Seat of Empire: The Embattled Birth of Austin, Texas

4. The Raven and the Poet

Seat of Empire | 34 || Chapter 4 | The Raven and the Poet General Lamar will not pardon a friendly regard in any person for Gen Houston. October 3, 1838, entry in Ashbel Smith’s diary, Ashbel Smith Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American Studies, the University of Texas at Austin He is too base to be respected and too imbecile to be trusted! Sam Houston, describing Mirabeau Lamar in a December 13, 1841, letter to his wife Margaret, Roberts, Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, vol. 1, 135 Many of those attending the wedding of Eliza Allen and Tennessee governor Sam Houston January 22, 1829, foresaw a presidency in the ambitious groom’s future. Houston had long enjoyed the favor of President Andrew Jackson, whose meteoric ascent after the War of 1812 resulted in a position of political preeminence . The president had wielded his rising power to nurture Houston’s career ever since the younger man’s valor at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814 caught General Jackson’s eye. Following a post-battle promotion to second lieutenant, the young protégé earned praise as subagent to the Cherokee nation, then held a series of appointments and elected positions which culminated in him reaching the Tennessee governor ’s mansion in 1826. Endorsement and support from Jackson provided crucial assistance each step of the way. As Andrew Jackson’s favorite, Sam Houston on his wedding day seemed a strong candidate to become Old Hickory’s eventual successor in the White House. A Virginian by birth, fourteen-year-old Sam Houston moved with his siblings and newly widowed mother to Blount County, Tennessee in 1807. Although he willingly spent long hours devouring The Iliad and other classics, Sam was a poor student who attended school only sporadically. He displayed even less enthusiasm working on the family farm alongside his older brothers, who eventually became frustrated enough with their younger sibling that they put him to work in the family store in nearby Maryville. Bored and angry, Sam ran away from home in 1809, finding The Raven and the Poet | 35 | refuge with the Cherokee in Chief Oolooteka’s town on an island in the Hiwassee River1 . He ingratiated himself so well and so quickly that Oolooteka adopted the young runaway, soon known among the Cherokee as the Raven. Sam Houston threw himself completely into his new life. He adopted Cherokee dress and rapidly became fluent in the Cherokee language. When his older brothers found him after several weeks, he adamantly Sam Houston lived with the Cherokee during his teens and again after his flight from Tennessee in 1829. He took a Cherokee name meaning “The Raven,” but it was his less flattering native nickname of “The Big Drunk” that provided ammunition for later political enemies. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-92305. Seat of Empire | 36 | refused to return with them to the farm. The brothers left empty-handed to inform their mother that Sam would not be coming home. Sam remained with Oolooteka and his people for three years. He intermittently visited his mother to chat and beg for money. During this time he also took up drinking, a vice that would plague him for the next three decades. As was common along the porous frontier in that day, he traveled freely between Indian and white society, working occasional jobs as a store clerk and teacher. Frequently finding himself in debt, Houston was in the process of asking another youth named Charles Norwood for a loan in 1813 when his long-time friend instead convinced him to join the army. A year younger than the enlistment minimum age of twenty-one, Sam had to ask his mother’s consent to sign up. While granting permission Mrs. Houston presented her son a gold ring with the word “Honor” engraved on the inside curve. Fifty years later Sam Houston’s widow would remove this ring from her deceased husband’s hand moments after his death.2 As had the American Revolution, the War of 1812 forced indigenous nations to choose sides. Indian statesmen agonized over the decision, for they knew that a wrong choice could ruin their people. Many undoubtedly recalled what had happened to the once-mighty Haudenosaunee federation ,3 a British ally destroyed by George Washington in 1779. Weary of the raids made on his forces by the Haudenosaunee, the American commander sent three armies through their country...