriots had looked at the map and proclaimed almost automatically: ‘We must control this continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific’ Texas dreamers could cry: ‘We must have everything down to the Isthmus of Panama,’ and frenzied New Englanders could and did shout for the annexation of Canada, even launching abortive military campaigns to achieve that worthy purpose. The successful outcome of the Mexican War meant that the Pacific coast was secured, and a good thing, in terms of geography at least, was accomplished.
Third, the war had a powerful psychological effect on the new state of Texas. It was exerted not on Texas itself, for the war really had only a limited influence internally: it was fought primarily by men and officers from the twenty-seven other states in the Union and it served as a training ground for the greater War Between the States of 1861-1865, which lurched ever closer. The names of the younger officers who had fought under Taylor and Scott sound like a roll call to military greatness: Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Braxton Bragg, George Gordon Meade, Albert Sidney Johnston, Jubal Early, William Tecumseh Sherman, P.G.T. Beauregard, Joseph E. Johnston, James Longstreet, George B. McClellan, and the two popular heroes Stonewall Jackson and Fighting Joe Hooker.
It also strengthened the American propensity for electing military heroes to the presidency, four of the American officers in this war attaining that high office—Taylor, Grant, Jefferson Davis, Franklin Pierce—with three others, Scott, Frémont and McClellan, trying. Three Mexican officers also attained the presidency of their nation, including the ineffable Santa Anna, who would be summoned back from exile to lead his country once more.
If the war had little effect in Texas in tangible terms, how was its significance for the state manifested? Thanks to the newspaper stories of reporters like Harry Saxon and the brilliantly colored lithographs of Currier and Ives, the rest of the nation acquired a romantic and often favorable view of their new state. The Texas Ranger became a legendary figure, composed partly of Panther Komax and his undisciplined ways, partly of Otto Macnab and his merciless efficiency. A deluge of lurid penny-thrillers recounted the adventures of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and the Texas Rangers. Tall stories were told about life in Texas decades before most people had heard the word cowboy or ever a steer was driven north.
Of course, not every soldier who served in Texas returned home singing its praises. One Pennsylvania volunteer said: ‘If I was ordered back to Texas, I’d cut my throat.’ A general said later: ‘If I owned Hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.’ Perhaps Colonel Persifer Cobb of Edisto Island, South Carolina, said it with deepest feeling: ‘I am often haunted by nightmares. I’m back in Texas trying to discipline thirty-six Rangers.’
The war left one indelible heritage: it intensified the animosity that already existed between Texans and Mexicans. The savage behavior of the Rangers in both the Monterrey area and Mexico City established them nationally as los tejanos sangrientes, and along the Rio Grande as los Rinches.
War often produces unexpected transformations of social life, and this one gave America and Texas each an unusual boon. During negotiations with Santa Anna, that wily gentleman told a group of American businessmen: ‘When I was on duty in Yucatan, I came upon a product which I am sure will make one of you rich. It was called chicle.’ And thus chewing gum was introduced into the States. Texas received a gift almost as far-reaching, for in one of Harry Saxon’s finest daguerreotypes, he caught the birth of a legend. Panther Komax, hairy as ever, is shown with a barefoot Mexican peon kneeling at his feet. The accompanying story read:
I must confess that I posed this picture the morning after the event occurred. When Colonel Cobb and I went out on the night of the great killings in Mexico City we were so late that we discovered nothing, so we retired to quarters, but shortly thereafter I returned to the streets, suspecting that something of moment was occurring, and I came upon the tail end of the slaughter. Komax and his partner Otto Macnab had been shooting anyone in sight, but they ran out of ammunition. Seeing this disreputable peon who looked as if he might have been one of the murderers of Allsens, Macnab was preparing to cut the man’s throat when the latter broke loose, fell to the ground, and began grabbing at Komax’s boot.
From prolonged use, the boot was in sad repair, and this the groveling man indicated, tugging at it and informing us in some way that he, the peon, was a bootmaker, and that given the proper tools, he could mend that boot. Macnab, who spoke excellent Spanish, put away his knife and interrogated the man. Yes, he carried the universal name Juan Hernández. Yes, he was a bootmaker and a good one. Yes, he could either mend Komax’s boot or make him one much better.
Komax, catching the drift, raised the man to his feet and asked, through Macnab: ‘Can you make a boot as good as this?’ and Hernández broke into nervous laughter: ‘If I made a boot that bad, my mother would beat me.’ In this way, on a night of carnage and at the very point of death, my company of Texas Rangers acquired a bootmaker who now marches with us, tending our shoes.
When the Rangers left their transport at Indianola, that thriving harbor on Matagorda Bay, Otto stayed three days with his brother-in-law, Theo Allerkamp; then, on a horse provided by Theo, he started on the long ride to Fredericksburg.
His spirits rose as he neared Austin, where he spent two days verifying title to his acreage at Fredericksburg. With reassuring documents in his pocket he started westward, and for the first time in his life took time to appreciate the miracle of a luxuriant Texas spring, not the ordinary blossoming of trees at Victoria, or the sparse flowers along the Brazos, or that wilderness of minute flowerlets in the Nueces desert, but the unbelievable expanse of two distinct flowers, one a rich blue, the other a reddish gold. Sometimes they covered entire fields: And not little fields, either. Look at them! How many acres?
