The Other Texas Frontier 9781477306291

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THE O T H E R TEXAS FRONTIER

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The Other Texas Frontier Harry Huntt Ransom Edited byHazel H. Ransom Foreword byJohn Graves

*v* UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN

Copyright © 1984 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Printing, 1984 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, Texas 78713. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Ransom, Harry Huntt, 1908-1976 The other Texas frontier. 1. Frontier and pioneer life—Texas—Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Pioneers—Texas—Biography—Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Texas—Biography—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Ransom, Hazel H. II. Title. F386.5.R36 1984 976.4'oo9'92 84-10382 ISBN O-292-7HOI-8

ISBN 978-1-4773-0629-1 (library e-book) ISBN 978-1-4773-0630-7 (individual e-book)

Contents

FOREWORD

7 PREFACE II SPIRIT OF TEXAS

IS THE COUNTERFRONTIER IN TEXAS

23 THE ROOTS OF EARLY TEXAS BIOGRAPHY

31 ASHBEL SMITH, 1 8 0 5 - 1 8 8 6

39 SHERMAN GOODWIN, 1 8 1 4 - 1 8 8 4

49 SWANTE PALM, 1815-1899

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Foreword

X H E OLD physical frontier's lingering presence in Texas ways and Texas views is a topic that has been much pounded by the region's academics and writers, myself on occasion among them. Even so, it's still a germane line of inquiry. Certain strong forces alive today in the state aren't really comprehensible without reference to the more emphatic of those hardy nineteenth-century Anglo-Americans who grabbed it for their own and fought off other claimants, populating and developing and exploiting the land in the process, sowing their values upon it like quick-sprouting seed, going to war when war was available and sometimes enjoying private conflicts in times of presumed peace. Many Texans still cherish the record of those old ones' often violent lives and deeds, and emulate, when it's feasible and frequently when it's not, their unreflective response to questions posed by life and livelihood. They were leathery and hairy and litde disposed toward neurosis or moral doubt, and their simple black-powder directness retains a pull at this mellowing range of years. "Who will go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?" Some of us would if we could, by God, or at least we find it pleasant so to think. But had such rough-hewn forefathers' drives and mental processes been the dominant ones involved in the shaping of Texas, it is doubtful that the place would need much analysis now, save perhaps in anthropological terms. They were and re-

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main mythic heroes and sometimes villains, but as mythic figures probably should be, they were a minority of the region's citizenry even in their heyday. Most Texans then as now were quiet people concerned with leading decent fruitful lives and building a future for themselves and their children. Among them from the very start were a good many broadly thoughtful men who believed that the use and development of people's minds could have great effect on that future. Texas may have been a frontier for a good long while, but during that same long while it was an outpost of a highly civilized world, and such men shared a widespread nineteenth-century conviction that intellectual curiosity, knowledge, and benevolent action could do much to lead society toward a better way of life— more, perhaps, than could battles, political maneuverings, factories, railroads, and the acquisition of goods. They believed in progress, but most passionately in a progress toward enlightenment. And, sometimes through projects they undertook and sometimes just through the example of their own lives, they helped to bring it about. These "Texans without guns," as Harry Ransom has termed them in this calm and perceptive group of essays, seldom attained mythic status. Quiet intelligence and thoughtfulness are not by and large mythic qualities in Texas or anywhere else, nor are the improvement of education and the slow accumulation of fine libraries the stuff of which popular legends are constructed. But in the long run, to our present great benefit, the drift of these men's lives and efforts and convictions has had more to do with the tenor of life on this patch of the earth's surface than have the exploits of their more extrovert and celebrated contemporaries. This is not to say that sweet knowledge and wisdom and public-mindedness now rule undisputed over our Texas woods and prairies and towns and cities, or that they ever will. But they are an entrenched and meaningful presence without which many of us would find it hard or maybe impossible to live here, and we can thank provi-

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dence and those civilized predecessors for them. Twitch though we may to the memory of old Ben Milam and Company . . . We can thank people like Harry Ransom too. It is instructive to note in this little volume how thoroughly he had studied the lives and significance of historic Texans of this ilk, for it helps one to see, in a sense, where he himself came from. Not by accident, I think, his own career lay solidly within their tradition of abetting progress toward enlightenment. The sustained chief effort of his mature years—to infuse excellence into the University of Texas and by extension into the whole state's intellectual atmosphere—took place in a more sophisticated time, but it was not different in kind from the labor of another "Texan without guns" discussed in one of these essays, Ashbel Smith, who had much to do with the founding of that same university and helped guide it through its early years. And both Smith and Ransom were men who not only could think and envision but also could get things done. Clearly enough, Harry Ransom's thoughts about these people and the world in which they functioned are often thoughts about himself, his own world, and his own work. They are strong thoughts and true thoughts, and it is gratifying to see them now assembled in printed form. John Graves

