A small band of men dressed in deerskins and armed with short bows and rabbit sticks looked across the creek with interest. Against their tattooed torsos their hair hung long and braided, interwoven with the occasional feather. Piercings decorated their lower lips and nipples. Normally small and lean, the bellies of these “Payayas,” as they called themselves, bulged on this morning from the buffalo they had killed the day before.

The creek – which they knew as the “Yanaguana” – separated them from sixty-four sunburned, bearded men covered from head-to-toe in woven cloth and shining armor. It wasn’t the first time that the Payayas had seen men such as these, yet it was the first time they had had the chance to really watch them work. As the Payayas looked on, the newcomers felled two cottonwood trees, their shining tools slicing through the wood as easily as if it were animal flesh. Different men with different tools set in on the trunks, shaving and hacking them into shape. In a matter of just a few hours, an arbor emerged, beneath which they placed a table supporting a giant cross.

A man in a simple brown robe and a ridiculous haircut – Father Damien Massanet, they would come to learn – took his position behind the altar. Father Massanet called forth the other twelve men in the party who were dressed like him to take their positions alongside him. A different man - marked by his own clothing as a chief amongst the newcomers - took the position of honor in front of the other fifty men, yet at a noticeable distance from Father Massanet.

The chief – known in his society as Don Domingo Terán de los Ríos, the new Spanish governor of Texas – was not on speaking terms with Father Massanet by this point, the two having traveled most of the last few weeks in separate parties. For this mass, however, they came together to give thanks. They had, after all, much to be grateful for. At a basic level, they were grateful simply to have regathered their horse herd which had stampeded the day before when they first encountered the big furry brown “cows” that the natives made such productive use of. Most of all, they were grateful to have emerged from the South Texas scrubland into this veritable oasis.

Arriving from the south with the hills of the Balcones Escarpment framing the creeks draining into the San Antonio River, it might have felt to these Spanish adventurers like they were walking onto the stage of a great, lush “amphitheater.”1It was “a fine country with broad plains - the most beautiful in New Spain,”2the Governor observed. Wildlife abounded all around him: buffalo, bears, lions, ocelots, coyotes, antelope, javelinas, dove, quail, ducks, alligators, fish, and of course, rattlesnakes – though not armadillos, they wouldn’t arrive until centuries later. The riverbanks and low spots sprouted with elms, oaks, cottonwoods, poplars, laurels, cypress, mulberries, strawberries, and grapes, wild hemp nine feet high and flax two feet high – though not mesquite, that too wouldn’t become widespread until much later.

The Payayas ’apparent indifference to the Spaniards’ arrival stood in marked contrast to the reception their brethren had met in East Texas. These Spaniards were, in fact, on a rescue mission to bring aid to their countrymen stationed in East Texas and now living in a state of siege amongst the tribes there. The Spanish were learning the hard way that Texas was – and would remain until well into the nineteenth century – an “essentially Indian domain.”3Here, they would have to negotiate their presence with the native tribes if they wanted to stick around, and to that end, they invited forward the Payayas looking on to join them in their ceremony.

The religious as well as the military men offered gifts to those Payaya who came forward: rosaries, pocketknives, cutlery, beads and tobacco. To the man they identified as a chief, they gave a horse. Then, the thirteen Franciscans began the mass. If the Payaya were listening carefully, they would have heard Father Massanet and General Terán de los Ríos say the words “San Antonio” for the first time on that spot, in honor of St. Anthony of Padua on whose feast day – June 13, 1691 – they had arrived.

The Payaya were part of a larger group of Native American tribes known later as “Coahuiltecans.” Coahuiltecans lived in bands of 100-500 people and ranged over an area running from Matagorda Bay to San Antonio to Eagle Pass and down into Monclova and Nuevo Leon. Though labeled today as a single people, their languages were not always mutually intelligible, suggesting that they were probably just a collection of lightly related peoples living a similar lifestyle. They dressed in tanned deer hides which they also draped over wooden poles for shelter during their frequent migrations and worshipped a wide variety of nature-gods with peyote-induced hallucinogenic rituals.

In the winter, they hunted with small bows and arrows or dug up roots and tubers. In the spring, they harvested what meager vegetables the monte offered. In the summer, they gorged on prickly pear. And in the fall, they collected pecans.4

In good years, that is. Most of the time, Coahuiltecans lived on the edge of starvation. Though perhaps not solitary, life as a Coahuiltecan was poor, nasty, brutish, and short, and made the more so by the fact that they were preyed upon by nearly every other tribe in the region, especially the agricultural Hasinai confederation in the East and the mounted Apaches coming out of the Great North American plains. They are perhaps best remembered for their appearance in Alvar Nunez Cabeza de la Vaca’s narrative as “second harvesters,” scavenging the seeds and undigested food particles from the droppings of other animals.5

The first organized entradas or expeditions into Texas by Spaniards in 1655 and 1675 probably just missed San Antonio and the truth is that the entire province of Texas might very well have remained unsettled for another hundred years had not the Spanish suddenly been motivated by that most powerful of human emotions– envy.

Sometime in 1685, rumors trickled back to the Viceroys in New Spain of a coordinated French effort to establish a settlement in Texas. The viceroy sent out several frantic expeditions from Monterrey to cut off these French interlopers, who history would remember as the LaSalle Expedition. The ill-fated LaSalle Expedition ended in the death of all but six of the 180 French colonists who stayed behind on the shores of Matagorda Bay.

In 1689, one of these Spanish expeditions out of Monterrey discovered the remains of the failed French colony, which they razed so effectively the next year that it would be almost three centuries before its location was rediscovered. This 1689 expedition also managed to find five young French survivors of LaSalle’s colony. These survivors – siblings, in fact – had lived the previous three years with the neighboring Karankawa and Hasinai tribes by whom they had been adopted and amongst whom they were now able to move about freely.

Spanish conquest wasn’t solely driven by politics, however. It was driven just as fervently by religion. Spaniards saw themselves as carrying on “the twofold tradition of Rome – the Imperial and the Christian.”6Accordingly, the 1689 and subsequent 1691 expeditions were joined by Father Damien Massanet, a co-founder of the Franciscan missionary College of Queretaro. Using arguments of geopolitics as much as of religion, Father Massanet sold his superiors on founding a mission amongst the Hasinai Indians, part of a larger linguistic group referred to as “Caddoans.”7 Yet the San Francisco de los Tejas Mission, founded on June 1, 1690, near modern-day Nacogdoches, did about as well as the French Matagorda colony. An epidemic of smallpox – which the Hasinai correctly suspected had been brought in by the Spanish – killed of a few thousand locals that first winter and turned the Hasinai decidedly against the Franciscans.

Returning to Coahuila, Father Massanet pled frantically for assistance from the civil authorities to aid the Mission.

The Viceroy of New Spain dispatched General Terán de los Ríos, a Spanish soldier who had served in Peru, Mexico, Sonora, and Sinaloa prior to arriving in Monclova where he took the office of governor of Coahuila in January of 1687 and soon thereafter the separate post of Governor of Texas. The General departed Monclova for Texas in 1691 with fifty soldiers and thirteen Franciscans from the College of Queretaro to East Texas to reinforce the struggling East Texas mission. They traveled the road that would become known as the Camino Real, crossing the Rio Grande just south of modern-day Eagle Pass, through the San Antonio basin, and up into East Texas.

The expedition founded three more missions in East Texas, yet by 1693, all the East Texas missions had been abandoned. In light of this experience, General Terán de los Ríos’ grim assessment of Texas as a province was understandable, namely, that “no rational human being had ever seen a worse one.”8 But one spot in particular had caught his eye. On June 13, 1691, he had camped at a settlement of Coahuiltecan Indians somewhere along the San Antonio River, a spot the local Indians called “Yanaguana” or “refreshing waters” and that General Terán de los Ríos would describe in his diary as “the most beautiful in all of New Spain. “June 13thbeing the feast day of St Anthony of Padua, they named the river San Antonio and held a mass in the presence of the natives, who they honored with of gifts of rosaries, knives, beads, and tobacco. To the local chief, they gave a horse.

Albeit a failure, the Terán de los Rios expedition left behind several important legacies.

First, they seeded the Texas ranges – deliberately in some cases, in other cases not – with the horses and cattle that came to dominate the province within a generation, radically transforming the lifestyles of the native and European populations who would inhabit it.9

Second, they left behind men who would develop critical relationships with Texas’s native peoples. In particular, a boy named José de Urrutia, perhaps only fifteen years old when he was injured during the 1693 general withdrawal, remained in East Texas amongst the Hasinai. His comrades would have been forgiven if they had thought they would never hear from him again and almost certainly could not have predicted his rise to become one of the most prominent early San Antonians.

And third, the events of the 1690’s gave the Franciscan missionaries a cause. Despite or perhaps even because of the failure of the first East Texas missions, they were more resolved than ever to extend their missionary work into Texas. Back at the College of Queretaro, they studied what had happened, and one of the principal lessons they drew was that they needed intermediate supply posts to support missions 540 miles away from the northernmost New Spanish settlements in Coahuila.10 The Rio Grande seemed a logically steppingstone towards East Texas. And as Terán de los Ríos’s journal entry indicated, the springs feeding the various creeks of the San Antonio River basin stuck them as especially promising.

And so almost as soon as they pulled back from East Texas, Spanish religious and civil authorities began tip-toeing back into the province. Just seven years after the abandonment of the first East Texas missions on January 1, 1700, Father Antonio Olivares and Father Felix Espinosa founded the Mission San Juan Bautista on the southern bank of the Rio Grande between modern day Piedras Negras and Nuevo Laredo. Two months later, they founded Mission San Francisco Solano just a few miles away. They took as their charges the local Coahuiltecans, who gave much better indications of embracing missionary life than any other natives yet encountered in the Texas area.

Also, sometime around 1700, that boy soldier who had been left behind in East Texas in 1693 came marching up to the gates of the Rio Grande missions. Only now, he wasn’t a boy. José de Urrutia had spent the previous seven years living amongst the Hasinai and their allies, not only learning their languages and customs, but eventually rising to command their armies, who warred incessantly with the Apaches coming off the plains.11

The attention that Father Espinosa gave to Urrutia in his chronicle of the period indicates that he and Father Olivares immediately appreciated his value.12Like a Spanish Natty Bumpo, José de Urrutia could now move effortlessly across Spanish and native worlds and offered Spaniards their first real inside look at Texas native society. The Franciscans downloaded from him all that they could. Though veterans already of several decades of missionary work in Zacatecas and Coahuila, the Franciscans had lacked any deep understanding of the politics among Texas’ native tribes. With Urrutia’s insight and presence, they believed, they might better be able to tailor their “pitch” to the Hasinai and convince Spanish civil authorities of the prospects of a new missionary effort.

The commander of the presidio guarding Olivares and Espinosa’s missions also saw opportunity in Urrutia. Captain Diego Ramón was almost sixty years old in 1700 – ancient by frontier standards – when he was tapped to command the Rio Grande presidio. His father had been a storied soldier in the slow and steady slog of Spanish conquest up through North Central Mexico13 and Captain Diego Ramón himself bore the battle scars of Spanish settlements efforts in Queretaro, Saltillo, and Monclova.

The Ramóns and their brothers-in-arms had developed a unique fighting style over the previous century as they had moved up into the Northern Mexican plains. There they encountered for the first time in the Spanish American experience mounted opponents, plains Indians who employed the hit-and-run, quick strike tactics that steppe horsemen the world over had used for millennia to terrorize sedentary civilizations.

The Spanish met their opponents on their own terms. They formed compañías volantes like the company that Captain Ramón commanded at the Rio Grande presidio, “flying” companies of light cavalry, armed with leather shield, lance, and carbines14mounted on the high-crowned saddles that in the Old World were reserved only for nobility.15 There was something undeniably romantic about these mounted, New World knights, and even in their first generation a certain lore and mystique began to develop around them.16

That said, the life of soldiers on the New Spanish frontier was far from glamorous. It was, in fact, downright impoverished, with most soldiers going for extended periods without pay. Most presidial officers found ways to supplement their incomes and a certain amount of this kind of “entrepreneurship” was encouraged by Spanish authorities as a benefit of postings on the frontier. Living near sources of foreign trade offered enterprising men the chance to circumvent some of the strict mercantilist policies that governed trade in New Spain, and – if we are to believe later allegations against him – Captain Ramón was among the first to see these opportunities in Texas.

Undoubtedly, Urrutia in his time with the Hasinai in East Texas, had borne witness to the beginnings of illicit trade with French Louisiana. Perhaps this was behind Captain Ramón’s decision to marry his daughter, Antonia, to Urrutia only a short time after his arrival at the Rio Grande missions. Regardless, when the Franciscans came up with their plan to establish new missions in East Texas only a few leagues from the French trading centers of Louisiana, Captain Ramón enthusiastically offered his and his new son-in-law’s assistance.

The Viceroy soon approved an exploratory entrada to gather more information. In 1707, thirty-one soldiers and 150 horses under Captain Ramón and accompanied by Father Espinosa undertook a two-month exploration of modern-day Texas. In addition to returning with new recruits for the Rio Grande missions, the Ramón Expedition also managed to delimit the range of the Coahuiltecan tribes and received from several of these bands – particularly in the future San Antonio area – strong professions of interest for a mission in their territory.

Encouraged, Father Olivares accompanied Father Espinosa on the next entrada in 1709, which identified and named San Pedro Springs, perhaps the most visible outcropping of the remarkable geology underlying the San Antonio region. They broke bread with the natives and remarked once again on the area’s suitability for settlement, noting that “an entire province [would] fit” there.17

Father Olivares returned from the 1709 expedition, conferred with his brethren, and departed for Spain to make the case directly to the crown for a new missionary attempt in Texas. Yet Texas couldn’t have been further from the mind of the King or his Council of the Indies, which was charged with overseeing Spanish activity in the Americas. The Caribbean islands were developing into highly profitable plantation economies, the old empires of the Aztecs and the Incas were producing foods and spices in high demand in Europe, and newly discovered mines in Zacatecas and Durango were spewing forth specie at prodigious rates.

Sensing that they were getting nowhere, the brothers of the College of Queretaro began to scheme. And the experience of the LaSalle expedition had taught them how to get the attention of the civil authorities. In 1711, one of Olivares’s Franciscan brothers sent a letter to the French governor of Louisiana asking for his assistance in reestablishing a mission in East Texas. How was it not outright treason, inviting the French to help settle New Spanish territory? Well, the Franciscans were men of God, and it was the souls of the native population that concerned them more than any secular allegiances. If France was willing to do what Spain was not in the name of eternal salvation, why, it was their moral duty to seek out help from the French!18

The French governor had long wanted to open trade with Northern New Spain, and so he didn’t let the opportunity pass.19 Looking around for a capable agent to send into the Texas territory, his eyes landed on Louis Jucherau de St. Denis, a long-time administrator in French Louisiana who spoke fluent Spanish.20 Departing in early 1714, the St. Denis expedition set off in search of the friar who had so humbly requested their aid, traveling East to West across Texas and down the Camino Real, including through the future site of San Antonio which St. Denis also remarked upon for its beauty.21

They marched right on across the province until – to the feigned surprise of everyone there – they arrived one day at the Rio Grande missions. Captain Ramón immediately arrested St. Denis and then wrote back to the Governor and Viceroy for guidance as to what he should do with the Frenchman.

Which isn’t to say that Captain Ramón didn’t have ideas for what to do with him. Almost as quickly as he had married off his daughter to José de Urrutia after his arrival on the Rio Grande, Captain Ramón married his granddaughter, Manuela Sánchez, to St. Denis.22

This and everything that will happen in future years sure looks like Ramón was in on the scheme, or at the very least, saw quickly how to profit from it. He, after all, was the commander of the last outpost of Spanish Settlement on the Texas frontier. St Denis was soon to be appointed administrator of Natchitoches, the last outpost of French settlement on the Texas frontier.23Nothing stood in the way of these two establishing a lucrative trading operation except their own willingness to enforce New Spain’s mercantile laws against themselves.24

As expected, the St. Denis Expedition served the Franciscans’ ends as well. What years of reasoned entreaties had failed to accomplish, a single French foray did almost overnight. St. Denis’s mere presence in Texas was enough to stimulate the Spanish authorities into action, because the only thing more distasteful to Spanish administrators than the uninhabitable wilds of Texas was the idea of the uninhabitable wilds of Texas belonging to the French.