He was staring at a spread of flowers along the banks of the Colorado River, so many and in such dazzling array that they almost blinded him. Here rose the wonderful bluebonnets of Texas, each stem ending in a sturdy pyramid of delightful blue flowers. Intermixed with them was the only other flower that could make the blue stand out, the Indian paintbrush in burnt orange. Blue and red-orange, what a surprising combination, made even more vibrant by the fact that both flowers bore at their apex a fleck of white, so that the field pulsated with beauty. So vast it was in extent that Otto could scarcely believe that so many flowers, each its own masterpiece, could combine to create a picture of such harmony. ‘Red, white and blue,’ he murmured. ‘What a flag.’
But then he reached the spot where the Pedernales River joined the Colorado, and now he knew he was approaching his destination, and as he climbed a slight rise he was confronted by a field not of forty acres or of eighty, but of limitless extent, and it was solid bluebonnet and paintbrush, a benediction of nature so prodigal that he could only halt and gaze. Then slowly he turned his horse and rode toward home.
Benito Garza also went home, but to a tormented scene. Exhausted from long days of guerrilla warfare, he left Vera Cruz with his wife and three commandeered horses as weary of battle as their riders. Painfully the couple made their way through the jungle and up to the altiplano, where they witnessed the desolation of Avila and the other ruins wrought by the war.
They felt a bleeding sorrow for their count
During the first eighteen days of this bleak pilgrimage Benito refused to place the blame upon his hero: ‘No! Don’t say that, Lucha. Santa Anna had a fine plan, but it fell astray.’
‘His plans always fell astray.’
‘He’ll come back, I promise you. He’ll land at Vera Cruz, just as before, except that this time …’
At the start of the third week, when the Garzas learned from friends in Mexico City how tremendous the loss of territory was to be—more than half the country turned over to the norteamericanos—he began to admit that his hero had made fearful errors: ‘He could have engineered it better. Lose Tejas, yes. But never should he have given up so much more.’
When they reached San Luis Potosí they heard a constant wail of grief, and now the recriminations against Santa Anna became vociferous, for this region contained many who had fought at Buena Vista, and who knew that Santa Anna had fled the battlefield when victory was at hand. As Lucha said: ‘That last night María and I crept out on scout while you were meeting with Santa Anna. Secretly, along the shoulder of the hill, we could see that the yanquis were retreating in disarray. But when we returned we were not allowed to report. Women were not welcomed in that tent.’
How tragic the defeat was! The litany of lost lands carried its own sorrow, never to be erased from the mexicano soul: ‘Tejas, Nuevo México, Arizona, California, qué lástima, qué dolor!’ The names formed a rosary of despair, the heart of Mexico torn away and bleeding.
As the Garzas approached the Rio Grande before turning east toward Matamoros, they paused to look across the river into the still-contested Nueces Strip, and resting in their saddles, they reached brutal conclusions: ‘Santa Anna failed us. In the present leadership there is no hope. Mexico will never know peace, and there is no chance of turning back the norteamericanos.’ But in the depth of their despair they saw a chance for personal salvation, and Benito, his mustaches dark in the blazing sunlight, phrased their oath: ‘The yanquis who try to steal that Strip from us, they’ll never know a night of security. Their cattle will never graze in peace. By God, Lucha, they’ll pay a terrible price for their arrogance. Promise me you’ll never surrender.’
‘I promise.’
… TASK FORCE
I believe that all of us, older members and youthful staff alike, looked forward with greater eagerness to our April meeting than to any before. It was to be held in Alpine, an authentic frontier town of some six thousand population situated in the heart of rugged ranch country in West Texas. To the south, along the Rio Grande, lies remote Big Bend National Park with its peaks and canyons, an overgrazed semi-desert in 1944, when it was taken into the park system, but now a miraculously recovered primitive wilderness. To the north, rising as if to protect it, are the Guadalupes, tallest mountains in Texas, and Fort Davis, best restored of the old Texas battle stations.
Alpine stands at an altitude of 4,485 feet, blizzardlike in winter, ninety degrees in summer, and its charm lies in its successful preservation of old-time ways. It serves as the seat of Brewster County, an almost unpopulated area about the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined, and is surrounded by ranches of staggering size.
‘Out here, ma’am,’ said the tour driver, ‘we never state the size in acres. It’s sections. The Baker Ranch you’re asking about, it has fifty-five sections, that’s better’n thirty-five thousand acres. Middlin’ size, I’d say, because it takes a hundred and fifty acres of that barren land to feed one unit … A unit, ma’am, is a cow and a calf, with hopefully another calf on the way. So the Bakers, they cain’t run but two hundred-odd cows on their ranch, and that’s why we classify it middlin’.’
