This week (Feb. 23) in 1836 a seminal event in American history — and lore — occurred when a Mexican army under the command of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna laid siege to the Alamo, a tiny church mission in San Antonio, Texas.  Losing their lives in defense of this small church were legendary heroes Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, William Travis and about 150 other less known but no less courageous Americans. Some were long-time settlers in Texas, while others (like Crockett, from Tennessee) joined the fight because they believed Texas should be independent from Mexico.

The siege of the Alamo was the culmination of a chain of events that began in the early 1800s, when Mexico actually welcomed settlers “from the North” into this sparsely populated Mexican territory.  Given the vastness of the land, denizens of both countries lived in relative harmony, until about 1830 when a demographic transformation occurred that profoundly affected relations between the two countries.  In essence, Americans began to outnumber Mexicans in the Texas territory, which caused the usual seismic shifts in politics, economics and culture that historically result when Americans become a majority.

On the American side — as often happened during this period of our history — this shift infected the settlers with the “Manifest Destiny” bug, causing them to believe that a land with the great potential (and wealth) of Texas would never fulfill that potential as long as she was associated with a backwoods country like Mexico. Only independence and an alliance (and later statehood) with the young, energetic, industrious America would allow Texas to fully bloom.

Continue reading →

This is a story about the Old West, but it is also a story about America when it truly was a land of opportunity.

In 1877 Ed Schieffelin, a prospector for gold and silver in Tucson, Arizona, was so destitute — and he looked it — that even though stores in Tucson customarily extended credit to prospectors in need of supplies, Ed was turned down, forcing him to spend his last few dollars to buy a few meager supplies.  Flat broke, he began prospecting in Arizona’s San Pedro Valley.

The odds of him striking it rich were far longer than the odds of him being killed by the Apache Indians that roamed the valley, and at a nearby fort he visited, the soldiers told him he would “find his tombstone” before he found silver.

But Schieffelin was convinced he would make a strike and he kept plugging until he eventually found what he thought was a promising ore sample.  And so this week (August 1) in 1877, as required by law, he filed a claim to a 600 by 1,500-feet stake that — recalling the soldiers’ warning — he puckishly named “Tombstone.”  Soon after, he filed two more claims, naming them “Graveyard 1” and “Graveyard 2.”

Schieffelin then took his samples to an appraiser, who called them “a very low grade,” but, undaunted, Schieffelin went to see his brother Al in Globe, Arizona, to convince Al to join him in prospecting the San Pedro Valley.  In Globe another appraiser, Dick Gird, examined Ed’s samples and was so impressed he journeyed back to the San Pedro Valley with the Schieffelin brothers to further investigate Ed’s discovery.

To make a long story short, Ed Schieffelin had hit a major silver strike, and in 1878 the Schieffelin brothers and Dirk Gird filed papers establishing the Tombstone Mining District in the San Pedro Valley.  Later that year they became major stockholders in the Tombstone Gold and Silver Mill Mining Company.  Ed Schieffelin was soon a very rich man.

Continue reading →

“We got off the boat and murdered a civilization.”   ‑ Jim Harrison

President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act this week (May 28) in 1830, which led to a number of “treaties” that accommodated land-hungry white settlers by “removing” Native-Americans, in particular “The Five Civilized Tribes”—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole—from their native lands in the Southeast  through forced emigration and resettlement.  I say “forced” because most of the affected tribes never even saw, let alone signed, these “treaties.”

The Cherokee are a case in point.  Ordered to leave their homeland Georgia and resettle in what is now Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, the Cherokee appealed to the Supreme Court, and to everyone’s surprise the court sided with them, ruling that Cherokee Nation was, legally, a sovereign nation, meaning that U.S. laws, including treaties, did not apply.

Unfortunately, President Jackson (for all his populist virtues, a racist and rabid Indian hater) ignored the court’s ruling, and his chosen successor, Martin van Buren, used the U.S. Army to initiate a series of forced marches that “removed” the Cherokee to the Midwest.  One particularly perilous march along the famous “Trail of Tears” caused the deaths of nearly 5,000 Cherokee out of a total of approximately 14,000, and when they finally reached their destination—present-day Kansas and Nebraska—they found it so cold and inhospitable (have you ever weathered a Nebraska winter?) that many more died in the first year alone.

Other tribes with less faith in the sanctity of America’s legal system fought a series of wars against this white encroachment. The Seminoles in particular, helped by the fact that much of their homeland was mosquito-infested Florida swamp, held out until the early 1840s, but eventually they too succumbed to the sheer numbers and power of the U.S. Army.

Continue reading →