In 1715, the Council of the Indies authorized the establishment of four missions in East Texas with a presidio to support them. The next year, in 1716, they authorized the establishment of a strategic presidio and mission near that spot on the San Antonio River that the locals called “Yanaguana.”

Captain Ramón won for his son, Domingo, command of the East Texas Presidio. Under pressure from the impatient Franciscans, Domingo Ramón and Father Espinosa departed in 1716 for East Texas. Captain Diego Ramón released his now-grandson-in-law, St. Denis, from his “imprisonment” to serve as guide for the expedition.

This depleted Captain Diego Ramón’s garrison on the Rio Grande, however, and left him without the resources to escort Father Olivares’s expedition to the San Antonio River. Father Olivares would have to await the arrival of the new Governor, Martín de Alarcón, to his frontier posting. A nobleman and a soldier by training, Governor Martín de Alarcón had fought Spain’s enemies from the Iberian Peninsula over to north Africa and throughout her American colonies. He was a company-man, a veteran of the Spanish Royal system that administered a sizeable portion of the world’s landmass. In fine Spanish imperial tradition, however, this meant that the new governor was also exceedingly methodical. He refused to be rushed into departing before he was ready, and that included recruiting civilian settlers to ensure that his would be an expedition of permanent settlement into Texas.

Meanwhile, the four new East Texas missions founded by Espinosa in 1716 went poorly. In two years, they failed to recruit a single convert from the Hasinai, who proved no more welcoming in 1716 than they had been in 1690. Father Espinosa’s account details how relations deteriorated so severely that the Spanish were reduced to living in a near siege-state, fearful to even leave their humble shelters and surviving on crows’ meat.

They sent repeated pleas for help back to Father Olivares, who grew now even more cantankerous in his dealings with Governor Alarcón. Ornery by nature, as 1718 rolled around and the news from the East Texas missions grew increasingly desperate, he attributed Governor Alarcón’s delays first to incompetence and then to malice. Eventually, Father Olivares grew so frustrated with Governor Alarcón that when the Governor finally left in in April 1718, he refused to travel with him.

The Governor also left behind Captain Diego Ramón and José de Urrutia. Their French relative and presumed partner-in-crime, St. Denis, had been caught returning to the Rio Grande missions with “contraband” and sent down to Mexico City to face charges.25 The Governor subsequently sidelined the other “Ramonistas” while formal charges against them wound their way through the Spanish bureaucracy.26

Governor Alarcón’s expedition arrived in the upper San Antonio River basin on April 25, 1718. Father Olivares and his smaller traveling party arrived a few days later. Technically speaking, he had brought with him the actual Mission San Francisco Solano that he had founded back on the Rio Grande eighteen years before, including the vestments, baptismal records, and handful of Coahuiltecan recruits that had nominally called that mission home.

On May 1, 1718, an old aged Coahuiltecan chief on an equally aged horse welcomed Alarcón, Olivares, and the rest of the new arrivals at a spring on the east bank of San Pedro Creek, about a mile south of its headwaters, near the spot that would later become the Knights of Columbus gathering hall. There, Father Olivares and Governor Alarcón held a mass and re-founded Olivares’ mission, renaming it San Antonio de Valero, in honor of the Viceroy of New Spain’s title as the “Marquess of Valero.” It would be almost 100 years before anyone would call it “the Alamo.”

They began construction of a humble chapel, a jacal in truth, of mud, brush, and straw, but not before they started digging irrigation ditches to water the nearby fields. Using their familiarity with the Coahuiltecan language and the few Coahuiltecan converts who had accompanied him,27 Father Olivares set about recruiting amongst the local tribes who’s seasonal rancherías dotted the San Antonio River basin. Or more accurately, we might say that he went about negotiating alliances with bands and family units who might be persuaded to collaborate with the Franciscans. Such alliances would always be fragile and opportunistic, yet on July 8, he celebrated the baptism of the first convert to the San Antonio de Valero mission.

Governor Alarcón had also brought along ten families, some 72 souls, hardened frontier stock primarily drawn from the settlements of Coahuila and Nuevo Leon and lured by the promise of land. Many of them were families of the soldiers Alarcón would leave behind. A few were artisans, blacksmiths and leatherworkers. In recognition of the hazards of the frontier, these first settler families were each given 450 pesos, a few head of livestock, and farming implements to start their new lives.28

On May 5, at a spot about a half mile south of the new Mission Valero, Governor Alarcón formally established the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar, named in honor of the Viceroy’s brother, the Duke de Béxar. Though a presidio in name, no walls or fortifications would ever be built. The San Antonio River to the east and San Pedro Creek to the west afforded a form of natural protection, albeit meager. Still, economic life in early Béxar, as it was known to its first settlers soon came to revolve around the military, the only organization with any money on the lonely frontier. This was Military City, New Spain.

Bexareños immediately began digging irrigation ditches as well, taking advantage of San Antonio’s prodigious springs.29The Governor apportioned lands along these ditches or acequias to each family, though sadly many of these assignments would never be properly “recorded” to the full satisfaction of Spain’s exacting civil code, as we’ll see in the next few chapters.30 There were more important things to worry about at the time, frankly, like getting a crop in the ground, though rodents ended up eating most of their harvest that year. Bexareños survived their first winter on supplies sent up from Coahuila and on the province’s plentiful cattle left behind a generation before.

Within a decade, however, a viable, independent frontier community took root. Families grew, soldiers retired and became citizens, and newcomers trickled up the Camino Real until the population was perhaps as many as 300 people by 1731. Nearly every family had a soldier in it and even those who weren’t soldiers served regularly in the defense of the community, which found itself under near-constant attack from Apaches. Yet shared hardship forged community. The settlement celebrated 47 weddings and baptized 107 children during the first thirteen years of its existence.31 Vecinos, they took to calling each other. Neighbors, one and all.32

So why did San Antonio de Béxar succeed when nearly every other mission in Texas – and there would be more than fifty of them –failed? Although certainly benefitting from the European game of empires, Franciscan zeal, and a few frontier soldiers looking to make a buck, its location offered several other geographic advantages.

First, San Antonio (as I will continue to call the communities comprising early “Béxar” for simplicity’s sake) sat at almost the exact midpoint between the northernmost settlements of New Spain and the trading centers of French Louisiana. Any road from northern New Spain to eastern North American was going to pass through the San Antonio area.

Second, San Antonio lay far enough inland to be largely unaffected by seasonally-swelling rivers, to disease-bearing mosquitos, and man-eating Karankawa Indians. It also lay south of the less easily traversable Hill Country, which was full of even meaner Indians.

Third, San Antonio looked like the northeastern-most outpost of the familiar Northern Mexican plains, which frankly looked quite a lot like Old Spain.33The Spanish knew that they could convert this kind of familiar terrain into a real competitive advantage over the native populations. To the trained eye of a Spanish engineer, San Antonio’s broad, grassy plains crisscrossed by spring-fed creeks was an ideal setting in which to install flood irrigation systems by means of dams and acequias. As the old Pearl Beer slogan reminds us, the San Antonio basin was once fed by 1,100 springs burbling limestone-filtered water and sloping at the near perfect gradient for mils and flood-irrigation.34Additionally, millennia of flash floods coming off the Balcones escarpment – which still visit San Antonio with tragic frequency – had left behind a mineral-rich layer of topsoil, from which San Antonio vecinos could extract two growing seasons a year thanks to San Antonio’s temperate climate.35

Lastly, because San Antonio was the meeting point of multiple ecosystems, it was a sort of no man’s land for the various indigenous group surrounding it. San Antonio was where the impossibly tall Karankawas, the sedentary Hasinai, and the downright fearsome Apaches met to trade, but also where they came to prey on the poor Coahuiltecan tribes in the region. This made the Coahuiltecans – more so than any other population in Texas – much more willing recruits to the mission system, which offered them protection and a reliable food supply.36Complementing this, missionaries like Father Olivares and Father Espinosa had now a generation of experience under their belt dealing with Coahuiltecans in Coahuila proper, making them known quantities to each other and boosting their ability to recruit once they arrived in San Antonio.

And inasmuch as Governor Alarcón in his time would presciently call the new settlement the “rampart, the fortress of all New Spain,”37 it geographic advantages still command the continent today, which is why Joint Base San Antonio is the largest single installation in the U.S. Department of Defense, where U.S. Army North and U.S. Army South (among others) bear responsibility for the security of the Western Hemisphere from their headquarters at Fort Sam Houston.38

Yet precisely because of its geographical location at the cultural crossroads of multiple western empires and many more Native American ones, San Antonio would become the most contested point on the continent for the next one hundred and fifty years of our story.39

Episode 2: Missionary San Antonio

Neither the Franciscan friar nor the Spanish soldier manning the mission San Miguel de Linares de los Adaes had any idea what they were doing there. Though only a few miles away from the French border town of Natchitoches, Louisiana, they were forbidden to interact or trade with that post, and thus relied on a nearly 600-mile long supply line back to Monclova that tenuously connected them to New Spain. They were constantly short of provisions, and after two and a half years, they had been reduced to a state of nature little improved over that of the local Indians they were supposed to win over with their demonstrations of Spanish superiority.

And what in the world could the Spanish King want with this godforsaken patch of forest anyway? There was no gold here, no discernible wealth of any kind. The woods around them could swallow in just a few years what it would take man a decade to clear. The Indians bore them no love, particularly by comparison to the French who had an unnatural knack for getting along with the same Indians that were happy to watch the Spaniards starve. The Franciscan friar couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like the local Indians had grown increasingly hostile of late, such that the friar and the soldier feared now to leave sight of the pathetic compound in which they lived. Indeed, two and a half years in, all the malnourished Spaniards had to show for their occupation of the site was a log storeroom, a chapel, a food plot, and a henhouse.

As the lonely pair of Spaniards went about their routine one June morning in 1719, they probably thought very little of the sudden appearance of a mounted French officer and small detail of seven soldiers from nearby Natchitoches. Although intercourse was illegal with the French, it was a necessity for survival,40 and the Spanish friar and soldier had likely seen them before. It was probably a bit surreal, then, when the French officer ordered his men to detain the Spaniards and confiscate as war booty whatever they might find at the Mission.

It didn’t take them long to inventory everything. The Spaniards had only rags left for clothes. They had been forced to boil some of their leather goods the previous winter for food. The only things of any potential value were the vestments and religious symbols, which the French officer couldn’t in good catholic conscience sell for much. The officer looked around for anything that he might be able to take to justify his little raid. His eyes landed on the henhouse, which he boldly entered. He took the chickens, tied their feet together in a sort of daisy chain, and marched back outside with them slung over his shoulder. He tied off the end of the daisy chain to his saddle and flung the chickens across his horse’s back. He mounted triumphantly and turned to address the Spanish friar, informing him that a state of war now existed between Spain and France, a war that would come to be called the War of the Quadruple Alliance, and the Administrator of Natchitoches –St. Denis from the previous chapter - had informed him that forces just like his were to march on Spanish holdings throughout North America. For too many years France had endured –

Suddenly, one of the hens protested, flapped her wings, and set off her daisy-chained sisters. The flopping string on the horse’s back spooked him and he reared, tossing the French officer to the ground. Fearful for their commander’s well-being, the French soldiers rushed to his aid and tried to calm the spooked horse. Before they had even reached him, the episode had its name – The Chicken War.41

In the commotion, the Spanish friar disappeared into the woods and made his way back to his superior at a nearby Mission in modern-day East Texas. His superior was the godfather of the Franciscan movement in North America, Father Antonio Margil de Jesús. Father Margil had cofounded the College of Queretaro soon after he arrived in the New World in 1683 at the age of twenty-six. He had served personally as a missionary in the Yucatan, in Costa Rica, and in Guatemala, but it would be in Coahuila and Texas where he would leave his most important legacy, and indeed, you can find statues of this great mission-founder all along the mission trail from Monterrey up through Lampazos, Nuevo Leon, and of course in San Antonio.

It was Father Margil de Jesús as Guardian of the College of Queretaro who had sent Father Olivares and Father Espinosa to the Rio Grande in 1700. In 1707, Father Margil de Jesús founded an entirely new missionary college, this one in Zacatecas, to compete in a relatively benign manner with the College of Queretaro, which Father Espinosa would himself rise to lead. Yet so impressed was Father Espinosa by Margil de Jesús’s leadership qualities that it inspired him to author his biography in order to advance his claim for sainthood, for which he remains under consideration to this day.

And it would be Margil de Jesús and Espinosa personally who led the ill-fated second attempt to establish Missions in East Texas in 1716.

Recall that in the previous chapter, Father Olivares, Governor Martin de Alarcón, ten families from the Coahuilan frontier, and a handful of mission Indians from the Rio Grande missions founded Mission San Antonio de Valero and San Antonio de Béxar on the banks of San Pedro Creek and the San Antonio River in May of 1718.

A month and a half later, on June 17, Governor Alarcón continued on to East Texas to rescue the Franciscans besieged there by a hostile native population from whom they had not converted a single soul.

More than disappointed, Governor Alarcón was downright distressed by what he found. The missions in East Texas, he saw, were hopeless. Worse, the prevalence of French goods and the testimony of the Franciscans stationed there confirmed the existence of an elaborate smuggling operation42 amongst the Rio Grande Missions (commanded by Captain Diego Ramón), the East Texas Missions (where Captain Ramón’s son Domingo was posted), and French Natchitoches (where Captain Ramón’s grandson-in-law, St. Denis, held the post of Administrator).

Governor Alarcón was already suspicious of the Ramóns before he had set out on his expedition to found San Antonio, for which reason he had refused to take Captain Ramón along with him. Upon inspection firsthand, Governor Alarcón was firmly convinced of the Ramonistas’ guilt. Just as he began to join his voice to the Franciscans in calling for Ramón’s removal, the Chicken War broke out, forcing the removal of the East Texas missions and presidio and destroying any evidence of illegal activities happening there.

Was it a coincidence that this little Chicken War happened right as all these charges against Ramón were coming to a head back in New Spain? Was it a coincidence that the French foray came out of Natchitoches, a post commanded by St Denis, Captain Ramón’s grandson by marriage, St. Denis? Was it a coincidence that the Indians that began to most menace the East Texas Franciscans were the same Indians amongst whom our old friend, the Spanish Natty Bumpo and Captain Ramón’s son-in-law José de Urrutia had lived for seven years?

The simplest explanation, we are told, is often the correct one. And the simplest explanation for the Chicken War, in my humble opinion, is that it was orchestrated by Captain Ramón and his family to conceal the evidence of their smuggling operation.

We like to think about history in terms of kings and queens and armies and religious movements – but for most people in most of history, life is about trying to put food on the table and do a little bit better than the people around you. And we shouldn’t forget here that the goods the Ramonistas were accused of “smuggling” were not particularly nefarious. Later records will show that cloth was the most commonly smuggled good, followed by tobacco, coffee, and bovine byproducts. The Ramonistas were simply the first in a long line to come of early San Antonians struggling to adapt the realities of the frontier to the non-sensical laws promulgated by distant bureaucrats who were largely indifferent to their plight.

Regardless of its causes, the Chicken War set off a series of events that concentrated people, resources, and Royal attention on San Antonio in a way that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. The East Texas missions were shuttered, and the entire population – soldiers, friars, and what civilians there were in East Texas – was ordered to pull back.

This time, however, and unlike in 1693, they had somewhere to pull back to.

In the year and a half since its founding in May of 1718, San Antonio had done comparatively well. Its Spanish population was stable, and Mission San Antonio de Valero continued to steadily recruit local Coahuiltecan Indians, something that the East Texas missions had never been able to do.

