A Nation of Immigrants
To the Editor:
I have an alternative viewpoint to share regarding Mr. Cernosek’s and Ms. Tietjen’s letters to the editor in the October 10, 2025, issue.
To me, Native Americans were, in fact, the settlers of North America because, using Mr. Cernosek’s definition, they “ventured out into the wilderness to build a civilization from scratch.” When my Puritan ancestors arrived in the Boston area in 1630, they found villages, farms, and trails. With the help of Native Americans, they learned which crops would grow well in the New World and how to adapt to their new environment. Without Native American help, their survival would have been much more difficult.
In 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition set out to explore the Missouri River, make diplomatic contact with Indians, expand the American fur trade, and locate a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Native Americans who settled the area assisted the expedition, acting as guides and providing supplies. Remember Sacagawea?
Texas was already established when the Czechs arrived in the 1800s. Nacogdoches, the oldest city in Texas, was founded in 1779. And, moreover, at that time, the official language of Texas was Spanish.
According to the Texas State Historical Association, Josef Bergmann, a Czech pioneer who arrived in Texas in 1850, wrote a long letter back home soon after his arrival. “This letter told of the freedom to be found in Texas, the large amount of land available at cheap prices, and how he had already acquired many chickens, hogs, cows, and a horse. His letter was eventually published in the Moravské Noviny (Moravian News), and people in Moravia began to discuss plans for following the Bergmann family to the great free state of Texas. Groups of Czech families came in 1852, 1853, and 1854, and this started the waves of migration of Czech and Moravian people to Texas. Bergmann, credited by many Czech immigrants and their descendants as their reason for immigrating to Texas, was the father of the Czechs in Texas.”
To me, unless you are Native American or a descendant of the enslaved, your ancestors came here to “eat the fruits and good things offered by an established country” and should be classified as immigrants.
Regarding Ms. Tietjen’s comments that her ancestors acclimated and learned the language after arriving in the United States, and opining that Spanish speakers are not assimilating quickly, I would like to point out that this did not happen overnight for most Czech and German immigrants in this county.
A case in point is the story of Czech immigrant Augustin Haidušek (1845–1929). He served as Fayette County judge and, as a duty of his office, was superintendent of public schools. He enforced the state law that required English as the principal language of instruction. Local Czech immigrants and national Czech newspapers criticized him. He founded the Czechlanguage newspaper Svoboda in La Grange in 1885, in part to argue for assimilation. The weekly newspaper was published until 1927.
La Grange Deutsche Zeitung was a weekly Germanlanguage newspaper that first appeared in 1890 and ran until 1926. If the Germans and Czechs in Fayette County assimilated rapidly, why did these non-English newspapers continue to exist for so long?
And translators were needed then, as now. In the 1930s. When Mary Dach, of German heritage, was on trial for the death of Henry Stoever, her English was not sufficient, and she required a translator.
The reality is that we are a nation of immigrants and that assimilation takes time. Those who speak Spanish will eventually become proficient in English, just as German and Czech immigrants before them.
Marie W. Watts Muldoon