him a job as clerk in a crossroads store. Within a fortnight he was
missing. After some months of anxiety his relatives learned that he
was living among the Cherokee Indians across the Tennessee. When one of
his brothers attempted to induce him to return home, young Sam answered
that he preferred measuring deer tracks to measuring tape, and that, if
he was not permitted to study Latin in the academy, he could at least
dig it out for himself in the freedom of the woods. Houston dwelt for
several years with his Cherokee friends, eventually being adopted as
a son by the chieftain Oolooteka. Upon the outbreak of our second war
with Great Britain he enlisted in the American army. Though his friends
remonstrated with him for entering the army as a private soldier, his
mother was made of different stuff. As he was leaving for the front she
took down his father’s rifle and, with tear-dimmed eyes, handed it to
her son. “Here, my boy,” she said bravely, though her voice quavered,
“take this rifle and never disgrace it. Remember that I would rather
that all my sons should lie in honorable graves than that one of them
should turn his back to save his life. Go, and God be with you, but
never forget that, while my door is always open to brave men, it is
always shut to cowards.”
Houston quickly climbed the ladder of promotion, obtaining a commission
within a year after he had enlisted as a private. He first showed the
stern stuff of which he was made when taking part in General Jackson’s
campaign against the Creek Indians. His thigh pierced by an arrow
during the storming of the Indian breastworks at Tohopeka, Houston
asked a fellow officer to draw it out. But it was sunk so deeply in the
flesh that the attempt to extract it brought on an alarming flow of
blood, whereupon the officer refused to proceed, fearing that Houston
would bleed to death. Thereupon the fiery youngster drew his sword.
“Draw it out or I’ll run you through!” he said. Out the arrow came.
General Jackson, who had witnessed the incident and had noted the
seriousness of the young officer’s wound, ordered him to the rear, but
Houston, mindful of his mother’s parting injunction, disregarded the
order and plunged again into the thick of the battle. It was a breach
of discipline, however, to which Andrew Jackson shut his eyes.
Opportunity once more knocked loudly at young Houston’s door when the
Creeks made their final stand at Horseshoe Bend. After the main body
of the Indians had been destroyed, a party of warriors barricaded
themselves in a log cabin built over a ravine in such a situation that
the guns could not be brought to bear. The place must be taken by
storm, and Jackson called for volunteers. Houston was the only man who
responded. Snatching a rifle from a soldier, he shouted, “Come on, men!
Follow me!” and dashed toward the cabin. But no one had the courage to
follow him into the ravine of death. Running in zigzags, to disconcert
the Indian marksmen, he actually reached the cabin before he fell with
a shattered arm and two rifle-bullets through his shoulder. It was just
the sort of deed to win the heart of the grim old hero of New Orleans,
who until his death remained one of Houston’s staunchest friends and
admirers.
Seeing but scant prospects of promotion in the piping times of peace
which now ensued, Houston resigned from the army, took up the study of
law, and was admitted to the bar within a year from the time he opened
his first law book. He practised for a few years with marked success,
gave up the law for the more exciting field of politics, was elected
to Congress when only thirty, and four years later became Governor of
Tennessee. As the result of an unhappy marriage, and deeply wounded
by the outrageous and baseless accusations made by his political
opponents, he resigned the governorship and went into voluntary exile.
In his trouble he turned his face toward the wigwam of his adopted
father, Oolooteka, who had become the head chief of his tribe and had
moved from the banks of the Tennessee to the falls of the Arkansas.
Though eleven eventful years had passed, the old chiefs affection for
his white son had not diminished, and the exile found a warm welcome
awaiting him in the wigwams and beside the council-fires of his
adopted people. Learning of the frauds by which the Indian agents were
enriching themselves at the expense of the nation’s wards, Houston,
who had adopted Indian dress, went to Washington and laid the facts
before Secretary Calhoun, who, instead of thanking him, rebuked him for
presuming to appear before him in the dress of an Indian. Thereupon
Houston turned his back on the secretary, and went straight to his
old-time friend, President Jackson, who promptly saw to it that the
guilty officials were punished. When the story of Calhoun’s criticism
of Houston’s costume was repeated to the President, that rough old
soldier remarked dryly: “I’m glad there is one man of my acquaintance
who was made by the Almighty and not by the tailor.”
