In a previous letter I have described to you the exceedingly honorable character supported by those German people of Texas who, in Europe, enjoyed the luxuries and advantages of education and wealth, and who have been driven [289] to emigrate hither by persecutions of the police, and other misfortunes arising from their political views. These form a remarkably large number of the recent emigrants. The great mass, however, consists of young men of the middle and lower orders of society, who, if they had remained in Germany, would have been liable to be reduced, by the various restrictions and taxes on business and by the oppressive guild-laws of the handicraftsmen, to live almost hopelessly in the condition of laborers struggling against starvation. Many of these have been educated with care and in the midst of considerable comfort, but are wholly unprovided with capital.

This class of immigrants find immediate employment on the farms here, at such a rate of wages that, in from two to four years’ time, they can always themselves become landholders, and be wholly independent of others—at least, for a mere personal livelihood. I have often found such young men clubbing together, either for the purchase or rent of land; and a picture of the condition of a family of this class, with a single man in partnership, established on a farm of their own, four years after immigration, I have given in a previous letter. The small number of women that immigrate occasions many bachelors to be their own housekeepers. Frequently, however, as soon as they have obtained the necessary means, they send to Germany for the betrothed, whom they have been obliged to leave there, to come and join them.

I am writing from a camp in the mountains. Near us there are several of these young Germans, who have either bought or rented or squatted upon land, which they cultivate and live upon, in small cabins or huts, alone, or in partnership with one another. There are four living together in one cabin. Two of them are mechanics, and earn a dollar and a quarter a day in the employment of the wealthier farmers; the others rent and work together a piece of land-the capital of the four being combined in the purchase of horses, cattle and swine, which, with their increase, are cared for and employed in their labor by the agriculturists.

Many of these young men, either with a little capital that they have been able to bring with them, or which they have earned by labor here, or with borrowed capital, become tradesmen, and I have not been in a single town in Texas in which I have not found at least one of these German shop-keepers established. Owing to their frugal manner of living and their habitual exactness of calculation and close attention to their business, the German tradesmen almost invariably make money rapidly. As soon, however, as they have acquired sufficient capital, instead of extending their business, they commonly sell out to new comers, and purchase land and stock and settle as farmers and graziers. I know one who six years ago commenced keeping a store in a small country town, with a capital of only three hundred dollars, who now owns several thousand acres of land, besides town houses which he rents, and other property, which altogether must be worth considerably more than twenty thousand dollars. He lives on a farm with a wife he had left in Germany from want of ability to bring her with him when he emigrated, and I have lately seen him [290] among his hired laborers, guiding a plow with his own hands, no less industrious than when seven years ago he solicited employment as a laborer for himself.

It is the same with mechanics; as soon as they have earned sufficient capital—often in two years after their arrival—they become farmers, laboring on their own land. Those who remain long in the towns, seldom do so in the station of journeymen, but rent or build themselves shops or take contracts for work themselves, and rapidly accumulate property. I know a house-painter—a trade for which there is very little employment in this country—who arrived here only two years since. In a little more than a year he paid out of his earnings for a very comfortable house, half of which he occupies himself and the other half rents for over 10 per cent. interest on the capital invested in the whole, and he has just completed building a very handsome stone house, also, I presume, paid for out of his earnings at his trade, which he has rented at $35 a month.

There is another important class of immigrants who come here from Germany—small farmers and tradesmen—who, though they have hitherto been able to live comfortably and happily, have not in the old country been able to increase their fortune materially, and who are unable to leave their families in comfortable circumstances, or to find honorable and lucrative employment for their children. This class usually bring with them a small capital, with which they immediately purchase land and stock for farming.

I lately spent a night with a family of this class of the immigrants who arrived in the country last Fall, and who had been settled only about two months.

Their house, although built merely for temporary occupancy, until

[291] they could spare time and money for one more comfortable, was a very convenient, long, narrow log cabin with two rooms, each having a sleeping loft over it, two halls, or rooms open at the ends, and a corn-crib. The cooking was done outside by a camp—fire, but with utensils brought from Germany, and peculiarly adapted for it. A considerable stock of furniture was stored in the halls, yet in the boxes in which it had been imported. The walls of the two rooms had been made tight with clay, and they were furnished with doors on hinges. (No man who has traveled much on the frontier will look upon these indications as trivial.) Our supper was cooked and served to us on china, on a clean tablecloth, in one of these rooms, skillfully and nicely. A sofa occupying one side of the room had evidently been made by the women of the family after the building of the cabin. On the walls there were hung a very excellent old line engraving of a painting in the Dresden Gallery, two lithographs and a pencil sketch, all glazed and framed with oak.

