There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when he was next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had long before adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and armed with knife and rifle, and served under the old chief Oolooteka. He was a gallant defender of the Indians.
When he found how some of the Indian agents had abused his adopted brothers he went to Washington to protest, still wearing his frontier garb. One William Stansberry, a Congressman from Ohio, insulted Houston, who leaped upon him like a panther, dragged him about the Hall of Representatives, and beat him within an inch of his life. He was arrested, imprisoned, and fined; but his old friend, President Jackson, remitted his imprisonment and gruffly advised him not to pay the fine.
Returning to his Indians, he made his way to a new field which promised much adventure. This was Texas, of whose condition in those early days something has already been said. Houston found a rough American settlement, composed of scattered villages extending along the disputed frontier of Mexico. Already, in the true Anglo-Saxon spirit, the settlers had formed a rudimentary state, and as they increased and multiplied they framed a simple code of laws.
Then, quite naturally, there came a clash between them and the Mexicans. The Texans, headed by Moses Austin, had set up a republic and asked for admission to the United States. Mexico regarded them as rebels and despised them because they made no military display and had no very accurate military drill. They were dressed in buckskin and ragged clothing; but their knives were very bright and their rifles carried surely. Furthermore, they laughed at odds, and if only a dozen of them were gathered together they would "take on" almost any number of Mexican regulars.
In February, 1836, the acute and able Mexican, Santa Anna, led across the Rio Grande a force of several thousand Mexicans showily uniformed and completely armed. Every one remembers how they fell upon the little garrison at the Alamo, now within the city limits of San Antonio, but then an isolated mission building surrounded by a thick adobe wall. The Americans numbered less than three hundred men.
A sharp attack was made with these overwhelming odds. The Americans drove the assailants back with their rifle fire, but they had nothing to oppose to the Mexican artillery. The contest continued for several days, and finally the Mexicans breached the wall and fell upon the garrison, who were now reduced by more than half. There was an hour of blood, and every one of the Alamo's defenders, including the wounded, was put to death. The only survivors of the slaughter were two negro slaves, a woman, and a baby girl.
When the news of this bloody affair reached Houston he leaped forth to the combat like a lion. He was made commander-in-chief of the scanty Texan forces. He managed to rally about seven hundred men, and set out against Santa Anna with little in the way of equipment, and with nothing but the flame of frenzy to stimulate his followers. By march and countermarch the hostile forces came face to face near the shore of San Jacinto Bay, not far from the present city of Houston. Slowly they moved upon each other, when Houston halted, and his sharpshooters raked the Mexican battle-line with terrible effect. Then Houston uttered the cry:
"Remember the Alamo!"
With deadly swiftness he led his men in a charge upon Santa Anna's lines. The Mexicans were scattered as by a mighty wind, their commander was taken prisoner, and Mexico was forced to give its recognition to Texas as a free republic, of which General Houston became the first president.
This was the climax of Houston's life, but the end of it leaves us with something still to say. Long after his marriage with Miss Allen he took an Indian girl to wife and lived with her quite happily. She was a very beautiful woman, a half-breed, with the English name of Tyania Rodgers. Very little, however, is known of her life with Houston. Later still—in 1840—he married a lady from Marion, Alabama, named Margaret Moffette Lea. He was then in his forty-seventh year, while she was only twenty-one; but again, as with his Indian wife, he knew nothing but domestic tranquillity. These later experiences go far to prove the truth of what has already been given as the probable cause of his first mysterious failure to make a woman happy.