Texas

  Rarely had I heard the options stated so clearly, and her subsequent analysis challenged us to sort out our prejudices: ‘If we search the historical record, particularly the diaries, we find support for almost anything we care to believe. Who can forget the report of Víctor Ripperdá from Nacogdoches to his superiors in Mexico City in 1824:

  ‘I have now served in this forsaken place for three years and in that time have watched a steady stream of Americans sneaking in to steal our frontier. If you scoured the gutters of Europe, you could not find a worse collection of undesirables and troublemakers. Half who creep across the Neutral Ground seem to be fleeing the hangman’s noose for murder. The other half have stolen money from their employers. Many were outright pirates with Jean Lafitte, who now ravages the coast of Yucatán, and others fought alongside Philip Nolan when he tried to steal Tejas and was shot by our troops.

  The attempt by the United States to fill our countryside with its discarded criminals would be amusing were it not so dangerous. If such rabble continue to pour in, there can be only trouble.

  That’s a pretty savage condemnation of our forebears, but we must temper it with the firsthand observations of the good Father Clooney of County Clare, who knew Ripperdá and who must have observed the same immigrants upon whom the Mexican official based his harsh judgments:

  ‘I admit that during those rainy days when we crossed the infamous Neutral Ground, I was apprehensive about the kind of people who would be forming my massive parish, for I was forced to officiate at several hangings. But when I came to know the real settlers along the three rivers, I concluded that they provided just about the same proportion of rascals as I had found in Ireland, and rather fewer than I had seen in New Orleans. They were a rowdy lot, but so was I when a lad, and if they liked their whiskey, so did I.

  ‘Forgetting the occasional shooting and the few who abandoned their responsibilities, I remember them as kind-hearted, generous, quick to defend their rights, and eager to marry, respect their wives, and raise their children as Christians. I was happy to serve amongst them and have bright hopes for the land they are building.

  The judgment that the settlers were average was made rather effectively by Mattie Quimper in the brief summary she left of her days at the ferry bearing her name:

  ‘Very few tried to use the ferry without paying, and when they did, others forced them to pay up, not me, because they said it was unfair to rob a woman. I offered bed and board to hundreds stopping at our inn, and apart from an occasional murder or a shooting after too much drink, I saw no misbehavior. If a wandering man had no money he slept free, and ate, too, but if he could afford it he paid, and few cheated me. Times were hard, but they were good, and I never saw much difference between the Mexican government and the Texican. They were both fairly decent.

  ‘And I’m sure you remember Finlay Macnab’s moving summary in which he tells of assessing his fellow ship passengers in October 1831 and found them to be stable citizens with above-average education? There were no criminals among the thirty adults and none who had been forced by the law to quit their homes back east. Remember with what respect he spoke of them and how pleased he was to be a member of such a group. He did, we must admit, point out two weaknesses: several had abandoned their families back home, and quite a few favored heavy drink. But on the whole, they justified Stephen Austin’s boast in his letter to Macnab in 1829:

  ‘I can assure you, Mr. Macnab, that the citizens of Texas are just as responsible and law-abiding as those of New Orleans or Cincinnati, and that ruffians will never be allowed in this colony.’

  With that, Dr. Smeadon clasped her hands under her chin and stared at us: ‘How shall we resolve these four conflicting statements?’

  She spent about twenty minutes parading before us other passages from contemporary documents, some supporting the view that all Texas settlers were criminals, others depicting an orderly society in which newcomers found refuge and encouragement to rebuild their lives. At the end of her recital we were in a jumble, and Lorenzo Quimper said so: ‘What do we do, toss a coin?’

  ‘No,’ Dr. Smeadon said, ‘we look for a construct.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A theory which will explain the contradictions, resolve the differences.’

  ‘That would have to be some theory! Jean Lafitte and Father Clooney in one bundle!’

  ‘But that’s exactly where they belong, where all of us belong, in one big bundle.’