The family consisted of several middle-aged and elderly people, a young man, a young lady, and four very sweet, flaxen-haired children. They were all very neatly dressed, the head-dresses of the females being especially becoming and tidy. They were courteous and affable, and the tones of their voices were amiable and musical. One of my traveling companions was a German, and our conversation with them was left entirely to him. He went away however after supper, to call on one of the neighbors. An hour or two later, as I returned to the house, after looking to our horses, one of the elder women spoke to me in German; I could not understand, and she called to the young lady, who came before me, and bowing in a very formal manner, addressed me in these words: “Sire, will you to bed now go, or will you for rest, wait?” I replied that I would at once go to bed, if she pleased. She bowed and walked before me till opposite the open door of the second tight room, in which a candle had been placed, and pointing to it, said: “There, Sire.” There were three Single beds in our sleeping-room, all extremely clean, and we were provided with washing apparatus and other bed-chamber luxuries very unusually found, even in the “best hotels,” in the Southwest. The walls of the room, too, were adorned with some good engravings and some paintings of religious subjects, of ordinary merit.

The head of this family had been a tradesman in a small town in Bavaria, where also he had owned a little farm. He had evidently been able to live there with considerable comfort. He could not, however, see any way in which he might provide for his family, so that he could leave them without great anxiety at his death. But now, if this farm should be divided among his children, all of them could, by honest labor, be sure of obtaining, come the worst, sufficient food and raiment and shelter, and in no case would they be dependent on the favor or kindness of public functionaries for the privilege of laboring for their living.

“Only one thing,” said the mother, “we regret. It is that our children, who have so well commenced their education in Germany, cannot here continue it.”

[292]

In Prussia every child is legally obliged to attend school. This forced education is, without doubt, often felt by the poor man as a tyranny, preventing him from enjoying for a time that assistance in his labor for the support of his Family which his children are capable of giving him. It has also been speciously urged that the child, being forced against its will to go to school, would resist his education, proceed with it as slowly as possible, and gain comparatively slight advantage from it, that the children altogether would be less well educated than if education were made, as in our Northern States, cheap but optional. The argument is fallacious, because, under all systems, the child is equally forced “unwillingly to school.” It is only the peculiarity of the Prussian, that the State claims the right and exercises it (not as a duty to the child but to itself), of preventing the parent from withholding, from selfish motives, an education from his child.

I am glad to say that the Prussians, and all Protestant Germans here, seem by no means to undervalue the advantages of Education, as a security for the continued safety and welfare of the State. There is a general desire that a law similar to that of Prussia should be enacted by the Legislature of Texas;—that well-prepared teachers should be employed, and adequate school-houses and apparatus for teaching be supplied, and that all the children in the State should be compelled to prepare themselves for the future exercise of citizenship, either by the use of these free means or such other as their parents may be able and willing to provide for them.

Everyone sees the danger, under a democratic system of government, of allowing the mass of the people to grow up in ignorance and unenlightenment of mind. In countries cursed with aristocratic institutions, like the Southern States and Prussia, the danger to be apprehended by the privileged classes from the education of the oppressed classes is greater than that which arises from their ignorance. In Prussia it is attempted to steer between both dangers, and by making the teachers functionaries, dependent for their living on the goodwill of the aristocracy, to compel them, while they educate the minds of the people in a low but useful degree, to misinstruct them, by habituating their minds to the idea of the rightfulness and the necessity of their submission to tyranny. The attempt has failed.

At the South, instead of providing means and compelling the education of the degraded class, to that degree which shall make them most useful as laborers and artisans—finished tools of their masters—the plan is adopted of wholly denying the means of education, and preventing the child of the degraded from even educating himself so far as he is disposed to; barring, restricting, and interrupting the natural development of his mind. This, undoubtedly, has its effect on making the relation of the masters and their people less dangerous.