And with the arrival of the East Texas missionaries, San Antonio instantly became an important focal point of Spanish colonial and missionary activity. Three forces drove of Spain’s colonial strategy in North America, often summed up pithily as Gold, Glory, and God. The first and most basic drive – Gold - was to create wealth for the Crown. Spain’s entire imperial system was designed to funnel money back to Spain and back to the Crown itself. This resulted in a highly mercantilist, highly bureaucratic state antagonistic to individual initiative. Indeed, the frontier was one of the few places where men of ambition but without political connections could seek their fortunes, though this often meant to ride on wrong side of the law.

The Crown knew, however, that to grow its tax base it needed tax-payers to prosper and to fill the enormous blank spaces on the maps in their North American colonies.43Conventional wisdom of the period held that “One family is worth 100 soldiers,” an acknowledgement of the value of civilian settlers as well as of Spain’s never-ending difficulty in actually attracting them to the frontier.44

Because the frontier – as you will soon grow tired of hearing me say – was a dangerous place. And the Spanish army – the Glory-driven second force propelling Spain’s colonial advance – often had other priorities than protecting poor Spanish peasants on the edge of civilization.

This is because Spain’s military prestige was tied up in its contests with the other great European powers. Defeating France on a European battlefield, capturing an English Caribbean plantation, or discovering advanced native civilizations from whom they could extract wealth – those were glorious ends! Chasing a bunch of horse Indians through the empty expanses of the North American plains? That was a thankless and glory-less endeavor.

Even more thankless than protecting settlers (and certainly less appreciated) was their charge to protect the Godly Franciscan missionaries, the third leg of Spain’s colonial stool. It’s easy to be cynical about the goals of these Spanish missionaries with three hundred years of distance between us and them, to view them as mere pawns of Spain’s imperial ambitions, or to snicker at their naivete and desire for martyrdom. But that’s not fair. These dudes were believers! They were absolutely obsessed with bringing Christianity to Native Americans and they were absolutely fearless in doing it. And despite their zealotry, they were actual quite methodical, constantly refining their modus operandi over the previous half century as they had led Spain’s imperial advance through Queretaro, Zacatecas, and Coahuila.

The Franciscan strategy was to open relations with native tribes first with gifts, trinkets really, but demonstrations of the benefits of association with Spanish society and of course of the Christian faith. They would then make a concerted effort to learn the language of the locals, something they always did with remarkable speed and which of course helped them make their “pitch” in the natives’ tongue. Often after some form of negotiation with specific bands that they would sometimes play against each other, the Franciscans would secure expressions of interest from the natives for the establishment of a mission. With the “petitions” of the natives in-hand, their superiors and the civil authorities invariably found it hard to stand in the way of the spread of the King’s Faith; his putative subjects were, after all, requesting it. The mission would be authorized and, as the name suggests, the understanding was that these would be temporary enterprises until enough locals could be converted to the Faith and turned into regular tax-paying subjects of the king.

In fairness, it should be noted that this was not always a mutually agreeable or entirely voluntary arrangement with the locals. When interest levels among the locals was “low” shall we say, more forceful measures were occasionally employed. As one reverend father put it: “There are some Indians who are hungry and accepting of the faith through the enticement of food…and then there are those who require the King’s weapons to convince them of the benefits of civil society.”45

In this, we see the Faith’s dependence on the military to perform their work; and if we think about it just a little, we can see too why the Crown might have liked having the missionaries along with military to keep them in check. Yet we can also understand why they each would have resented the presence of the other. Recall that in both the 1691 expedition which named San Antonio and the 1718 expedition which founded it, the secular and religious leaders not only refused to talk to each other, they refused to even travel together. It’s almost like the set up to a bad sitcom, like pairing the Marine Corps with the Peace Corps and making them share bunk beds. Which is actually how modern American foreign policy works, so maybe this shouldn’t seem that unfamiliar to us.

As a result of the Chicken War, 1719 found both Father Margil de Jesús and Father Espinosa in San Antonio, and both champing at the bit to get back to mission-founding. The advantages of San Antonio over East Texas were immediately apparent to both, as was the fact that the region could support a much larger population than Mission Valero could serve by itself. Following the Franciscan playbook, Margil de Jesús secured expressions of interest in a mission from the Pampopa, Pastía, and Sulujam bands of Coahuiltecans, who had refused to settle down with the Payaya bands at Mission Valero but who nevertheless sought the benefits of association with the friars.46 Margil de Jesús then petitioned the new Governor of Coahuila, the Marquess de San Miguel de Aguayo, to found a second mission in the San Antonio area. He appealed to the region’s bountifulness, he pointed to the abundance of missionary talent in San Antonio and the early, quick success of the Mission Valero; and he cited the need for his College of Zacatecas no less than the College of Queretaro to have a midway point to supply any future attempts to proselytize in East Texas.47

Luckily for Father Margil de Jesús, the importance of San Antonio was becoming apparent as far away as Spain. As a condition of his appointment to the governorship, the Marquess was required to reinforce San Antonio with as many missionaries, soldiers, and settlers as he could. The Marquess, to be fair, needed little convincing. He was a colonizer and an imperialist at heart and burned with ambition to make his mark on the New World. He had twice made proposals to lead expeditions to settle the northern extremities of New Spain at his own expense. This posed no particular strain on his finances. He had, in fact, come to the New World to manage one of his family’s estates, a quaint little spread that encompassed about half the state of modern Coahuila. Indeed, when he was appointed Governor and Captain General of Texas in 1719, it was in no small part due to his repeated offers to make available his own ample resources for the benefit of the office.48

Given this background, Father Margil de Jesús’s proposal for a second mission in San Antonio was a no-brainer, and the Marquess assented in February 1720.It probably didn’t hurt that Father Margil de Jesús offered to name the mission after the Marquess.49

The Marquess de Aguayo undertook the reinforcement of San Antonio with greater zeal than anyone could have expected. He not only personally deployed the resources necessary to make the settlement of Texas a success, he actively sought firsthand knowledge of the province from the most experienced Spaniard on the frontier: José de Urrutia. Urrutia, recall, who had gone native as a fifteen-year-old boy and risen to command the armies of the Hasinai against the Apaches. Since his return to New Spain in 1700 or 1701, he had been an invaluable source of information about Texas tribes, and had been advising the Marquess since 1715. As the son-in-law to Captain Ramón, this also put the Ramóns back in government favor and secured their support for the Marquess’s expedition.

When the Marquess de Aguayo crossed the Rio Grande on March 20, 1721 at the head of a 500-man expedition, he marched into Texas with more support than any European who had ever preceded him.

He arrived in San Antonio on April 4th and a few days later, he and Father Margil de Jesús founded the Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo about 5 miles south of the Mission Valero, which had moved to the future site of La Villita in 1719. Founded on the East Bank of the San Antonio River, Mission San José would move to the west bank in 1727 and to its final location in 1740. By ultimately selecting a site downstream of the confluence of the San Pedro and San Antonio Rivers and with slightly more advantageous topography, the mission San José would be blessed from the start with fertile soil, with good agricultural yields, with by the energies and experience of Father Margil de Jesús.

The Marquess Aguayo’s 1721-22 expedition would leave behind 219 soldiers, 10 missions, and several dozen civilian settlers throughout Texas. Spain’s control of Texas would never be seriously contested again by external powers. The Marquess would also leave behind thousands of livestock, which he would drive West to East across almost all of Texas’s river, marking it as one of the first and assuredly one of the most difficult cattle drives in Texas’s history. Others had come before and seeded the range, but the Marquess would deliberately leave behind some 2,800 horses, 4,800 cattle, and 6,400 sheep and goats.50

On his return trip through San Antonio in March 1722, he would attempt to found one more mission in San Antonio, the Mission San Francisco Xavier de Nájera, and though the mission would be abandoned within a few years, its site and the irrigation ditch that fed it would both be adopted by a later mission founded there nine years later.

Yet with all this talk of missions and missionaries, we shouldn’t forget that 100 or more civilian settlers were trying to make San Antonio home. It wasn’t easy. Early harvests were ruined by rodents, flash floods destroyed both of Mission Valero’s first two locations, and in 1721, a fire ravaged many of the humble jacales which the initial settlers had built. The Marquess took the opportunity presented by the fire to relocate the San Antonio de Béxar presidio and its neighboring civilian vecinos to a more advantageous spot a bit further south, between San Pedro Creek and the San Antonio River.51 There, at a spot that would one day boast the city hall of the seventh largest city in the United States, he ordered the construction of a plaza, the Plaza de Armas, around which were built storerooms, barracks, small houses, and a humble residence for the presidial commander.

It was good that the Marquess was focused on the presidio and the defense of the tenuous settlement, because the Apaches had “discovered” the new settlement, so to speak. In August of 1723, the Apaches welcomed the settlers of San Antonio to the region after their fashion by launching a nighttime raid and stealing eighty of the presidio’s horses.

The fifty or so presidial soldiers now stationed in the San Antonio were no novices to frontier warfare. They were veterans of the wars of the northern New Spanish highlands, and they had learned the importance of attack as a part of any strategy of defense. They set out almost immediately after the Apache raiders, tracking and following them 338 miles up into the Hill Country where they ambushed them, killed 34 warriors, captured 120 horses, and returned with 20 women and children as – let’s call them what they were – hostages.52

The presence of the 20 hostages back in San Antonio infuriated the friars. For one, by simply being Apaches they terrified the local Coahuiltecans that the friars were trying to convert. Two, the act of taking hostages contradicted the friars’ message of peace that they saw as critical to their success in being able to recruit amongst the local natives.

Though the hostage episode eventually led to unceasing complaints by the friars and the ultimate removal of the presidial commander, it may also have contributed to the next decade of peace that San Antonio enjoyed. The Apaches seemed to have been chastened by the counterattack and fearful for the hostages’ safety. And even when the Apaches raided again in 1726 and killed 2 in 1730, they were relatively minor convulsions during a comparatively peaceful period that allowed San Antonians to sink roots on the New Spanish frontier.

A tour by a royal inspector in 1724 made official what had already become true in-fact: San Antonio had become the focal point of Spanish activity in New Spanish Texas. The Royal Inspector ordered all resources allocated in East Texas pulled back to San Antonio, and he charged the San Antonio presidio there with protection of the entire line from Louisiana to the Rio Grande.

Father Espinosa – now back in Queretaro as the director of the Franciscan college there –read the political tea leaves and saw his opportunity to go all-in on San Antonio. He had also seen the success of Father Margil de Jesús and Father Olivares over the previous few years, each of whom now counted several hundred “converts” among their numbers.53

In early 1731, Father Espinosa stepped down from the Guardianship of his College – as his mentor Father Margil de Jesús had done ten years before – to go back into the trenches, and to personally lead the re-establishment of the East Texas missions in San Antonio.

On March 5, 1731, Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepción de Acuna, or “Mission Concepción” was formally reestablished by Father Espinosa near the failed Mission Xavier de Nájera, just below where Alazán, Leon, and San Pedro Creeks join the San Antonio River. The work already performed on the previous mission’s irrigation ditch – which would become known as the Concepción Pajalache ditch – as well as its protected location between several of the other missions would give it an important leg-up, and almost from the beginning it would prove to be among the most consistently successful of the San Antonio missions.

On that same day, Espinosa re-founded another of his East Texas missions, this the Mission San Juan Capistrano or Mission San Juan, about 7 miles downstream from Mission Valero. Mission San Juan had also been re-founded in East Texas in 1721, but floundered there again, for all the same reasons. Though it would fare better in San Antonio than it ever did in East Texas, its lands would always be a bit pinched between Mission San José’s and Mission Espada’s, without enough space to support its herds or its crops.

Lastly, also on March 5, 1731, Mission San Francisco de los Tejas, the original Spanish mission in Texas, was re-established, this time in San Antonio and this time by the name San Francisco de la Espada, known today as “Mission Espada. “Originally founded in East Texas in 1690, it had been abandoned three years later and reestablished in 1721 near Barton Springs in Austin, before finding its final home at a spot just a mile or so downriver from Mission San Juan. Like all the missions, it was granted substantial ranch lands south of San Antonio in the area of modern-day Floresville. Yet as the southernmost mission with the easiest access to its ranch lands, the Espada mission would take a more active interest in ranching than any other mission and would in many respects be the incubator for many of the ranching techniques that would soon spread throughout the San Antonio area.54

All in all, San Antonio was the great success story of the Franciscan missionary system in New Spain and the culmination of the life’s work of men like Father Olivares, Father Margil de Jesús, and Father Espinosa.

That said, their moment in San Antonio’s sunshine was brief. Father Olivares broke his leg only a few months after founding Mission Valero, and by 1720 he had returned to Queretaro where he died in 1722, a veteran of 57 years of missionary work in the Americas. That same year, Father Margil de Jesús returned to his college in Zacatecas and would die just four years later in 1726. And in late 1731, Father Espinosa returned to Queretaro to work on his great, multivolume chronicle of these Franciscan glory years, which is still today the most valuable historical resource of the period.

Yet in truth, the legacy of the great mission founders, for all their personal bravery and religious zeal, was always more transient than the people who stayed in San Antonio. And from nothing just thirteen years prior, by 1731, San Antonio boasted some 50 soldiers, perhaps twice as many civilians, and several hundred mission Indians.

Almost all the citizens were farmers and stock raisers; there was some trade to be had with the presidio; and a few had started trading in earnest with the native populations and, more profitably albeit illegally, with the French in Louisiana.

And the most prominent of these merchants remained the Ramonistas, who did not miss a step after Captain Diego Ramón’s death in 1724 and did not fail to capitalize on the changes brought about by their little Chicken War. St. Denis, the grandson-in-law of Captain Ramón, was back in Louisiana and more prominent than ever; Diego Ramón, Jr. had assumed the command of the Rio Grande presidios after his father’s death. And in 1733 Captain Ramón’s son-in-law, our Spanish Leatherstocking José de Urrutia would be appointed to the command of the San Antonio presidio. Illicit as their activities may have been, they were establishing the crucial trade routes that would allow San Antonio to survive for the next 100 years.

Don’t be fooled, San Antonio in 1731 was no quaint colonial town: its presidio had no walls, its town had no government, its inhabitants had no permanent housing to speak of. Still, Spanish culture had finally taken fragile root in Texas, and the authorities in Mexico City and Spain were not going to let it wither away.

Episode 3: The Canary Islanders

On March 8, 1731, a band of fifty-six men, women, and children made camp on the Medina River.55 They had been traveling now for the better part of a year, having left their homes in the Canary Islands on March 27, 1730. The Spanish King had promised to provide them everything they might need for the entire first year of their lives in their new homes, down to handkerchiefs and socks. And the Crown had promised to furnish each family a yoke of oxen, five breeding cows and a bull, five mares and a stallion, and farming implements, as well as a community mill and a proper church for them in the center of their new town. When that still wasn’t enough, these hard-trading Canary Islanders finally extracted as well promises of land, the right to form their own government, and titles of minor nobility to each head of household.

Still, eleven months into the journey, it felt like meager recompense for all that they had had to endure. Four of their fellow travelers had died along the way. One had tried to kill himself. They landed first in Havana, disembarked briefly, then boarded another ship for Veracruz, from which they had moved overland – walking, mostly, but a few on burros or draft animals – to Mexico City, San Luis Potosi, Monterrey, Saltillo, and Monclova. They added to their numbers when a few young couples paired off, a child was born, and two other Canary Islanders joined along the way. Of course, the extra bodies didn’t make the trek any easier.

As they neared the end of their journey, the Canary Islanders, or Isleños as they were called, couldn’t help but feel that the whole enterprise might simply have been a way for the Crown to get rid of them. They had a reputation as being self-important and difficult to govern. Yet to get the Crown’s attention, they had to be. The Canary Islands lie 1,000 miles southwest of the Iberian Peninsula and some 62 miles off the coast of Northwest Africa, at approximately the same latitude as San Antonio. Originally conquered in the 1400’s and colonized by Spaniards who interbred with the indigenous population, the island became a critical waystation in the early exploration in the Americas. The islands’ volcanic soil proved particularly well-suited to sugar plantations and the islands created spectacular wealth for the first two centuries of Spanish rule, yet by the 18th century, the soil had played out and Caribbean sugar plantations worked by slave labor began to outcompete the Isleños’ farms in almost every respect. The islands were, by the 1700’s, overpopulated, and many of the inhabitants descended into poverty. Except for the thin layer of largely absentee nobility, most Canary Islanders or “Isleños” lived a hard-scrabble life and were becoming increasingly vocal about it. As early as 1719, the Marquess de Aguayo, the Governor of Texas at the time and founder of Mission San José, had advocated settling some 200 Isleño families in San Antonio,56 an idea further endorsed five years later by the royal inspector who had argued for San Antonio to become the principal Spanish settlement on the northern frontier.