  She then launched into her main thesis, and as she developed it we began to acquire another vision of the Texas we loved. We neither defended it nor condemned. We merely looked at it through somewhat clearer glasses.

  ‘The construct that clears away many of the seeming contradictions is anomie, and I’m pleased that members of your staff provided the definition they did. It’s quite accurate. Anomie is the emotional state of mind we are apt to fall into when we are wrenched away from familiar surroundings and thrown into perplexing new ones. The two key words for me are disorientation at first, followed by alienation if it continues long enough.

  ‘I assure you, Mr. Quimper, I have no opinion whatever as to whether our great-great-grandfathers were criminals or rowdies or gentlemen scholars. All I’m concerned with is: “How did they behave? What did they actually do?” And when I study that restricted body of information I must conclude that most of them experienced anomie.

  ‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ she asked. ‘They were torn from settled homes. They surrendered the assured positions they had enjoyed in the pecking order. And they found themselves tossed topsy-turvy into a new environment they couldn’t control.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they rejoice in their new freedom?’ Quimper asked. ‘I would.’

  ‘At first you would, I’m sure. So would I. But then doubts would begin to seep in. You find that what looks like firm ground really isn’t. Values begin to shift, and what was secure back east is found to be in flux. Disorientation is the word, and once it starts, its effect can be cumulative and catastrophic.’

  When we started to argue about our susceptibility to such disorientation, Dr. Smeadon asked Quimper if he would mind being a guinea pig, and he said ‘Shoot!’ so she asked him to stand, and as he smiled down at us she began to dissect him: ‘The attractive thing about you, Mr. Quimper, is that you wear so forthrightly the badges of your position in our Texas society. Your big hat there on the table. Your attractive bolo tie. Your neat rancher’s whipcords. Your very nice boots—you make them, don’t you? And your Cadillac parked in some driveway and an oil well somewhere. They define you. They give you assurance that you’re part of the team, and a not inconsiderable part.’ She laughed, then asked: ‘You’re proud of being a Texan, aren’t you?’ and he snapped: ‘I sure am.’

  Now she became serious: ‘Mr. Quimper, please be seated, and I thank you for your help. But how would you feel if you were suddenly transported, let’s say to New Hampshire, which is a very fine state but which respects none of your visible symbols. Its people don’t cotton to Cadillacs and oil wells, and its children would laugh at you if you wore a bolo.’ She moved closer to him. ‘How would you react, Mr. Quimper, if all your securities were suddenly dissolved?’

  She smiled at him, a generous, warm smile of encouragement. ‘From what I hear, you’re a strong-minded man, Mr. Quimper, and I’m sure you’d fight back. Get the confusing signals sorted out. Establish new bases for self-esteem. And fairly soon, I would suppose, you’d be back on track.’

  Suddenly her manner changed completely. Very gravely she said: ‘Look at the conclusion in the definition the young people gave us: The ultimate manifestation of anomie: suicide. Have you ever reflected on the large number of leading Texas citizens, in the early days, who committed suicide? Anson Jones, last-time President of the Republic of Texas, a suicide. Thomas Rusk, United States Senator from Texas and perhaps the ablest man of his time, a possible candidate for President of the United States, suicide. And what perplexes, Manuel de Mier y Ter?
?n, the ablest Mexican official ever sent north, he too committed suicide.’

  ‘What can that possibly mean?’ Miss Cobb asked, and the reply was short: ‘That Texas was a fluid situation which attracted people who were prone to anomie, and that in their continuing disorganization they killed themselves.’

  She proceeded with additional material which startled us: ‘Look at the number of our Texas heroes who abandoned their wives back home. Sam Houston did it twice. That pretty little thing in Gallatin, Tennessee, his splendid Indian wife in Arkansas. Davy Crockett walked out the door one day without even saying goodbye, if we can believe the legend. William Travis did worse in Alabama, and I would not care to know how many others defending the Alamo had fled their wives without the formality of divorce. The Finlay Macnab who had such a favorable opinion of his fellow passengers was a standard case—left his wife and daughters in Baltimore, but brought his son with him.’

