The Yellow Rose of Texas
Did she or didn't she?
FOR MANY TEXAS HISTORY BUFFS, that one salacious question looms large over the hotly contested legend of Emily D. West—forever etched into the folklore annals as the Yellow Rose of Texas. The story—that West corralled Mexican General Santa Anna in his bedroom so that General Sam Houston and his Texas loyalists could catch their enemy with his pants down and win the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto—has gotten more complicated, and steamier, since its original publication in 1956 in the diary of William Bollaert, an English ethnologist who visited Texas in the 1840s.
Not unlike modern-day tabloid fodder, the story has become a he-said, she-said runaround that's made West, a mulatto woman from New Haven, Conn., an unofficial, and unlikely, goddess of Texas mythology.
It all started, or so the legend goes, on Oct. 25, 1835, in New York City, when West signed a contract with James Morgan, a Philadelphia entrepreneur, to work as a hotel housekeeper in his settlement, New Washington (in what is now Morgan's Point, Texas), for $100 a year.
While the earliest accounts identified West as Morgan's slave, and even referred to her as Emily Morgan, Texas folklorist Francis E. Abernethy says that she was never a slave, only an indentured servant. Although there are no pictures and no first-person descriptions of West, it's imagined that she was a "long-haired, lovely, gold-skinned girl resembling a Latin goddess" who was exceptionally intelligent, according to Martha Anne Turner's 1976 book The Yellow Rose of Texas: Her Saga and Her Song. Texas essayist and historian Henderson Shuffler once wrote of West that "her deliberately provocative amble down the street was the most exciting event in town," further solidifying her distinction as a pioneering femme fatale.
By the time West arrived in the then-Mexican colony, the war for Texas' independence, led by Gen. Sam Houston, was a momentous reality. On April 16, 1836, Mexican cavalrymen invaded New Washington, looting and burning down buildings and taking prisoners, West among them, according to the Handbook of Texas published by the Texas State Historical Association.
Despite the hubbub it seems that Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna caught a glimpse of West and snapped her up as a member of his, let's say more personal entourage.
What happened next was both the impetus for her now-sacred fame and the catalyst for debates over the merit of that fame.
Several days after her capture, on the morning of April 21, West was spotted outside of Santa Anna's tent, preparing a champagne breakfast (which probably also featured the general's other well-documented indulgences—chocolate and opium). In the most optimistic account, West was privy to Houston's impending attack, so she lured Santa Anna into his bedroom where she kept him occupied until Houston's men had a chance to make their move.
Not everyone, however, believes that West was a hero in the sense that she willingly sacrificed her "virtue for victory."
"She may have been in Santa Anna's tent when the Texans charged the Mexican camp...but it was not by choice," wrote Margaret Henson in her entry on West for the Handbook of Texas. "She could not have known Houston's plans, nor could she have intentionally delayed Santa Anna."
After the Battle of San Jacinto, West returned, some say wearing only her perfume, to New Washington. She stayed in Texas only until 1837 when she was granted a passport to go back to New York.
What became of her is pure speculation, but what became of her story is pure sensationalism. In 1956, the University of Oklahoma Press published William Bollaert's Texas, an edited version of the Englishman's 1840s visit. West's story, although buried in a footnote, piqued enough interest, and raised enough historians' eyebrows, to lift her out of obscurity. Curiosity suddenly abounded about the "influence of a Mulatta girl...who was closeted in the tent with G'l Santana [Santa Anna]...and detained [him] so long that order could not be restor'd again."
Coincidentally, another written artifact from the tumultuous 1830s was also being revived, the lyrics to "The Yellow Rose of Texas," a popular folk song in which a soldier laments leaving his "yellow rose" sweetheart (so called because of her black ancestry). A connection was easily made between Mitch Miller's revision of the song and the emergence of West as an influential woman from the same era. "It's a popular song and a good story, but they're not at all connected," says Abernethy, who is the secretary and editor of the Texas Folklore Society.
With new, more titillating adjectives added with each rehashing of the tale, historians began to look for concrete evidence of a strategic tryst. Two documents placing West at the battle site have been unearthed: the original work contract she signed, which is in a Wells Fargo bank in California, and her passport application, which was endorsed by Capt. Isaac N. Moreland, a friend of West's. Gathering solid proof of who first told whom about West—and determining whether or not they were conveying the truth—has been difficult.
Historian James Crisp, a Texas native who teaches at North Carolina State University, asserts that Bollaert heard about West's fortuitous fiesta from Sam Houston, who heard it from Moreland, who in turn heard it from the Yellow Rose herself. And it was Crisp's graduate student, Jim Lutzweiler, who dug through Bollaert's archived papers and discovered that the Yellow Rose incident was originally attributed to Houston. "Houston visited Moreland on his deathbed, a few weeks later Houston preached his eulogy, and a few weeks later Bollaert wrote about [West]," Crisp says. "My theory is that Houston got the story from Moreland."
As a mixed race, indentured servant, West was "close to being a nobody," Crisp notes, yet Houston, a "leading citizen, [knew] about her. This leads me to believe that there's something to [the story]. But can you prove she was in the tent? My goodness, no."
In fact, it's the lack of proof that's made it the juiciest story in Texas history. "What's most interesting about the story is that it's become a modern urban legend [even though] there was no reference to it until 1956," Crisp says.
Of course, as long as there are questions about the Yellow Rose—was she in the tent or wasn't she?—there will be those looking for answers. So don't be surprised, Crisp forewarns, when a new thesis regarding Emily West and the woman she sailed back to New York with, Emily de Zavala, and a possible linking of their identities, arises in the next year or two.
The story of Santa Anna's distraction may be one of fragments and add-ons, inferences and revisions, but like any compelling legend it's the fuzzy parts—did she or didn't she?—that keep us curious, and keep us talking, singing, and debating about Texas' Yellow Rose.
