Galveston: A History of the Island

Chapter 6

6 COLONEL STEPHEN F. Austin, not General James Long, is known as the Father of Texas. But Long got close. He married the Mother of Texas. Undeterred by Lafitte's betrayal and the humiliation of his first failed expedition-suIVivors were arrested by government officials in New Orleans and paraded down Charles Street-General Long assembled another army and established a fort on Bolivar Peninsula , across the channel from Galveston Island. When Lafitte departed , the general moved some of his troops to the Island. Galveston was still to playa strategic role in his obsession to invade Mexico. Long had hoped that his vainglorious scheme would attract thousands of volunteers, but only a few hundred came forward. It was a measure of Long's ego and ambition that he continued to believe he could conquer a country the size of Mexico, and a testament to his foolhardiness that he believed he commanded loyality. Some of Long's men were patriots to the cause of Mexican independence, but many more were soldiers of fortune or fugitives; Long had trouble distinguishing between the two. The more the general's invasion plans were delayed, the more they were imperiled by his own stupidity. First, there was trouble with Karankawas. Long decided to teach the Indians a lesson after they attacked and butchered the crew of a French sloop that ran aground on the Island. With only thirty men Long attacked a much 56 Gary Cartwright larger force of Indians. Forced to retreat, Long left behind his dead and wounded, which hardly endeared him to his men. A short time later the general hanged one of his officers for insubordination. The victim was a popular young colonel named Modellio, and his execution was viewed by other Mexicans under Long's command as an act nearly tantamount to murder. In the fall of 1821, Long learned of a rebellion at La Bahia Presidio (the present town of Goliad), and, with a contingent of troops, marched off to help, leaving his wife and fifty men at Fort Bolivar. Mrs. Long never saw her husband again. Months later she learned that he had led his men into Mexico and been assassinated in Mexico City, probably in retaliation for the murder of Colonel Modellio. Jane Wilkinson Long was a gentle and refined woman, the niece of General James Wilkinson, who had been deeply implicated in Aaron Burr's plot. In the fall of 1821, a few weeks after Long marched off on his final expedition, the troops that he left behind to protect Fort Bolivar and his family began to drift away. Jane Long could have gone with them, but she had promised the general that she would wait for him at the fort. And that is what she did. Pregnant and alone with her young daughter, a black servant girl, and a dog, Jane Long waited all winter. The winter of 1822 was one of the worst ever: for a quarter of a mile out from shore Galveston Bay froze solid. Across the narrow channel Jane Long could see the campfires of the Karankawas and hear their bloody yelping. To prevent attack she hoisted her red flannel petticoat on the fort staff and fired cannons. She chopped a hole in the ice and caught fish with a handline, and when her fishhooks were lost, she seined with an old hammock and stored her catch in a pickle barrel of brine. Sometime that winter she gave birth to a child. General James Long is a footnote in Texas history, but in honor of the fact that her child was the first born to an American settler on the Texas frontier, Jane Long will always be known as the Mother of Texas. Over the next fourteen years Long's dream of an independent Texas became a reality under Stephen F. Austin and his followers. What Long tried to do by force, Austin attempted by means of diplomacy. Austin had a contract with the Mexican government to colonize land between the watersheds of the Brazos and Colorado rivers. The ongoing revolution in Mexico made all agreements tenuous , but Austin kept the faith and insisted that his colonists ob- GALVESTON 57 serve strict neutrality. If the empresario had any thoughts of an independent Texas, he kept them to himself. Shiploads of settlers began arriving at the port of Galveston in 1822. People crowded the decks to get a look at...