Houston

cess was by no means certain; but the chances
seemed to favor Houston, and he was about to
be married (Jan. 22) to Eliza Allen, a daughter
of a wealthy and influential family. Scarcely was
Jackson established in the White House when
he heard that his friend's wife had gone back to
her father's house and refused to return, and that
Houston, on Apr. 16,1829, had sent his resigna-
tion to the secretary of state and had left for the
Indian country, where he was planning to revolu-
tionize Texas with the aid of the western In-
dians. No wonder Jackson wrote: "I must have
really thought you deranged to have believed you
had such a wild scheme in contemplation; and
particularly, when it was communicated that the
physical force to be employed was the Cherokee
Indians!... Your pledge of honor to the con-
trary is a sufficient guaranty that you will never
engage in any enterprise injurious to your coun-
try, or that would tarnish your fame" (Yoakum,
post, I, 307). This confidential letter, written in
June 1829, seems to indicate that Jackson had
some grounds to fear that Houston had really
considered the possibility of the career of a fili-
buster, and Jackson was clearly opposed to any
such action. For a man in Houston's very dif-
ficult position, however, a change of scene to the
Indian country was by no means the act of a
madman. His enemies were saying that Mrs.
Houston had left him on account of his unreason-
able jealousy, a charge which, with perfect good
taste, he refused to challenge. He later received
a divorce on the grounds of abandonment, but
neither Houston nor Mrs. Houston ever gave any
reasons for the catastrophe (J. C Guild, Old
Times in Tennessee, 1878, pp. 269-85; J. H.
Reagan, Memoirs, 1906, pp. 48,101; James, post,
p. 299), He was now almost sure to be defeated
in Tennessee, but in the western country, next to
politics, the life of an Indian^trader had been for
a century one of the chief avenues to wealth and
power. For such a career Houston seemed to be
well fitted. .

After arriving in the Indian country, one of
his first acts was to use his influence to prevent
a ruinous war between the Cherokees and the
more distant Pawnees. Before the end of the
year he was established at a trading post which
he called the Wigwam, on the Verdigris near
Fort Gibson. There he was soon living with an
Indian wife, Tiana Rogers, after the fashion of
the typical trader (Stokes to Crawford, Mar. 19,
1839, Foreman, post, p. 260; James, post, p. 152).
His formal adoption by the Cherokees also ap-
pears in the documents as an expedient to facili-
tate his new profession. Like other traders he
was the friend and adviser of the Indians, and

Houston

though he drank heavily, even according to fron-
tier standards, he made almost yearly the long
trip to Washington, pleading, and no doubt sin-
cerely, the wrongs of the Indians, seeking a prof-
itable contract, and engaging in bitter disputes
with rivals. Of these disputes, that which led in
April 1832 to a personal assault on Representa-
tive Stanberry of Ohio, followed by a trial in the
House of Representatives, was merely the most
famous.

The records now available indicate that for six
years Houston's fundamental interest was in the
diplomatic and business opportunities of the In-
dian country. In spite of the facts that as early
as 1822 he had joined with others in applying for
a grant of lands in Texas (Dunn Transcripts,
Library of Congress) and that in 1829 he was
being invited by old acquaintances like John A.
Wharton to settle there, his interest in Texas
remained incidental. Even his well-known jour-
ney thither in 1832 was made chiefly to secure
peace between the Indians among whom he lived
and the dangerous Comanches who had their
headquarters near San Antonio. His attendance
in the spring of 1833 at the Texas convention
which sent Austin to Mexico to secure statehood
seems to have been a mere interlude in his In-
dian life. In the next year, we catch occasional
glimpses of him, once in Louisiana, again at Fort
Gibson, then in a tavern in western Arkansas;
but when he made his annual pilgrimage to
Washington in 1834 he was still talking to Cass,
then secretary of war, much about the Indians
and their rights and not at all about Texas.
There is not a hint in his letters that he was then
or ever an agent of President Jackson to revolu-
tionize Texas (Houston to Cass, Mar. 12, 1834,
MSS., Library of Congress). He was counted
in the census of 1833 at Nacogdoches, Texas
(James, p. 199), although not till the spring of
1835 is it evident that he was definitely estab-
lished at that place, which he had visaed more
than once in the last two years (Nacogdoches
Archives, Mar. 4,1835). Even now he seems to
have been an agent for the Cherokees and for
certain New York interests regarding lands in
Texas. Here he was caught by the rising storm
which he had probably done little or nothing to
arouse.

As the necessity for an armed struggle with
Mexico became more clear, Houston, with his
commanding presence and capacity to arouse
confidence and enthusiasm, was promptly se-
lected commander, first of the local volunteers
and then of the regular army under the pro-
visional government. He had no part, however,
in the occupation of San Antonio in December

264