Early in Governor Wood’s administration a disagreement arose between Texas and the United States over Sante Fé and the surrounding country. This had been a part of Texas, but was ceded in 1848 by Mexico to the United States with New Mexico. When the United States took possession of it Texas protested, and much ill-feeling followed. For a time it seemed as if the state which had just got into the Union would march out again.
But the question was settled during Governor Bell’s term of office. The disputed territory was bought by the United States from Texas for the sum of ten million dollars.
During these years Texas grew in prosperity; all boundary questions were settled, and the public debt was paid. Settlements sprung up to the very border. This, however, caused fresh trouble among the Indians, who from time to time fell upon isolated settlements, burning the houses and killing the settlers or carrying them into captivity. As late as 1847 two hundred Lipans on the war-path swept the western frontier. In 1848 the Indians in Texas killed one hundred and seventy persons, carried twenty-five into captivity, and stole six thousand horses.
The Texan rangers were ordered out by Governor Wood to protect the frontier. The Comanches, the fiercest of the western tribes, were finally defeated by the rangers under Colonel John S. Ford. Their chief, Iron Jacket, was killed in a desperate hand-to-hand combat with Captain S. P. Ross. The chief’s tall form was found, after death, to be encased in a fine coat of scale armor, supposed to have belonged to some Spaniard in the days of the conquest of Mexico. Hence his name, Iron Jacket, and the belief that he could not be killed by the bullet of the white man. Iron Jacket’s little son Noh-po was carried to Waco, where he was raised by the Ross family. During the administration of Governor Pease, the legislature gave the Indians twelve leagues of land and built for them several new trading-posts along the frontier. Later they were all removed to the Indian Territory.
Two million dollars were set aside by the state for a permanent school fund; and a quantity of land was voted for the support of the deaf and dumb, the blind, the orphan, and the insane.
A new state capitol, a Land Office, and other public buildings were erected at Austin.
In 1857 there was an uprising of Texan wagoners against the Mexican cartmen, who were engaged in hauling goods from the coast towns to San Antonio. Mexican labor was much cheaper than any other, and a large number of these teamsters, who were honest and reliable, were employed by merchants and planters. The Texan wagoners, failing to drive out Mexican cartmen by threats, raided them on the roads, drove off their oxen, broke up their carts, and in some instances killed the drivers.
Governor Pease, by ordering out a company of rangers to protect the Mexican teamsters, finally put a stop to the “Cart War,” as it was called.
No other trouble marred this bright period. “Our inhabitants,” said Governor Pease, in his message to the legislature in 1855, “are prosperous and happy to a degree unexampled in our former history.”