GOT PROBLEMS BELIEVING STILLMAN STOLE MEXICAN LAND?

By Manuel Callahan
"Mexican Border Troubles: Social War, Settler Colonialism and the Production of Frontier Discourses, 1848-1880"
Callahan, B.A, M.A. Dissertation, 2003,
The University of Texas, Austin

"Anglo violence continued long after the US-Mexico War had ended. An example of Anglo impunity took place in January of 1850 when Charles Stillman and 15 associates rode into the Palmito Ranch.

Stillman had been robbed earlier and he and his men were determined to recover his stolen property and punish the culprits.
Stillman “got together a force of Americans” from Brownsville and rounded up the entire population of the ranch, ordering them tied and whipped until they delivered the malefactors. Stillman’s interrogation revealed that the guilty party was Juan Chapa Guerra and that he was at Ranchito.

Once Stillman’s men found the man they believed to be responsible for the theft, he informed them that they could “do what they pleased with him.”
 It was not until after Chapa had been “whipped and then killed” at the hands of Stillman’s associates that an investigation not only “disclosed the horrible proceedings of the murder” but also uncovered that Stillman and his men had incorrectly identified the accused victim.

The confusion resulted from a lethal cultural barrier. The one guilty of the original theft was allegedly one Juan Chapa Garcia, not Juan Chapa Guerra.
The outraged family of the wronged Juan Chapa Guerra sought legal remedy, but they could find no lawyers in Brownsville willing to challenge Stillman.

Much later, the 1873 Mexican Committee of Investigation concluded that as a notable person of considerable resources Stillman “exercised a controlling influence in Brownsville,” explaining, in part, why such a grave miscarriage of justice remained unpunished.
Stillman could boast of a great deal of influence in Brownsville as a result of a number of successful commercial ventures in the region.

During the US-Mexican War Stillman supplied General Zachary Taylor’s army with goods delivered from the Gulf of Mexico up the Rio Grande. Following the war, Stillman continued to profit. His success was due, to some extent, on the purchase of large tracts of disputed lands made available to him by Sabas Cavazos.
In Texas courts, Anglos such as Stillman were able to take advantage of the diminished legal standing of the Spanish and Mexican legal apparatus adjudicating communally held lands.
Stillman, for example, profited handsomely by establishing the Brownsville Town Company with the land he so easily acquired with Cavazos aid.

After converting the property into lots, he easily disposed of most the tracts for a considerable profit. As a result of his early successes, Stillman developed “a trade and manufacturing nexus” throughout Northeastern Mexico and South Texas, dominating “large scale trade, finance, and landholding in the Rio Grande Valley.”

At one point, Stillman and associate Richard King hoped to further solidify their investments and holdings by supporting Jose Maria Carvajal’s unsuccessful attempt to establish the Republic of the Sierra Madre.

Later, as Mexican liberals struggled to rid themselves of the occupying French forces through a widespread guerrilla war, John Hart adds that Stillman and other prominent Anglos such as Richard King established their commercial empires through their effective use of paramilitary force.

“From the 1850s to the mid 1870s,” John Hart explains, “their controversial claims to these properties were backed up by the Texas Rangers, the U.S. Army, and their own private armies.

For years their militias fought the Mexicans who confiscated cattle and burned ranches in retaliation for their displacement. The titles were still in dispute in Texas courtrooms at the end of the twentieth century.”