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Au Texas!!! (The Fulfillment!! / Twelve Years Afterwards)

signs "C…" / "M.A. Col."; working identification F. Collas (Uriel #168) — evidence in findings · letter dated 1 Sept 1855 ("Mutuelle"); published 1858 in Jean Journet, Documents Apostoliques et Propheties (Paris), pp. 154–174 · French original (not held); English translation only — primary, as act

Transcription: doc/text/books/1800/colas/english_clean.md (English trans. by James W. Phillips, DeGolyer Foundation Library, 1963)

What it is

A hostile eyewitness letter from a disillusioned ex-colonist to a friend in Savoy, dated "Mutuelle, 1 September 1855" — i.e. written on the ground during the colony's first summer, not reconstructed later. It survives only because the anti-Fourierist crusader Jean Journet reprinted it (with 7 of his own footnotes) in his 1858 Documents Apostoliques. We hold the English translation only (Phillips, DeGolyer Library, 1963); the French original in Journet is not in the repo.

Author's position

A self-described non-Fourierist who left Belgium out of boredom, not conviction ("I have never been a Fourierist… I broke my shackles and I left"), having believed Considerant's promises and then felt deceived. He sailed on the Uriel in the group of twelve (with three exiled anarchists and six Belgian workmen), was among those the colony branded "revolutionaries"/"anarchists," demanded his money back, was expelled, and co-founded a breakaway village, "Mutuelle," on the Dallas–Fort Worth road. So: an insider to the voyage and the first months, an outsider by conviction throughout.

Stake

Maximally hostile — the corpus's only adversarial primary voice. Two layers of motive stack here and must be separated: (1) the writer's personal grievance (expelled, reimbursed in overpriced goods), which colors every fact toward indictment; and (2) Journet's editorial agenda — his footnotes generalize the letter into an anti-Phalansterian and anti-American polemic (slavery, Barnum, "capitalist religion"), which is reception-history, not testimony. The letter itself is a mutualist attacking Fourierism from the left, not a conservative attacking socialism.

Access

First-hand and near-contemporaneous: the Uriel crossing (64 days, half-rations); the Houston→Dallas overland march (climate, land quality, prices); the colony's daily labor-assignment board; the share-redemption from below; the "Mutuelle" secession. Window closes early — written Sept 1855, so like [[wolski]] he sees the onset of the unwind, not its completion.

Known distortions / how to weight

Cross-references

[[wolski]] (Uriel voyage, ~130 count, redemption-in-kind), [[savardan]] (attacked by name; the New Orleans/Houston expulsions), [[burkli]] ("left six Swiss in New Orleans"), [[considerant-du-texas]] (the Eden promise refuted point by point), [[sceat-statutes]] (act of association: 1/3 wage, 18-yr liquidation, Considerant's votes). One of the primary-as-act voices on why it failed. Events/claims attach in TIMELINE.md (roadmap #1a).

Timeline extraction

Colas timeline — events extracted from a hostile contemporary letter

Source: "Colas" (attribution provisional; signed C..., addressed by Journet as "M.A. Col."), a letter dated 1 September 1855 written from the colony / Dallas, published 1858 in Jean Journet, Documents Apostoliques et Prophéties (Paris), pp. 154–174. English translation (James W. Phillips, DeGolyer Foundation Library, 1963) at doc/text/books/1800/colas/english_clean.md. The French original is not held.

Why this source matters: Colas is the only on-the-ground contemporary account written by someone hostile to the Fourierists — a defector who left Belgium with the colony (Uriel group), turned "anarchist," was expelled, and wrote ~4 months after the main arrivals. It is the hostile counterweight to the participant diarists (Wolski, contemporaneous) and memoirists (Savardan, reconstructed). Where they explain and excuse, Colas accuses. The value is in the contradictions: a hostile witness who nonetheless corroborates Wolski on the hard conditions (sickness, water, drought, the labour-assignment "exchange," the dissolution by share-redemption, the malcontents leaving for Dallas) while contradicting the participants on motive and morale. Most figures are unnamed, masked behind initials (Sa[vardan], Bu[rkli], Ve..., Mo..., La..., J....); resolved below where the masking is transparent.

