The History of Texas. Robert A. Calvert
had, in the guise of contract labor, been able to perpetuate slavery despite Mexican disapproval. Neither the Law of April 6, 1830, nor a state decree issued in 1832 to weaken negotiated servant contracts deterred some of the immigrants from bringing black slaves into Texas surreptitiously. Anglos argued that the economic development of the province depended on slave labor, and both Tejano oligarchs and liberal politicians in Coahuila seconded this position. Although many Mexican officials genuinely believed in the cruelty and immorality of the institution, they somehow consistently accepted the argument that the province could not grow and prosper without it.
By 1836, the number of slaves in Texas numbered about 5000. Most slaves lived on the Anglo plantations located in the productive lands adjacent to the Brazos, Colorado, and Trinity rivers, although slavery did exist around Nacogdoches and in other fledgling Anglo communities along the Red River.
The peculiar institution arrived in Texas with all its southern trappings, for whites sought to recreate it just as it existed in the United States. As in the South, where society delineated strict roles for the disparate races, in Texas many Anglos considered blacks a racially inferior people suited to a life of strenuous labor and servitude. As far as these people were concerned, black persons could be bought and sold, hired out, counted as part of one’s assets, and bequeathed to relatives. To control the slave population, whites followed tried and tested policies, including the liberal use of the lash. Slaves attempted to alleviate their condition by running away when possible, often seeking refuge among the Indian tribes of East Texas or in the Mexican settlements of the nation’s interior.
Tejanos
Hispanic Texans, many of them descendants of the first colonizers and presidial soldiers assigned to garrisons throughout the Spanish period, lived in the ranching areas of Central and South Texas. In the latter area, they occupied lands granted to them since the 1770s but also ones acquired from the state of Tamaulipas as late as the early 1830s. Most Tejanos, however, continued to live in the older cities established in the eighteenth century. The Tejano urban settlements included: San Antonio, which had a Hispanic population of 2500 in 1835; Goliad, with 700 in 1834; and Nacogdoches, reporting a figure of 537 Mexicans in 1835. Additionally, Tejanos resided near Goliad, in the nascent town of Victoria founded in 1824 by the empresario Martín de León. By 1830, the population of Victoria had grown to 248, and to 300 four years later. On the Rio Grande, Laredo consisted of about 2000 predominantly Hispanic residents in 1835.
In the towns, people tried to make a living in a variety of ways. Merchants, especially in San Antonio, sojourned to the Mexican states below the Rio Grande to acquire finished goods such as clothing and household items for resale in the province. Tradespeople met both civilian and military needs as tailors, blacksmiths, and barbers. Poor people, most of them peones (commoners), did whatever task people would pay them to perform, including work on nearby ranches.
In the countryside, rancheros still took to the open range to round up mesteños, though by this time government regulation impeded efforts to make a profitable living in this way. Nonetheless, the rancheros around San Antonio clandestinely captured wild horses and cattle and invented clever ways to sell the stock to soldiers, fellow Béxareños, and even Anglo Americans. Alternatively, as rancheros had done in the Spanish era, they drove their stock into other Mexican states or Louisiana.
Generally, farming continued to provide only a subsistence‐level existence. The people in San Antonio generally limited themselves to working family plots, though larger landowners tried harvesting vegetables and fruits on a grander scale. Some of the farmers in Béxar and Goliad who possessed irrigable lands experimented with growing cotton. Farming did at times yield slight surpluses, most of which were consumed locally.
As was the case before Mexico gained independence, Mexican society in Texas remained a divided one, the emerging opportunities in commerce, ranching, and politics during the 1820s and 1830s fueling the fragmentation. Government bureaucrats, successful merchants or rancheros, and others who came from prominent families made up a small elite. Among its members were Erasmo and Juan N. Seguín, José Antonio Navarro, Ramón Músquiz, and retired soldiers such as José Francisco Ruiz and José María Balmaceda.
The status of Hispanic women reflected both liberties and restrictions. Women sued for military survivors’ benefits and engaged in the sale of lands, from which some achieved financial standing equal to or surpassing that of some men. But women also suffered from serious disadvantages. Law and tradition barred them from voting or the holding of political office. Religion discouraged divorce, dooming many women to endure unhappy marriages. Furthermore, societal conventions at the time demanded the ostracism of adulteresses, while turning a blind eye to the philandering of men. As was common practice in other western societies at the time, women often ate their home‐cooked meals apart from (and sometimes only after) their spouses.
As in the Anglo sector, education was an area of concern for the Hispanic community, and in the traditional Mexican way, Tejanos supported it locally through fundraising drives. In Laredo, citizens opened a school in 1825. In Nacogdoches, Mexicans began a determined drive in 1828 to establish a similar facility, and by 1831, they had a school building and a teacher. San Antonio had two teachers in the late 1820s and early 1830s, though education there seems to have had its ups and downs according to prevailing economic conditions. Béxar and Nacogdoches boasted the highest proportion of students per capita in Texas. Generally, education declined with the turmoil of the mid‐1830s.
Militia units remained the primary form of defense, as had been common during the period before 1821. Different from the Anglo volunteer companies, which were basically retaliatory, the Tejano militia, led by locally elected officers, followed an offensive strategy that conducted forays into Indian camping grounds. By the early 1830s, militia squadrons had developed into highly efficient, ranging cavalry units with the capacity to strike and pursue the enemy. Leaders of these companies included Martín de León, Juan N. Seguín, and Carlos de la Garza.
Catholicism remained the primary religion among the Mexican Texans. As during the Spanish era, Tejanos carried on the practices of their colonial forefathers. The Church had all but given up its work in the Far North during the period, and the two priests responsible for Texas Catholicism during the period had earned disgraceful reputations. Displaying their own independence from religious dictates, Tejanos pleaded poverty and refused to pay the fees that the clergymen requested for performing the sacraments and other priestly functions.
Indians
The Indian peoples of Texas, still seeking to maintain their independence, now contended with Tejano militias and Anglo rifle companies instead of Spanish priests and royal armies. Those tribes that the Spanish had targeted for conversion had by the 1820s, either perished due to wars and (European) diseases, been displaced from their native lands and driven into the western regions, or integrated successfully into Spanish/Mexican communities. Only vestiges of the tribal Coahuiltecans remained by the 1830s, some of them having managed to meld into Goliad’s population following the last phase of mission secularization in the 1820s.
With the Nuestra Señora del Rosario Mission no longer operative, the Karankawas lost one of their last sources of refuge near their old hunting grounds; at the same time, they became the targets of Anglos who coveted Karankawan lands. In 1824, settlers from Austin’s colony launched hostilities to drive nearby Karankawas from the vicinity. By 1827, the antagonistic whites had succeeded in forcing the tribe to relocate farther south along the coast. The move, however, only produced new problems for the Indians, as it placed them closer to the Tejano settlements at La Bahía, where local rancheros tolerated no threats to their livestock. During the 1830s, the Karankawas numbered less than 800 persons but desperately clung to survival by preying on Tejano‐owned cattle or, in the case of those who gradually drifted back to their previous homeland, “hiring out” to Anglo settlers as casual laborers or domestic servants.
Meanwhile, the Indian tribes of the plains–such as the Comanches, Apaches, and Norteños–remained faithful to their traditional lifeways. Norteños and Apaches still relied on a combination of the hunt and small‐scale farming, with women cultivating and harvesting corn, pumpkins,