Honorable Mention: Sam Houston

Yesterday we discussed the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, where the lives of several important later leaders in America, both White and Native, converged.  We mentioned two men from Tennessee, Davy Crockett and Sam Houston, who both came away from that battle with a different perspective of Natives and Native culture.  Houston also came away with an injury that might have affected his life in a different way.

Sam Houston was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia on March 2, 1793.  His father died while Sam was still a boy and his mother took her family to Maryville, Blount County, Tennessee, when Sam was 14 years old.  Life was rough for a fatherless boy on the frontier and Sam did double duty, working on his mother's farm and as a clerk in his brothers' store.  Not liking either farm work or shop work, he ran away went to join the Cherokee on Hiawasee Island on the Hiawasee River.  This band was led by Ahuludegi, whom Americans knew as John Jolly.  Sam fitted in with Jolly's family, learning the Cherokee language and customs.  Whether sparks flew between Jolly's niece, Talahina/Tiana Rogers and Houston at that time will never be known.  Eventually, Sam returned to White society and became a schoolmaster.  He later settled on becoming an attorney, apprenticed to a Judge and passed the Tennessee bar exam.  In 1822, Houston was elected to Congress, where he was seen as a political protégé of Andrew Jackson.  Their politics differed in one principle area, treatment of Native Americans.  Houston did not approve of the prevailing sentiment of the time, which coalesced around Jackson, of calling for Indian Removal or worse.  He felt that peaceful co-existence with fair treatment and putting aside of mutual differences and prejudices was the answer. 

He sought to continue these policies when he was elected Governor of Tennessee in 1827, but rumors of alcoholism and infidelity threatened to undermine his career.  He was a heavy drinker at this time and he would quit only years later, in Texas.  But the infidelity accusations more likely stemmed from an incident during his wedding to Eliza Allen, daughter of a prominent Tennessee family.  On their wedding night she fled from their marriage bed and left Houston's home within a week.  Speculation abounds on why.  Possibly the chronic injury he had received from the Battle of Horseshoe Bend had something to do with it, though Houston would later have children with his third wife.  Eliza, though, publicly accused Sam of infidelity and the resulting scandal cut short his term.  He was forced to resign from the Governorship and seek annulment of his marriage.  Ashamed and disgraced, he once again sought refuge with John Jolly's family.

The Jollys were making a transition of their own.  While some Cherokee chose to remain in their traditional homeland for as long as they could, others decided to leave.  Sequoyah was one, John Jolly and his band were others, seeking refuge in Arkansas before White settlement could catch up to them again.  Houston accompanied the Jolly family to Arkansas and met Tiana/Talahina Rogers, the daughter of another Cherokee leader.  They married and were happy together.  While living in Arkansas with the Cherokee, Houston decided to use whatever influence he had in Washington to help them.  Indian Removal had passed in 1830 and he knew it was a matter of time before Jackson carried through on his platform of total removal of all Natives east of the Mississippi.  In 1832, while he was in Washington, he became embroiled in a dispute with Congressman William Stansbury of Ohio.  Stansbury believed that Houston, rather than coming to Washington out of any benefit to the CHerokee, was coming instead to support contractors seeking to provide rations to the Natives who were being removed, a lucrative job that was notorious for graft and corruption.  Houston challenged Stansbury to a duel and, when his challenge was refused, met up with Stansbury on a Washington street and beat him with a hickory stick.  Houston was arrested and found guilty, though sentenced to a fine only.  Stansbury sued and won damages, but Houston had already left for Texas without paying.

He also left without Tiana, who had no desire to leave her family.  Houston went to Texas and quickly became swept up in the independence movement.  He negotiated a settlement with the Cherokee who had settled in East Texas, to allay their fears about independence and what an American-based government in Texas could mean for them.  After defeating Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, Houston was elected President of the Republic of Texas.  Along with the American settlers who poured into the country, he also had to contend with Native refugees from across the eastern United States who were fleeing removal.  He made treaties with as many different tribes as he could, creating a buffer zone between White settlement and Native lands.  This lenient treatment did not earn him favor with Whites.  He lost a second term in 1841, but regained office in 1844, where he continued his policy of fair treatment of the Natives.  His policy culminated in a treaty of peace in 1843 which involved eleven different tribes.  While he was in office, he mandated that Texas troops assist the Native leaders in keeping trespassers off their land and settled disputes among Natives and Whites before they became open conflicts.

Sam Houston went on to marry a third time, to a White woman.  He served as a Senator from Texas and later as Texas Governor.  Slavery, secession and a looming Civil War took up much of his time from then on out, but when he could, he continued to demand fair treatment and on-interference with the Natives.  In 1838, Talahina Rogers Gentry had died of pneumonia in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.  Her tombstone read, "wife of General Sam Houston".