  After she had poleaxed us with a score of such instances, she chuckled: ‘Did you know that one of the first laws passed by the new nation of Texas in 1836 forgave bigamy if the immigrating male, like this Macnab, could claim long separation from his legal wife back east, or mail that had not been delivered, or unavoidable confusion or almost any other claim, no matter how fragile? The law assumed that a de facto divorce had occurred and that the Texas wife was legally married, with the children bearing no taint of bastardy. The law was necessary because in some areas a fourth of the husbands could have been charged with bigamy.’

  After allowing this to sink in, she asked: ‘What do you make of it, this irresponsible behavior, this wild resort to dueling, this sudden murder in the streets, this refusal of juries to find men guilty, and withal, this insistence that Texas was a religious state observing the highest moral principles?’

  After we had paraded our ignorance and our determination to protect the reputation of our state, she said calmly: ‘The best explanation, I think, is that the original situation in Texas—with the Neutral Ground more or less inviting disorganization—and the inability of the Mexican government to find consistency, and the protracted uncertainty over whether Texas would join the American Union created a fertile ground for the development of anomie. It became inescapable, a way of life whose lingering effects are with us still.’

  After discussion, during which we rejected many of her ideas, she said: ‘You people know your own minds, and that’s good, that’s Texan. But I want to crank in several additional ideas before you set yourselves in concrete. Oregon was settled at about the same time as Texas, but its citizens developed none of the Texan neuroses.’

  ‘Ah!’ Quimper cried. ‘But Oregon never had the Mexican indecision. Its forerunners were decent, law-abiding Englishmen.’

  ‘But California did have exactly the background of Texas, and it didn’t develop like us.’

  ‘False analogy,’ Garza said. ‘For a hundred years California experienced orderly Spanish and Mexican governments. Definitions were understood.’

  ‘A very good point, Mr. Garza. Maybe that was the difference.’

  ‘You’re missing the real difference,’ Quimper said. ‘California didn’t have to battle Apache and Comanche.’

  ‘But that the two states developed quite individually, you must admit.’

  ‘And thank God for that.’ Garza said. ‘Who would want to live in Los Angeles?’

  ‘Or San Francisco?’ Quimper asked. ‘All those gays?’

  ‘About the same percentage as in Texas, I would suppose,’ Dr. Smeadon said.

  ‘You say that out in Lubbock, you’re gonna be fired,’ Quimper warned, and she said: ‘I was thinking of Houston,’ at which Quimper said: ‘Houston don’t count.’

  ‘My next point is that even after joining the Union, Texas continued to enjoy special freedoms denied her sister states. She had the right to separate into five states, any time she wished. Public lands, which other states had to cede to the federal government, she retained. And in many things she went her own way. I’m not sure that these were constructive experiences. I’m not sure at all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Quimper thundered. ‘They’re the backbone of this state.’

  ‘And one of the base causes of its neuroticism.’

  ‘Are you saying that we’re a bunch of neurotics?’

  ‘I’m certainly neurotic,’ Dr. Smeadon said. ‘And I’ve just demonstrated that you would be if you were moved to New Hampshire, and if we talked long enough, I’m fairly sure I’d find that even Miss Cobb would be—on certain tender subjects, like Texas patriotism.’

  ‘I never voted for Lyndon Johnson,’ Quimper said, ‘but I had to respect him that night at the Petroleum Club in Dallas when he told us: “I love three things. God, Texas and the United States.” And if there hadn’t been a couple of ministers and priests in the audience, I’m sure he’d’ve changed the order.’

  Dr. Smeadon nodded, as if she agreed. ‘The lasting effect of the Texas version of anomie is that it has encouraged the state and its citizens to believe they’re different. This was really the end of the road—for Spaniards, for Mexican officials and churchmen, for Americans. When you reached Nebraska in those heady years, you plunged on to Oregon. When you reached Kentucky, you forged ahead to Missouri. But when you reached Texas, you stayed put, except for the real crazies like Isaac Yarrow, who stumbled on to California.