After three years of forest life among the Indians Houston decided
to emigrate to Texas and become a ranchman, setting out with a few
companions in December, 1832, for San Antonio. The romantic story of
Houston’s self-imposed exile had resulted in making him a national
figure, and the news that he had come to Texas spread among the
settlers like fire in dry grass. Before reaching Nacogdoches he learned
that he had been unanimously elected a member of the convention which
had been called to meet at Austin in the spring of 1833 to draft a
constitution for Texas. From that time onward his story is that of
his adopted country. When the rupture with Mexico came, in 1835, as a
result of the attempt to disarm the settlers at Gonzales, Houston was
chosen commander of the volunteer forces to be raised in eastern Texas,
and after the battle at the Mission of the Immaculate Conception he was
appointed commander-in-chief of the Texan army.
When Santa Anna, flushed by his bloody successes at the Alamo and
Goliad, started to invade central Texas, in the spring of 1836,
Houston, who had been able to raise a force of barely five hundred
untrained and ill-armed men, sullenly retreated before the advance of
the dictator. On the 18th of April, however, his plan of campaign was
suddenly reversed by the capture of two Mexicans, from whom he learned
what he had not positively known before: that Santa Anna himself was
with the advance column and that he was temporarily cut off from the
other divisions of his army. The chance for which Houston was waiting
had come, and he seized it before it could get away. If Texas was to
be free, if the Lone Star flag and not the flag with the emblem of
the serpent and the buzzard was to wave over the region above the Rio
Grande, it was now or never. There were no half-way measures with Sam
Houston; he determined to stake everything upon a single throw. If he
won, Texas would be free; if he lost he and his men could only go down
fighting, as their fellows had gone before them. Pushing on to a point
near the mouth of the San Jacinto, where it empties into the Bay of
Galveston, he carefully selected the spot for his last stand, mounted
the two brass cannon known as “the Twin Sisters,” which had been
presented to the Texans by Northern sympathizers, and sat down to wait
for the coming of “the Napoleon of the West.” On the morning of the
20th of April his pickets fell back before the Mexican advance, and the
two great antagonists, Houston and Santa Anna, at last found themselves
face to face. The dictator had with him fifteen hundred men; Houston
had less than half that number--but the Texans boasted that “two to one
was always fair.”
At daybreak on the 21st Houston sent for his chief of scouts, the
famous Deaf Smith,[D] and ordered him to choose a companion, take axes,
and secretly destroy the bridge across the San Jacinto. As the bridge
was the only means of retreat for miles around, this drastic step meant
utter destruction to the conquered. Talk about Cortes burning his
boats behind him! He showed not a whit more courage than did Houston
when he destroyed the bridge across the San Jacinto. At 3 o’clock in
the afternoon he quietly paraded his little army behind the low range
of hills which screened them from the enemy, who were still drowsing
in their customary siesta. At this psychological moment Deaf Smith,
following to the letter the instructions Houston had given him, tore
up on a reeking horse, waving his axe above his head, and shouted:
“Vince’s Bridge is down! We’ve got to fight or drown!” That was the
word for which Houston had been waiting. Instantly he ordered his whole
line to advance. The only music of the Texans was a fife and a drum,
the musicians playing them into action to the rollicking tune of “Come
to the Bower.” And it was no bower of roses, either. As they swept
into view, rifles at the trail and moving at the double, the Mexicans,
though startled at the unexpectedness of the attack, met them with a
raking fire of musketry. But the sight of the brown-faced men, and of
the red-white-and-green banner which flaunted above them, infuriated
the Texans to the point of frenzy. Losing all semblance of formation,
they raced forward as fast as they could put foot to ground.
