Texans and War: New Interpretations of the State's Military History

4. The Influence of War and Military Service on African Texans

4 The Influence of War and Military Service on African Texans Alwyn Barr WAR AND MILITARY service confronted African Texans with a variety of challenges and opportunities at different times from the Spanish colonial period through the twentieth century. In the years of slavery, that institution might be strengthened or weakened by conflict, with mixed results for African Americans. For those who had achieved freedom, war could require efforts to protect that status. Following emancipation, military service took on both symbolic and practical meanings: participation in the responsibilities of citizenship, an opportunity to overcome images of inferiority that denied manhood, and an opportunity for improved economic status. Struggles to gain equality within the military proved most successful during new conflicts, while degrees of discrimination lingered for over a century. War crises might also expand job possibilities for African Texan civilians, but at the same time they could increase social tensions. African slaves entered Texas as part of Spanish military expeditions that explored the region in the sixteenth century. The first, Esteban, came ashore on the coast in 1528 with Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and other survivors of the Panfilo de Narvaez expedition. Esteban’s ability to speak with American Indians expanded his role as the men searched for Spanish settlements. Africans labored for Francisco Vazquez de Coronado during his military explorations in the Southwest, including West Texas, in the 1540s. Some of them escaped Spanish control along with Indian workers on the expedition. In the same decade, Hernando de Soto brought African slaves with his military march from Florida to the Mississippi River, where he died. Luis de Moscoso then led an expedition into East Texas. Three of the 98 Alwyn Barr Africans accompanying him escaped to seek greater freedom by joining American Indian communities.1 Spanish settlements in Texas did not develop until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in response to the failed French colony of Rene-Robert Cavalier, sieur de La Salle on the Texas coast in the 1680s. To establish a claim to the region, Spanish expeditions sought to develop missions and a military presidio in East Texas. By that period, persons of African ancestry often had gained their freedom and some had intermarried with Indians, although others remained slaves. When the expedition of Domingo de Teran faced a severe winter in 1691, a black bugler joined other soldiers who deserted, perhaps to find shelter with the Caddo Indians. AfroHispanics played roles in later military expeditions from 1716 to 1718, with duties such as herder and cook. The garrisons at presidios on the Texas frontier came to include Afro-Tejanos, who improved their status through military service, with some of them becoming landowners. African American roles in the Spanish military ranged from early escapes out of slavery to later upward mobility as a result of service.2 African Americans played complex roles in the Texas Revolution of 1835–36, in part because their status varied. Most had been brought to Texas from the United States as slaves, while smaller groups lived there as free people. Further complexity existed since some free blacks lived as part of the Spanish-Mexican society and culture , while others came from the United States and lived in the Anglo-American settlements and society. In the 1790s, censuses listed about 15 percent of the population in Spanish Texas as black or mulatto. In 1835 an Anglo-Texan described the Mexican troops at San Antonio as including Afro-Hispanics, with one serving as a sergeant.3 Free African Americans entered Texas from the United States in the 1820s and 1830s. Historian George Woolfolk suggests that they appear to fit the image of people escaping problems in more settled areas by using the frontier as a “safety valve,” as described by Frederick Jackson Turner. They sought greater opportunity there and freedom from discrimination in the United States. Some came to escape ostracism because they had married white men or women at a time when many states declared interracial marriage illegal.4 When the Texas Revolution began in 1835, about 150 free African Americans lived in the Anglo settlements. The conflict forced them to make a choice. They had found less discrimination in Mexican Texas, but they lived among Anglo-Texans, whose acceptance of them would be crucial to their future. Generally, those free black men either joined the Texan Army or offered other aid to the independence THE INFLUENCE OF...