Colonization without Empresarios — Indigenous Land Petitions in the GLO’s Spanish Collection
By: Texas General Land Office
Tags: Indigenous People, History, Texas, American Indians

The Spanish Collection at the GLO offers a window into the empresario land system of Mexican Texas, over which the figure of Stephen F. Austin looms large in the popular imagination. There are good reasons for such an empresario-centric focus. The collection covers the efforts of Stephen F. Austin exhaustively, including the thousands of titles issued by the Mexican government to the mostly Anglo immigrants within and outside of Austin’s Colony. It continues to serve as the bedrock for researchers in the fields of genealogy, history, and surveying.

Yet the Spanish Collection sheds light upon a wide variety of historical topics outside empresario colonization, from mission history to slavery to the Fredonian Rebellion. Further, even within the narrower confines of colonization, the collection’s subjects substantially are more diverse than one might expect, and its historical implications more complex. Texas’ empresarios included Mexicans like Lorenzo de Zavala, Tejanos like Martín de León, and Irishmen like John McMullen. Along with Anglo-Americans, Mexico’s generous colonization policies attracted Tejanos/as, Mexicans, African Americans, and Europeans. Moreover, all of these groups had to contend with Indigenous nations such as the Comanche, Lipan Apache, Karankawa, and Caddo, who exercised sovereignty over their respective territories through diplomacy and warfare.[1] To complicate matters, other Indigenous groups driven out of their homelands by U.S. policies of Indian removal solicited land grants in Mexican Texas as immigrant settlers during the same period, thus blurring the line between native and foreigner.[2] In fact, the GLO Archives preserves a rich trove of records on the efforts of various so-called “immigrant tribes” (here, Cherokee, Shawnee, Alabama/Coushatta, and Choctaw) to obtain land grants in the 1820s and 1830s. Empresario colonization, in other words, was not the only game in town.

“Immigrant” Shawnee, Delaware, and Quapaw Indians shown living near Pecan Point on the Red River. From Stephen F. Austin, Mapa Original de Texas por El Ciudadano Estevan F. Austin Presentado al Exmo. Sr. Presidente por su autor 1829, 1829, Map #76201, Texas State Library and Archives Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.

Thanks to the work of Gabriela Pérez, who served as the GLO’s Spanish Collection Intern in summer 2019, the story of the immigrant tribes’ quest for land in Texas has become more accessible to researchers. During her internship, Pérez translated forty documents with a date range of 1822–1835.[3] Rich in ethnographic data and historical insights, these records demonstrate how Mexico’s inclusive colonization policies were complicated by local competition for land, weak state institutions, and anti-Indian prejudice.

The Case of the Shawnee

Expediente (record of the proceedings) of the Shawnees’ petition for land on the Red River, March 20, 1826, Box 117, Folder 18, Records of the Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.

Subscribing to the mantra that “to govern is to populate,” Mexican officials adopted an inclusionary — if strongly assimilationist — attitude towards the groups that began arriving at Texas’ doorstep from the east in the early nineteenth century. After failing to entice the Lipan Apaches into a defensive alliance, the new republic looked to immigrant tribes, whom its leaders generally considered more “civilized,” to help it create a buffer zone on the northern frontier and check the southward advance of the Comanche and their allies.[4] Thus did officials in Béxar, Saltillo, and Mexico City entertain various proposals for Indigenous colonization in Texas between 1822 and 1831.[5] These petitions received mostly favorable assessments from Tejano and Mexican military officers and statesmen such as José Francisco Ruiz, José Francisco Madero, and General Manuel de Mier y Terán. Not only did these officials hope that Indigenous settlers would increase the population and bring stability to northern Texas, they also sought to use them as a counterweight against their enemies. A letter from the ayuntamiento (municipal council) of Béxar to the governor of Coahuila y Texas supporting the 1824 petition of a group of Shawnees illustrates Mexico’s geopolitical strategy well:

. . . after discussing the matter and keeping in view the welfare and true development of this province, we have unanimously agreed to report to Your Lordship that the settlement of [the Shawnee] nation at the place they solicit will not only be of much utility, but also most advantageous to this province, for besides being laborious and well-provisioned, they are warriors, and the place where they wish to settle is one of utmost importance for the protection of this city and the inhabited parts of this province against the hostile incursions of various savage nations, especially the Tahuayases [Taovaya], and even the Tahuacanos [Tawakoni] and Wacoes, who even at peace do not cease to be thieves. This Ayuntamiento therefore deems it prudent that Your Lordship, if he pleases, should send this petition up to the Honorable Congress of this State, with the recommendation best calculated to obtain for the interested parties the object of their petition.[6]

: Land grant provisionally made to the Shawnee Indians on the Red River. From David H. Burr, Texas, New York: J.H. Colton and Company, 1834, Map #79292, Texas State Library and Archives Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.