The viceroy, the Council of the Indies, and the King Himself agreed on the need to firm up their tenuous foothold in Texas. “One family is worth 100 soldiers,” the conventional wisdom held in promoting the virtues of civilian and especially Isleño relocation.57 And so the Crown decided that the best thing to do with these irascible Isleños was to ship them to the New World.

Most Canary Islanders, it seemed, were less enthusiastic about the idea. Despite the earlier goal of recruiting 200 families, the Crown was lucky in the end to recruit 10, and these only after the certain enticements discussed earlier were offered.

Yet these 10 families and a few other hangers-on had accepted the offer and now they had made the journey halfway around the world. They set up camp on March 8, 1731 on the banks of the Medina River amidst a great but fertile expanse of apparent emptiness. In the daytime, it had seemed so full of opportunity. At night, it was more ominous somehow, impossibly large and a little barbarous. What they felt most, however, was excitement at knowing that their new homes lie just over the row of hills before them.

The land was not empty, however. It had seen them coming and decided to greet them in fine frontier fashion. That night, as the moon rose and the travelers fell asleep, an Apache war party on their last raid of the Spring materialized out of the darkness with horrific cries. The Isleños had never seen anything like these fearsome mounted indios barbaros. Whipping and whooping their way through the camp on their horses, the Isleños scrambled for their families and their weapons. Dressed in tanned buffalo hides, their hair long and greased and held back with a headband, the Apaches then seemed to disappear as suddenly as they had appeared, along with many of the Isleños’ horses and valuables.

Once the Apaches rode off, the Isleños took stock of what had happened. No one was killed or seriously injured, but the Isleños were left with a horrible sense of helplessness, and presumably spent a rather sleepless night wondering what they had gotten themselves in to.

On the morning of March 9 some fifty-six canary islanders – fifteen families and four bachelors – stumbled into San Antonio de Béxar. They were no more encouraged by what they saw in the light of day. San Antonio de Béxar in 1731 was nothing more than a conglomeration of friars, converted Indians, soldiers, and their families. Perhaps the only stone buildings were the presidial commander’s house, a barracks, and a few storerooms at each of the missions – most of the great buildings wouldn’t be built until the next decade. The town had no walls, no government, and no real organization to speak of. The one thing the community had in abundance was land, but most of the best land had already been assigned to the original vecinos and to the missions, three of which had rushed to stake out their lands along the San Antonio River just a few days earlier.

The presidial commander – the de facto Royal authority in San Antonio – offered to house the Isleños in the presidio’s meager buildings while he decided what to do with them. He had been tasked with protecting this rather costly new investment by the Crown – the total price of the Isleño colonization effort ran to 80,000 pesos.58 Assigning them lands outside of town would have made it that much more difficult to protect them and would have made them almost entirely dependent on the presidio for food the first year while they plowed their fields and laid out their own irrigation ditches. On the other hand, lots were still available from those lands reserved for the original settlers.59

The presidial commander had another reason to help these new arrivals. He saw an opportunity to make allies of the Isleños in his never-ending competition with the nearby missions, and to build up the economic base of the presidio by having them near.

Recall that the presidio was not a proper “fort” in the way it is often translated. There was in fact no single building to which “presidio” referred. The presidio referred collectively to all soldiers stationed in San Antonio, their buildings around the Plaza de Armas, and their assorted projects and patrols designed to tame the province and make it more suitable for settlement. All these things – soldiers, buildings, and patrols – required money and supplies, which meant that the presidio had a substantial budget. For this reason, it was the primary driver of economic life in San Antonio for the first half century of its existence, and locals would constantly compete to fill its lucrative supply contracts.60The Isleños understood this advantage immediately and jumped at the opportunity to establish themselves nearby.

Additionally, by settling on the original vecinos’ town lots, the Isleños could take advantage of the already-operating San Pedro acequia. Within a few months, the Isleños were able to get their first crop in the ground.

Their homes secured, the Isleños then set about to do what the original vecinos had never had time to: form a proper town.

In strict accordance with the Law of the Indies, they surveyed and staked out their town around a new plaza adjacent to the presidio’s Plaza de Armas. They called theirs the Plaza de las Islas, in honor of their homeland. Their town they called San Fernando, in honor of the namesake of the heir apparent to the Spanish throne which had underwritten their journey. On July 2, 1731, they selected the site for San Fernando church, from whose future dome all distances in San Antonio would be measured.

On August 1, the presidial commander convened the first meeting of the ayuntamiento of San Fernando. This city council – often called colloquially the cabildo as well – was composed of five regidores, or councilmen, and the alcalde, often rendered as mayor though we might do better to call him the County Judge, the modern-day Texas descendant of the alcalde’s administrative and judicial authority. The two Isleños who could read and write were, logically, made county clerk and sheriff (the secretario del consejo and alguacil, respectively) and the tax-collector (the mayordomo) were soon appointed as well. The first mayordomo, Antonio Rodríguez, had significant experience back in the Canary Islands as an acequiero, or irrigation system manager, and so soon assumed supervision of the civilian acequias and many other early construction projects in the villa.61

The names of these first city fathers: Leal, Curbelo, Travieso, Arocha, and others will appear prominently and without interruption throughout our story. Conspicuously absent from this first city council, however, were any of the original vecinos. At first, the vecinos were content to simply mock the Isleños for their claims of nobility, their lack of experience with horses,62 and their unfamiliarity with frontier traditions such as militia service. And though it peeved them when these newcomers received some of the last town lots on the San Pedro acequia – which they had dug! –they had tolerated it in the name of community-building.

But when this new “aristocracy” was suddenly granted a right to rule over them without their consent, they bucked.63They went straight to the viceroy, bypassing the presidial commander, whom they increasingly perceived as in cahoots with the Isleños, and demanded the right to be represented on the ayuntamiento. The viceroy agreed with them, but San Antonio’s distance from Mexico City made it an easy order for the Isleños to ignore.

Conflict between the original vecinos and these new Isleños dominated San Antonio politics for the next fourteen years. Indeed, an etymological war ensued as well between as to who were the real “founders” of the community. For the first decade, the Isleño faction largely won out, in spite of the fact that they were never more than 20% of the local population. In part they won out simply because they were so determined to make this New World the place they had been promised it could be. This is why they had formed a town government, to create some order on the disorderly frontier. They imposed obligations on all property-holders to improve their land, under penalty of forfeiture.64 They required communal care of the acequias, that all arable land be tilled, and that permanent, stone structures be constructed to replace the shoddy jacales that predominated in the town. In 1733 they petitioned and were granted rights to essentially all the San Antonio River’s flows not already appropriated to the missions, which they began to distribute to those who could develop them.

The Isleños were the kind of settlers that civilian San Antonio had never known. They were aggressive and effective political players, using their control over the community’s water to impose control.65They complained about the vecinos’ livestock wandering into their fields. When they were chastised for injuring those vecinos’ loose livestock, they retaliated by stealing mission livestock. When the friars tried to bring a cause of action against the Isleños, the Isleños countersued the friars for refusing to share their supply of cheap Indian labor while monopolizing all the best lands, and eventually began maneuvering to have the missions disbanded entirely.

The Isleños battle with the missions became particularly heated after 1736, when a Canary Islander took office as governor of Texas and made San Antonio his residence. Governor Franquis de Lugo made no secret of his antipathy toward the friars, whom he called “pimps” “sons of Satan” and cabrones, which I will assume our readers do not need translated.66

Isleño frustration with the missions arose from three sources. First, the missions held some of the most fertile lands in the area, and they were not taking advantage of them. Much of the land sat untilled and idle, something that offended the ambitious Isleños. Second, the missions had an effective monopoly on the supplying the presidio with food. The presidio was under orders to buy as much as they could from the missions,67 since doing so more or less kept precious specie in the Crown’s coffers. Yet the presidio-mission trade alliance deprived the Isleños of the only legitimate local market for their goods. And third, the missions refused to allow their charges to be hired out by the Isleños. Labor was scarce on the frontier, and the fact that the missions could use Indian labor to produce their food – and the Isleños couldn’t – only further advantaged them unfairly in the eyes of the Isleños.

The friars’ position was always well-articulated and well-defended in San Antonio by their leader during this critical period between 1731 and 1745. Born and trained in Spain, Father Benito Fernández de Santa Ana was only twenty-four years old when he arrived in San Antonio in 1731. He eventually rose to the post of President of the Queretaran missions in San Antonio, which he oversaw from his seat at Mission Concepción. And he never lost sight of his charge to protect the lands that had been assigned to his missions, to protect his market in the presidio, and to protect his converts from exploitation by less Godly men-of-the-world.

The Isleño Governor Lugo, however, began to stick his thumb on the scales of the Isleño-mission battles. He encouraged the Isleños to build a bridge across the horseshoe bend of the San Antonio River by which they began to turn out livestock on untilled Valero lands. He pulled the presidial soldiers stationed at each mission, which led to a decrease in numbers and discipline there.68

Then a horrific smallpox epidemic swept through the missions. The small pox epidemic of 1738-9 killed 655 of the 837 of the mission Indians in the San Antonio area.69 That’s a staggering number on two counts: one, as a demonstration of the spectacular success that the San Antonio missions were having in converting natives to the Faith; two, it’s because of the magnitude of the devastation. One-third of the Indians at San José and one-half of those at Concepción died. Valero, San Juan, and Espada were almost entirely depopulated.

What was a tragedy for the missions was a clear opportunity for the Isleños. In 1739, they sent a delegation to Mexico City to petition for the right to sell produce to the presidio and to employ mission Indian labor.70

Father Fernandez, strategically, did not oppose them. Like many of San Antonio’s leaders over the years, he was fundamentally a pragmatist and he was acutely aware of his vulnerability at this moment. Indeed, his missions – depopulated as they were – were in real danger of being disbanded, and the presidio would have been in danger starvation that year had he insisted on retaining his prerogative to feed it.

The Viceroy assented to the Isleños’ requests, but in a roundabout and rather politically elegant fashion.71 First, he prohibited the missions from producing more than they could consume. Note that this was not quite what the Isleños had wanted. They wanted an exclusive right to supply the presidio themselves. The Viceroy struck down the mission monopoly on supplying the presidio, but effectively opened it up to all of San Antonio, Isleño and vecino alike. Thus, in one act, he fed the presidio, appeased the Isleños, and improved the lot of the original vecinos.

Second, the Viceroy allowed for the hiring of the Mission Indians by locals. As we have seen, however, the missions were virtually depopulated of Indians at this point, so in truth this concession had no real impact, even as it looked like acquiescence to a long-held Isleño demand.

Third, and in direct defiance of other Isleño demands, the Viceroy refused to disband the missions. On the contrary, he reaffirmed their importance to the Royal colonial vision and offered them critical support in rebuilding, ensuring that a local counterweight would remain to growing Isleño power.

The elegance of the Viceroy’s decree of 1739 and its sensitivity to local political dynamics suggests the influence of someone like Father Fernandez. And indeed, it was Father Fernandez who benefitted most from the decree of 1739. It bought him immense political credibility as a fair-minded community leader.

And perhaps Father Fernandez that the political tides were starting to turn against the Isleños. By 1741, their compatriot Governor Lugo had long since been replaced and a new governor with little sympathy for them had taken office. He viewed the Isleños as “more given to prejudice than to progress.”72 In contrast, he spoke highly of the missions and their charges, which, under Father Fernandez’s guidance, had recovered remarkably quickly in the two years since the smallpox epidemic. The new governor was also sympathetic to the original vecinos’ long ignored complaints about the Isleños, chief among them being the Isleños ongoing refusal to allow vecinos on the city council. By contrast, the Isleño never-ending grievances finally exasperated whatever sympathy royal authorities had for the hardship of their initial voyage. One viceregal official at the time wrote: “These [Isleño] families…complain against the reverend fathers…the presidial captain, and about the established families…so that it seems they want to be left in sole and undisputed possession of the province. Perhaps even then they won’t find enough room.”73

In 1744, with the missions fully recovered from the 1738-9 smallpox epidemic and boasting an agricultural surplus, the opponents of the Isleños took the opportunity to strike them a blow. On January 4, 1745, the Viceroy’s decree of 1739 was rescinded and the mission-presidio trade monopoly was reinstated.74

The political dynamic had changed, however, and this time it wasn’t just Isleños who got fired up. Vecino families had also started to benefit from the opening of presidial trade. Further, fourteen years of trading together, living together, and well sleeping together had blurred the lines between vecinos and Isleños. Of the thirty marriages recorded in San Fernando Church between 1742 and 1760, only 5 would be “pure” Isleños marriages.75 Some of the Isleños who had originally opposed any sort of intermixing with the vecinos had in fact become the most active at intermarrying with them.76

Compradazgo, intermarriage, and the propensity of elites to absorb up-and-comers had, by 1745, created a more blended society in San Antonio. Proximity almost always trumps prejudice. Even the Isleños began to call themselves vecinos. To be sure, the Isleños held on to their traditions and to their identity, of course, and do so even to this day in the Canary Islanders Descendants Association. And there would always be an advantage to be had in San Antonio society by being able to claim Isleños descent: “Canary islander” would always have a faint ring of nobility to it and a distinct ring of Spanish pure-bloodedness, even as the Royal authorities and proper Spaniards would only ever look down on them as provincial and backward.

By 1745, it was clear to San Antonio’s various communities that none of them were going away. The missions declared their permanence in the magnificent buildings they began to erect. The presidio continued to be the center of economic life and de facto governor of the province. The original vecinos would embrace their frontier identity and pass their fierce independence and self-reliance into the local bloodlines. And the Isleños’ ayuntamiento and its political control over the community became a fact of life.

The groups came together in 1745 to negotiate a more formal compromise, brokered by Father Fernandez, using the political capital he had won in 1739, and guaranteed by the presidial commander Toribio de Urrutia. Toribio de Urrutia had unique credibility at this moment as well, not only because he was son of José de Urrutia, that Spanish Leatherstocking from previous episodes and the San Antonio presidial commander from 1733 to 1741, but also because he had just fended off another horrific Apache attack on June 30, 1745. It’s a spectacular moment of collaboration that we’ll explore in more detail in the next chapter, and it served as motivation for the bickering interest groups to seek common ground.

The Compromise of August 14, 1745, opened city council positions to full participation by any local property-owner, Isleño or otherwise. Landowners were required to fence their land, an obvious solution to the never-ending disputes arising from stray livestock. Isleños and vecinos abandoned their attempts to hire mission Indians but trade with the presidio was opened up, even as it was instructed to retain a preference for certain mission goods. In exchange, the missions made available some of the much-coveted farmland they had been holding in reserve on the East bank of the horseshoe bend of the San Antonio River.77

Despite the reasonableness and success of this compromise, we shouldn’t make of this some great kumbaya moment from which a unified, San Antonio identity emerges. On the contrary, what San Antonio was in 1745 was, in fact, many San Antonios. There was the Villa de Béxar of the old vecinos, the Villa de San Fernando of the new Isleños, the Presidio de Béxar, the College of Queretaro’s old mission Valero, the College of Zacatecas’s Mission San José, and the relocated East Texas missions of Concepción, San Juan, and Espada, each relatively self-governing and in many respects self-contained. Indeed, you can still see the indirect legacy of these “many San Antonios” today in San Antonio’s seventeen some odd school districts. Yet this diversity gave early San Antonio its resiliency. When the missions struggled, as in the smallpox epidemic of 1738, the town could still flourish. When immigration stagnated, the presidio could be reinforced. And when the presidio was undermanned, the townsfolk and even the mission Indians could take up the defense of the community.

