The Brazos River and the Steamboat Yellowstone

The Brazos River and the Steamboat Yellowstone. . , The Brazos River, whose formal name Brazos de Dios is Spanish for Arms of God, is the longest river in Texas. As it wound its way through Texas, it witnessed the coming of the first Anglo settlers, the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos and the swearing in of Sam Houston and the republic's first duly elected government in Columbia. In 1821, Austin's first colonists, scheduled to land at the Colorado's mouth, landed at the mouth of the Brazos instead. The Brazos became the chief artery for transportation and commerce. In November 1835, the steamboat. Yellowstone arrived in Brazoria for the purpose of running cotton along the Brazos. On March 31, 1836, while loading cotton at Groce's Landing above San Felipe, Sam Houston employed the crew of the Yellowstone to ferry his retreating army across the flooding Brazos in advance of the Mexican army. The Yellowstone further witnessed history when ad interim President David G. Burnet pressed it into service on Galveston Island on April 26 to house the cabinet. Joined by Mexican General Santa Anna and his staff and eighty wounded prisoners, the Yellowstone continued to Velasco where treaties were being readied. Perhaps its saddest route, the Yellowstone bore the body of Secretary of State Stephen F. Austin and his mourners from Columbia to Peach Point Plantation for burial in December of 1836. Its last official act was to carry the Texas government and the printing press and staff of the Telegraph and Texas Register to Houston, the new capital, in the spring of 1837. The Yellowstone's last known voyage was May 30, 1837.