In front of them rode the herculean Houston, a striking figure on his
white horse. “Come on, boys!” he thundered. “Get at ’em! Get at ’em!
Texans, Texans, follow me!” And follow him they did, surging forward
with the irresistibility of a tidal wave. “Remember the Alamo!” they
roared. “Remember Goliad! Remember Travis! Remember Jim Bowie! Remember
Davy Crockett! Kill the damned greasers! Cut their hearts out! Kill
’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”
In the face of the maddened onslaught the Mexican line crumbled like
a hillside before the stream from a hydraulic nozzle. Before the
demoralized Mexicans had time to realize what had happened the Texans
were in their midst. Many of them were “two-gun men,” who fought with
a revolver in each hand--and at every shot a Mexican fell. Others
avenged the murdered Bowie with the wicked knife which bore his name,
slashing and ripping and stabbing with the long, savage blades until
they looked like poleaxe men in an abattoir. In vain the terrified
Mexicans threw down their arms and fell upon their knees, pattering
out prayers in Spanish and calling in their broken English: “Me no
Alamo! Me no Goliad!” Within five minutes after the Texans had come
to hand-grips with their foe the battle had turned into a slaughter.
Houston was shot through the ankle and his horse was dying, but man and
horse struggled on. Deaf Smith drove his horse into the thick of the
fight and, as it fell dead beneath him, he turned his long-barrelled
rifle into a war-club and literally smashed his way through the Mexican
line, leaving a trail of men with broken skulls behind him. An old
frontiersman named Curtis went into action carrying two guns. “The
greasers killed my son and my son-in-law at the Alamo,” he shouted,
“and I’m going to get two of ’em before I die, and if I get old Santa
Anna I’ll cut a razor-strop from his back.”
The commander of one of the Mexican regiments attempted to stem the
tide of defeat by charging the Texan line at its weakest point with
five hundred men. Houston, instantly appreciating the peril, dashed
in front of his men. “Come on, my brave fellows!” he shouted, “your
general leads you!” They met the charging Mexicans half-way, stopped
them with a withering volley, and then finished the business with the
knife. Only thirty-two of the five hundred Mexicans were left alive to
surrender. Everywhere sounded the grunt of blows sent home, the scream
of wounded men, the choking sobs of the dying, the _crack-crack-crack_
of rifle and revolver, the grating rasp of steel on steel, the harsh,
shrill orders of the officers, the trample of many feet, and, above
all, the deep-throated, menacing cry of the avenging Texans: “Remember
the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Kill the greasers! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill
’em!”
In fifteen minutes the battle of the San Jacinto was over, and all
that was left of Santa Anna’s army of invasion was a panic-stricken
mob of fugitives flying blindly across the prairie. Hard on their
heels galloped the Texan cavalry, cutting down the stragglers with
their sabres and herding the bulk of the flying army toward the river
as cow-punchers herd cattle into a corral. And the bridge was gone!
Before the Mexicans rolled the deep and turbid San Jacinto; coming up
behind them were the blood-crazed Texans. It was death on either hand.
Some of them spurred their horses into the river, only to be picked
off with rifle-bullets as they tried to swim across. Others threw down
their weapons and waited stolidly for the fatal stroke or shot. It was
a bloody business. Modern history records few, if any, more sweeping
victories. Of Santa Anna’s army of something over fifteen hundred men
six hundred and thirty were killed, two hundred and eight wounded, and
seven hundred and thirty taken prisoners.
The finishing touch was put to Houston’s triumph on the following
morning when a scouting party, scouring the prairie in search of
fugitives, discovered a man in the uniform of a common soldier
attempting to escape on hands and knees through the high grass. He
was captured and marched nine miles to the Texan camp, plodding on
foot in the dust in front of his mounted captors. When he lagged one
of them would prick him with his lance point until he broke into a
run. As the Texans rode into camp with their panting and exhausted
captive, the Mexican prisoners excitedly exclaimed: “_El Presidente!
