CARL ES CHILLON: S. TEXAS NATIVES INGRATES OF ANGLO MUNIFICENCE

By Carl Es Chillon (AKA Carl Chilton)
Special to El Rrun-Rrun
Even before 1836, when illegal Anglo settlers overran the eastern Texas border in hordes, many local natives (Spanish subjects before they declared independence) there were already rumblings of disconcert from these ingrates toward the civilizing influence of the Anglo squatters.
Surprisingly, many Texas-Coahuila residents resented the fact that these newcomers were allowed to have large land grants for next to nothing in exchange for their allegiance to Mexico, the adoption of the catholic faith, and renouncing the ownership of slaves.
The new industrious settlers set about at once to establish their dominant spirit over the slothful natives and before you could say Colt 45 they eventually ended up controlling choice farmland and pastureland coveted by the avaricious Mexicans.
It turned out to be too little too late that the Mexican government realized things were getting out of control and administered a few military defeats on these democratically-minded newcomers at Goliad and the Alamo. The courageous, freedom-loving independent spirits soon avenged themselves by defeating a sleeping (siesta always gets them) Mexican army under General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana at San Jacinto and the die was cast.
The United States didn't want any part of these wild revolutionaries to the west, their "independence" coming only 17 years after the nation had signed the Adams-de Onis Treaty recognizing the Red River as the boundary between the two nations. It wasn't until 1845 that the U.S. finally decided to annex Texas and moved Zachary Taylor to Louisiana, then the Nueces River, and finally, in 1846, to the mouth of the Rio Grande to counter the inevitable response.
The pattern was set for later hostorical eras when the U.S. military created an "incident" at Los carricitos where "American blood was shed on American soil" and the invasion was on.
The rest, as Mike Murphy over at Palo Alto likes to say, is history.
The new vigorous, valiant and hardy pioneers using the soldiers as interference to dispossess the local landowners, soon established themselves on stolen land and set about to impart civilization among the riff-raff majority of local Mexicans here.
Oh, by the way, there was no one living in this area, regardless of what those historical revisionists say about land grants and rancherias dating back to the 1700s. And even the original owners of the land where Ft. Brown, Annie S,. Putegnat School, Washington Park, etc., recognized the futility of fighting over it in our freedom-loving courts and instead recognized the superior claims brought by crooked Anglo lawyers and the likes of Stillman, Kenedy, King, and other Anglo luminaries and their freedom-loving (but firm and courageous) Texas Rangers, meekly recognizing their betters and giving it up for a song.
A special thank right about here should go to the Yturrias, the Cuetos, the Celayas, and other proud, Spanish-stock families who paved the way toward the amassing of these great ranches and estates by convincing their native brethren to part with their land birthrights for peanuts. Yturria, especially, was well paid for riding out into the poor rancherias and offering the poor rancheros a pittance for their documents that gave them the right to their lands. Now, these were true blue-bloods whose female offspring were worthy mates for our young American boys given the inheritance laws that dispensed land equally to males and females of the old Spanish families.
Truly, there are some customs worth keeping! That's why you have a Petra Vela Vidal de Kenedy, Estéfana Solís Champion, etc.
Nonetheless, there are some rabble-rousers out there who would hold bandits like Catarino Garza and Juan Cortina as heroes who fought the land grab at the point of a Colt 45 and Springfield repeater as heroes. They say that Stillman took land that didn't belong to him and that his donations to the public of Washington Park and Annie S. Putegnat were done merely to whitewash his depredations.
The next thing they'll say is that they early Mexican families worked the land and that they – not our Anglo fore bearers – actually settled the land and established livestock and agriculture almost a century before we got here.

Next Week: Christianity, Motherhood and Apple Pie came with the new settlers.