For this and other reasons, San Antonio was starting to look different than other towns in New Spain. And its political institutions took on a character of their own as well. Indeed, if San Antonio was known for anything during the years of Spanish rule, it was known for its political fractiousness, which was just as often misread as political dysfunctionality.78 Royal and viceregal authorities didn’t know what to make of San Antonians’ never-ending political disputes or the emergence of democratic institutions. In most other New Spanish frontier towns, a city council position was held for life, and vacancies were filled by appointment or bequeathed to an heir. Yet within two decades of the formation of the San Fernando ayuntamiento, regidores and alcaldes were rolling off and stepping down with their successor determined by annual, open elections.

Again, this was partly driven by San Antonio’s isolation. Elections were a practical way to fill a vacancy on the frontier, when appointments could be delayed for months by the long distances involved. But they also provided a healthy venue for resolving the various political controversies which consumed San Antonio in its first decades, helping make of politics a game, rather than a tool of compulsion by the well-connected. And it played to two pronounced traits shared by both the original vecinos and the new Isleños: a fierce independence and a determination to better their lot in this world.

Episode 4: Building San Antonio

By 1745, around 1,000 souls called the San Antonio presidio, missions, and villas home. San Antonio’s success as a settlement made it the model for future Spanish colonization efforts, such as those of José Escandon which would settle modern day Tamaulipas, Laredo, and Goliad. It also taught Spanish authorities what not to do. Indeed, even before the Isleños had arrived in San Antonio, the viceroy scrapped plans to send another 400 Canary Island families because of the expense. And frankly, by 1745, it was unnecessary. The natural increase of San Antonio through military retirements, Indian conversions, and intermarriages during the years 1731-1745 was far larger than the subsidized migrations of Spaniards from Spain.

San Antonio’s permanence began to assert itself in a massive building campaign overtaken over the next half century. The late Spanish Baroque architecture of this 18th century building campaign remains as striking today as it was when it was built. Raw yet precise, its stone-cut beauty sings through across centuries. And it sings even louder when we appreciate the material and logistical constraints under which these buildings were constructed. Over an approximate fifty-year period, some one million metric tons of primarily limestone would be moved around the San Antonio countryside79by man and beast to shelter themselves, honor God, and give expression to man’s artistic drive. And they did it all with only hand tools.80

Mission Espada, the original Texas mission founded in East Texas in 1690 before being relocated to San Antonio in 1731, today sits just south of Loop 410 in a predominantly rural area that does not look terribly dissimilar to how it must have looked when it was built. Espada was never be a large mission community, but it did consistently well with what it had. It’s population by the 1750’s was probably around 100 converts, having recovered quickly – like the other missions – from the smallpox epidemic of 1738.

Completed in 1745, Espada’s church was intended as the sacristy of a much larger church that was never built. Yet Espada has been taken up as a symbol, not just of the missions but of San Antonio generally. You see it often on San Antonio’s marketing materials, and its distinctive bell gables might very well have been the inspiration for the US army’s reconstruction of the Alamo when they added its iconic hump. It serves, in fact, as the inspiration for this book’s cover! There’s a comforting beauty to Espada’s humble construction marked by exotic flourishes like its Moorish door, a reminder of the many different cultural traditions to which Imperial Spain was heir.

Like most Franciscan churches, Espada is cruciform-shaped, its walls plastered white, its ceiling made of exposed beams. In a spectacular manipulation of solar geometry, every October 4th (the feast day of Saint Francis, the namesake of the mission), the sun rises perfectly through the small window above that Moorish door and lights the rear wall behind the altar.81

The church and the adjacent convent comprised the west wall of the original enclosed compound. The ruins of the granary still mark the south wall, and along the north and east walls stood the living quarters for the mission Indians. Outside the walls were lime kilns82 and a sugar mill for which Espada was locally known, where they made cane syrup and brown sugar bars, all guarded by a swivel-cannon atop a bastion at the southeast corner of the quadrangle.83

But much of what Espada became known for and perhaps its most important contribution to the region lies 23 miles down the San Antonio River to the Southeast at its ranch. Founded in 1750 near the future town of Floresville, Rancho de las Cabras at its peak would boast over 4,000 head of sheep, 145 horses, eleven mules, nine donkeys, and 1,262 head of cattle. Rancho de las Cabras provided meat, wool, and other animal products to the mission inhabitants and – occasionally, albeit illegally– cash when its stock was sold to foreign markets.

There is not much left today of the hexagon-shaped compound that existed two hundred fifty years ago at Rancho de las Cabras. In its day, however, it had its own chapel, living quarters, twelve-foot-high walls, bastions, and cannons. It was really a mini-mission, big enough to house two dozen residents. These residents were primarily vaqueros – “cow-boys” as it would later be translated into English – and developed many of the techniques that we would come to identify with Texas’s ranching culture, which would of course eventually spread to nearly half of the North American continent.84

And all the men working here at the Rancho de las Cabras, it seems, were Native Americans. Which means that the first Texas cowboys might, in fact, have been Indians. And if Rancho de las Cabras ran like the other mission ranchos (and there is every reason to believe it was), there was no reverend overseer onsite.85These were entirely Indian-led operations, which says something about the mission system and the relationship of the converts to the Franciscan fathers.

Most of Espada’s converts worked back at the mission raising crops on the mission’s lands. San Antonio’s temperate climate offered these earliest settlers the benefit of two growing seasons,86 a critical means of diversification in a time and place where crop failures were common and rodents could just as easily get what the insects failed to. To make San Antonio’s many days of sunshine work in their favor, however, the missionaries needed to harness the region’s water, and this was achieved by constructing irrigation systems that make the solar geometry of Mission Espada look like a mere trick.

Before the mission-inhabitants built walls, before they built churches, before they built houses, the first thing they did was dig the canals or acequias that watered their crops.87 Espada’s irrigation system required the construction of a 131-foot-wide weir dam to raise the San Antonio River into its canals. The Espada dam remains the oldest continuously operating dam north of the Rio Grande,88 having been started in 1731 and completed in its current form by 1745.It still waters some of the 3,500 original acres that its six miles of canals bordered. A part of this irrigation system relied on the Espada aqueduct, built to perfect Roman proportions,89 with piers one third the width of their span carrying the waters of the acequia over a creek. A diamond shaped central pier has supported the aqueduct for two hundred and fifty years, with only minor repairs.

Just one mile north of Espada but sitting on the opposite, east bank of the San Antonio River, stands Mission San Juan de Capistrano, founded by Father Espinosa of the College of Queretaro and also relocated to San Antonio in March of 1731.Ministering primarily to Coahuiltecan tribes represented today by their direct lineal descendants, the Tap-Pilam nation, San Juan remained for most of its existence the smallest mission, yet with a vibrant community nonetheless.90

Though effectively depopulated by the 1738 smallpox epidemic, San Juan recovered to a peak of 203 inhabitants by 1762. The first buildings went up in the 1740’s, when the granary and a first, temporary church was erected on what would become the west wall of the compound. Living quarters were built into the walls around the rest of the mission. These quarters were typically two-room affairs, comprised of a common room with a metate (grindstone), comal (griddle), water jar, pantry, and perhaps a few other personal possessions. The second room would house the dresser and bed, which was typically elevated off the floor, a necessity in a mud-floor abode structure with frequent rodent problems. Built into the walls of the mission quadrangle, they opened into the interior of the mission, focusing the life of the residents inward, away from the temptations and corrupting influences of the outside world.91

On the southwest corner of the compound were the textile workshops for which San Juan became famous, thanks to its 3,500-head sheep herd, its cotton fields, and its converts’ aptitude for weaving.

The visitor center adjoining the church today housed the mission fathers two centuries ago. The church itself, which was completed in 1756, was originally a storeroom. The three doors on the side of the church are the give-away that it was never designed to be a church at all, as they force you to enter from the side, though in practice it has the pleasant effect of pulling your eyes upward as you enter to the clay-tiled ceiling supported by wood cross braces. It measures 101 feet long by 20 feet wide, its three unadorned bell gables rising 40 feet into the air. Like most of the missions’ buildings, its walls are a mixture of limestone and rubble sandstone, held together with lime mortar and plastered inside and out.92

San Juan’s 300-foot wide caliche block dam raised the San Antonio River into a 6.7-mile acequia system93 that watered more than 500 acres of farmland at its peak. The canals crossed four different streams perpendicularly, arriving at just the right elevation and grade so that the water could pass through the stream without disrupting its flow. Today, modern pumps lift the river’s water into canals which still water a few farms nearby, including the San Juan Demonstration Farm. Managed by Mission Heritage Partners, the 501(c)(3) that supports the National Park Service’s management of the missions, the San Juan Demonstration Farm showcases Spanish colonial farming techniques just the way that Mission San Juan’s inhabitants would have done it two hundred and fifty years ago.

Spanish authorities liked to believe that Native Americans were being “reduced” by the mission process into something more domesticated and more agreeable to life as settled citizens.94 In practice – and particularly in Texas – native participation in mission life was always a bit of a negotiation between the Franciscan fathers and individual bands or family groups. Some documents clearly reflect this negotiation, with bands committing to certain labor each year in exchange for instruction, protection, and certain material promises as well.95

These were, in truth, independent Native American communities, pueblos apart from the settlements at San Fernando and Béxar.96 At each mission’s founding, the tribes to whom the missions were dedicated were granted “posesión” of the mission’s lands, with the Franciscans merely acting as Trustees.97 By the 1760’s, many of these missions were openly self-governing, with their own governors and alcaldes selected from among the native converts.98

We refer blanketly to the different missions and their converts if they were all the same people, but the truth is that these communities were fantastic melting pots populated by more than 200 different native tribes99 speaking at least seven different languages. Coahuiltecans predominated, but there were Karankawas, Comecrudos, Cotonames, Solanos, Tonkawa, and Aranama, among others.100

Life in the missions was highly structured. At 6 am, at noon, and at 6 PM the mission bells tolled, calling the inhabitants to mass.101 There were daily lessons in the Spanish language, in catholic religious doctrine, and in technical skills like sewing, butchery, carpentry, metal work, and others.102 Though most of the converts started life working in labor gangs on the acequias and the farms, many graduated into skilled labor, taking over for the civilian craftsmen in-residence.

Yet certain aspects of mission diet or mission lifestyle clearly did not agree with the converts. The average number of children born to mission Indian couples by 1790 was only 1.3, well below the replacement rate.103 And in Mission Valero’s records, it’s hard to find an Indian that lived past the age of thirty.104 Mission populations fluctuated wildly year over year, particularly during epidemics, drought years, or times of heavy raiding by more warlike tribes.105 As well, mission life was hard work, and it wasn’t the kind of work that native men in particular looked upon with approval.106 When hunting and gathering was easy, it took little to entice them people back out onto the plains. Still, tellingly, the San Antonio missions were among the few in all of Coahuila and Texas that never experienced an uprising of the local populations, suggesting that the relationship was mostly respectful, if not perhaps mutually beneficial.

On the ranchos, as we have seen, the missions raised sheep, goats, horses, and of course cattle. On the farms, they raised corn, beans, potatoes, cotton, melons, and a few other staples. Each of the missions developed their own specialties as well: sugar and cattle ranching at Espada, weaving at San Juan, orchards at Concepción, just to name a few. They traded amongst themselves, but commerce was limited, by design. The Franciscans missionary model was built around Benedictine ideals of self-sufficiency, and the mission fathers went to great lengths to protect the mission Indians from trade with the locals, forever fearful that they would be exploited.107They opposed hiring out these Indians to Spanish settlers for the same reason. All of this had the result of making the missions very insular places, which probably worked against their ultimate integration into larger Spanish society.108

Indeed, many mission Indians, it seems, held on to many aspects of their old lives, as we see in their continued preference for stone tools and bows and arrows. Native American pottery became the de facto dinnerware throughout San Antonio’s communities, made just as it had always been by these long-time inhabitants of the San Antonio River basin.109And the friars continued to tolerate peyote-induced mitotes that involved using bone flutes and rattles to waken the dead and scare off evil spirits.110 Franciscan purists condemned such pagan ceremonies, yet the men on the ground understood the importance of allowing a local, autochthonous brand of religion to develop if the missions were to accomplish their long-term objectives of creating Hispano-Indian communities, rather than the Native American slave plantations which predominated elsewhere in New Spain.111

The most powerful evidence of Native American “buy-in” into the San Antonio missions was the role that mission Indians took in that most important frontier tradition, serving as ciudadanos armados that defended the community.112They elected their own officers in these militia units, and they would come to play a critical role – as we’ll see in the apache attack of 1745 and the Battle of the Twin Villages with the Comanches in 1759 – in the town’s communal self-defense.

The central mission – both geographically and in size –was Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, the “Queen of the Missions,” sitting today just north of the intersection of Roosevelt and S.W.Military. Formally founded in 1720 by Father Margil de Jesús back in Chapter Two, the entire mission was relocated to its present site in 1740 following the 1738 smallpox epidemic. The walls and the outer rooms which now surround the compound are largely reconstructions from the 1930’s, but they fit the descriptions of contemporary observers who claimed that San José’s walls were so stout that its inhabitants could sit behind them and laugh at their opponents indefinitely.113 For most of the mid-1700s it was home to 350 or more Indians in the eighty-four stone residences that surrounded its seven acre inner courtyard, around which workshops and storerooms also sprung up.

One of the most striking buildings at San José is its granary sitting along the northwest wall. It’s larger than either of the churches at Espada and San Juan, and its barrel-vaulted ceiling and transverse arches divide the room into four bays.114 It’s an enormous space and testifies to the agricultural productivity of the mission.

Just outside the north and east walls ran the acequia which watered San José’s 4,000 acres. The land was fertile and ample, but the irrigation system was unreliable. Sitting as it did just below the confluence of San Pedro Creek and the San Antonio River, its dam was the frequent victim of washout. Still, the acequia managed to power several mills around San José, one of which has been reconstructed for visitors to see today.115

Dominating the entire scene is San José’s church, possibly the finest example of Spanish baroque architecture on the new Spanish frontier. Even denigrators of provincial San Antonio – and there were many – described San José “in point of beauty, plan, and strength as the foremost mission in America.” It defied belief, to their minds, “there were such good artists in so desolate a place.”116Recall that San José was the only mission of the College of Zacatecas in the area, and when the Zacatecans took over stewardship of all the San Antonio missions in 1773, it became the seat of their administration and the jewel in their crown.117 Started in 1768 and completed in 1777, the church is 110 feet long by 33 feet wide with a single belfry rising over its southwest corner. The inside space measures more than 100 feet by 25 feet with a choir loft above the entrance, the altar at the east end, and “groin-vaulted ceiling, transverse arches, and a dome on penditives that is 60 feet high at its apex.”118 It’s awesome.

To the rear of the church sits the old, two-story convent, with its photogenic arches and courtyard that have been used in too many wedding announcement photos to count. The front of the church today remains 70% original,119 featuring carvings of missionaries, martyrs, and angels. When they were new, the façade of the church was painted, which would have made its floral and geometric patterns absolutely glow in the South Texas sun.

The Franciscan fathers relied on master masons from Europe to execute some of the more intricate architectural features. Yet many of the most distinctive flourishes, we are told, are the product of native savants.

Foremost among the examples of this native genius is the “Rose Window” on the south wall of the sacristy. Completed around 1790, it is traditionally attributed to one Pedro Huízar.120It’s a stunning display of artistic talent, condensing the beauty of the west-facing façade and its multiple styles into one affirmative explosion of raw sculpting talent. It protrudes from the wall in pointed contrast to the rough-textured walls around it which have long since lost their plaster finish.

As to what inspired this work, one version of the legend goes that Huízar’s beloved – named Rosa - perished on their voyage over from Spain. Huízar was so distraught that he swore to never love again and carved the window in remembrance of his departed Rosa.121

There are a couple problems with this story, however. One, Huízar clearly did find a way to love again, as he would go on to father a clan whose descendants still live in the shadow of Mission San José. Two, he wasn’t from Spain. He first appears in the records as a mulatto from Aguascalientes who arrived in San Antonio in 1778.122Yet he was quite clearly a savant, a polymath who shows up as a carpenter, surveyor, businessman, and politician across many decades in San Antonio. It is not at all improbable to believe that such a talented individual could have carved something like the Rose Window.

