The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas by Frederick Marryat

We had now entered the white settlements of the Sabine river, and found, to our astonishment, that, far from arriving at civilization, we were receding from it; the farms of the Wakoes and well-cultivated fields of the Pawnee-Picts, their numerous cattle and comfortable dwellings, were a strong contrast to the miserable twelve-feet-square mud-and-log cabins we passed by. Every farmer we met was a perfect picture of wretchedness and misery; their women dirty and covered with rags, which could scarcely conceal their nudity; the cattle lean and starving; and the horses so weak that they could scarcely stand upon their legs.

Where was the boasted superiority of the Texans over the Indian race? or were these individuals around us of that class of beings who, not daring to reside within the jurisdiction of the law, were obliged to lead a borderer's life, exposed to all the horrors of Indian warfare and famine? Upon inquiry, we discovered that these frontier men were all, more or less, eminent members of the Texan Republic, one being a general, another a colonel; some speakers of the House of Representatives; and many of them members of Congress, judges, and magistrates. Notwithstanding their high official appointments, we did not think it prudent to stop among them, but pushed on briskly, with our rifles across the pommels of our saddles; indeed, from the covetous eyes which these magistrates and big men occasionally cast upon our horses and saddle-bags, we expected at every moment that we should be attacked.