Krishna
A doorstop of a book. Even with the small print, my copy is 1321 pages.
Starts with a Governor’s Task Force in the University of Texas, where the narrator, a professor Dr Travis Barlow meets the others, a rich Texan businessman Ransom Rusk, a rich rancher Lorenzo Quimper, a scion of political family Lorena Cobb who is a forceful looking woman and the diminutive Professor Efrain Garza.
First, the story begins with an ancestor of Garza, a boy of mixed (aboriginal mother and Spanish father) origin called Garcilaco, who is asked to take mules to Mexico city by his master. On the way he meets four folks who wandered in unexplored regions populated by Indians and their leader is Alvar Nunez with a nickname meaning ‘Head of a Cow’. He tells of his capture by Indians, and his escape into the territory of another set of ‘kinder Indians’. There is also an ex slave, a black man who is called Esteban. The Teyas Indians gave the name to the Texas state.
Garcilaco is adopted by the priest Marcos as his son and he later meets the slave Esteban. Hearing of the Seven Cities paved with gold, they send Marcos and Esteban together with a large group to scout for it and Esteban claims sole leadership of the group. Marcos is left behind and when Esteban sends word that he saw the Golden city, he lies to his masters and says that he has seen it. Esteban subsequently is slain with almost all of his group by the Chief of the place he found.
Marcos, greedy for glory, claims to have seen the cities of Gold and they send an expedition with him. Carcilaco befriends the two top officers and is made a cavalry soldier but Marcos is exposed as a fraud and sent back. The group sees Grand Canyon for the first time.
They are once more duped by an Indian slave and spend all their time in a pointless exercise, when Garcilaco gets back, the priest takes him in, gives a girl as his wife and also money to live comfortably for the rest of his life.
Next Simon Garcia, a young carpenter, is looking for a wife and finds it in a mixed race girl. The priest, Damien whose help he enlists, is interested in the Spanish girl Benita who is her mistress. Though tormented by his love for her, he knows he cannot marry and his dashing army brother Alvero comes in to claim her, and Damien discovers jealousy for the first time.
He officiates in their marriage. He goes and sets up a monastery in Tejas with a lazy but brilliantly effective deputy. His brother Alvaro comes to head the military garrison in the same town.
The death of both Damian and Demingo at the hands of the Apache, at two different times, ends this part of the story.
Next starts the story of Trinidad, a young girl who falls in love with a Frenchman but who is killed while saving her from a savage Apache attack. She also earns the enmity of the new mean priest, who is looking for ways to bring down her and her family, which is related to Damian. Meanwhile a brash American pays court to Trinidad, mostly for her father’s wealth. The American, Marr, after literally raping Trinidad, jilts her to marry the daughter of an ever richer landlord, Amalia. To add insult to injury, her lands were removed from her and added to Amalia family, making Marr even richer.
Trinidad is rescued by a note she wrote to an old farmhand, and she marries him finally.
Next a round faced Irish priest Clooney converts the methodist family Quimpers, Jubal, Mattie and son Yancet who are escaping the law and creditors and move to Texas, which entitles them to a large swathe of land. They are cheated out of it by the city’s mayor, a man who would do nothing but talks with a honeyed tongue and they run away, helped by the priest to where they can take the land for the asking, deeper into Texas.
She gets prime land and makes a living by providing food and ferrying people across the river, in addition to what grows on her land.
When the flood comes she survives bravely and saves her cowardly son from a rattlesnake which migrated in the flood.
A Protestant pastor and a Catholic Pastor (our own Clooney) have an argument about how Texas is going to turn out.
The son, Yancey, proceeds to disgrace himself in the battle against the Indians. But when they return, he also treacherously has a tame Indian killed, who had been great help to Mattie.
Jubal goes to Tennessee to claim inheritance, cashes out, resists temptation to marry a local girl and become rich and goes back to Mattie. The sideline is Sam Houston, the greatest regarded governor of Tennessee marrying a local girl called Elsie. He is even slated to contest the Presidency next. When she leaves him without explanation, he resigns all posts, turns to drink and lives among Indians in the Indian fashion. (Of course, this being an old book, it refers to the native Americans as Indians)
Jubal comes back but never reaches his home, dying of cholera in the hands of the priest Harrison.
The next part of the book starts with the religious strifes that shaped Texas. McNab from Scotland comes to US to escape lawmen and hears of Texas. He goes there taking his son Otto, and learns of the good and the bad and the cheats and the good people. He learns that mustangs and cows run wild there and no one will buy them off him.
They meet the famous Mattie, and also Clooney dies in their presence after converting them to Catholicism. He marries a Mexican and gets double his allocation of land accordingly, as per his entitlement.
When the real wife and daughters of Finlay arrive in Texas, they are shocked to hear that he is married already and leave in bitterness.
The Battle of Alamo where the rebels defend the territory from the cruel and pitiless general from Mexico is well described. Then the other massacre at another city till finally Houston destroys the army of the General Santa Anna and also captures him. Texas becomes a Republic.
There are stories of how the land was used by Texans to prop up the failing economy and how competing currencies were printed by companies and individuals, causing chaos.
Awesome account of the Comanche, the fearsome Indian gang, and how they were tricked and massacred by the white men and how they took fearsome revenge on Texas towns. (“They make the feared Apache look like schoolchildren” was the comment of one character in the story)
Talks of Germans flooding to Texas to escape repressions at home. Lots of vignettes about what makes Texans fiercely independent, even after John Polk finally managed to annex it to USA. How the Texans in the war against Mexico were both brave and utterly ruthless to the point of war crimes, is well told.
The savagery of Texas rangers in Avila is shocking and make you realize that they were as cruel as the Spanish General Santa Anna.
They talks of families coming in, now buying land on the cheap (no more free land) and how the population increased to remote areas of Texas. The Cobbs family has grown rich by appropriating enormous amounts of land and shoemaking and flour mill and one of the brothers decides to fight on the Confederate side in the coming civil war. Lincoln got elected, much to the chagrin of the South.
The siege of Vickburg following a battle where the Texans successfully resisted wave after wave of Union soldiers is well told.
Earnshaw Rusk, a devout preacher, is appointed to make peace with the conquered Indian tribes by President Grant. He writes about the predicament of the Indians (Comanche tribe for example) in being slowly driven away from their own homelands as well as the savagery they display in their attacks which horrifies western sensibilities. A very even handed but brutal and frank description, the likes of which have made his writing so famous.
The overwhelming of the Indians and banishment of them to the reservations is told well. Then they start on the casual cruelty to blacks by whites even after their emancipation. Terrible scenes like the judge killing a black lawyer because he was winning the argument in the defense of a black man and then not even being reprimanded for it.
The scenes where Rusk turns mercenary but almost loses his land to a banker and how the same banker joins with him to bring railroad back are well told. Rusk and Emma’s fat, hateful son and how he killed two people without provocation in a pub and how incorrigibly bad he is – nice narration. Above all, the near extinction of the Texas longhorn is well told.
There is a lot about football and its rise. The three enduring themes of Texas are the ranges, oil, and Friday Night Football.
And in case you doubted that a serious author like James Michener could do hilarity, there is quite a funny chapter on how armadillos entered Texas and the havoc they caused to the lawns of a Rusk and how it led to his divorce with his wife. There is a lot of blather about hunting, oil and money making that seems a sideline to the main story.
The last bit is about a conniving real estate agent who cheats everyone and gets killed by one of his victims. Interesting.
A classic Michener. Does not disappoint.
7/10
– – Krishna (Dec 2018)