Today the headquarters for the entire National Park Service’s Missions historical site sits adjacent to San José just outside its walls. While the mission grounds – with the exception of Mission Valero, the Alamo – are all run by the National Park Service, the churches themselves remain active Catholic parishes under the administration of the Archdiocese of San Antonio.

The old joke goes that San Antonio’s roads were laid out by a blind Spaniard on a drunk mule, but that’s the idiotic joke of the kind of person that thinks water comes from the faucet and electricity comes from the light switch. San Antonio’s winding roads follow her original streams, acequias, and irregular plots of land, and pay homage to San Antonio’s unique relationship with water. Most people in this country don’t even know where their water comes from; most San Antonians, by contrast, can tell you the aquifer level on any given day and discourse at length on the comparative drought-tolerance of Saint Augustine, Bermuda, and Zoysia grasses.

San Antonio’s hydrogeology created the topographical, ecological, and ethnographical features that drove its founding, as we discussed in Chapter 1. The “Blue Hole” or headwaters of the San Antonio River on the University of Incarnate Word’s campus used to spew water nine feet into the air.123 You can still find pictures of San Antonio’s first municipal wells gushing many feet over the heads of the drillers who brought them in.124 And even just a few decades ago, catfish farms on San Antonio’s southside could drill wells capable of flowing millions of gallons per days without any sort of artificial lift.125

The same hydrogeology fed the springs that flowed into San Antonio’s acequias.

These acequias are works of profound precision. What these mission fathers saw even before they settled in San Antonio was the general slope of the San Antonio basin from its headwaters at San Pedro Springs and the Bluehole followed a near perfect gradient, steep enough to flow without being so steep that the rushing water would erode away their canals’ banks.126Where they could, they lined the acequias with limestone, and you can still see the head gates of Mission Valero’s irrigation system in Brackenridge Park with their hand-cut limestone blocks quarried from what is now the San Antonio Zoo. They planted nopales or prickly pear cactus along the canal banks to keep livestock out, and the canals themselves they ran through streams, over streams, and around streams, using engineering, aqueducts, and hollowed-out cypress trees as makeshift pipes.

It was water that, in truth, defined San Antonio’s land. Lots were long and thin, perpendicular to the water source, thus maximizing the number of landowners that could take advantage of it. Texas’s land system and irregular shaped properties derive from this Spanish heritage, which proved much better suited to arid regions that Anglo-American models of land and water management.

Lot sizes were defined by how much could be watered in a given period of time. The standard lot size was a suerte, about fifty-three acres, the amount of land that could be watered in twenty-four hours through a canal the width of an ox’s legs. The term suerte or “luck” was used because landowners drew lots to determine which days they irrigated.127

Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña also arrived from East Texas to San Antonio in 1731. Father Felix Espinosa founded Mission Concepción on the foundations of a failed that had been abandoned in the 1720’s near the same spot. Mission Concepción would become the seat of all the Queretaran missions in Texas. More than half of its converts were Karankawas, giving Concepción a slightly different flavor than the other, predominantly Cohuiltecan missions.128 It was always more agricultural than pastoral, boasting smaller herds of livestock, but more expansive orchards and a wider variety of row crops. Its acequia system took advantage of the Pajalache ditch started in 1722 and ran from a small dam near the current Presa street bridge through a channel that has since been paved over and named “Roosevelt Street.” In its day, the Concepción-Pajalache ditch was wide enough and deep enough that the mission fathers used small boats on it to transport themselves to and from town.

Concepción’s quadrangle has long since crumbled to the ground. All that remains today is the convent and the church. But what remains is magnificent.

The church at Concepción is virtually unchanged from the day that it was finished in 1755, the oldest unrestored church north of the Rio Grande. When the bishop of Guadalajara came in 1759 to dedicate it, he surely would have been impressed by what he saw, and by the 200 some odd natives which Concepción supported for most of its existence. Its austere, classical façade looked west with symmetrical twin belfries rising fifty-two feet in the air. If it is imposing now, imagine what it must have looked like to the Native Americans back when its plastered walls were covered with brightly colored, stenciled frescos which have since been bleached by the sun. It would have been like putting Virtual Reality goggles on your grandfather who has never even seen a cell phone, though you can approximate the feeling yourself by attending one of Concepción’s periodic “Restored by Light” expositions which paint the façade with lasers to imitate its original appearance.

But Concepción is even more impressive inside. It’s barrel-vaulted masonry roof with a transept crossing rises to forty-four feet at its apex and runs ninety-three feet long and fifty-three feet wide. The walls are four feet thick of dressed limestone quarried on-site. Some of the original decorations that once covered its plastered walls inside and out remain.129 My favorite is the mustachioed, sun god who looks down from the convent-ceiling. Depending on your perspective, he looks either like a Spanish face imposed onto a native religious symbol, or a native face imposed onto a Christian one. It complements the baptismal font on the south wall with its carving of native faces, crops, and geometry mixed with Christian symbolism as a reminder of the savvy of these Franciscans friars in incorporating easily recognizable Native American imagery into a Christian bill-of-sale.130

The most spectacular feature of Concepción is its solar geometry. Each year on August 15th, the Feast Day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, at precisely 6:30 PM – thirty minutes after converts would have been called to evening mass – two beams of light shoot through the church, one landing on the face of Mary sitting just above the altar, and the other on the floor under the dome of the sanctuary.131The majesty and precision of it all should impress us today as much as it would have impressed its audience then.

If you were to walk the mission trail from end to end, you would be struck by just how close these missions really are to each other, only 7.7 miles separating Mission Valero from Mission Espada. In fact, the San Antonio missions’ spacing violated Spain’s mission-spacing requirements which required that they be at least one day’s ride apart.132The San Antonio missions, however, were an early demonstration of what economic development folks might call a “clustering effect.” It allowed for the sharing of some resources and craftsmen, yet the missions’ sprawl also allowed for separate identities and specializations to develop at each mission as well.

Yet one mission always struggled to maintain its identity independent of the civilian world around it. Mission San Antonio de Valero, the mission whose 1718 founding we mark as the birth of our city, would endure the most traumatic and dramatic history of any of the missions precisely because of its proximity to San Antonio’s growing civilian communities just a few hundred yards away.

I’m talking, of course, about the Alamo, which met with early success. Once established at its present location in 1724, it was well-situated above the flood line with easily irrigable lands. Second only to Mission San José in size, by 1756 it was home to some 328 Indians primarily from Coahuiltecan bands but with a few Tonkawa converts from north of San Antonio.133 The first stone buildings were started in 1727, when the convent – today referred to as the long barracks– was begun on what would become the east wall of a compound that would eventually enclose a little more than three acres.

The chapel was started in 1744 and was never entirely completed. Construction halted in 1756. It seems the intention was to build up two, twin belfries, such as at Concepción, but these were never completed, and its iconic hump added in 1847 was the US army’s way of both finishing out the façade and of giving it a roof. The only piece of the main church that was roofed when it was built was the sacristy. It was plastered and painted in yellow, red, blue, and black,134 sky and night colors that pose an interesting contrast to Concepción’s sun imagery. The exterior of the church was finished with handsome though not overly elaborate touches, such as carved statuaries in the recesses framing the doors.

Sitting on the northeastern edge of San Antonio’s communities, Valero was most exposed to attacks by Plains Indians, for which reason its walls were stoutly built two to three feet thick and nine to twelve feet high. Erected in 1758-9 at the height of Apache and Comanche attacks, the attention paid to the construction of the walls might have been the reason for the lack of attention paid to finishing the church’s roof. As at the other missions, living quarters and workshops were built into the walls, whose roofs also served as firing platforms for the mission’s defenders and its cannons, of which it never had less than three.

The Valero acequia formed some additional protection, wrapping around the west, north, and east sides of the compound like a moat. The acequia started six miles upstream near the headwaters of the San Antonio River in what is now Brackenridge park, and ran down the path that would later become Broadway street. It watered 1,000 acres between the acequia on the east and the San Antonio River on the west, and small pieces of it are still preserved, such as the lovely little fishpond just off the side of the Alamo.

Just a few hundred yards away from the Alamo, west down future Commerce Street and across the San Antonio River, were San Antonio’s civilian communities: the villa de Béxar, which gave its name to the region at-large, and the town of San Fernando, settled by Canary Islanders in the previous episode.

The first civilian settlers of San Antonio were a fantastically diverse lot, though not everyone saw this as a virtue. The founder of the Mission Valero, our ornery old Father Olivares from Chapter 1, described the original lot of first settlers as “mulattos, lobos, coyotes, and mestizos, people of the lowest order, whose customs are worse than the Indians,”135 which says as much about the prejudices of Spain’s mostly noble-born priestly class as it does about the importance of Spain’s racial caste system.

Race, of course, is a complicated thing, but the Spanish tackled the problem with bureaucratic thoroughness. They came up with terms for almost every imaginable racial mixture, thirty-two in all. At the top of the caste hierarchy reigned Spaniards born in Spain; below that were pure-blood Spaniards born in the New World; and below that were mestizos of mixed Spanish and Indian heritage. A Spanish-African pairing yielded a mulatto; an Indian-African pairing, a lobo; a mestizo-Indian pairing, a coyote. Indeed, lobo and coyote would become sort of the default classification of most early San Antonians, suggesting a strong Indian and African presence in the early settlers.

But more important for our story is how little this mattered in frontier San Antonio.136As distance from the centers of culture in Spain and Mexico City increased, the rigidity of the caste system decreased.137 And indeed, an individual’s racial identity could change with time, and often closely tracked their economic status. Remember Pedro Huízar, the purported creator of San José’s Rose Window? He shows up to San Antonio a mulatto, later becomes a mestizo, and finishes life as a Spaniard. I’ll dive into this more in a later chapter but suffice it to say that San Antonio was a much more diverse and colorful place in 1750 than we ever imagined.

Far from rigid old social structures and functioning courts systems, compadrazgo and intermarriage took on heightened importance, which we saw with Captain Diego Ramón in the early 1700’s and with the Isleño and vecino truce of the 1740’s. Social life centered around baptisms, weddings, and religious festivals. These weren’t solemn affairs, however. More often than not, they ended in a fandango. From their earliest history, San Antonians seemed to love dancing and singing. Indeed, for the next hundred or so years, taxes on fandangos and musical performances would be one of the most significant sources of municipal revenue.

These early San Antonians had other ways of having fun as well. They developed a series of sporting events that later developed into the sport of rodeo. Calf-roping they called cabestros138; jineteo de toros and jineteo de yeguas became bull-riding and bronc busting; and the coleadero would become steer-wrestling – which they performed by grabbing the steer’s tail from horseback and twisting them to the ground.139Many of the feats later associated with both charrería and with western horsemanship they incorporated into their games, such as the cala de caballo or “sliding stop” as it would be called in reining. They played a game called the corrida de la sandía, a sort of capture the flag on horseback with a watermelon as the prize. They performed carreras del gallo, burying a rooster up to his neck in the sand and plucking off its head at a full gallop.140 Setting aside the humaneness of the game, what we should take note of is that its nearly identical to one played by the horse Indians that so terrorized them. The land was shaping these settlers just as it had shaped the Native Americans for hundreds of years. And like those horse lords of the plains, San Antonians were becoming master horsemen.

Their horsemanship had a principally practical purpose of course. Many San Antonians ran livestock, which they kept on their ranchos outside of town. Even the less well-to-do worked cattle regularly, rounding up or slaughtering the wild cattle that roamed the countryside in the thousands. Everyone farmed at least some of their own food and tried to have enough left over to sell to the presidio.141There were always a few weavers in town too, as well as leatherworkers, hatters, carpenters, masons, and blacksmiths, and often these skilled trades were populated by foreigners: Frenchman, Irishmen, and even a German and Canadian found their way to the San Antonio River in the mid-1700’s.142

The diet revolved around corn tortillas, chiles, and beef.143 And yes, I am still talking about 1750 San Antonio, not the present day. Other fruits and vegetables were available seasonably, but variety was not a feature of early San Antonio cuisine. This improved over time, however, as each new immigrant added their own seasonings and spices, such as the Canary Islanders’ contribution of cumin and cilantro.

Of the 1,500 or so people that buzzed around the many San Antonios by 1760, some 661 one of them lived in the town of San Fernando centered around the church of the same name.144Founded on July 2, 1731, the first stone for San Fernando church was laid in 1738, but construction progressed slowly. Funded primarily by collections taken up from locals, this was San Antonio’s first capital campaign, as Father David Garcia puts it. And the donations came from all different segments of society, vecino, Isleño, and military, a further sign of the blurring of class and social boundaries.145In 1748, seeing the widespread local support for the measure, the viceroy appropriated 12,000 pesos to bring in new stonemasons from San Luis Potosi– the first one having disappeared after murdering a local man whose wife he was sleeping with – to finish the work.

By 1755, the church was complete. The Isleños named the church San Fernando for the King of Spain who had underwritten their journey across the ocean. In honor of their Old World ties to the Canary Islands and their New World ties to Mexico, they chose two patron saints: the Lady of Candlemas and the Virgin of Guadalupe respectively. Surviving wars, epidemics, and fires, San Fernando would be renovated and rebuilt many times, yet the original church walls remain today as the walls of the sanctuary.146 It remains one of the oldest continuously operating parishes north of the Rio Grande and the spiritual heart of the city, whose distances are all measured from its dome.

The inhabitants of San Antonio built their houses around San Fernando on approximately one acre lots large enough for a dwelling, a food plot, and a small corral.147 They farmed their fields between the San Antonio River and San Pedro Creek, drawing water from the acequia which originated at San Pedro Springs. The San Pedro Acequia ran along the path of present-day Main Street, which derives its name from its previous moniker: the Main Ditch. Two feet deep and six feet wide, this canal system would be the lifeblood of the town, watering approximately 1,500 acres, some thirty suertes in all. After the original settlers and the first Isleño families had all been assigned suertes by 1734, a second round of suertes were distributed south of the town lots below modern-day South Alamo Street. By 1743, however, all the land south of modern-day Houston street between San Pedro Creek and the San Antonio River had been distributed, with the horseshoe bend of the San Antonio River left as a sort of communal grazing lands and a buffer zone with Mission Valero. It would be 18 years until the city council was able to pry loose new land grants from the governor.

Because the governor for much of San Antonio’s history was too far away to really care about details like land distribution. Until 1773, the capital of Texas was technically on the Louisiana border, though the governor just as off resided in Monclova, Coahuila. The local presidial commander became the highest governmental authority in the community.148 He controlled the largest budget and it was he to whom citizens looked for relief when all other options had failed.

And he lived just behind San Fernando church in the Plaza de Armas, or Military Plaza. Completed in 1749 later aggrandized into the Spanish Governor’s Palace, the keystone above the door still bears the coat of arms of the Hapsburgs who ruled Spain in the 1700’s.It’s wonderfully restored today, but it will prove to you that even old San Antonians had a sense of humor, as it might be the humblest dwelling on the planet to which the term “Palace “has been attached.

Yet the presidial commander lived well compared to most of his 40-60 men. The presidial soldiers were primarily from other places along the New Spanish frontier, mostly volunteers on ten-year terms, though coercion was occasionally employed to convince them to make that initial enlistment. In many unfortunate cases, soldiers were outright exploited by their presidial captains, who made them work their personal lands, stole their pay, or docked them for provisions sold to them at exorbitant prices.149

Soldiering consisted of boredom punctuated by brief moments of terror: guard duty at the missions, night watch of the horse herd, and dangerous patrols out into the wilderness. Their food was even less varied than that of the civilians and was often infested with pests or nibbled away at by rodents. It shouldn’t be a surprise then that the morale and quality of the soldiers on the new Spanish frontier was generally low. Yet they were the true first seeds of settlement along the frontier line, bringing their families with them, retiring at their new postings, and often producing the next generation of soldiers as well. And San Antonio’s presidial unit was always exceptional, and often noted for its quality by royal observers.150

Surely some of this is attributable to the quality of San Antonio’s early presidial captains. In 1733, the captainship of the Presidio fell to our old friend José de Urrutia. There wasn’t a more qualified man in the world to hold the post. The command would stay in his family for the rest of the century, passing in 1740 to his son, Toribio de Urrutia, who became the first to occupy the so-called “Spanish Governor’s Palace.”

