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MIRABEAU
LAMAR’S
BUFFALOExcerpt
from Seat of
Empire:
The Embattled
Birth of Austin, Texasby
Jeffrey Stuart Kerr
Texas
Tech University Press, 7/15/13
294 pages with bibliography, notes & index
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In
the fall of 1838, the tiny hamlet of Waterloo,
Texas welcomed the most important visitor in its brief history. At the time,
the town had not yet even been incorporated, Congress not taking that step until
the following January.[1] Lying farther up the Colorado River than any other Anglo
settlement, Waterloo
presented a humble appearance to the dignitary and his entourage.[2] Only a few
log cabins scattered around the mouth of Shoal Creek greeted Willis Avery, James
C. Rice, and four other Texas Rangers along as guardians against Indian attack.
The Reverend Edward Fontaine, friend of the important man, accompanied the group,
and may have had his slave Jacob with him. [3] Commanding the greatest attention,
however, was the Georgia native, San
Jacinto hero, and highest ranking member of the entourage, Mirabeau B. Lamar,
Vice-President of the Republic of Texas.
Lamar coveted the presidency.
He seemed fated to get it. His most formidable political opponent, President Sam
Houston, was constitutionally barred from succeeding himself. Two other leading
challengers, Peter Grayson and James Collinsworth, had incredibly committed suicide
within two days of each other. On July 9th, while traveling through Tennessee,
the unstable Grayson wrote a note begging his landlord to “pardon the frightful
scene I have made in your house” and “blew his braines out with a pistol.”[4]
After Supreme Court Chief Justice James Collinsworth publicly announced his candidacy
June 30th, he went on a drinking spree that culminated July 11th in his jumping
or falling off of a boat into Galveston Bay. Most people believed his drowning
death was suicide.[5]
Lamar thus seemed a guaranteed victor in the coming
election. His friends, however, urged him to take nothing for granted. In June
Senator Albert C. Horton, a vice-presidential candidate, advised a trip west to
court the frontier vote.[6] Judge James Webb also saw political advantage in a
western journey:
It is the opinion of several of your friends with whom
I have conversed, that a trip up the Country would be serviceable to you. I think
so too-There is no telling what impression may be made on the minds of the people
on the eve of the Election-you know by whom the effort will be made, if made at
all, & you therefore know in what section of the Country to expect it-In Houston
& all the lower part of the Country, there is no danger.[7]
Lamar evidently
saw wisdom in his friends’ advice, for he made the risky journey. Once at Bastrop
he was well into dangerous frontier territory. After leaving the town and crossing
the Colorado River, the vice-president and his companions meandered through a
lush landscape of tall grass and scattered woods before fording the river again
and stopping at Josiah Wilbarger’s
place on Wilbarger Creek. The party then traversed Webber’s Prairie, passed Hornsby’s
Bend, and paused to rest at Fort Coleman on Walnut Creek.[8] The stockade most
likely offered little protection. After its abandonment the preceding April, local
residents had quickly begun dismantling its walls and blockhouses to make use
of the lumber in other construction projects.[9] Once beyond the remains of the
fort, the party waded through several more miles of grassland before reaching
Waterloo. |
| Although
Edward Burleson laid out the town of Waterloo
early in 1838,[10] Tennessee native Jacob Harrell had been the first Anglo to
occupy the site.[11] Harrell and his wife Mary brought their four children to
Texas in 1833, settling among Reuben Hornsby’s clan
at Hornsby’s Bend. Two years later Harrell erected a tent several miles upriver
on the Colorado’s north shore near the mouth of Shoal Creek.[12] Because this
spot in the river formed a natural low-water crossing, he likely knew that it
lay along an ancient Indian trail long used by travelers heading north and west
through the hills.[13] |
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By 1838 Jacob Harrell
had constructed a split-log stockade to replace the tent and moved his family
to their new home. Several families followed suit.[14] No Anglo community lay
upriver from Harrell and his immediate neighbors; the tiny settlement defined
the frontier’s extreme edge.
As any good political campaigner must, Mirabeau
Lamar quickly joined in local custom upon his arrival in Waterloo.
For Jacob Harrell and other frontiersmen, this meant hunting. One morning as Lamar,
Harrell, and the others breakfasted in Harrell’s cabin, one of Harrell’s sons
burst into the room with the exciting news that the prairie was “full of buffalo.”[15]
Quickly astride their mounts, the men rode the short distance to a ravine which
intersected the Colorado River. To their delight they encountered great numbers
of the mammoth beasts and wasted no time in shooting as many as they could.