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Preface

1 H E FOLLOWING ESSAYS were among the myriad pieces of Harry's shorter literary works that I examined after his death in 1976. For a number of years prior to that date, we had discussed his intention of compiling a small book made up of some of his essays on Texas topics. Among his handwritten notes I have encountered several outlines for such a book, each varying in choice of materials. The outline that seemed nearest to his verbal plan included, in addition to general essays, six biographical sketches of Texans whom he labeled "Texans without guns." Three were nineteenth-century figures (one of whom—Sherman Goodwin—was his great-grandfather); three were twentieth-century citizens whom he had known personally. Upon closer examination of the materials, I felt that his thesis of the counterfrontier in early Texas, the quiet settling of the land by thoughtful, undramatic citizens as opposed to the stereotyped pioneers of blustery heroics, was the main burden of his thinking. The three men from the nineteenth century whose profiles appear in this volume demonstrate by their intellect and character what he meant. The materials on the other three—Ima Hogg, Karl Hoblitzelle, Joe C. Thompson—were less complete. Although these soft-spoken philanthropists are superb examples of this century's continuing counterfrontier, I

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have limited this volume to the nineteenth century and its representatives. I have made some changes in the text for the clarification of the overall thesis, always preserving the author's meaning. In order to simplify presentation, I have omitted footnotes and the author's general sources. I am most grateful to the friends who either listened to the plans for this volume or read and checked the text. To Mr. and Mrs. O. Scott Petty I am indebted for their continuing enthusiasm and their material support of the book. Harry Ransom was a native Texan who was educated out of the state but who returned to devote most of his years to university education in Texas. He was interested in the historical, cultural, literary, and intellectual development of the state. These essays suggest some of his thoughts without any pretense of his being an authority on Texas history. Hazel H. Ransom 1984

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THE OTHER TEXAS FRONTIER

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Spirit of Texas American Heritage, Fall 1952

IS TEXAS. Improbable event, incredible success, unprofitable loyalty, colossal hardship, heart-breaking failure went into its making. By turns expansively liberal and hidebound conservative (sometimes both at once), Texas is often as contradictory and unpredictable as its rivers: Canadian, Red, Sabine, Neches, Trinity, San Jacinto, Brazos, Colorado, Lavaca, Guadalupe, San Antonio, Nueces, Rio Grande. It can also be smardy calculated. Now and then somebody turns a crazy dream like a man-dug ship channel into profitable business for all concerned. Texas has had its share of heroes, some native and some borrowed from other states. It has also originated or borrowed a notable gallery of shysters, spoilspirits, and gunmen. Extreme breeds averaged out in time; the state was built mainly by men for whom it was not necessary to erect either statues or scaffolds. As Texas went on building what it needed, it stayed big but lost its old spaciousness. It is true that several dozen counties are still full of the loneliness that invited frontiersmen; in some, human beings are fairly scarce per square mile. But other parts are crowding. Texas is becoming an urban state. Meanwhile, the city and country folk-sense stays pretty much the same; whatever the scene or accent, the state's tongues pre-

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Spirit of Texas

serve talking lore of men who have held lively opinions about everything from God almighty to county politics and cures for rheumatism. Because Texas has never tried to isolate itself from its past or from its future, it has changed more than most states. Through successive stages of wilderness, foreign dominion, republican government, and hardy statehood, an untamed independence has been nourished by everything about Texas: geography, tradition, history, custom. Capable of friendliness and cooperation, this Texas individualism resists standardization and quiescence. The state is prodigal of natural resources, jealous of its name, confident of the present, willing to gamble on the future. Both piety and ambition get stirred with restlessness here. Texans mix intense dissatisfaction with inveterate pride. They join discussion of deficiencies with hopes, and find no conflict between them—frustration occasionally, but not conflict. They also join ambition of Texas to a keen sense of missed opportunities. This bifocal attention to what is behind and what is ahead accounts for much of the vitality and most of the contradictions in Texas. Texas contradictions begin with geography. This geography is more than a map defining 267,338 square miles, of which 3,695 [5,204 in 1984—Ed.] are covered with water. Before maps were made, slow geologic changes were prophetic of the quick-changing periods men have recorded. Several hundred million years ago, the Permian sea covered western and northwestern reaches of Texas. High mountains struck from north to south. The heaving up of the west, the vanishing of the sea, the slow erosion of the mountains, the shifting of waters made Texas foundations. These rocks and leavings, separated into the numberless habitations of plant and animal, underlie the contradictions of coastal and high prairie, piney woods, postoak land, blackland, valley, rolling plain, wild rockiness, desert stretches, peaks. The highness and lowness of Texas ranges from Guadalupe Peak's 8,751 feet in Culberson County to zero. {