I try, sometimes, to close my eyes and imagine how San Antonio must have looked two hundred and fifty years ago. I imagine coming into this town with its limestone structures – larger than anything manmade for three hundred miles in any direction –with their plastered walls and brightly colored frescoes amidst tree-lined rivers and acequias, row crops in neat furrows, and multi-colored inhabitants milling about this settlement on the edge of civilization. It would have been like stumbling on an oasis, like a “city in white marble” as one early visitor in 1837 would describe it.151

And yet it was awful. That’s right, it was a terrible place to be. First, life in 1700’s San Antonio was mostly just about subsistence. You were born, you married, you had children, you worried about where your next meal would come from, and then you died. Oh, and some of your children probably died before you. If anyone tries to tell you that the human condition hasn’t improved dramatically in the last hundred years, they aren’t thinking about infant mortality rates. If you had children in the 1700’s, some of them were going to die in your arms. And it was particularly bad on the edges of civilization, like San Antonio, whose infant mortality rate exceeded the replacement rate: population growth was supplied almost entirely by immigration. If you want statistics, of 929 births recorded between 1719 and 1760 in San Antonio, 202 died in the first year and another 66 would die before the age of 10. Only about half of children made it to adulthood.152

Disease loomed over everyone. Mosquitos are not new arrivals to San Antonio, and mosquitos in the 1700’s carried malaria. We’ve spoken about the smallpox epidemic of 1738.Juliana Barr found records of epidemics (principally smallpox) in 1728, 1736, 1743, 1748, 1749, 1751, 1759, 1763, and 1786.153 Cholera would pick up where smallpox left off, striking in 1834, 1848, and 1866. These epidemics were of epic proportions, killing off as much as 1/3 or half of the population each time they hit.

Yet those whom disease spared hostile tribes coming off the Great Plains often didn’t

I apologize for repeating so often how hard life was in these first years for San Antonio, but I think it’s important to do so because it’s true, the people living back then never fail to mention it either,154and it was formative. Indeed, danger even more so than isolation was the unifying, shared core of the early San Antonio experience. It created the character of the people we will continue to study, just as it created the magnificent buildings that have endured down to our time simply because they were built to endure the myriad dangers of their own.

Episode 5: Apaches

On June 20, 1745, the morning broke warm and humid. The moisture from May’s rains still lingered in the air over the rolling hills a few miles north of San Antonio. A boy from town only about ten years old wandered out into the countryside to search for his family’s livestock, which roamed unbranded and unfenced through the grassland greening up all around him.

Just a half decade before, no San Antonian would have dared to venture so far out of town unguarded. The 1730’s were marked by unceasing attacks by the Apaches against the humble village along the San Antonio River. San Antonians at the time couldn’t understand the unique animosity that the Apaches harbored toward them, chalking it up to their barbarism and deceitfulness. As barbaric as the Apaches may have seemed to the Spaniards, however, they were the recognized rulers of the Texas Plains in 1700. It was the Spaniards who had intruded onto their territory.

The Apaches had descended from the Northern Great Plains into Texas sometime in the 1400’s and split into two groups. The Mescalero Apaches drifted west, toward New Mexico and Chihuahua. The Lipan Apaches settled in central and southwest Texas, from the Hill Country down to the Rio Grande.

They were not truly a “nation” in the European sense or even a confederation like the Hasinai of East Texas. If they seemed deceitful to Europeans, it’s because they lived and fought in bands with broad, loose allegiances, which made it famously difficult for Europeans to negotiate with them, as no band felt obliged to respect the promises of another.

They were quasi-agricultural, planting crops each spring, but they were also among the first horse Indians of the great plains, capturing and breaking the Spanish mustangs that arrived in the 1600’s. The mobility of the horse and their mastery of it turned them into devastating force to their neighbors and indeed the word “Apache” seems to have come from a rival nation’s word for “enemy.”155

Chief among their enemies were the relatively prosperous, sedentary Hasinai tribes of East Texas whose villages abounded with agricultural surpluses and trade goods from across the continent. Raiding and warring against the Hasinai was a centuries-old Apache tradition by 1700 when the Hasinai started to fight back alongside bearded allies with firesticks who worshipped images of a cadaver hanging on a cross.

The source of these newcomers, the Apaches soon realized, was a little village along the San Antonio River, where the Apaches had long been accustomed to raiding and trading.

Apaches announced their presence to San Antonians in earnest in 1723, when they stole 80 of the presidio’s horses in a daring daylight raid. The San Antonio presidio, however, manned by veterans of the New Spanish frontier, knew the importance of taking the offensive and quickly mounted up in pursuit. They surprised the Apaches in their camp near the San Sabá River, slaughtering 34 warriors and taking 20 women and children captive. This purchased a fragile eight years of peace for San Antonio, interrupted by periodic but non-fatal raids, as the Apaches sized up these new enemies and waited to see if the settlement would even survive.

In 1731, the Apaches decided to try their luck again. On September 18, 1731, they attacked the town in broad daylight, riding into the Plaza de Armas and driving off sixty horses. The attackers then lingered in town for a suspiciously long time, daring the townsfolk to challenge them. The presidial commander mustered what forces he could, and launched a counterattack, and the Apache raiders retreated, willingly. A little too willingly. They drew the soldiers further and further out of town, until suddenly, just a few miles north in the first foothills of the Balcones Escarpment, the forty-man Spanish troop ran into an Apache ambush of some 500 warriors.

Somehow, some way, the troop avoided disaster. Either the Apaches sprung the trap too early or perhaps the Captain sniffed them out in time to call off the assault. He was lucky to leave the field with only two dead and thirteen wounded.156The Apaches, for the time being, withdrew.

Drawing on the lessons of 1723, San Antonians knew that they couldn’t just sit and wait and hope that the Apaches would leave them alone. Instead, a punitive expedition was organized. But logistical delays, changes in leadership, and uncertainty as to where the Apaches had gone delayed the response almost a year. Finally, on October 22, 1732 the expedition rode out, led personally by the Governor of Texas at the head of 157 soldiers and 60 mission Indians, a substantial number of the men of fighting age from San Antonio’s communities. It’s a testament to the toughness of these early settlers. No town in northern New Spain would ever mount so many expeditions out into the wilderness or project its power onto the frontier the way San Antonio would.

They marched into the Hill Country where they picked up the trail of the Apache raiders. They engaged in several small skirmishes with Apache bands but could never draw the main Apache force into battle, even as they continued to press deeper into Apachería. Finally, they came upon a large Apache camp on the San Sabá River. They engaged the warriors into a brief battle, in which the Apaches predictably broke rank and began to flee, attempting to lure the San Antonians after them in order to string them out across the Hill Country. But the San Antonians were learning Apache tactics, and they didn’t bite. They let the warriors flee, then turned and attacked the camp, taking thirty women and children as hostages and returning to San Antonio with their prizes on December 22.

It worked. In early 1733, the Apaches came to San Antonio begging for peace in exchange for their loved ones. Thinking the Apaches chastened, San Antonians accepted the peace and released the hostages.

We always seem to learn our last lesson a little too well, however. And we like to flatter ourselves that our opponents do not learn nearly so well as we do. Just as the San Antonians were learning the Apaches’ tactics, the Apaches were learning how to deal with the San Antonians as well. All they had to do to get their hostages released, they realized, was say the word “truce” to the soldiers and tease the missionaries about the prospect of a mission in their territory, which they repeatedly did.

Only a few months after the Apaches had got their hostages back, the so-called “truce” was broken. A small band of Apaches materialized one afternoon from the brush outside of town and attacked two presidial soldiers on patrol. Within sight of town, they tortured, mutilated, and killed the soldiers, their screams carrying even to the outlying missions.157 Everyone in town assumed that a further onslaught was imminent. The mission Indians began to flee back into the countryside. Soldiers sent their families back to safer parts of New Spain. Vecinos in town fortified their homes as best they could.

The Governor knew that San Antonio needed help but had little in the way of resources to offer them. There was one man, however, still floating around the presidios of Texas, that knew more about fighting Apaches than anyone else alive. Indeed, the fact that he still was alive in 1733, forty years after being left behind in East Texas as a 15-year-old was itself a miracle and no minor proof of his exceptionalism.

I’m talking, of course, about our old friend José de Urrutia, our Spanish Natty Bumpo from Chapter 1, who went native in 1693 and rose to command the Hasinai Indians against the Apaches. He had married into the presidial officer class, pairing off with Antonia Ramón, the daughter of Captain Diego Ramón, the commander of the Rio Grande presidio and effectively the military commander of Texas until his death in 1724. By 1733, Urrutia had served in San Antonio, in East Texas, and along the Rio Grande, and become generally invaluable to Spanish church and civil authorities.

He took office as the Captain of the San Antonio presidio on July 23, 1733, just when the Apache menace was at its peak and when the presidial unit was down to 30 men, the smallest it had been since San Antonio’s founding. By this time, Apaches avoided outright attacks on the town proper, preferring to terrorize vecinos and mission Indians on the edges of town of town. Pretty soon, San Antonio fell into siege mode, its citizens afraid to leave city limits without military escort. This was the world that our ten-year old San Antonio boy would have been born in to. As a result, the outlying ranches and farms went untended; trade nearly stopped; and food became scarce. Indeed, the general Apache terror of the 1730’s was a not insignificant contributor to the missions’ success during that same period at recruiting from other tribes, who flocked to the protection of the mission fathers.

Urrutia understood Apache warfare and knew that he needed to take the offensive against them. He lacked the resources to be able to fund such an expedition, however. In 1739, Urrutia came up with a plan that would address both his money problem and his Apache problem. He scraped together what last men and resources he could and went out against the Apaches, surprising them after so many years of inactivity, and capturing several dozen men, women, and children. But instead of just holding them as hostages, he sold them down into Mexico as slaves. Slavery was a fate worse than death for these free-spirited horse warriors, but more importantly for Urrutia it generated proceeds for the defense of the town. As before, the Spaniards had learned their lesson and changed the rules in order to reestablish a new equilibrium.158

The new tactic worked, for a time anyhow. When José de Urrutia died in 1741, his son Toribio took over the command of the presidio and the Apache slaving strategy without missing a beat.

The mission fathers, led by Father Benito Fernandez de Santa Anna from Chapter 3, were of course outraged by this tactic, which not only violated their sense of propriety, but also undermined their attempts to establish a mission amongst the Apaches, which these martyrhood-minded missionaries were still intent on doing. And, they warned, over time the slaving raids were sure to provoke a violent counter-response.

By 1745, the Apaches were fed up, probably with both the slaving soldiers as well as the solicitous friars.159

On June 30, 1745, the same morning that our ten-year-old San Antonio boy spent searching for his family’s cattle in the hills, a small force of Apaches slipped into town. They lit fire to several buildings, turned out the presidio’s horse herd, and generally made a great commotion before fleeing out of town.

The bells of San Fernando rang out, calling the militia to action and calling townsfolk in from the countryside. Our San Antonio boy heard the bells – probably not for the first time in his life, but for the first time in many years – and immediately understood the danger he was in. As he turned toward town and began running, the sound of his own panicked breath and footfalls caused him to stop in his tracks. If the Apaches were in town, it meant they were also all around town, and could be lurking behind every bush. He froze for a minute, and decided on a different course home, through the more heavily wooded draws and up over the hilltops where he could scout out the countryside around him.

And it was a good thing he did. As he crawled up one of the last hills north of town and peaked over the summit, he was horrified to see below him an Apache force of some 350 warriors waiting in ambush, just as they had done in 1731. But these Apaches wouldn’t make the same mistake their fathers had made, when they had let the presidial command get away. They would lure the San Antonians onto the plains, encircle them, slaughter them, and then have their way with the town.

Somehow, in the face of 350 grown men who would have liked nothing more than to take our little boy hero’s scalp or bash his brains open on a rock, this boy had the courage to collect himself and quietly but determinedly continue his way toward town. Amidst the commotion of the townsfolk and the mustering of the militia and presidial soldiers, the little boy found his way to Captain Toribio de Urrutia and got his attention. He told him what he had seen, and the Captain had the good sense to believe him.

Captain Urrutia changed his strategy. He sent the boy on to Mission Valero, the closest and one of the largest missions, to report what he had seen and to beg them to mobilize all the men they could to come to the aid of the city. Valero’s mission Indians responded, mobilizing over 100 men who moved into town while Urrutia attempted to ambush his ambushers.160

The Apaches, who held the high ground, saw Urrutia marching out of town, but not in the direction that they had anticipated. He moved out to the west, confusing them. Soon, they saw the Valero Indians barricading the streets, taking up positions in defense of the town, and ringing bells to rally reinforcements from the other missions. Just as the Apaches were figuring out that something had gone wrong, Urrutia hit them on their flank. At that instant, the Apaches knew that they had lost the element of surprise, even as they probably still had the numbers, and broke into full flight.

This was a special moment in San Antonio’s history. Each of San Antonio’s communities – civilian, military, and missionary – had come together to defend the town. It’s an example of what we talked about in the previous episode, of facing danger together as the formative fact of the early San Antonio experience. San Antonio’s vecinos, Isleños, indios, soldiers, and friars had stood and fought and won side-by-side, inspired by the example of one heroic ten-year-old boy whose name, unfortunately, has been lost to history. It all inspired a feeling of unity that brought about the great political compromise of 1745 that we talked about in Chapter 3, which saw the civilians and missionaries resolve their differences in a deal brokered by Father Fernandez and guaranteed by Captain Toribio de Urrutia.

The battle of 1745 made an impression on the Apaches, who ceased their raids and undertook more serious negotiations with Father Fernandez for peace and for a mission in the Hill Country. But as a condition, they demanded that Captain Urrutia cease his slaving raids into their territory. Father Fernandez, his esteem at an all-time high, pled with Captain Urrutia to abandon the tactic. In a sense, Father Fernandez told him, Urrutia had beaten the Apaches. Yet because they weren’t a proper nation, they could never surrender. There would always be lingering bands to be dealt with, but at some point, the slave raids would backfire once again and give courage to a now-desperate foe, which would only serve to prolong the terror that San Antonians still felt every time they looked north at night.

And consider the alternative, we might suppose Father Fernandez to have told him. What if they could establish a mission amongst the Apaches? Even if they could never persuade them to pound their lances into plowshares, they could still establish a presence north of town, a presidio to help ward off future attacks or even a trading outpost where San Antonio merchants – like Urrutia himself – might find new markets for their goods.

Urrutia relented. In his first attacks of 1749, he did not kill and he did not sell into slavery his war captives. After one wildly successful raid early in the year, he captured four Apache chiefs, brought them to San Antonio and – unlike in the past – treated them like honored guests.161 They were fed, brought gifts, and catered to by Father Fernandez, who thanked divine providence for bringing them together as friends. The Spanish didn’t want war with the Apaches, he told them. He reminded them of their overtures of friendship, of the virtues of the Christian faith, and of the benefits of trade with New Spain. Alternatively, there was little he could do for them if they chose the path of war. Yet he trusted in their fundamental goodness, Father Fernandez told them – the good cop to Urrutia’s bad cop – and sent them home as messengers of peace and as a sign of San Antonians’ good intentions.

One month later, in March of 1749, the Apache chiefs returned, in peace, with another dozen or so chiefs in tow. Father Fernandez, Toribio de Urrutia, and members of the city council were there to greet them. To honor the occasion, the San Antonians did what any proper San Antonian would have done: they held a great barbeque. Furthermore, they exchanged gifts and promises of peace. They buried a horse (hopefully already dead) and they buried a hatchet (as in the cliché) as symbols of putting their warlike ways behind them. The Apaches nominally accepted conversion to the Christian faith and swore allegiance to the Spanish king. And they agreed to the establishment of a mission in their territory.162

The Apache Peace of 1749 was the culmination of Father Fernandez’s life’s work in San Antonio. A year later, in 1750, at the age of forty-three, he fell ill, and retired to Queretaro where he lived out the remaining decade of his life. In his nineteen years in San Antonio, he had guided the missions to the peak of their prosperity, moderated the presidio’s warlike ways, brokered a compromise between the original “vecinos” or settlers of San Antonio and “Isleños” arriving from the Canary Islands, and established peace with the same Indians who had nearly wiped the settlement off the map the year he arrived.