With
the right weapon a buffalo is easy to kill. Because of very poor vision, it relies
primarily on its sense of smell to detect danger. Thus, if a hunter stays upwind
and possesses a rifle powerful enough to send a ball through the animal’s thick
hide, it is possible to pick off large numbers one by one without the surrounding
members of the herd sensing danger. When he hunted for food or hides, the Anglo
settler preferred this method.[16]
For sport the hunter chose a more thrilling
technique. Armed with one or more single-shot pistols, he charged on horseback
through the herd while blazing away at the fleeing beasts. At the bottom of the
ravine bisecting the prairie near Waterloo,
Mirabeau Lamar chased and shot “with his holster pistol” the largest buffalo bull
one of his companions had ever seen.[17]
Later, one of the hunters blew
a bugle to gather the men atop a hill at the head of the ravine. From the summit
stretched a view “which would give delight to every painter and lover of extended
landscape.”[18] A German traveler later described the scenery as idyllic,[19]
while an 1840 immigrant called it “a fairy land.”[20] A year after Lamar’s visit
Thomas Bell wrote home to his brother: “I must consider this the most beautiful
country I ever saw what I have yet seen. There is some of the most beautiful lands
I ever beheld or ever expect to“.[21] James Jones, in an 1839 letter to Lamar,
expressed equal enthusiasm: “We are marching through a beautiful country-Its face
presents a scene of grandeur and magnificence rarely if ever witnessed I imagine
in any other part of the American Continent.”[22]
Mirabeau Lamar, politician,
farmer, adventurer, and military hero, was also a poet. One imagines him regarding
with awe the stunning beauty before him as he looked down the hill toward the
Colorado River. Perhaps he composed inner verse as he gazed upon the “woodlands
and luxuriant Prairies”[23] straddling the waterway. Small hills in the foreground
wore crowns of post-oak, blackjack, elm, and live oak trees. Thickets of dogwood,
hackberry, elm, and live oak blanketed the river bottom.[24] Framing Lamar‘s view
to either side were two “beautiful streams of clear water.”[25]
In the
short span of three years Mirabeau Lamar had escaped personal despair, obscurity,
and political humiliation to attain a position of prestige and power. Barring
disaster, he would soon command an embryonic nation destined for greatness. He
had just finished a thrilling buffalo hunt in which he had distinguished himself
by bringing down an enormous animal, the largest at least one companion had ever
seen. He now admired with his poetic eye natural beauty which had consistently
stunned far cruder and less imaginative men than himself. Faced with this awe-inspiring
vista, Vice-President Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar announced that day an ambitious
dream to fellow hunters Jacob Harrell, Willis Avery, Edward Fontaine, James Rice,
four Texas Rangers, and maybe the slave Jacob when he cried from the hilltop,
“This should be the seat of future empire!”[26]
References
> |
Notes:
True West Magazine said
“Seat of Empire is the most thorough history of the dynamic personalities,
political intrigue and powerful self-interests of empire, nation building and
manifest destiny that led to the birth of the Texas capital.”
Jeffrey Stuart
Kerr’s first book on Austin was a Finalist for the Writers’ League of Texas Book
Award.
Author's website: www.jeffreyskerr.com
Related
Topics:
Austin, Texas
Texas
Books | People
|
Texas Towns | Texas |
|
References: [1]
Gammel, The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, Volume II, 52.
[2] As the crow
flies, Hornsby’s Bend lay about eight miles downriver, with the town of Bastrop
another twenty-two miles downstream. A traveler following the river would have
covered significantly greater distances.
[3] Barkley, History of Travis
County and Austin 1839-1899, 13.
[4] Gulick, Jr., The Papers of Mirabeau
Buonaparte Lamar, item number 763, 183.
[5] Handbook of Texas Online,
s.v. “James Collinsworth.”
[6] Gulick, Jr., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte
Lamar, 161.
[7] Gulick, Jr., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar,
2: 757.
[8] Barkley, History of Travis County and Austin, 7.
[9]
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “Fort Colorado.” The fort was also known
as “Fort Colorado”. A historic marker on Highway 969 near Walnut Creek marks the
fort’s location. There are no visible ruins.
[10] Handbook of Texas Online,
s.v. “Edward Burleson” and Barkley, History of Travis County and Austin, 12.
[11]
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “Waterloo.”
[12] Handbook of Texas
Online, s.v. “Jacob Harrell.”
[13] Barkley, History of Travis County
and Austin, 31-32. The northbound portion of this trail now forms the Shoal
Creek Hike and Bike Trail; the old trail turned west at modern 34th Street, which
now approximates the old path. In Austin‘s early days this was still the westward
route out of town.
[14] Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “Waterloo.” A
document in the Austin City Lots file in the Texas State Archives lists the following
as receiving compensation for land taken by the republic for the construction
of Austin: James Baker, H. N. Baker, W. R. Baker, Joseph Barnhart, B. D. Bassford,
Neri Chamberlain, R. T. Chandler, J. M. Harrell, Anderson Harrell, W. H. Miller,
Joel Miner, B. B. Peck, and Samuel Fowler.
[15] Terrell, The City of Austin
From 1839 to 1865.
[16] The Northern Standard, Sept 17, 1842 as
appearing in Sheppard, An Editor’s View of Early Texas.
[17] Terrell, The
City of Austin From 1839 to 1865.
[18] Lawrence, Texas in 1840, Or the
Emigrant’s Guide to the New Republic, 63.
[19] Roemer, Texas, 170.
[20]
Settler George Flood wrote this November 27, 1840 in a letter to his mother in
Ohio. George Flood biography file, Briscoe Center for American History, The University
of Texas at Austin.
[21] Thomas Bell Papers, Briscoe Center for American History,
The University of Texas at Austin.
[22] Gulick, Jr., The Papers of Mirabeau
Buonaparte Lamar, 2:529.
[23] Winkler, The Seat of Government of Texas.
[24]
Brown, Annals of Travis County and the City of Austin, chapter 6.
[25]
Gulick, Jr., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, 587. Edwin Waller
used this phrase in a letter to Lamar written shortly after he arrived in the
area for the first time.
[26] Terrell, The City of Austin From 1839 to
1865. | | |