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Spirit of Texas

This is essential, then: Texas is many widely differing places. Not less than places, the kinds of weather that blow hopscotch across Texas differ. Texas weather was never predictable. In the mood of "What next?" Texans escape boredom-byclimate. Long hot stretches, however, have made refrigeration a highly popular science. Hot or cold, the weather has a great deal to do with the popular tags and gags applied to Texas at home and abroad—more than anything else, perhaps, except the Texas Revolution, the Cowboy Age, and Oil. It was partly weather that inspired a Northern general to declare that if he owned Hell and Texas, he'd rent Texas and set up his tent in Hell. Touchy about wisecracks like that, Texans have used whatever imagination and verbal skill they had to make the inevitably bad appear worse and raise that worse to something that might evaporate in laughter. Hence the tall tale, the tenderfoot shocker, which was designed partly to hoist the self-respect of people sensitive to criticism. With a different twist, it could be used to bring the other fellow's towering opinions of himself down a peg or two. Strength, exploit, bigness, beauty, wealth, weather—always the weather— made likely topics, and still do. Like remarkable littleness, remarkable bigness has advantages and disadvantages. Bigness in Texas was a blessing when it came to acquiring range for cattle. It was something else for the traveler. To an Easterner used to short distances, Texas seemed mighty like a void, a jumping-off place. Being human, and having to put up with size whether they liked it or not, Texans made a virtue of mileage. Hence one kind of Texas megalophily. Ranches, hats, jackrabbits, fortunes were either made big or made to sound that way. The big story was free and flourished in the years when Texas was acting out romances and farces of sudden wealth and melodramas of sudden death. More recent Texas "brags" are quite another matter. They are no more genuinely Texas than the funny cowboy suits and imitation Indian feathers. {

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Spirit of Texas

For calculating influences, Texas needs a long look backward. This retrospect sweeps unequal periods of history, including 317 years of conflicting Indian, Spanish, French, and Mexican influence, penetration, and power. Nothing much remains of all that, if the eye is in a hurry—chapters in books, some colorful words, a few legends, attractive picture spots where tourists catch the past between hamburgers and the next motel. Serious social historians keep asking if "Texas under Six Flags" means anything more than the following chronology, which schoolchildren are required to learn and adults are inclined to forget: Spain, 1519-1685 France, 1685—1690 Spain, 1690—1821 Mexico, 1821—1836

Republic of Texas, 1836-1845 United States, 1845—1861 Confederacy, 1861-1865 United States, 1865—

The earliest records of Spanish and French dominion, like the stories of Karankawa and Comanche, are unrealities today. Mexican impressions are clearer, changed and renewed by new times and closeness. Some tokens, like imitative Mexican cuisine served everywhere in Texas, are casual. Others, like the steady feeling for Mexican art and craft, are more serious and more essential. Still greater influence rises when there is agreement between Texas and Mexico on some matters where good neighborliness connects with simple humanity or humanitarianism, unassisted by planned tours, economic subsidies, and high-flown resolutions. For at least a century the Texas Afro-American has made contributions that are widespread and subtle. In earliest evidence, these could hardly be distinguished from the black's contributions to any other part of the South. Recently, however, in Texas the Afro-American has found a redefined position and a heightened responsibility in the life of the state. Successive generations of European groups have cast in

