PD Commons From the collection of the n ^z m PrelingerTi I a JjibraryJj San Francisco, California 2006 PD Books PD Commons LOTS OF LAND PD Books PD Commons Lotg or ^ 4 I / . FROM MATERIAL COMPILED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMISSIONER OF THE GENERAL LAND OFFICE OF TEXAS BASCOM GILES WRITTEN BY CURTIS BISHOP DECORATIONS BY WARREN HUNTER The Steck Company Austin Copyright 1949 by THE STECK COMPANY, AUSTIN, TEXAS All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper. PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PD Books PD Commons Contents \ I THE EXPLORER 1 II THE EMPRESARIO 23 Ml THE SETTLER 111 IV THE FOREIGNER 151 V THE COWBOY 201 VI THE SPECULATOR 245 . VII THE OILMAN 277 . BASCOM GILES PD Books PD Commons Pref<ace I'VE THOUGHT about this book a long time. The subject is one naturally very dear to me, for I have spent all of my adult life in the study of land history, in the interpretation of land laws, and in the direction of the state's land business. It has been a happy and interesting existence. Seldom a day has passed in these thirty years in which I have not experienced a new thrill as the files of the General Land Office revealed still another appealing incident out of the history of the Texas Public Domain. It has long been an honest conviction of mine that at least some of those thrills should be passed on to the present genera- tion of Texans. I have regarded my effort in the preparation of this volume as not only a gratifying hobby but a personal duty. This book is the result. At first it was my idea to prepare a history of the General Land Office itself, but, as the material began to take shape, it seemed to me that the story was too big for such confinement. I have compiled pamphlets depicting the history of the public domain's disposition, but I wanted in this book more than recital of land facts. I wanted the color of the people woven in, some of their laughter and tears, and a frame- work which would make it a continuous story rather than piece- meal history. I wanted the story of the land as well as the history of the land. It is here, all of it. I consider it well done. I am proud of my part in it. It comes at a timely moment when all Texans should be re- minded of the immense land heritage which was and is theirs by the simple act of becoming Texas citizens. This is the full story of how you got it, what was done with it, and what is left of it. It is the story of a people who won "lots of land" with their very blood, who struggled with it and among themselves for it, and who own it by a higher law than any gov- ernment can enact. BASCOM GILES Commissioner of the General Land Office PD Books PD Commons INTRODUCTION THE LAND was here, and lots of it. In the course of time all manner of men were to reach toward it. It was a new country, a fabled country. Its challenge spread out to all corners of the earth, and white man and yellow man crossed every sea to reach it. The explorer came first, of course. Then there was the colo- nist, the empresario. Then the settler bringing with him the spirit of revolution which was his heritage as an American. Then came the foreigner the German, the Frenchman, the Englishman, the Czech. Then a new breed of empire builder was born out of the land itself. Across Time's stage he rode in a new mode of dress, on a new type of pony, swinging a rope of hemp or rawhide and wear- ing a heavy blue-barreled gun at his hip. Then finally was the swashbuckler born amid the whirls of the industrial revolution, a seeker of new horizons that no other man had ever imagined, following the same challenging trails of ad- venture and wealth even below the surface of the sea. Explorer, empresario, settler, foreigner, cowboy, speculator, oilman, but all sought El Dorado. ix Indians greeted the first Spaniards with cries of "Tejas, Tejas," which meant friendly. And so the Spaniards named it "the land of Tejas," or "friendly land." PD Books PD Commons I THE EXPLORER TEXAS HAD its share in the romance and myth and fable which everywhere attended the Spanish conquest of America. In Florida the Spaniards sought the Fountain of Youth; in South America, the gilded man (El Dorado); on the west coast of Mexico the islands of the Amazons; in Arizona and New Mexico the Seven Cities of Cibola; on the California coast the Strait of Anian. "Likewise, in Texas, they searched for the Gran Quivira, where 'everyone had their ordinary dishes made of wrought plate, and the jugs and bowls were of gold,' for the Seven Hills of the Aijados, or the Aixoaos, where gold was so plentiful that 'the natives, not knowing of any of the other metals, made of it every- thing they needed, such as vessels and the tips of arrows and lances'; for the Sierro (or Cerro) de la Plata (Silver Mountain), somewhere north of the Rio Grande; for the pearls of the Ju- mano country; and for the 'Great Kingdom of the Texas,' a people like the Jumanos, who had been miraculously converted by a woman in blue who lived next door to the Kingdom of Gran Quivira, who were ruled by a powerful lord, had well-built towns, each several miles in length, and raised grain in such " abundance that they even fed it to their horses HERBERT E. BOLTON, "The Spanish Occupation of Texas, 1519-1690," The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. XVI. PD Books PD Commons THE beginning of the the landAof Texas unsettled eighteenth century sprawled, and virtually unknown, between two slowly advancing frontiers the French outposts of Louisiana and the Spanish mission civiliza- tion seeping beyond the Rio Grande River. Both empire-eager nations had made penetrations and over- tures. The Spaniard came first the shipwrecked Cabeza de Vaca, more concerned with finding his way home than with dis- covering a new empire; the gullible Coronado, marching stolidly in pursuit of Indian fantasies; the curious Pineda, dipping cau- tiously into every sizable bay along the Gulf coast; the luck- less Garay, who could not hold the confidence of either his king or his men; and Don Juan Onate, who cast off the humble cas- sock of a monk to become the protege of Hernando Cortes. These expeditions had their purpose. In an article for The Southwestern Historical Quarterly Herbert E. Bolton, authority upon the Spanish settlement of Texas, wrote: For a century and a half before they made definite attempts to occupy the region now called Texas the Spaniards gradually explored the and it, proceeding step by step from the borders toward interior, slowly formed ideas concerning its geography and suitability for settlement. The final occupation at the end of the seventeenth cen- tury was by no means the sudden event, brought about by the chance settlement of the French on the Gulf coast, that some have con- sidered it. None of these expeditions left any impress upon Texas ex- cept for Don Juan Onate, none anywhere. The efforts of this young Spaniard, whose religious fervor waned after his marriage to the granddaughter of Cortes and his wealth increased, re- sulted in the establishment of settlements in New Mexico, which the were temporarily abandoned a century later. Onate crossed 4 LOTS OF LAND Rio Grande near the present site of El Paso in the spring of 1598, 1 and that's all his expedition meant to Texas. One of Onate's successors as governor of Spanish New Mexico, Don Diego de Penalosa, seems to have been the first man to re- gard with enthusiasm the settlement of Texas. In 1630 the cus- todian of the New Mexico missions, Alonso Benavides, proposed the conversion of the Quivira Indians and even appealed over the viceroy's head to the King himself. Penalosa also carried his case direct to Spain, after publication of his expeditions into Texas received only a negative reaction from the viceroy. Re- ceiving no encouragement in Madrid, Penalosa turned to France, appearing in 1682 at the court of Louis XIV with his pamphlets. By then he was ready to propose that France not only seize Texas, but all of Spanish Mexico. He could do it, he said, with only a thousand men. Louis XIV was not convinced. He was not even very inter- ested until, a year later, a more famous explorer asked the King's blessing and financial aid for almost the same proposal. He was Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, who had just returned from an expedition down the Mississippi River. Penalosa's proposal, according to E. T. Miller in The South- western Historical Quarterly (Vol. V), was to establish a colony at the mouth of the Rio Grande, seize the Spanish settlement at Panuco, and move on to conquer all of Mexico. La Salle's scheme was to settle the Mississippi River basin. Penalosa's idea was rejected by Louis XIV. It is not certain how much of it La Salle assimilated in his own later memorial, which the French king approved.