Sam Houston : A True Frontier Legend Of The United States

Sam Houston : A True Frontier Legend of the United States

Sam Houston was a great man who was involved with much of the early development of America and especially Texas. He was a soldier, lawyer, politician, businessman, and also family man. He was taken adopted by the Native American who later became the people he admired and supported. They together helped to bridge the gap between the American government and the Native American. Sam Houston succeeded in many roles in American's history, and was praised to be one of the true American heroes.

Sam Houston was born to Major Sam Houston and Elizabeth Paxton Houston on March 2, 1793 at Timber Ridge, Rockbridge County, in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1807, when he reached the age of thirteen, he lost his father. Later, Mrs. Houston, his mother, took him and the rest of the family to a farm on Baker Creek in Tennessee. Sam was unhappy with farming, so he ran away to live with the Cherokee tribe. At the age of seventeen, he came back home for a short period and then returned to the Cherokees, where he was adopted by the chief of the tribe received an Indian name "Black Raven." Two years later, he came back to Tennessee and opened a successful private school.

In 1812, he enlisted in the regular army as a private. Within the year, he was promoted to Third Lieutenant to the 39th Infantry Regiment where Houston was badly wounded twice at The Battle of Horseshoe Bend. His courage caught the attention of General Andrew Jackson who promoted him to Second Lieutenant and later in 1816, the First Lieutenant. He left the army on March 1818 for studying law at Judge James Trimble's law office in Nashville, Tennessee.

Sam Houston was a congressman from 1823 to 1827. In 1827, he was elected Governor of Tennessee and two years later he married his first wife, Eliza Allen. Within two weeks of his marriage, Houston was announced as a candidate for re-election as Governor of Tennessee. Sam separated from his wife Eliza after less than four months of marriage and divorced in 1837 after he became the President of Texas.

Known for his passion for Native Americans, Houston was reunited with his adopted Indian father. After becoming the Cherokee citizen, he left for Washington to represent the Cherokee Nation. He protested to the government the way Indians were treated. He married his second wife, a Native American named Tiana Rogers, in a Cherokee Indian ceremony.

In 1836, Texas declared its independence from Mexico, Sam was elected to commander