Mexican-American War Archives

An earlier version of this story was published on Forth Part of the World.

I wasn’t looking to find a story of abounding love when researching violent episodes of Texas history. Then I ran across a Texas newspaper article that shed a brief light on the lives of a Black woman and a Mexican man who had lived as husband and wife in the 1840s, twenty-five miles northeast of Victoria, Texas. She was a woman forced to live in bondage in Jackson County, near the town of Texana, in present day Edna, Texas. Her husband was a Mexican man who was likely indentured, employed, or a peon in that same vicinity.

The report, unsurprisingly, did not fully document their lives, experiences, or bonds of intimacy. It did, however, document a glimpse of two lives whose stories and relationship often go untold in the archive. This glimpse and the many questions the source delivered compelled me to further explore this couple’s relationship and harrowing flight to freedom. As a historian whose work investigates the experiences of enslaved and free Black women, men, and children who sought freedom across transnational frontiers, I wanted to learn more about this couple. I was interested in knowing more about the woman and her origins. Was she born enslaved in Texas? How long was she held in bondage near Texana? Had she tried to run to freedom before? What was her trade? How many languages did she speak? The archive has a history of silencing the Black experience and Texas has historically engaged in a disconcerting suppression of its Black past. Answers to my many questions, therefore, proved daunting tasks that led me to creative ways to study this couple’s narrative. I turned to investigate the environment and history of the geographic localities where this woman was held in order to learn more about her life, what she may have witnessed, and her tragic journey to freedom.

A 1856 map of Jackson County, Texas depicting Texana, Texas — 1856 Jackson County TX Map showing Texana. Texas General Land Office.

The region where this courageous Black woman was held enslaved had been largely inhabited by Tonkawa and Lipan Apache tribal communities up until the 1830s, when they were unsettled by a group of Anglo colonizers who arrived as part of Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred colonization program. In 1832, these Anglo-settlers led the Sandy Creek assault against the native communities living in the area and destroyed remaining Tonkawa and Lipan Apache settlements. Six slave holding families, originally from Alabama, consolidated power over the area. These six families redeveloped the region’s agricultural, cattle, and trading industries through the labor of the people they held in bondage. Was this fearless Black woman brought enslaved from Alabama? Was her family forced to move to Texas alongside her? How did she come to meet the Mexican man? It is likely that she was forced to toil in both sugar and cotton crops, staples that turned high profits in Jackson County during that time. Perhaps she may have worked in any of the many groups of enslaved people who packed, prepared and carried the products of said crops to the local port on the Lavaca River. She may have played a central role in the trade that was sent out weekly on the steamboat that ran from Texana, through the pass of Matagorda Bay, to other parts of Texas, Louisiana and the Gulf South.

This daring woman was one of hundreds of enslaved individuals who turned this locality into a successful trading hub. In the early 1850s, Texana was made the seat of Jackson County, a place that became an important military and trading center that linked Texas to the rest of the US South. During that period, 34% of its population was enslaved, and only a decade later, in the 1860s, the enslaved population had risen to be half of the total population because cotton and sugar drove the land’s economic affluence. After the Civil War, when slavery ended, this prosperous area, developed by enslaved people, became a ghost town. Yet, in 1848, when this story takes place, the region was booming and welcoming of visitors and settlers, except Black and Brown. The people governing the county were certainly hostile to enslaved and free Blacks and expressly militant against settlers of Mexican descent. Interestingly, the Mexican man in this story, by 1848, had managed to live across that county for several years. Why? What was his experience upon arrival? How did he end up living in Jackson County, Texas? Where did he come from? How did he come to meet his wife? While we may never know where this couple met, how their lives intertwined, or how their plan to run away was devised and developed, we do know that this couple ultimately fled together. It is imaginable that both desired a future where they were free. A future far removed from Texas slavery.

In the summer of 1848, and perhaps for years before, these two lovers carefully planned their escape, surely detailing every trail, bend, and river they would encounter and need to traverse on their journey to freedom. In early July of that same year, they took two horses and rode them southward, hoping to leave Texas behind and reach safe havens beyond the Mexican border.

Image of the painting A Ride for Liberty by Eastman Johnson from the Brooklyn Museum — Eastman Johnson. A Ride for Liberty. Brooklyn Museum.

They made their way towards Mexican territory, but as they reached the Lavaca river they were intercepted and pursued by a group of slave hunters, unscrupulous employees of a highly profitable profession. They were quickly surrounded. They stood no chance and received no mercy. The Romeo of this story was lynched. His body was returned to the place where authorities claimed he had “stolen” his enslaved wife. His body was then hung and displayed as a public reminder and threat to all others who hoped, braved, or even thought to run away. In this story, Juliet faced an unimaginable fate. Tortured and robbed of the freedom she almost secured for herself across a Mexican frontier, she was forcibly returned to her ruthless enslaver. The rest of her story remains hidden, silent, until it is found, and told.