Caution on stratum: Colas reports much hearsay ("they have told us," "those who have lived here tell us") and frames almost every observation as an indictment. Below, observable facts are kept distinct from hostile judgments; the latter are tagged [hostile claim].

Dated events (the letter spine)

1854.??.?? - Colas leaves Belgium (he stresses he "did not leave to search for
             the best of the Phalansterians" and "have never been a Fourierist");
             sails on the Uriel — 12 in the group (3 proscribed/exiled
             anarchists, 6 Belgian workmen), group leader "M. Co...". A 64-day
             crossing; for the last 40 days only one biscuit a day, 2 litres of
             water; reach New Orleans famished
1855.??.?? - Houston→Dallas overland on foot, baggage drawn by oxen, ~300 miles,
             ~12 miles/day, ~a month sleeping on the ground in the open. The
             group leader bought provisions in bulk at Houston, then billed the
             group at the (doubled) Dallas price + interest "for capital
             advanced"; they reach Réunion "entirely without funds"
1855.??.?? - In transit (Savardan's larger party): Savardan dropped ~a quarter of
             his party at New Orleans, left a 52-yr-old woman at Houston, and had
             the tailor "Mo..." thrashed (by a "policeman, a certain Ve...")
             and expelled 150 miles from Dallas, penniless; Considerant later
             refused Mo... even a $5 loan ⟨hearsay, hostile⟩
~1855.06.?? - "Since the month of June, everyone could see the direction in which
             the society was heading"; workers begin keeping apart from the group
             leaders; evening grumbling-circles form around the "anarchists"
~1855.07.04 - 4 July (US Independence Day) celebrated at Réunion; Americans came
             to hear the singing
~1855.07.14 - 14 July: Americans came to Réunion expecting a Bastille-Day
             celebration; were told the authorities had decided to "no longer
             celebrate European anniversaries" — Colas reads this as hypocrisy
~1855.07.~17- After Savardan's arrival "the irritating measures were redoubled";
             evening conversations cease — "the silence of death"; an official
             Sunday dance is decreed, danced "without enthusiasm," then dropped
             "for want of dancers"
~1855.08.??- Society acquires its first plow "only fifteen days ago" (i.e. ~mid-
             Aug, counting back from the 1 Sept letter); still no grist mill;
             saw-mill "still en route"
~1855.08.??- ~30 of the best workers have left for paid work in the
             neighbourhood; ~20 lawsuits pending in Dallas over refused wages
~1855.08.??- The act of association is being drawn up / forced; council tells all
             who will not sign as members to leave at once (society "not able to
             pay salaries"); workers counter by demanding the right to name 2 of
             the 7 council members — election held "as in England": govt
             candidates get 9 votes, the workmen's get 57. "The war continues."
~1855.08.??- Colas expelled with the other "anarchists"; demands reimbursement of
             his 500 fr; society refuses cash, pays only in marked-up goods
             (cotton cloth, tobacco at ~2.3–5× cost). He estimates he recovered
             "one hundredth" of what they took
~1855.08.??- Considerant's birthday: "no one complimented" him; he shut himself
             with 5 friends in the bakehouse and drank toasts there [hostile]
~1855.08.??- The dozen defectors band together; buy (in 4 parts) a section on the
             Dallas–Fort Worth road at the Lancaster/Houston junction; lay out
             the village square "Mutuelle"; corners reserved for shop, bank,
             hostelry, club; build houses; cattle/horses bought on credit;
             payments due in 12 and 18 months
1855.09.01 - LETTER DATE / observation anchor. "Today there are almost 130 people
             in the Colony — I don't recall exactly." Building has been stopped
             "to put a stop to the debacle"; ~a dozen group leaders run a daily
             posted work-program; Americans have ceased relations with the colony
             ("could not find credit for even a sack of wheat"). Letter signed
             from "Mutuelle ... the first of September 1855"

Specific items (figures, names, mechanisms)

Hard numbers

Prices / cost of living (Colas's appended schedule, in $ and fr)

Named people + roles (de-masked where transparent)

Mechanisms (the hostile reading of how the colony ran)

Colas's hostile theses (explicitly judgments, not observation)

Reconciliation with TIMELINE.md

Witness key for this source: colas (new; add to the Conventions key-list in TIMELINE.md). Stratum: primary-as-act, hostile/contemporary.

Identity / attribution notes