It has, however, this great difficulty, even immediately. The large majority of the aristocratic class is itself poor and ignorant, and this part, having equal political rights, nominally, with those who reap the advantage of [293] the degradation of the lower class, danger arises from their ignorance and unenlightenment. See the difficulty manifest now in Mississippi, where the poor and ignorant people, unwilling to submit to a tax, refuse to allow the debts of the State to be paid; in consequence of which the credit of the State has fallen so low, that works essential to its future prosperity cannot be carried on for want of means.

The education of the children of this ignorant aristocracy, is therefore, as everyone perceives at the South, a matter of vital necessity. The degraded laboring class (slaves) however, constitute so large a proportion of the whole population, and so large a part of the land is reserved by their owners for the application of their labor, that the poor and ignorant moiety of the population is so scattered, and forced into such a vagabond method of life, that it is entirely impracticable to provide adequate means for educating them. The degree of this difficulty experienced is evident in the results exhibited by statistics, showing the proportion in which the smallest measure of education is possessed by the aristocratic class of the Southern States, and the whole people of the Free States, respectively. While there is but one in several hundred of the people of the North that are not able to sign their names to legal documents, in most of the Southern States the proportion is one in from seven to twenty.

A merchant in Western Texas tells me that a majority of his customers are Germans. Among these, in seven years’ dealings with them, he has never found a man unable to write his name; a very common thing to find among the Americans with whom he has occasion to do business.

As the eastern part of Texas is to have, for an unlimited time, a planting aristocratic state of society, with slave labor, and the west—under the effect of the German immigration—will be a farming, democratic and free labor community, here will eventually arise a difficulty in adapting a school system suited to both sections, which can only be solved by a division of the State.

There is throughout the State, a much stronger disposition to give the means of some education to all its white children, than I have seen manifested anywhere else at the South. The present Executive, a native of that old pedagogue State, Connecticut, has done much by his personal and official influence to encourage this disposition, and the late Legislature constructed a fund for general educational purposes, of the sum of two million dollars.

We crossed the Medina in returning from a trip to the Rio Grande, last Saturday morning, and hesitated whether we should not turn from our road and follow it up to the ranch of an Irish gentleman, who has one of the largest flocks [295] of sheep in Texas, which he had invited us to look at. Preferring, however, to spend Sunday in town, we fortunately concluded to postpone our visit.

The next morning (yesterday) a messenger came into the city with the information that during the night the ranch had been visited and plundered by Indians, who had also killed two of the shepherds. In the course of the day a party was formed to go in pursuit of the Indians.

This morning a woman came into the city with the information that yesterday a party of Indians came to her house, which is about sixteen miles from here, and called for meat and drink, and as soon as they had obtained it, shot her husband, killing him at once, and knocked her down by a blow upon her head with the butt of a rifle, and left her for dead, while they caught the children, of which there were four, the oldest a girl of fourteen. She recovered sufficiently to run from the house and escape through some thick bushes which grew near it. She heard for a long time the shrieks of the children, but whether they were killed or taken into slavery by the savages she cannot tell.

On the Rio Grande, and at other exposed points on this frontier, there have lately been a number of Indian outrages, but none perhaps so bold and frightful as this.

The absurd inefficiency of our national system of managing the Indian tribes is horribly apparent in these occurrences. Theoretically, there are no Indians allowed to come within some hundred miles of where these tragedies were enacted, except a few tribes, small in numbers and peaceable and friendly in disposition, with whom an agent of the Government, to make sure of their good behavior, is constantly living.

To keep the savage Indians at a distance from the settlement, there is a cordon of military posts which are greatly valued by the people on the frontier on account of the excellent market they offer for corn, beef, and so on. What the pioneers would do without the soldiers to provide for, Heaven knows. These posts are all called forts, though they are generally mere camps, with a log hospital, magazine and quartermaster’s store-houses—the soldiers living in tents. At one of them which we visited last week, there are two hundred men, admirably dressed, drilled and disciplined. There are some settlers immediately around this fort. Within a month these settlers have had their cattle killed and their horses stolen by the Indians. The Indians have even ventured into the stable of the post, and succeeded—though one of them was supposed to have been shot by the sentry—in taking off three of the Government’s horses.

