Deaf Smith is just flat interesting, and I should looked him up long before now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_SmithBorn on the Hudson River below Albany in 1787, Smith's family moved to Natchez around the year 1800. Not stone-deaf by all accounts, just partially so. I suspect severe ear/nose/throat infections as I myself lost a measurable amount of hearing that way in Africa.
Ain't found out yet what Smith did in his early years, or if he was in the War of 1812 or the Creek War. The story of his life in Texas begins rather abruptly when he was thirty-five.
By that time we can assume Smith was in the livestock droving business and that he had regular dealings with Tejanos and Mexicans. Certainly he seemed to fit in easily with both societies.
Dunno if he had been married before but in 1822 he married a Tejano woman ten years his junior, the daughter of a probable business associate, one Mexican horse trader Salvadore Ruiz de Castaneda. Carrying on a longstanding Bexareno practice, from his home near our San Jose Mission, Ruiz de Castaneda drove herds of horses to trade in Louisiana.
What was unusual in Smith's marriage was that Guadalupe Ruiz was a twenty-five year-old widow with three daughters from a previous marriage to another Tejano. I have no idea if Smith had been married before.
In retrospect, sounds like a love match. Guadalupe bore Smith three more children early on in their fifteen year marriage, the two remaining together until Smith's death in '37. Likewise relations between Smith and his three step-daughters also seem to have been cordial, Smith being on especially good terms with one Hendrick Arnold, his son-in-law through one of his step-daughters.
Interesting thing is Hendrick Arnold was the son of a White man who had married a probably mixed-blood slave woman and then gone to Texas, probably where the living was easier in those early days, much like Noah Smithwick's own partner Webber. See...
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/far15One gets the impression of a sprawling, congenial hacienda close by the San Jose Mission, populated by working Vaqueros in company with this first wave of Texians (perhaps not an uncommon scenario, Jim Bowie likewise intergrated himself into the local population during this time period).
If the racially integrated aspect sounds improbable, I would point out that such was a feature with several famous cattle outfits in Texas history, where considerations of ability tended to trump distinctions based upon ethnicity.
Whatever their activities, by 1835 Smith and Arnold were accomplished and toughened outdoorsmen with a geographical knowledge of the country. No accident really that the two men were out buffalo hunting together north and west of town when the shooting war broke out between the Texians and the forces of Santa Anna.
Said buffalo hunting episode highlighting what was a regular practice among San Antonio Tejanos as well as drawing attention to the fact that anyone going out into buffalo country in that time and place likely had their act together as competent fighting men.
Birdwatcher