El Presidente!_” It was Santa Anna, dictator of Mexico--a prisoner in
the hands of the men whom he had boasted that he would make fugitives,
prisoners, or corpses. Lying under the tree where he had spent the
night, the wounded Houston received the surrender of “the Napoleon of
the West.” The war of independence was over. Texas was a republic in
fact as well as in name, and the hero of the San Jacinto became its
president. The defenders of the Alamo and Goliad were avenged. From the
Sabine to the Rio Grande the lone-star flag flew free.
THE PREACHER WHO RODE FOR AN EMPIRE
THE PREACHER WHO RODE FOR AN EMPIRE
This is the forgotten story of the greatest ride. The history of the
nation has been punctuated with other great rides, it is true. Paul
Revere rode thirty miles to rouse the Middlesex minutemen and save from
capture the guns and powder stored at Concord; Sheridan rode the twenty
miles from Winchester to Cedar Creek and by his thunderous “Turn, boys,
turn--we’re going back!” saved the battle--and the names of them both
are immortalized in verse that is more enduring than iron. Whitman, the
missionary, rode four thousand miles and saved us an empire, and his
name is not known at all.
Though there were other actors in the great drama which culminated in
the grim old preacher’s memorable ride--suave, frock-coated diplomats
and furtive secret agents and sun-bronzed, leather-shirted frontiersmen
and bearded factors of the fur trade--the story rightfully begins and
ends with Indians. There were four of them, all chieftains, and the
beaded patterns on their garments of fringed buckskin and the fashion
in which they wore the feathers in their hair told the plainsmen as
plainly as though they had been labelled that they were listened to
with respect in the councils of the Flathead tribe, whose tepees were
pitched in the far nor’west. They rode their lean and wiry ponies
up the dusty, unpaved thoroughfare in St. Louis known as Broadway
one afternoon in the late autumn of 1832. Though the St. Louis of
three quarters of a century ago was but an outpost on civilization’s
firing-line and its six thousand inhabitants were accustomed to seeing
the strange, wild figures of the plains, the sudden appearance of these
Indian braves, who came riding out of nowhere, clad in all the barbaric
panoply of their rank, caused a distinct flutter of curiosity.
The news of their arrival being reported to General Clarke, the
military commandant, he promptly assumed the ciceronage of the
bewildered but impassive red men. Having, as it chanced, been an Indian
commissioner in his earlier years, he knew the tribe well and could
speak with them in their own guttural tongue. Beyond vouchsafing the
information that they came from the upper reaches of the Columbia,
from the country known as Oregon, and that they had spent the entire
summer and fall upon their journey, the Indians, with characteristic
reticence, gave no explanation of the purpose of their visit. After
some days had passed, however, they confided to General Clarke that
rumors had filtered through to their tribe of the white man’s “Book
of Life,” and that they had been sent to seek it. To a seasoned old
frontiersman like the general, this was a novel proposition to come
from a tribe of remote and untamed Indians. He treated the tribal
commissioners, nevertheless, with the utmost hospitality, taking them
to dances and such other entertainments as the limited resources of
the St. Louis of those days permitted, and, being himself a devout
Catholic, to his own church. Thus passed the winter, during which
two of the chiefs died, as a result, no doubt, of the indoor life
and the unaccustomed richness of the food. When the tawny prairies
became polka-dotted with bunch-grass in the spring, the two survivors
made preparations for their departure, but, before they left,
General Clarke, who had taken a great liking to these dignified and
intelligent red men, insisted on giving them a farewell banquet. After
the dinner the elder of the chiefs was called upon for a speech. You
must picture him as standing with folded arms, tall, straight and of
commanding presence, at the head of the long table, a most dramatic and
impressive figure in his garments of quill-embroidered buckskin, with
an eagle feather slanting in his hair. He spoke with the guttural but
sonorous eloquence of his people, and after each period General Clarke
translated what he had said to the attentive audience of army officers,
government officials, priests, merchants, and traders who lined the
table.