At Fort Duncan there are four hundred men—infantry and artillery. They are in admirable condition for marching upon Mexico, but within a fortnight the Indians have stolen the beef from under their guns, and attacking a forage party, killed the beast the commanding sergeant was upon with an arrow, cut four mules from the wagon and escaped unharmed.

On the Mexican side of the Rio Grande we saw a mule which was worth about $60, but which the rider said he had bought of an Indian for $5, [296]

[297] and which our guide recognized as being one that had been stolen from an American settler a few weeks ago.

The last murder by the Indians was committed sixteen miles from here yesterday evening. I do not know what time it was that the woman who escaped arrived here. It was about 9 o’clock when I saw two Germans very hastily saddling their horses, strapping on each a blanket, and filling their pockets with bread. They told me what had occurred, and I asked where they were going.

“To hunt the Indians. There is a company making up; will you join us?”

“No,”

“Lend me your Colt, then?”

“Yes; here it is.”

“Loaded?”

“Yes,”

“All right. We shall start as soon as a company gets together on the plaza.”

I walked into the plaza an hour afterwards, and found my German friend very impatiently waiting, with two or three others, who were all talking of the business as if it were a frolic they were anxious should begin. There, too, was a Government Indian agent, guessing what Indians it had been, and very patiently waiting for certain preparations to be made for pursuing them. At noon, the German came home to dinner in extreme vexation. Some soldiers had been ordered to join them, and they had not got ready yet. There are four companies of infantry in camp near the city. I walked to the plaza again after dinner. There were still the small crowd of Indian agents, volunteers and idlers, smoking and talking, waiting, and making preparations.

About 3 o’clock this afternoon a squad of soldiers rode by my window, and I followed them to the plaza. Here they joined a number of citizens, and waited half an hour, everybody inquiring of everybody else what they were waiting for now. Finally, the Indian agent remarked that he did not see that there was anything else to wait for, and they had better go. A Mexican led off as a guide, and they trotted calmly out of town.

The soldiers were not exactly in parade equipment. Most of them wore flannel shirts, without coats. The only part of their uniform they retained, was the pantaloons and the fatigue cap. They were infantry soldiers, but had been for this occasion mounted. They each carried a blanket, a haversack of provisions, and a canteen. I asked the corporal why they did not take muskets or rifles like the volunteers? “They’d be too lumbersome, Sir; we have all got Colts.” A couple of pickayune Spanish mules, led by a Mexican mounted on another, followed the detachment with rations roped on to their backs, and a buffalo robe, and apparently a tent for the Indian agent to sleep in.

It was 3½ o’clock when the pursuit commenced. When the prisoners are brought in, I will tell you.

My German friend, who had been ready on the parade-ground at half past 9, fully armed, equipped and rationed for a forced march of several days, [298]

had left the plaza before the soldiers came. Whether he had given it up in despair, or had in his impatience ordered himself to advance before the company, as a scouting party, I do not know.

It is my private opinion that if there had been ten New-York firemen scattered over the ten miles square around San Antonio, when that poor woman came in this morning, they would in some way or other have heard of it, and got together and been twenty miles on their way to rescue the children before the detachment had drawn its rations.

April 18.—They found the dead bodies of three of the children in the house. The Indians are supposed to be Comanches, the most formidable of American savages. Could it have been the mere gratification of the love of cruelty and bloodshed that they had in view in these murders? It seems hardly possible. How else can their conduct be explained?

A month ago we were about making a trip through the Bandera Pass, which is at the head of the Medina valley, near which these occurrences have taken place, but were deterred by accounts of Indian disturbances. According to the account sent to the newspapers by some people who belong to a faction of the Mormons, and who are squatting in the Pass this Summer, they had been annoyed by the Indians killing their cattle, and formed a company to attack them. They stole upon the Indians, surprising them in camp, fired a volley upon them, killing several as they believed, though they found no dead bodies. The Indians fled, and they took as booty what they left behind. We [299] afterwards learned from a German who lives in that vicinity, that there was in the Pass an old Indian burying ground, and he believed that the Indians had come to visit it, and had found that the graves had been opened and the bones of their fathers scattered by the whites, and that if they really committed any depredations at all, at that time, it was in revenge for this outrage on their feelings. The most they had done was to shoot some oxen.

It seems to me probable that the present massacres have been made by the Indians in retaliation of the attack then made upon them by the whites.