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TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
No. 1742 1840 :Mar. 13, J. D. OWEN AND OTHERS, VIO'rORIA, ['l'EXAS] PE'l'ITION TO l\L B. LAMAR, [AUSTIN, TEXASJ 85
Victoria March 13 1840
To his Excellency Mirabeau B Lamar President of Texas
The undersigned merchants of the town of Victoria Respect- fully petition your Excellency to take into consideration the propriety of affording protection to the Mexican 'l'rade and of enforcing respect to the laws of the land In contempt of the institutions of the country there still exists in our adjacent Frontier bodies of Armed Americans who rob and other- wise molest the traders to an extent that none or verry few are able to reach the settlement, and lately their outrages have been so daring the trade is almost wholly stopped Did we not deem it unnecessary in a matter of so much notoriety we could mention to your Excellency a number of those outrages which have been committed in defiance of Law and common decency ana their motto being "Dead men tell no tales" it is probable many are never known but to the perpetrators thereof At our instance a few days since an examination was had before a Justice of the Peace in this town- An individual who headed a party of those Americans was arrested, Two Americans of Credibility were sworn as witnesses; From their testimony it appeared that about four weeks since a company of traders were attacked on this side the Nueces not far from San Patricio by a company of Americans who severely wounded one of their number-The Mexicans were scarely quit of the Company who first attacked them than another company of Americans overhauled them and pressed their horses for the use of the Federal Mexican (alias cow driving) Service The matter is still before the examining court but we are fully satis- fied the law will avail nothing; they are able at all times t_o c-xculpate themselves by means of pliant witnesses Formerly these American' parties contented themselves with pressing a few horses and other necessaries for Cow driving, driving, [sic] not- withstand which the traders continued to come in with their monev and trade; but since there is not only a risk of property but of life to the adventuring traders their trade has almost ceased to exist Your petitioners have lately received and are still receiving verry large stocks of goods for the importation of which a considerable Revenue will be paid into the public Treasury :rhe importations through the Lavaca Bay the present quarter will be many times heavier that they have ever been in any previous Quarter- and should there not be some protection to the trade for which our goods are almost exclusively imported we shall feef most sensibly a calamity which with the aid of the law we are not able to avert
"'D.S.
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