Indian Agent: Peter Ellis Bean in Mexican Texas (review)

A Tennessean, Peter Ellis Bean came to Mexican Texas by way of a Spanish prison. In 1800 he ventured onto the southern plains to hunt horses, but Spanish troops intercepted his party and held him captive for the rest of the decade. When insurgency erupted in New Spain in 1810, officials released Bean from prison in Acapulco to fight on the Spanish side. He switched sides, however, and fought for José María Morelos until 1815 before decamping to Tennessee. After Mexico won its independence, Bean moved to Mexican Texas with an American wife and settled in the Neches district. There he flourished, in no small part because his decade and a half in Mexico had left him fluent in Spanish and influential with revolutionary leaders who now held power in the new nation's capital.

In Texas, Bean obtained a substantial amount of Texas real estate, although his bigamy (he had left a wife behind in Jalapa) worked against his obtaining an empresario grant. He won a colonelcy in the Mexican army, with subsequent promotions, and an appointment as Mexico's agent to Indians in East Texas. The approach of the Texas Revolution put Bean in a tight spot. As a Mexican officer, he advised his superiors about treasonous Anglo Americans in his district, yet he enjoyed personal and business relations with Anglo Americans that he apparently did not wish to jeopardize. When the fighting broke out, Bean apparently played no active role on either side. His enemies later tried to brand him as a Mexican sympathizer, but Jack Jackson tells us that the charges had no merit. Bean remained in Texas until 1843, then moved to Jalapa where he reunited with his Mexican wife. He and his American wife had become estranged in the late 1820s.

A master sleuth, Jack Jackson has uncovered fresh information about all aspects of Bean's life but, as the title of his book suggests, Jackson focuses on Bean's role as an Indian agent. Cherokees in particular distrusted Bean since he could not deliver on promises of land. Anglos distrusted him, worrying during the Texas Revolution that Bean might turn Indians against them. Jackson explains the complicated world in which Bean operated, and makes his actions understandable if not always praiseworthy.

In this wordy life-and-times biography, the times often overwhelm the life. Jackson's assiduous research notwithstanding, much about Bean remains mysterious and Jackson has had to fill in the blanks with informed speculation or counterfactual arguments. Readers, however, may lose patience with his digressions into how he knows what he knows, and with his relentless focus on the documents rather than on the stories they tell. Jackson devotes considerable attention to burnishing Bean's tarnished reputation and minces no words in condemning earlier historians' interpretations. Yet, one wonders if Jackson himself has overreached. For example, as evidence of Bean's friendship with James Bowie, Jackson offers the "often-repeated story" (p. 209) that Bowie gave Bean a gold-tipped walking stick. Late in life Bean walked the streets of Jalapa with that stick, Jackson says without equivocation. One of Jackson's endnotes, however, reveals that the source of the "often-repeated story" was unreliable and that there is no evidence the gold-tipped walking stick ever existed.