The report of this couple’s story is but a fragment, a tiny visible thread in the vast unknown tapestry of the lives and experiences of thousands of women, men, and children who faced, fought, resisted and survived (or failed to survive) enslavement in Texas. It offers us a window into the vibrant, diverse and porous composite that was Texas, during a time when the institution of slavery thrived and consolidated on this side of the border, and freedom existed just a few miles south, on the other side.

Theirs was a story of bravery, of life and death: a harrowing tale of sacrifice, impassioned desire for freedom, and heartbreak different from any I have ever encountered in the archive. We know very little about their relationship. Did they have children? How did he envision freedom at their destination? Was family waiting for them in Mexican territory? Although reconstructing their background and the extent of their intimacy may not be possible, we do know that in their story love was empowering, death was swift and its perpetrators vicious. They sought freedom, yet instead they found a macabre ending committed by Texas vigilantes and sanctioned by laws that protected and promoted the institution of slavery in Texas. Theirs was a story raw, fleeting, and heartbreaking; one where freedom was worth the most violent “‘til death do us part.” Their lives and death are a love story shaped by slavery, freedom, and resistance; marked with blood and violence and no happily ever after. This record documents a rare biography of a couple’s partnership existing amongst a burning desire for freedom. It is a memoir of love in time of Texas slavery.

Other Articles by María Esther Hammack:

The Illegal Slave Trade in Texas
Textbooks Texas, and Discontent

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The Paperwork of Slavery
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Remarks on Jesse Ritner’s “Paying for Peace: Reflections on the ‘Lasting Peace’ Monument.“

Having designed a class that engages students with original texts surrounding the Meusebach-Comanche Treaty, I read Jesse Ritner’s contribution with great interest. He makes valuable observations about the political position of the Comanche, and attempts to take on the Native American perspective which happens far too seldom. I believe, however, that we should recognize the significance of the Treaty of Fredericksburg.

An image of the Meusebach-Comanche Treaty of 1847 — The Meusebach-Comanche Treaty of 1847. Texas State Library and Archives Commission

Germans in 1847 did not see themselves as “Anglo-European” settlers. Accordingly, Meusebach launched his expedition without consent of the government (Neighbors and the Delaware followed him), arranged for his own Mexican translator and designated a German Indian agent who remained with the Comanche. The effect was interesting. In a quote attributed to Penateka chief Kateumsi, he finds the Germans to be “less reserved” than the Americans.[1] The Penateka also noticed other cultural differences. A Houston newspaper of May 1847 reads: “[The Comanche] say they are more willing for the Germans to settle in their country than the Texians, for the former settle in towns and villages and do not scatter over the countryside and kill the game as the Texians do.”[2] Money was never the only consideration.

As a German freethinker, Meusebach brought a very exceptional view to Texas. None of his letters indicate he wanted a military solution. It is true that the “Comanche did not forfeit land rights in the treaty.” But he had no expectation that they should. Meusebach suggested a treaty of integration, not of separation. Engraved in the treaty was the spirit of the idealistic European revolutions of 1848. During a speech delivered at the negotiations, Meusebach exhibited racial sensibilities that differed radically from his contemporaries. He suggested intermarriage between Germans and the Comanche, spoke of the unimportance of skin color and mused about young Germans learning the Comanche language.[3]

One of the first settlements in the grant area was founded by German Forty-Eighters. Among the group was a doctor named Ferdinand Herff who successfully performed cataract surgery on a Comanche chief.[4] The episode further strengthened trust. Evidence that Germans were viewed favorably for a few years also comes from a travel account by Friedrich Schlecht from 1848. When he encountered a band of Comanche, the chief shared coffee with him, and told him that had he been of “those who […] had broken their treaties on numerous occasions” he would not have hesitated to scalp him.[5] The Comanche not only understood geopolitics, they also recognized differences in ethnicity and attitude among those they dealt with.

Whether the treaty remains unbroken is a different question. As Roemer predicted, violence erupted as early as 1850.[6] The significance of the treaty, however, and the reason it is still celebrated by Comanche and German descendants, is that it points to a conceivable alternative to the ethnic cleansing of most Native Americans from Texas territory that eventually occurred.

