Part 32
Queen of the King
Henrietta Maria Morse Chamberlain King was always more than just a ranch wife. Her mother died not long after giving birth, and her father was a Presbyterian missionary whose frequent travels meant that young Henrietta was often left alone. She became quiet and self-reliant, and through self-education, more learned than many other women of her time. She moved to Texas in 1850 when her father began a mission in the south of the Republic. She worked as a teacher for a time, before meeting a steamboat captain and budding land baron named Richard King. They were married in 1855.
Their first home was little more than a mud jacal, but the holdings of the King Ranch eventually grew to be over 750,000 acres of land. Henrietta’s role was far from passive - not only did she supervise the housing, education, and spiritual needs of the Tejano workers, during Richard’s absences she was the de facto head of the household. She was serving in such a role when Nathan Forrest returned from the Battle of Edwards Plateau, leading a column of worn and wounded men, his scarred visage grim. Richard King was not with him.
It can be assumed that Henrietta was greatly distraught. Her clothing would remain uniform from that day until her own death - mourning black from head to toe. There was, at least, plenty of work to distract the widow King’s mind, for she now was the sole owner of over three quarters of a million acres of functionally independent land.
Wait a minute! Richard King isn't dead! He's trapped inside that brooch! Witch! Witch!
Henrietta was a clear-eyed and intelligent administrator, but running an enterprise of those proportions was too much of a task for any one man or woman. Fortunately, Henrietta had also inherited a talented band of advisors. Nathan Forrest was one of Richard King’s close friends, and of course had his own experience in running a ranching venture. As did Mifflin Kenedy, a former partner of King’s whose massive tracts of land bordered the King Ranch. Gideon "Legs" Lewis was another former King partner, the original owner of a half-share of the Ranch. He cashed out to finance his political career and made a good living representing the interests of the Caudillos - until the French coup. Wounded while in flight, Legs had been recuperating at the Ranch, which now appeared to be his permanent home. Leander McNelly and his lieutenant Ben Thompson had been the soul behind South Texas’s Rangers, hand-picked by Richard King. As the central government lost effective control over the South, the Southern Rangers had simply changed their stationary to the vague title “Special Force”, and served as the paramilitary/security arm of the Ranch. Finally, Francisco Alvarado had been with Richard King since the earliest days of the Ranch, the cowboss who managed much of the Ranch’s nuts and bolts operations, and a vital connection to the Ranch’s workers.
Because those hundreds of thousands of acres were home also to a number of Tejano workers - the Kineños. The first Kineños, or King’s Men, hailed originally from the Mexican village of Cruillas. In the devastation after the Mexican War, Richard King had gone to the village to recruit cattle workers, and found a population wracked with famine. Never one to think small, King quickly altered his plans, and after a discussion with the village elders, it was agreed that every man, woman, and child in Cruillas would move to the growing King Ranch. Over 120 souls departed, on foot, upon the great Entrada. Others would come over the years, and by the time of King’s death, the Ranch had hundreds of workers. The connection between the Kings and their Kineños was somewhat unique, the results of a close symbiotic relationship. King had sought out workers in the first place because he had no idea how to manage a Ranch’s operations. The Kineños had been vital in getting the Ranch started, but likewise, King had been vital in providing them with a livelihood after the destruction of the war. Though far from a perfect relationship, there was a large measure of mutual respect between King and his workers, who were far better treated than even most other ranches’ white cowpunchers. Only Mifflin Kenedy and his Kenedeños enjoyed a similar relationship.
Mifflin Kenedy (Right) inspired respect by his Ranch management, relationship with his workers, and the fact that he was nine feet tall.
Obviously, this is a departure from the depiction of the King Ranch that was put forward throughout most of the 20th century. In these ideologically fueled imaginings, Richard and Henrietta King were either a brutal tyrants oppressing peaceful Tejanos, or necessarily firm patricians holding back the baser instinct of wild Mexican savages. Reality is, as ever, more nuanced. While later relations would be at times more strained, Henrietta King enjoyed a high reputation among the Kineños for her lifetime of work in improving their living situation. Further, there was no great feeling of racial solidarity among the Kineños, the Mexicans, and other Tejanos. Mexican bandits killed Kineños just as readily as white men in their cattle raids. The Kineños were Kineños, and felt solidarity among themselves, and to some extent, with the King family. They had no great desire to rejoin Mexico or take up with murderers. While on other Ranches the relationship between owner and worker was much less cooperative, it was not for lack of good examples in the King and Kenedy Ranches.
Henrietta King would lead by more than just example. The nights after Forrest’s return were filled with long discussions between Henrietta, Forrest, Legs Lewis, and McNelly. Eventually, Kenedy too was invited to give his advice. Thus by the time of Richard King’s funeral, a massive gathering attended by every Ranch owner in South Texas, the caudillos of three of the largest and most important Ranches were fully prepared to make their proposal - formalizing the bonds between the Ranches to forge a free, secure, and
independent South Texas. Drawing on the historical rebellions that had led to Texas's birth, the triumvirate even had a name prepared - The Republic of the Rio Grande.