Congress adjourned in December. The following May it met in the new town on Buffalo Bayou named in honor of the President.
Monsieur Le Clère (Le Clare), a Frenchman who visited Texas about this time, writes thus of Houston: “I cannot say that Houston is a great city, although it is a capital. The principal street, Main Street, which is laid out in a straight line, and handsome enough for the country, runs down to the river. The footwalks are barely marked out. We found the landing still blocked by enormous trunks of trees. Great southern pines are left standing in the street. The ascent which leads from the bayou to the city is very rough, and one stumbles over the logs that encumber it. By the side of houses of tolerably fine appearance (though built entirely of wood), one meets here and there with those poor houses called log cabins. Finally, as a last touch to this picture, there stand in Main Street and near the capitol two great tents which would do honor to a chief of the Tartars or Bedouins.
“The environs of Houston are not inhabited. A great number of the people I saw in the city were going further west, but their passage gave it a very lively appearance. They were on horseback, and almost all armed with the terrible weapon called the bowie knife. Most of them carried before them on the saddle that rifle, excessively long, which they handle with a wonderful skill, and which Jackson’s men used so well at the battle of New Orleans.”
The capitol building was unfinished, and Congress was obliged to shorten its sittings when it rained or a “norther” blew fiercely through the shutterless windows. The President’s house was a double log cabin with a puncheon floor. But the naturalist Audubon describes President Houston (May, 1837) as receiving his guests in this rude cabin, “dressed in a fancy velvet coat and trousers trimmed with gold lace; and around his neck was tied a cravat somewhat in the style of 1776.”
The same writer speaks of the members of the cabinet as men bearing the stamp of “intellectual ability, simple, though bold in their general appearance.”
All sorts of people from at home and abroad thronged the little capital. Curious travelers like Audubon and Le Clère, the Frenchman, brushed against hunters clad in buck-skin, traders with pack-mules, and eager-eyed young adventurers from “the States.”
A Comanche Chief.
A great many Indians came into the town to see their Great Father, Houston. One such deputation was from the hunting-grounds of the Comanches. They came to make their treaty of peace in person. They rode mustang ponies, and brought their squaws and papooses with them. After setting up their buffalo-hide lodges on the prairie near the town, the warriors marched in single file to President Houston’s own residence. They were all tall and finely formed, with very red skin, and jet-black hair which they wore hanging in long locks down their backs. These locks were ornamented with bands of silver. Many of the warriors wore, just below the elbow, clumsy rings of copper or gold, from which dangled the scalp-locks of their dead enemies. Monsieur Le Clère, who saw this procession, says that one young Indian had two of these rings hung with ten or fifteen heads of hair of different colors. The women wore tight leggings of tanned buck-skin, with tunics of wolf or jaguar skins, trimmed with beads and quills. Many strands of colored beads were strung around their necks, and their hands were loaded with gold and silver rings. Some of their costumes were graceful and pretty. The wearers were nearly all old and ugly; but one young girl, the daughter of the chief, is described as very beautiful, with liquid black eyes, softly rounded cheeks, and red laughing lips. She wore on her head a crown made of eagle feathers, and her girdle was a band of heavy silver discs.
The President welcomed his red brothers gravely and kindly. The calumet, or pipe of peace, was smoked and the treaty was made. The Indians received presents of beads, blankets, and red cloth. The old chief when he rode away carried the Texas flag tied to a stalk of sugar cane. “Me big chief! Houston big chief!” he cried, striking his breast with his hand.