“I have come to you, my brothers,” he began, “over the trail of many
moons from out of the setting sun. You were the friends of my fathers,
who have all gone the long way. I have come with an eye partly open
for my people, who sit in darkness. I go back with both eyes closed.
How can I go back blind, to my blind people? I made my way to you with
strong arms through many enemies and strange lands that I might carry
much back to them. I go back with both arms broken and empty. Two
fathers came with us; they were the braves of many winters and wars. We
leave them asleep here by your great water and wigwams. They were tired
in many moons, and their moccasins wore out.
“My people sent me to get the white man’s Book of Life. You took me to
where you allow your women to dance as we do not ours, and the Book
was not there. You took me to where they worship the Great Spirit with
candles, and the Book was not there. You showed me images of the good
spirits and pictures of the good land beyond, but the Book was not
among them to tell us the way. I am going back the long and sad trail
to my people in the dark land. You make my feet heavy with gifts, and
my moccasins will grow old in carrying them; yet the Book is not among
them. When I tell my poor, blind people, after one more snow, in the
big council that I did not bring the Book, no word will be spoken by
our old men or by our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go
out in silence. My people will die in darkness, and they will go on a
long path to other hunting-grounds. No white man will go with them and
no white man’s Book to make the way plain. I have no more words.”
Just as the rude eloquence of the appeal touched the hearts of the
frontier dwellers who sat about the table in St. Louis, so, when it was
translated and published in the Eastern papers, it touched the hearts
and fired the imaginations of the nation. In a ringing editorial _The
Christian Advocate_ asked: “Who will respond to go beyond the Rocky
Mountains and carry the Book of Heaven?” And this was the cue for the
missionary whose name was Marcus Whitman to set foot upon the boards of
history.
His preparation for a frontiersman’s life began early for young
Whitman. Born in Connecticut when the eighteenth century had all
but run its course, he was still in his swaddling-clothes when his
parents, falling victims to the prevalent fever for “going west,”
piled their lares and penates into an ox-cart and trekked overland to
the fertile lake region of central New York, Mrs. Whitman making the
four-hundred-mile journey on foot, with her year-old babe in her arms.
Building a cabin with the tree trunks cleared from the site, they
began the usual pioneer’s struggle for existence. His father dying
before he had reached his teens, young Marcus was sent to live with
his grandfather in Plainfield, Mass., where he remained ten years,
learning his “three R’s” in such schools as the place afforded, his
education later being taken in hand by the local parson. His youth was
passed in the usual life of the country boy; to drive home the cows
and milk them, to chop the wood and carry the water and do the other
household chores, and, later on, to plough and plant the fields--a
training which was to prove invaluable to him in after years, on
the shores of another ocean. I expect that the strong, sturdy boy of
ceaseless activity and indomitable will--the Plainfield folk called
him mischievous and stubborn--who was fonder of hunting and fishing
than of algebra and Greek, must have caused his old grandfather a
good deal of worry; though, from all I can learn, he seems to have
been a straightforward and likable youngster. Very early he set his
heart on entering the ministry; but, owing to the dissuasions of his
relatives and friends, who knew how pitifully meagre was a clergyman’s
living in those days, he reluctantly abandoned the idea and took up
instead the study of medicine. After practising in Canada for several
years, he returned to central New York, where, with but little help,
he chopped a farm out of the wilderness, cleared it, and cultivated
it, built a grist-mill and a sawmill, and at the same time acted as
physician for a district fifty miles in radius. He was in the heyday
of life, prosperous, and engaged to the prettiest girl in all the
countryside, when, reading in the local paper the appeal made by the
Indian chieftains in far-away St. Louis, the old crusading fervor that
had first turned his thoughts toward the ministry, flamed up clear and
strong within him, and, putting comfort, prosperity, everything behind
him, he applied to the American Board for appointment as a missionary
to Oregon. Such a request from a man so peculiarly qualified for a
wilderness career as Whitman could not well be disregarded, and in due
time he received an appointment to go to the banks of the Columbia,
investigate, return, and report. The wish of his life had been granted:
he had become a skirmisher in the army of the church.