Despite such an endorsement, the Shawnees’ petition encountered immediate difficulties because of confusion about the location of the land they requested. Their first petition had requested land on the Colorado River, “west of the Pedernales Creek [sic],” although subsequent correspondence indicated they were not aware of this. In fact, the Shawnees had already established themselves on the Red River near present-day Clarksville; and when they discovered the error, they requested permission to stay there. The Mexican government initially objected, explaining that the requested land grant fell within the 20-league Border Reserve. It ultimately allowed the roughly 300 Shawnee families to continue cultivating the land on the Red River until the federal authorities could settle the matter. Such an offer included several assimilationist caveats. The Shawnees could stay:

[. . . ] so long as they observe the Constitution and the laws of the Nation, and not form for themselves a national body with their own authorities, but rather obey those of the state. For this purpose, [the government judges it] convenient that they not remain all together, but rather settle themselves in pueblos or rancherías separate from one another, and that Your Excellency [should] take the prudent measures so that they may embrace the religion of the nation if they do not yet profess it, and for them to be peaceful and laborious neighbors, useful to that state and to the federation.[7]

Gov. Rafael Gonzáles to José Antonio Saucedo, May 10, 1825, Box 127, Folder 34, p. 249, Records of the Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.

In line with its mostly welcoming stance towards Anglo-American immigrants, Mexico thus fostered what scholars have termed a “frontier of inclusion.” Meanwhile, the U.S.’s expanding western border can be described as a “frontier of exclusion,” since settlers and their military and civilian governments often sought the wholesale displacement of native and Mexican societies on their march towards the Pacific.[8] Immigrant Indians were pulled by the former frontier and pushed by the latter.

Unfortunately for the Shawnee families, land hunger among Anglo-American settlers in the Arkansas Territory and the Mexican government’s instability soon conspired to undermine their claim to the land. Taking advantage of uncertainties over the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico, squatters from Arkansas Territory had moved south from present-day Oklahoma into the Pecan Point area. They quickly began to complain to authorities on both sides about the growing Indigenous presence. Despite vociferous objections from a U.S. military captain stationed at Fort Towson (who asserted that the Shawnees were not on Arkansas soil), a group of Arkansas territorial militiamen responded by forcefully driving the Indians further south into Texas.[9]

Fort Towson was established in 1824 as the southern outpost of Indian Territory. From W. Kemble, Texas in 1836, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1846, Map #95364, Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.

To make matters worse, Mexican authorities proved unable to protect the Shawnees, despite the latter’s steadfast loyalty. Along with Stephen F. Austin, the group had supported the Mexican state during the short-lived Fredonian Republic; it had also offered to organize armed bands against Mexico’s Indigenous enemies such as the Tawakonis and Wacoes.[10] Certainly, the Mexican government appreciated such loyalty and made gestures of support. In 1826, in approving an empresario contract for Arthur Wavell which encompassed the Shawnee grant, the government asserted that new colonists “could not occupy the tracts that the Shawnee Indians have legitimately acquired” on the Red River; it also forbade Wavell from distributing titles to American squatters (Wavell’s contract was specifically for European families).[11] For his part, General Mier y Terán, during his 1828 inspection of the frontier, offered a sympathetic assessment of the Shawnee groups dispersed from their Red River lands and provisionally offered them a tract near the Trinity River.[12]

Lino Sánchez y Tapia, a Mexican scientific illustrator and cartographer, accompanied General Manuel de Mier y Terán on his 1828 inspection of Texas and the frontier. Using the “costumbrista” style popular in Mexico, he produced detailed portraits of various indigenous “types” encountered along the way. Sánchez y Tapia, “Shawnees,” in Jean Louis Berlandier, Indians of Texas in 1830, ed. John C. Ewers and trans. Patricia Reading Leclerq (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute, 1969).

The political instability of the 1830s hindered decisive action to protect the Shawnee and other immigrant tribes, and the hardening attitudes among the increasingly separatist population of East Texas led to deteriorating relations. By 1836, the various Shawnee bands in Texas had joined with other nations under the leadership of Cherokee Chief Bowl in seeking a treaty with the Texians. Despite Sam Houston’s efforts, such a project ultimately failed, and many of the Shawnee immigrants were forcefully driven north into Indian Territory during the early years of the Republic.[13] Thousands of Shawnees still call Oklahoma home today, while smaller populations are found in California, Texas, and Kansas.[14]