Ransom Rusk had provided the planes to fly us to Alpine, and as we drove from the little airport we saw two signs which prepared us for what was to be one of our best sessions:
REAL OIL PAINTINGS
$3.50 AND UP
THIS MOTEL IS RUN
BY HONEST NATIVE BORN TEXANS
Our meetings were to be held at Sul Ross University, a handsome collection of red-brick buildings perched on the side of a hill, and there a real surprise awaited us, for we were met by a short, white-haired, sparkling-eyed man in his sixties whose face positively glowed with enthusiasm: ‘I’m Professor Mark Berninghaus, Texas history, and we’ll pile right into these two ranch wagons.’ He would drive the lead car, he said, which the Task Force members would share. Then he introduced us to a young man of imposing build wearing a big Stetson: ‘This is Texas Ranger Cletus Macnab, and if you know your frontier history, you’ll remember that one of his ancestors was the legendary Ranger Otto Macnab. And another was the equally famous Oscar Macnab, also a Ranger.’
Macnab, a handsome young fellow in a pearl-gray whipcord suit, bowed to us but did not remove his hat. To the girl from SMU who had arranged this session he said: ‘Staff’ll ride with me,’ and to the rest of us he said: ‘I’ve provided maps of the region we’ll be traveling,’ and with that, we headed south along Route 69 to the twin border towns of Polk on the American side and Carlota on the Mexican. It was a journey of eighty miles through absolutely empty land—not even a filling station—but one which, under the loving tutelage of Professor Berninghaus, provided us with an intimate glimpse of a Texas that few visitors ever get to see.
‘I want you to notice the vegetation, and how it changes as we drop down to the Rio Grande, two thousand feet lower in elevation.’ Then he began an instruction which was shared by intercom with the staff in the following car: ‘Look at the bleakness of land, only one shrub to an area the size of a football field.’ When we studied the barren earth we saw at first only a reddish, rocky soil, but as our eyes grew accustomed to the vast empty space and the arching blue sky, cloudless and perfect, we began to see lone bushlike plants clinging to the arid earth. They were dark green and had many narrow leaves that branched out like untended hair, forming beautiful globes: ‘Sotol, one of the major plants of our barren plains. Remember how green it is, because later I’ll provide you with a surprise.’
Imperceptibly the landscape changed—worsened, in my opinion—until we were in the heart of a real desert, but not the sandy kind featured in Grade B movies: ‘We call this the Chihuahuan Desert, eight hundred miles, maybe, north and south, two hundred east to west. And here we have one of its characteristic plants.’ He pointed to a remarkable growth, a tall, reedy plant composed of forty or fifty slender whips, each bearing at its tip a cluster of brilliant red flowerlets. The ocotillo, which looked as if it had been thrown together helter-skelter, was appropriate to its bleak surroundings, for only a plant so thin, so conservative of water, could have survived here.
‘Look!’ Miss Cobb cried as we descended into a protected valley. ‘What can that be?’ It was an imposing plant of the desert, a low-growing cluster of heavy brownish leaves, quite undistinguished, except that from its middle rose a thick stem high in the air, topped by clusters of beautiful gold-white flowers that seemed to fill the blue sky.
‘A special yucca,’ Berninghaus said over his intercom. ‘But hold your applause till we climb out of this depression. Because then you’re going to see what many never see. A forest of yucca … many species … beautiful.’
I think we watched with a sense of disbelief, for we could not associate this tremendous desert with beauty as we were accustomed to know it, but as we reached the crest of a small rise we saw spreading off to our right a vision of Texas that would never be erased; it was so different, so grandiose that it seemed to represent the state in its original form before intrusions like Houston and Dallas.
It was a small forest of three kinds of yucca: the noble ones we’d already seen, a more beautiful version called Spanish Dagger, and a veritable tree with stu
They had a strange effect on me. I compared them to the delicate garden flowers I’d known when a student in England, and with the carefully cultivated flowers in Geneva. Obviously they were flowers, but big and brutal and self-protective against the rainless wind. Compared to the pansy or the tulip, they were gross; one handful of their heavy blooms at the end of a stalk seemed larger than a garden of English flowers or a bed of Boston blooms. They were frightening in the awkwardness of their limbs, unkempt in the way their trunks shed, and when Miss Cobb insisted upon leaving our ranch wagon to inspect one of the nearer yuccas, she quickly returned, for a rattlesnake lay coiled at its base.
How beautiful they were, those yuccas of the Chihuahuan Desert, how Texan. As we moved past their tremendous forms we carried with us a new understanding of the West, that bleak and barren land which offered so many hidden rewards.
But now we were descending to regions with a much different vegetation, and Berninghaus assured us: ‘Flowers that look like flowers. See down there.’
He was pointing to one of the strangest flowers I had ever seen or, rather, to a cluster of some hundred individual flowers congregated into a round cactuslike globe more than four feet in diameter. When I looked closely I saw that each plant forming the globe had powerful thorns that interlocked with those of other plants to make the globe impenetrable. These proved that the thing was a cactus, but the blizzard of delicate purple flowers proved that it was also a luxuriant bouquet. However, the real surprise was to come: ‘In the autumn each of these flowers produces a spiny fruit, brilliant red in color. When you peel away the skin you find a delicious treat. Tastes like strawberries.’