Free The Mammoth Book of the West by Jon E. Lewis Page A

into prominent Cheyenne families and this, plus the partners’ industry and rare financial honesty, ensured that Bent’s Fort dominated the commerce of the Colorado region for nearly 15 years.
    The other consequence of the Santa Fe trade was morenotable, if less tangible. The Mexicans proved incapable of enforcing their tariffs and their laws on the American traders. Along its northern borders, Mexico was weak, its land there for the taking.

“And Remember the Alamo”
No Land More Lovely
    There were Americans in Texas from about 1803, intruders who settled around Nacogdoches, one of the fortified outposts on the northern frontier of New Spain, which spanned a 2,000-mile arc from Texas to California. These Anglos were barely tolerated, but then in 1821 Mexico won her independence from Spain, and the new republic decided to swing open the doors of its Texas province to American immigrants, mostly to strengthen the local population base against Indian attacks.
    A sheet-lead manufacturer by the name of Moses Austin was among the first to consider settlement. Born in 1761 in Connecticut, Austin had drifted into Missouri when it was still part of Spanish Louisiana, and begun business. After a severe financial reverse, Austin decided to move on to Texas, petitioning the governor to allow him to build a colony there. His petition was granted, mostly because he was a Spanish citizen by virtue of his residency in Missouri.
    Exhausted by the journey to Texas, Moses Austin fell ill and died of pneumonia. His last request would be the inheritance and destiny of his eldest son, Stephen Fuller Austin, whom he asked “to go on with the business in thesame way.” Although hardly in the classic mould of pioneer leader, the diminutive 27-year-old journalist and banker left at once for the far frontier.
    Stephen Austin began his mission by exploring the central regions of Texas, eventually hitting on the deep, alluvial land between the Brazos and the Colorado rivers for the site of the American colony. Settlers proved easy to recruit; the hard times following the financial Great Panic of 1819 made many US citizens eager for free Texan land. Austin was able to pick and choose the founding members of his father’s colony.
    As with many new settlements, the colony suffered initial hunger and hardship, also drought and Indian attacks. Much the worst setback, though, was when Austin was informed by the Mexican government that the settlement needed the authorization of the republic’s Congress. The almost destitute Austin was obliged to travel to Mexico City and plead his case. It took nearly a year to be heard, but his diplomacy eventually gained him the land grant he wanted. Under the terms of the Congressional approval, each family in the colony was allowed one
labor
(177 acres) of land for farming and 74
labors
for stockraising. Austin was allowed to collect 12½ cents an acre for his services, and was promised a bonus of 65,000 acres on the arrival of the 200th family. There were a number of other clauses in the contract. The settlers had to accept the Roman Catholic faith; they had to be of good moral character; and they were allowed to bring in slaves, but not to buy or sell them within the state.
    While Austin was absent in Mexico City, the colony was welcoming a steady trickle of newcomers. A town, St Felipe de Austin, began to take shape on the lower crossing of the Brazos. “It does not appear possible,” one “Texian” pioneer wrote home, “that there can be a land more lovely.” By 1823 the original 300 families (known toTexas history as the Old 300) had arrived, and Austin was permitted to recruit another 500.
    The success of the Austin colony as a bulwark against both the tribes and unofficial American landgrabbers led the Mexican government to encourage further immigration. The 1824 National Colonization Law joined Texas to its neighbouring state of Coahuila (so ensuring a Spanish-speaking majority), while allowing