  ‘I like the Texas mix. The dreamers, the petty criminals. The God-driven ministers, the real estate connivers. And my heart goes out to the women like Mattie Quimper, who kept the ferries running.’ She said nothing for some moments, thinking of her predecessors who lived in sod huts, and bore a dozen children, and died at thirty-nine, but did not commit suicide. ‘I mourn for the strong men who were driven to self-destruction by complexities they could not understand. Texas has always been a neurotic place, a breeding ground for anomie. But it’s the neuroticism of activity, of daring, and I hope it never changes, even though the cost can sometimes be so tragic.’

  WAR FORCES MEN TO MAKE MORAL CHOICES, AND THE stronger the man, the more difficult it can be for him to make the right choice.

  Thus, when the great General Santa Anna marched north from Saltillo on the morning of 26 January 1836, determined to discipline the rebellious district of Tejas once and for all, he goaded three men to reach decisions on problems they had been contemplating for some time. Finlay Macnab and Zave Campbell, both married to cherished Mexican women, suffered immediate crises of loyalty, which each would resolve in his own arbitrary way.

  Especially tormenting were the problems which perplexed Benito Garza, their unmarried brother-in-law, who faced a decision of the gravest import: To what nation do I owe my allegiance?

  As a loyal Mexican he argued with himself: I love Mexico. My heart beat faster when that fine Constitution of 1824 was announced, because I saw that it made possible a free state in Tejas, one that would enjoy honest freedoms. And I was proud when Santa Anna assumed control of my country, for he promised fine changes.

  But as a young man he had always been generous in welcoming American immigrants, for he recognized that vast changes were afoot and that perhaps even the basic governance of Tejas might have to be altered: I like northerners. I greeted them warmly when they arrived. I saw that we needed their vitality to fill our empty spaces, and I proved my good will by marrying my two sisters to yanquis. And when I am able to overlook the wrongs they do us mexicanos, I can imagine a new state in which we live together as equal partners. To his amazement, he was even willing to concede: If things go well, we might build in Tejas a new nation, half Texican, half mexicano.

  But he never made that concession without immediately considering a major impediment: Those damned Texicans are so arrogant. Men come here from Tennessee and Kentucky, live on our land for two months, and start telling us mexicanos how to behave. Don’t they know that this is our land? Has been for three hundred years. If they had decent manners, we would share our land with them.

  In fairness
he had to grant certain facts: Zave Campbell? No better man ever came to Tejas. Same goes for Finlay Macnab. And I’d be happy if Otto were my son. If all Texicans were like them and all mexicanos like me, we could build a tremendous state in Tejas, and it could be either a part of Mexico or a free nation of its own.

  But insurmountable obstacles intruded: Campbell and Macnab are all right, and so is Mattie Quimper. But the others? Impossible. They despise our religion. They laugh at how we act. They even mock our language, imitating the way we sing the last words of a sentence as if we wanted the melody of our idea to linger in the air. What makes me bitter, they treat our women with contempt, unwilling to recognize the difference between a whore and a gentlewoman. If they insist on ridiculing everything we stand for, how can they hope to share our land with us?

  Because he was an intelligent man, widely traveled, he had to admit a fact which most mexicanos living in Tejas refused to face: There seems to be an inevitability about these Texicans. They come pouring into Tejas and our mexicanos do not. In the last ten years I’ve seen hundreds of northerners drift in, not one mexicano and certainly never anyone from Spain. Maybe the future lies with the americanos. Maybe a new nation of some kind is inescapable.

  But his accidental use of the word americano evoked the angriest memory of all: Those damned Texicans are such braggarts. Call themselves americanos as if they had the right to dominate both our continents. The only name they have a right to is norteamericano, and I will never again call them anything else.