David Huenlich, Research Fellow, Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Zentrale Forschung, (Ph.D. UT Austin, 2016)

[1] Penninger (1896), Fest-Ausgabe zum 50-Jährigen Jubiläum der Gründung der Stadt Friedrichsburg, p. 91
[2] Daily Telegraph and Texas Register [Houston, TX], Monday, May 10, 1847
[3] Penninger (1896), Fest-Ausgabe zum 50-Jährigen Jubiläum der Gründung der Stadt Friedrichsburg, p. 104f
[4] Handbook of Texas Online, Glen E. Lich, “BETTINA, TX,” accessed October 22, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvb55
[5] Schlecht (1851), Mein Ausflug nach Texas, p. 74
[6] Wurster (2011), Die Kettner Briefe, p. 19f

Jesse Ritner replies:

I would like to thank David Huenlich for his thoughtful response to my article on the Meusebach-Comanche Treaty of 1847 and the “Lasting Peace” monument that commemorates it in Fredericksburg, Texas. I appreciate his insight into the role of the Indian Agent, R.S. Neighbors. Neighbors was sent by the governor of Texas specifically to stop the treaty, if possible, and to mitigate any negative effects that might have occurred if the treaty could not be stopped. The goals of the German-Texans were certainly at odds with the goals of the Anglo-Texans and U.S. Government, which was precisely why Meusebach needed to make a treaty with the Comanche. In addition, I never intended to question Meusebach’s role as a “German free thinker.” However, the evidence that Huenlich presents in his discussion of Meusebach’s speech during negotiations, should be read with caution. The reliability of information on his speech is difficult to determine. Most accounts that I know of awere either written by German-Texan boosters or were written almost fifty years later, when relations with Native Americans were profoundly different, and the rhetoric of removal had changed. That being said, Meusebach likely mused about the possibilities of Comanche and German co-existence. In this he was not alone. In 1847, there were still people throughout the nation who believed that Native Americans and Europeans could and would live side by side.

Huenlich is also correct to point out that Germans in Texas in 1847 did not see themselves as “Anglo-European.” Too often we think of Texas as Anglo, rather than as the diverse polity it was during the Mexican-American War. What is so interesting about this treaty, and what drew me to it in the first place, was precisely the ways in which it exists outside typical Anglo-Comanche relations. The presence of Americans, Mexicans, Germans, Comanche, and Delaware makes for a fascinating mixture of people, cultures, and political goals. As a result, when looking at this treaty, we must try and imagine an immensely complex world, in which the two of the three biggest political and military actors were at war, and the German-Texans were trying to protect their future access to certain lands.

In this context, Meusebach could only work within prevailing geopolitical systems. On one side were the Comanche, who were undoubtedly feared by both Native Americans and Europeans in the region. On the other, were the U.S. Government and the German Emigration Company, who despite conflicts with each other, agreed on what determined legal ownership of land. The German Emigration Company, which Muesebach represented, had been given a grant of land from the former Republic of Texas, which if they failed to settle, they would lose. As a result, despite the language in the treaty, Meusebach must have been aware that settling the land would, in the eyes of western law, guarantee German-Texan access to it in the future. He would also have been aware, that by German and Anglo reasoning, the company already had rights to own land that was already promised by the U.S. Government to the Comanche.

When we take a step back, and think about Comanche motivation for signing this treaty, two things become apparent. One is the fact that the Comanche saw a very different future for themselves in Texas than the German-Texans saw. The other is that there were existing presumptive rights to land already at work by the time Meusebach entered treaty negotiations. Meusebach was not concerned with money, per se, but he was deeply concerned with property rights, and those property rights were to land that another nation already owned.

Even as Meusebach imagined a future in which the Comanche and Germans lived at peace together, that very desire denied a future in which the Comanche continued to be in control of Comanche land. In order to write a story that does not repeat the removal of people from their land by removing them from history, we must take as our first premise that Europeans, Anglos, German, Spanish, French, etc., had zero right to Indigenous lands. Once we do this, it becomes impossible to see either the Comanche or the Germans as simply friendly and well meaning, and as a result allows us to see how, in 1847, each group imagined radically different futures for themselves and each other than the future that came to pass.

The Comanche imagined a future in which their horse herds still roamed the plains and buffalo still prospered in the American West, in which trade fairs in the center of Comancheria were still economic and cultural centers, and the Comanche military was still feared the way the U.S. military is feared today. It is only once we acknowledge that this was a possibility, and that even well-meaning settlers aspired to lands that were never theirs, that we can begin to understand the violence that settler societies unleashed on North America.

The history I offered in my first article aspired to such an imagination. It is based on this premise that I proposed that the treaty’s significance was greater than its value to German-Texas. The treaty does not point to an alternative future because some German-Texans chose friendship over violence, it points to an alternative future because it gives us insight into myriad possibilities that the Comanche imagined for themselves.

Love in the Time of Texas Slavery

Letter to the Editor

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