Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas Page: 706 of 894
762 p., [172] leaves of plates : ill., ports. ; 30 cm.View a full description of this book.
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604
INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
Alabama, ou the 25th of November, were published
in the Washington (Mississippi) Republican, on
the 23d of December, 1813. The writer said:
" Capt. Jones and his party deserve the greatest
praise and honor for the handsome manner in which
the enterprise was conducted."
In the fall of 1814, Capt. Jones visited the Sabine
river. In 1815 again he entered Texas with goods
and traded with the Indians. In 1816 he opened a
store at Nacogdoches and visited Lafitte on Galveston
Island to buy negroes, but whether he succeeded
or not cannot be stated. He was hospitably entertained,
however, and found in the famous buccaneer
a man of external polish and winning address. He
temporarily allied himself with the first scheme of
Long, in 1819, and in command of a small party
near where Washington is on the Brazos, he was
driven, along with all of Long's followers. from the
country, by Spanish troops from Mexico.Early in 1822 he permanently settled, as an American
colonist, on the Brazos, in Fort Bend County,
and thenceforward, till age asserted its supremacy,
was all that patriotism and good citizenship imply,
his courage and experience in Indian warfare rendering
him doubly useful. In September, 1824, he
commanded in a severe but unsuccessful engagement
with the Carancahua Indians on a creek in Brazoria
County, from which the stream has ever since been
known as "Jones' creek." In this fight fifteen
Indians were killed, and three white men, viz.:
Spencer, Singer and Bailey.
Capt. Jones reared a highly respectable family,
served in the Consultation, the first revolutionary
convention, in November, 1835, and continued to
reside on his original Brazos home till a short time
before his death. Losing his eyesight he removed
to Houston, where he died in June, 1873..
JOHN AUSTIN.
The early death of the sterling patriot, Capt.
John Austin-dying before the revolution began in
1835-has been the cause (as is true of a number
of other gallant and conspicuous men in the earliest
trials of Texas, who died prior to the same period),
of his name not being familiar to the people of the
present time. Yet he is justly entitled to be ranked
among the foremost and m3st valuable men of the
colonial period of our history and, as will be seen,
somewhat before that period was inaugurated.
John Austin was born and reared in Connecticut,
but was not of the family of Moses Austin, a native
of the same State, who, in 1821, received the first
permission ever granted under the authorities of
Spain to form an American settlement in Texas.
When quite young John Austin drifted to the
Southwest, in various ways developing nerve, intelligence,
love of adventure and capacity to lead. In
1819 he left New Orleans under the auspices of
Capt. Long's second expedition into Texas, then
announced as in aid of the patriot cause in the
Mexican revolution against Spain. (Long's first
expedition, a few months before, avowed the purpose
and actually inaugurated at Nacogdoches, on
paper, the form of an independent Republic, buthis divided force of about three hundred men was
speedily driven from the country by Spanish troops.)
This second expedition avowed a different purpose
and was joined by a number of exiled Mexican
patriots, the chief of whom was Don Felix de Trespalacios.
The expedition rendezvoused on the
barren island of Galveston and Bolivar Point on the
mainland. Trespalacios, accompanied by the intrepid
Kentuckian, Col. Ben. R. Milam, Col.
Christy, of New Orleans, and others, sailed down
the coast and effected a landing somewhere north
of Vera Cruz and formed a junction with patriots
in the country. Long, with only fifty-two men, by
an understanding with Trespalacios, sailed down
the coast into Matagorda Bay, thence into the bay
of Espiritu Santa and up the Guadalupe river a
few miles, where he landed and marched upon La
Bahia, now known as Goliad. John Austin was
one of his chief lieutenants. La Bahia was surprised
and easily captured. A few days later a
Spanish force from San Antonio appeared and hostilities
began, lasting two or three days, when Long
was seduced by Spanish cunning into a capitulation,
under the absurd pretense that his assailants
were also patriots and had been fighting under a
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Brown, John Henry. Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, book, 1880~; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth6725/m1/706/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.