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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.

tion as a State. This is important to bear in mind
as a historical fact.
In 1820 Zavala was elected by Yucatan as a
deputy to the then ephemeral Cortes of Spain. He
attended the sessions of that body and proposed
a measure to establish a legislative body for
Yucatan and other Spanish-American colonies, for
their local self-government; but this caused among
the monarchists per se, a great cry against him,
and, to save his liberty, if not his life, he was
compelled to flee. He escaped into France and
thence found his way over to London and from
there sailed for his home.
In September, 1821, the Mexican revolution,
under Iturbide's plan of Iguala, triumphed.
Thereupon Yucatan determined to join her fortunes
to Mexico, and in February, 1822, elected Don
Lorenzo as one of her deputies to the first Congress
of that country. He took his seat in that notable
assembly and was elected its President. That body
finally adopted the Republican constitution of 1824.
The first name signed to it is that of Lorenzo de
Zavala, President, and Deputy from Yucatan.
Under that constitution, the future Congress
being divided into a Senate and House of Representatives,
Zavala was senator from Yucatan in
1825 and 1826. In March, 1827, he was made
Governor of the State of Mexico, (including the
capital city), and held that office till 1830, when a
revolution fomented at Jalapa compelled him, as a
friend of free constitutional government, to flee to
the United States. During his exile he made a
tour of the United States and wrote a most valuable
volume on his observations, designed to enlighten
his countrymen as to the practical workings and
benefits of free government.
On the triumph of Santa Anna, in 1833, as the
champion of the Republican constitution of 1824,
Zavala returned to Mexico. He had been a friend
of Santa Anna and the Liberal party, and incidentally
a zealous friend of the American colonists in
Texas. Indeed he had bought land on Buffalo
bayou, in Texas, and resolved to make that his
home, that he might live among a free and libertvloving
people; but fate delayed the consummation of
his wishes. His great and lucid mind seems to
have foreseen the future grandeur of Texas. He
acquired the right to found a colony in the eastern
part of the province, but his public duties forbade
his personal attention, and he transferred the right
to persons, or a company, who did nothing to carry
out the project.
On the triumph of Santa Anna, Zavala was
appointed Mexican Minister to France. In the
meantime Mrs. Zavala had died, early in 1831, and

he had married an accomplished lady in New York,
whose maiden name was Emily West, who was
born in New York, September 9, 1811. (This lady,
subsequently Mrs. Hand, died in Houston, June 15,
1883, and was buried at the family cemetery,
Zavala's Point, opposite the battle ground of San
Jacinto.) Mrs. Zavala was considered at the court
of St. Cloud a beautiful and accomplished woman,
and was greatly esteemed for her social virtues.
Don Lorenzo repaired at once to his post in Paris
flushed with high hopes as to the future of his
country. He had scarcely arrived, however, when
ominous sounds rolled over the Atlantic -sounds
soon rendered certainties
admonishing him that
his old-friend and chief, Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna, had become a traitor to the cause of liberty
and was now the champion of despotism
of the
Church and State party-and in fact was the
champion of the cast-off despotism of Spain, the
only difference being in a name.
When this whole fact, thrice repeated, came to
be understood by Zavala in Paris, his honest soul
revolted, and he promptly sent his resignation to
Mexico. He at once resolved to carry out his idea
of becoming a citizen of Texas
then a Mexican
province
where he hoped to rear his children in
an atmosphere of freedom. He sent his son
Lorenzo de Zavala, Jr., who was his Secretary of
Legation also, to Texas, to begin improvements on
the lands he had previously bought. He wrote
Santa Anna a letter worthy of his character, denouncing
the latter's apostasy to the cause of
liberty, and telling him that whereas, heretofore
his cause had prospered because it was right, now
that he had betrayed that cause, he would fall.
Truer prediction was never uttered, though it required
nineteen years to bring the grand truth
home to Santa Anna, and make him a refugee from
the wrath of his own countrymen, never more to
be tolerated on the soil of his birth, except when
old and decrepit, to be allowed the privilege to
return and die in the capital of the land he had
outraged. The poor old apostate did so return and
die, a veritable outcast, in the old Hotel Vergara,
about 1874.
Governor Zavala arrived in Texas early in 1835.
He was received with open arms by all classes, and
was consulted by all prominent men in regard to
the condition of the country. When the people
elected members to the first revolutionary convention
(consultation), of November 3d, 1835, he was
a delegate, and aided in forming the provisional
government, of which that grand and noble patriot,
Henry Smith, was made chief.
When the second convention declared Texas to