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Spirit of Texas

their languages, ideals, and ways of living. English, Scotch, and Irish were early in this mingling: many came in the second and later generations from homes in other states, while others traveled straight from Ireland, Scotland, and England. Germans, Scandinavians, and Czechs joined them. In smaller numbers other nationalities appeared in Texas. All disappeared to reappear as Texans. A few institutions, a few communities, an occasional holiday will mark these separate nationalities, but especially since World War I there has been a rapid unification of cultures. Texas puts to use not only other periods and foreign cultures but also the significance of particular events. It mixes celebration of Texas Independence Day and the Battle of San Jacinto with observances for George Washington, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Christopher Columbus. Perhaps this tendency rises both from Olympian tolerance and from American love of holiday. In the rhetorical account of its spirit, Texas would be wasteful to put noisily any line like Travis5 "I shall never surrender or retreat." Much of the excited punctuation of Texas history is not rhetorical, nor political, nor military. Disaster, wonder, and sudden change crowd popular recollection. Such history may lift the heart or divert the curiosity of strangers. But mere glory and romance, fine rhetoric, drama and melodrama, excitement and sensation are medicines sure to stupefy the spirit at last. Whatever was enthralling about the fact of Texas in early time submits to change—to change and to judgment. The Texas grizzlies are gone. So are the bighorns, the otters, the bison. The longhorns and the mustangs follow. Instead, what? What is there instead of the Chisholm Trail, wild horses, wide ranges? Lots of airplanes, many miles of oil and gas pipelines, larger cities, expressways everywhere, and a good many things that seem tentative and transient in a day when airplanes themselves are quickly dated. {

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Spirit of Texas

There are some people in Texas—not many, but some— who remember earlier times not as "enthralling" but as spare, pertinent, functional. They are inclined to reverse the process of examination, very carefully and irreverently to scrutinize the shiny things of today that to other Texans suggest growth and progress. If you build a very modern house, one of them will note its big windows glaring at the Texas sun and call it a fourwalled frying pan, despite its air-conditioning. In this attitude there is more than intransigence. At one extreme it is a pose, of course, but in the middle it insists on values and notes the ludicrousness of many proud human devices. What is past and passing gives Texas archives and museums the hard task of maintaining clear views, of keeping things defined and original. Time helped to reinforce judgment across Texas. Against outright lawlessness, ugliness, discomfort, and ignorance, head-on opposition was roused many generations ago. Preachers, teachers, doctors, lawyers who asserted the importance of learning, faith, science, and beauty did not always see the results of their assertions. Gradually, though, the looks and life of Texas changed. The counterfrontier movement persisted. It is prevailing. In education it is prevailing because of a fundamental shift in the attitude of youth. Early sententious declarations upon the benefits of trained intellect have echoed in the halls of Texas and have been inscribed in stone on coundess walls. For years these sentiments seemed only to speed departing minds, artistic talent, and planning ability to far corners of the earth. Theoretically the youthfiilness of things Texan should have held them. It is beginning to do so. In recent years a growing proportion of young Texans have chosen to stay at home. Perhaps in the Great Depression a younger generation got stuck; perhaps in the war of the forties another younger generation aired their living and opinions so widely that they were ready to stay put. Whatever the cause, the results are obvious and, in general, good. c 20 }

Spirit of Texas This is particularly true in terms of prospective leadership from these youthful groups. In politics alone, the difference is easy t o predict, but statesmanship has too often had t o get along beside other things. N o w and then a politician gets away with disregarding the people and voting them in masses, but the very self-consciousness of these smart tricksters is evidence that their sway is temporary. It is temporary in any place that has an honest tradition of independence. In Texas the central tradition has had to look to men and w o m e n w h o could memorize courage and endurance and unselfishness. Texas has never developed its minds so conscientiously as some states, nor polished its manners so politely as others. It could d o with more taste, moderation, serenity, and wisdom. But something may be said for its friendliness, energy, enthusiasm, and willingness to try anything at least twice. If big-heartedness and wide-mindedness are not invariable in Texas, they are common enough to encourage some expectation of them. O n e thing is sure. Things will be different tomorrow. As the odds in Texas history go, there's a fifty-fifty chance that they will be better. Professor Ralph H . Gabriel of Yale University has p u t the main fact about Texas this way, and truly: Texas is an Empire in its own right. To drive from the dry grasslands of the Panhandle across the lowland cotton country, through the Magic Valley, to the Gulf ports, and on to the eastern oil fields is to pass through half the material phases of American civilization. For all its diversity, Texas has in a spiritual sense a unity born of its history, which includes the war for freedom in 1836 and nine years of independent membership in a society of nations. The individualism and the hopefulness of a frontier which has just passed is confirmed and magnified by an industrial revolution that is just beginning. Texas is particularistic yet very American.

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