How come Texans are so dad-blamed proud of themselves and their state. A series...





Built of Texas Pink Granite, quarried at Marble Falls. 308 feet to top of Goddess of Liberty Statue

  

     A friend of mine wondered aloud about Texas and Texans.  She was first exposed to Texans as a high school student in California, during the late forties.   Many Texas families moved to California back then, searching for jobs.  The Texas children attended local schools and complained long and loud about everything in California, while they bragged long and loud about everything in Texas. As one might expect, this did not endear them to the natives.

     I was, at first, tempted to simply ignore her concern as just another foreigner who didn’t understand my part of the world.  I suspected that much of the braggadocio of the high school kids might have been based upon feelings of inadequacy.  After all, they were in a strange new environment and most of the rules they had grown up with simply didn’t apply.  I did not care to make excuses for a bunch of displaced high school kids who ticked off some natives in California over sixty years ago.

     I soon realized that I could not let it pass.  Those kids had been rude and immature, and perhaps a bit obnoxious, but they were Texans.  I had no choice.  I was duty-bound to defend them.

     Texas was born as a territory of Spain in the early 1500’s.  Spain planned to work its tried and true method of colonization on this province---put in missions, augmented by a presidio with troops.  Thus equipped,  they could either kill the heathen Indians or save their souls, enslave them, and finally populate the territory with loyal subjects of the Spanish King.  It worked in South America and Mexico---it should work in Texas.  For three hundred years they tried this and all they had to show for their efforts was a bunch dismembered priests and scalped soldiers.  They learned the hard way---Comanche do not plant beans.

      The Spanish, and the Mexicans after 1824, decided to establish a “buffer zone” between themselves and the Comanche.  They would allow Anglo settlers into Texas, on the frontier next to the Indians, and move the loyal Catholic subjects of the king into the protected areas behind them.  How do you suppose that worked?

     Some of the original Anglo settlers who came to Texas were honest, hard-working farmers, looking for places to build their homes and establish their families.  A big portion of the settlers were opportunists, looking to make their fortunes by land speculation, real estate development or other popular games of chance.  Most of the rest were fugitives, running from failed businesses, failed marriages, or failed attempts in other places.  There were common threads in this rag-tag bunch; wanderlust, a zest for adventure, self-reliance, the will to work, and a supreme (if sometimes misplaced) confidence in their own abilities.

     While the folks along the east coast were going to the opera, and other future states were dutifully surveying boundaries, holding elections and standing in line to be admitted to the Union, Texans were fighting and dying at the Alamo, Goliad, and Coleta Creek.  Through sheer luck and monumental bluff, in 1836 Sam Houston wrested control of Texas from Mexico.  The government of Mexico was in shambles---strong arguments suggest that Mexico is not yet capable of self-government.  Due to the political disarray in Mexico City, a counter attack against the rebels was not mounted,  and Texas somehow managed to survive as an independent republic.

     After ten years, Texas finally became the twenty-eighth state in the United States, and the only state to come into the union by treaty, not annexation.   The US/Mexican War of 1846-1848 was predictable and necessary to resolve boundary disputes between Texas and Mexico, and other little things that Sam Houston and Santa Anna had let fall through the cracks in the Treaties of Velasco.   Mexico, through diplomatic channels, had warned the US that war would result if Texas was annexed.

        As a side benefit of this war with Mexico over Texas, the United States fulfilled its “Manifest Destiny” by acquiring title to the remaining western territory still under Mexican control.   A large part of Colorado, all of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, California, and Utah, and bits of Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Kansas became property of the United States because of this obscure little war.  The Gadsden Purchase in 1853 defined the final US/Mexican border and completed the territories of New Mexico and Arizona.

     After the Civil War, during reconstruction, Edmond Davis, a staunch Unionist, was elected governor of Texas. His idea of reconstruction was more punitive than constructive.  Texans again suffered, but endured.  Tribulations like these left the citizens of Texas with a strong mistrust in the federal government which remains to this day.

     Construction of the Texas State Capitol Building was finished in 1888 and by a strange coincidence, it ended up twenty feet taller that the Nation’s Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  Texans, in their usual self-effacing manner, built the San Jacinto Monument in 1936.  When they installed the Lone Star on top, someone thought to measure the total height.  Land Sakes, it is twelve feet taller than the Washington Monument.  Who would've thought it?

Five hundred sixty-seven feet to the top of the star.

     As to how we became so loud, so arrogant, so obnoxious, and so dad-blamed proud of ourselves and our state, stay tuned…. To be continued…..