Stormy Bluebonnets and the Death of Young Jouette McGee

This photo was shared on Facebook by a friend, and I love it. It was taken this week at Brenham, Texas, in the heart of bluebonnet country. My son says it must have been heavily photo-shopped to achieve the lighting so spectacularly. Maybe, but I don’t care.

I’ve been writing daily on my new novel about Central Texas in 1855, a stormy time in the history of the fledgling Lone Star state. There were some big un-resolvable issues tormenting the state’s leaders and citizens: A bankrupt state treasury, Indian depredations, and the growing support for southern secession from the Union. 

Back to the photo, I look at the huge dark cloud over the bright lights of a small Texas town surrounded by a lovely blanket of bluebonnets, and think, yup, this photographer pegged us—pegged us way back then, and since the Texas Legislature is in session as I write this, pegged us right now.

Thankfully, Indian depredations are no longer an issue, but have been replaced by fears of immigrant terrorists using the Rio Grande valley as a highway like the Apaches and Comanches did in the 1800’s. The state treasury is far from bankrupt, but from the fighting in the Capitol over the state budget, you’d think there was no oil in Texas. And, then there’s the issue of states-rights, a moving target that never seems to quite go away, even if secession is off the table.

So, beautiful bluebonnets under dark storm clouds it is.

As to novel-writing, I’ve been learning this week about one of the first Methodist ministers in Texas. His name was John S. McGee, a Kentuckian, who in the early 1850’s was sent to Texas to serve as a circuit-riding preacher, serving Seguin and a few smaller settlements in the area between Austin and San Antonio.

Reverend McGee enters my story because historically his 14 year-old son Jouette, the oldest of  McGee’s 13 children, all with the same wife, was killed by Indians on July 4^th, 1855. The murder occurred when Jouette’s mule balked and refused to run when the boy, and the man who was with him, saw the Indians approaching them. The farmer, who Jouette was helping search for stray cattle, was mounted on a robust mare and successfully outran the Indians. He didn’t, or maybe couldn’t, save Jouette, but he immediately reported the attack.

Jouette McGee’s murder was one of the final straws that convinced the Texas governor to approve Ranger Captain Callahan’s request that his expedition be allowed to cross into Mexico, if needed, in pursuit of the marauding Indians seeking sanctuary in across the Rio Grande.

I’ll note that the same band of Indians on the same day also killed a 14 year-old slave girl named Lucy who was caught carrying a bucket of water from a stream to the house. While her death was noted, it was not part of the list of Indian murders that prompted Captain Callahan’s expedition of reprisal.

Bluntly, Black slaves, male or female, were property, and far too often, while the loss of a slave was regretful, the death was considered no more serious than the death of a good horse. As I write that and think about it, I’m still dumbstruck that our country--my country--my state--even my family--owned slaves until the end of the Civil War. What were they thinking, our ancestors?

So here I sit in Recliner #7, every day, creating characters and conversations to fill in the gaps around the stories that have survived, to recreate historical events from a tempestuous time 160 years ago. I’m loving that it’s a story about where I live, in a time when Anglos and Hispanics and Negroes and Native Americans were all tangled up in “A Different Country Entirely,” this place named Texas.

Finally, just because I think they are an interesting-looking couple. who lived difficult and interesting lives, I’m including images of Reverend McGee and his wife Ann Hawkins McGee.

Still a handsome couple for the times, whenever it was these paintings were done, and I bet she was a looker when she was a young bride. My wife says Ann McGee looks tired, and after 13 pregnancies and births, raising so many kids, and enduring the early deaths of some of her brood, I bet she was. Heck, four grandkids in the house at the same time wears us out.