Yet it was also the highpoint of San Antonio’s early existence, and an unequivocal declaration of their intention to reside upon this harsh frontier for a long time. San Antonians had, of their own initiative and with virtually no aid from the Crown fought their greatest opponents to a truce, something that most other towns on the New Spanish frontier would never come close to. They had won their place on this frontier, and even 100 years later they would still be reminding each other of this fact.163

All that said, there was something else motivating the Apaches to seek peace with San Antonio in 1749. Sometime in 1743, a different kind of horse Indian appeared in San Antonio’s historical record, their faces painted black and red, wearing only animal skins when they wore anything at all, and moving about horseback as naturally as if they were born on them. These new horse warriors had started to press down on the Apaches from the Northern Plains a few decades prior, pushing them into conflict with the Spaniards. Without detracting from Father Fernandez’s diplomacy or from San Antonians’ bravery, by 1749, the Apaches were looking for allies anywhere they could find them against these “Nemernuh,” as the new masters of the Plains called themselves. We will come to know them as the Comanches.

Episode 6: Comanches

In March of 1759, San Antonio was a flurry of panicked activity. The missions scrambled to finish their walls, vecinos fortified their humble homes as best they could, and an armed force that grew daily drilled in the Plaza de Armas. This hastily assembled retaliatory force was comprised of presidial soldiers from San Antonio, of course, but also from the presidios along the Rio Grande, in Coahuila, and as far away as San Luis Potosi. But the core of the force was San Antonians, some 331 San Antonio vecinos, mission Indians, and their relatives from other towns along the New Spanish frontier.

San Antonians might have thought they were past this. Just a decade prior, they had won peace from their old enemies, the Apaches, and presumed that they had finally secured their place on this frontier.

What they didn’t realize was that the Apache peace had, in reality, been won not only by Spanish arms, but by pressure from another, even more fearsome band of indios barbaros pressing down on the Apaches from the Plains. And in that March of 1759, when the sole survivor of a twenty-man massacre in the Hill Country stumbled into town, San Antonians realized that nothing now stood between them and the Comanche menace.

The Comanches, or “Nemernuh” in their own language, were cousins to the Ute and Shoshone tribes much further north. For centuries, they had lived hard, malnourished lives in the Rocky Mountains that left them physically smaller than many of the Native American tribes around them, until they, like the Apaches, had been ennobled by their discovery of the horse.164

Yet the Apaches only used horses; the Comanches were horsemen. One observer wrote that on foot “they are heavy and ungraceful…but the moment they mount their horses, they seem at once metamorphosed.”165No one who ever saw them ride failed to comment on their mastery of the art and had they lived in a different time and a different place, you might have sworn that they were the inspiration for the myth of the Centaur.

Comanches placed their children on horseback as soon as they could sit up straight. At an early age, they were trained to pick up items from the ground at a gallop, starting with stones, then sacks, then finally other Comanches, whom they never left behind on a battlefield. Old men walked the village recounting their glories and encouraging young warriors to live up to their fathers’ fame.166 Celebrated warriors were rewarded by their choice of lodging, meat, and women.167

They never shod their horses, instead toughening their feet by walking them over coals and smoke. They rode on light saddles, bareback pads really, which gave them confident, intuitive seats. They hiked their stirrups up high and squatted in them for stability when firing a bow and arrow and for power when driving their lances, and braided ropes into the horse’s manes in order to hang under their necks and fire their bows and arrows from safety.

Within 150 years of descending from the Rockies, they had carved out a veritable empire, to use historian Pekka Hämäläinen’s term, the largest post-Colombian empire in North America, larger even than any of the European holdings.168They soon incorporated many of their vassals into a sort of loose confederation that covered the entire Great Plains from Canada to Mexico, where their Shoshone dialect became a sort of lingua franca, the ultimate mark of cultural domination.169

Whereas the Apaches planted some crops each year, the Comanches proudly planted none.170 They were hunters and only hunters. Heaven for them was the Happy Hunting Ground.171 And most of them didn’t have to wait long before going there. Life was short and fierce. Women did most of the manual labor. Girls began childbearing in their early teens, just as boys were passing through their spirit journeys and entering the world of warriors. Status was determined by displays of bravery on the battlefield such as “counting coup” or touching an enemy in the heat of battle.172

On the battlefield they were fearsome sights, their long black hair slick with bear grease, their faces painted black and red, occasionally donning a buffalo skull for additional effect.173 They attacked by the light of the full moon wielding bison-hide shields, lances, bows and arrows, and later, rifles. Death was a mercy to their enemies; the less fortunate were horrifically tortured or enslaved. Scalping was the ultimate humiliation, believing that it prevented the soul from entering the Happy Hunting Ground.

Yet we shouldn’t suppose that life in these bands was unhappy. By all accounts, the Comanches were like all people: they found joy and triumph amidst hardship and tragedy. Some European captives would later refuse to go back to civilized society after they had lived amongst the Comanches long enough. These were free people living in the full exercise of their power in a state of nature, perhaps at some level in touch with certain aspects of the human condition that western civilization has spent millennia learning to repress.

On the warpath, they followed leaders of charisma and leaders who could produce booty.174The bands themselves were held together by only the loosest of bonds, with no band accountable to any other. This is why it was so maddeningly difficult for Europeans to make peace with the Comanches: as soon as peace had been negotiated with one band, a new band would descend upon them, often composed of the discontents from the band with whom they had just made peace.

The Comanches discovered a particularly effective strategy against the Spanish. The fast moving Comanches would launch a bold initial attack with all the terror of their appearance and their reputation preceding them. As the less mobile Spaniards braced for impact, the Comanches would break off and begin to encircle them, weaving and dodging to deny their enemies an easy target, and lobbing arrows into the tightly packed Spanish formation. It’s hard to imagine what was worse for the Spaniards, the actual arrows raining down upon them or the inability to do anything about it. Eventually, the Europeans’ discipline would erode, and they would lash out at their attackers. The Comanches would quickly retreat, drawing their enemy out for miles over the featureless plains. Then, just as the Spanish began to believe that they might have driven off their attackers, the Comanches would reveal themselves in all their strength and glory, and swoop down on their disorganized enemy for the final blow.175

And in 1743, they appeared in San Antonio.176 By that same year, they had cut off the Apaches from their trade with New Mexico and prevented them from planting their spring crops, creating acute shortages in Apache camps. This pressed the Apaches at first into fiercer conflict with the citizens of San Antonio, eventually driving them to make peace in 1749, as we saw in the previous chapter.

San Antonians at the time, however, were not privy to this larger context. They read the Apache overtures of peace and alliance as sincere, as the beginning of a new, amicable relationships with their former enemies. And so, as agreed in the Peace of 1749, the San Antonio missionaries sent forth new missions north into the Hill Country to minister to their new allies, including a mission and a presidio on the San Sabá River near modern day Menard, Texas.

Yet even after several years, the missions would fail to record a single Apache recruit. The Spanish observed that the Apaches seemed to use the missions only as trading posts, or as occasional refuge from the new, more menacing and better-armed Indians migrating south. These new Indians they called norteños, “men from the north,” a broad term for the loose confederation of Taovayas, Tonkawas, Wichitas, Hasinai, and others that had fallen under Comanche hegemony.177

The Comanches were relentless in their attacks on the Apaches, whom they regarded as their archenemies.178 And the increasing coziness of the Apaches with the Spanish only heightened Comanche suspicions of the Spanish as well. Playing on this, the Apaches began to engage in a rather sophisticated game of deception. They would steal Spanish livestock and leave behind Comanche trinkets, then go raid Comanche camps and leave behind Spanish goods.179

It worked, to tragic effect. In late 1758, the Comanches and their norteño allies including the Taovayas and Wichitas attacked the San Sabá mission in retaliation for one of these Apache frame-ups. The Franciscan founders of the San Sabá mission – honoring a now one-hundred-year-old tradition – had quarreled with the Spanish military authorities and settled their mission four miles away from the presidio’s protection. As such, Colonel Diego Ortiz, the San Sabá presidial commander, was close enough to hear the sounds of San Sabá mission attack, but too far away to do anything about it. In a matter of minutes, the Comanches killed eight Spaniards ands and seventeen mission Indians – none of them apache –with only one soldier escaping to tell the tale.180

Colonel Ortiz and the Franciscans pulled back to San Antonio, leaving behind only a small, twenty-man unit to man the presidio and guard the horse herd.

San Antonians had every right to be terrified or to flee to the interior, as they had considered in 1745. But they didn’t. They called a Council of War. On January 3, 1759, representatives of the frontier provinces and Spanish military authorities convened to plan a response. Decades of struggle on the frontier had taught them the importance of attack, and just ten years before they had brought to their knees the feared Apaches, who now gleefully joined them in their Council of War against their Comanche enemies. The Council decided to launch a punitive expedition and called out the militia: 241 volunteers and 90 mission Indians – perhaps more than half of the men of fighting age in the San Antonio area –answered, along with 139 presidial soldiers mustered from throughout the frontier.

Although these 331militiamen were mere “cowboys, tailors, farm boys, cigar-makers, carpenters, leather workers, and miners,” according to the Colonel’s official account,181 we do them a disservice by discounting their soldierly qualities. Many of the vecinos had served in the presidial unit before, and most all had drilled in the local militia or responded to at least one Indian raid in their lifetime. They were schooled as well in the tradition of the compañías volantes, units of light cavalry with a long tradition in Hispanic culture, back to the jinetes of Old Spain. The jinetes were not nobles, yet they were propertied men, yeomen we should call them, with the means to arm themselves and provide their own string of horses when called into action. A great mythology had formed around them in the Reconquista of the fifteenth century, and the tradition found new life on the plains of Northern New Spain against the mounted Indians of the New World. All of these men in 1759 carried in their heads the songs of their predecessors’ heroism, to stories of men charging their foes with their reins in their teeth to free their hands for the weapons, of men deflecting arrows with their shields, and dropping their enemies at a gallop with well-placed shots fired from their smoothbore muskets.182

Each of the members of these compañías volantes – by regulation – was required to arm himself with a long gun, a pistol, a three-pound lance, and a leather shield, which they held along with the reins in their left hand.183They wore wide-brimmed broad hats, tight canvas trousers, and high-shanked leather boots. To the standard equipment, San Antonians added la reata – anglicized later into a “lariat” – which they would weaponize to great effect.184With a lariat they could bring down a mounted opponent,185 snatch a weapon right out of his hand, or rope an enemy fleeing on foot. They invented saddle horns for tying off these lariats to their high crowned saddles, saddles of a style which had been reserved for nobility in the Old World, but which were both imminently practical for these frontiersmen (and also a mark of how these free, propertied men saw themselves). Indeed, that 241 vecinos and 90 mission Indians had the means to arm themselves and provide their own horses says something about the broadly distributed material wealth that was slowly accruing to these frontier settlers.

A year after the initial attack on San Sabá, however, the expedition still had not left San Antonio. In March 1759, the Comanches punished the Spanish for their delay. In March 1759, after their attack on the San Sabá mission, the Comanches and their allies attacked what remained of the San Sabá presidial troop and slaughtered 19 soldiers, leaving only one survivor to tell the tale. Hence the flurry of activity with which we began the episode. There was nothing now standing between San Antonio and annihilation at the hands of the Comanches.

Sometime in mid-August 1759, Colonel Ortiz marched out of San Antonio with his 331 volunteers, 139 presidial soldiers, 1500 horses, and about 134 Apache allies,186 whose role in provoking the Comanche attacks was still undiscovered.

What today could make one-quarter of the population of a city march out together, without pay, and into the heartland of the most feared warriors the continent had ever known? And indeed, there were few others along the New Spanish frontier that would have done it then. Many New Spanish settlements under such constant menace dissipated, or retreated into a siege mentality, or in some cases became vassals of the Comanches, plantations where they grew children for adoption or slavery.187That little frontier San Antonio could muster a punitive expedition of 470 men says something remarkable about its citizens.

The expedition’s commander, Colonel Diego Ortiz, was another of these great Spanish Indian fighters, among the last of the storied conquistadors. In his lifetime he would fight – and largely win – Indian campaigns across the North American continent, from Florida to Texas to Arizona, Sonora, and Sinaloa. Yet not only had he learned how to defeat Indian enemies in the field, but also how to treat with Indian allies in friendship.188 For all the fearsomeness that goes with our image of Spanish conquistadors, what they were probably best at was diplomacy. Since the days of Cortez, the Spanish military’s success was almost always accompanied by strategic Native American alliances.

The San Antonio expedition picked up the trail of the Comanches and their allies at the ruins of the San Sabá mission on September 1. Colonel Ortiz pushed his diverse force at a madman’s pace and never let up. They would cover 400 miles in one month, some 17 miles per day on average – in August! – despite having their flanks harassed, their horses stolen, their foraging parties attacked, and their sleep interrupted by war cries unleashed by the Comanches in the night. Maddeningly, their Apache allies marching alongside them as scouts proved less than reliable, leaving them occasionally for days at a time to hunt, particularly at the most critical moments of the march when battle seemed nearest it seemed.189But the expedition never faltered, and pursued the enemy deeper into his own territory than he had ever been pursued before.

Sometime around October 1, 1759, the expedition caught up to a group of norteños. Burdened by their baggage, their horse herds, and their own families, this particular group was slow in getting across a tributary of the Red River. Colonel Ortiz ordered the attack and the expedition emerged victorious, killing fifty-five of the enemy and capturing 150 more along with many of the horses originally stolen from San Sabá.190

And here Colonel Ortiz could have turned back. He had recaptured the horse herd and sufficiently punished the enemy to satisfy Spanish honor and to have justified the expedition. Indeed, his volunteer vecinos – composing two-thirds of his force – could have likely forced his hand had they insisted on turning back.

But they didn’t, and it seems like the idea was never seriously entertained. The men in the expedition had learned too well the lessons of the frontier to ease off the attack now. Turning back would have exposed themselves to harassment all the way back to San Antonio and indeed, it would have likely invited a new round of raids the next year as the Comanches and their allies sought to satisfy their own honor.

The frontiersmen knew that they had to strike the enemy in his home, to teach the Comanches the true cost of making war on San Antonio.

They pushed on, more cautiously now, deeper into the Comanche heartland. At long last, on October 7, 1759, the Comanches decided to give battle, just 11 or so miles away from the October 1 encounter. They had retreated now to the edges of their territory, and their own families were now just a few miles away across the Red River. They had nowhere else to go.

The Comanches fell back on a familiar battle plan. Sixty or seventy mounted warriors hid in a wooded area along the San Antonian’s line of march. They sprung their ambush, surprising the San Antonians and inflicting some casualties, but failed to break the force, which quickly formed up and switched to fresh mounts. The Comanches tried to encircle them, but the tactic was successfully parried by Colonel Ortiz, causing the Comanches to retreat in apparent panic through a wooded path that led down to the Red River.191

Colonel Ortiz’s San Antonians followed the fleeing Comanches through the wood and out onto the riverbank overlooking the Red River. There, they were surprised for the second time that day. Below them wasn’t an empty river valley or even the temporary encampment of a hunter-gatherer tribe.192 Beneath them, across the Red River from the ironically named modern town of Spanish Fort, Texas, was a fortified Indian city, probably the largest city for hundreds of miles in any direction and possibly the largest Native American settlement west of the Mississippi.

Colonel Ortiz estimated the villages on the Red River to support a population between two to six thousand Native Americans, primarily Taovayas or Wichitas, but ruled over by the Comanches who used it as a trading post.193 The village and its fields spilled over both banks of the Red River, yet there on the northern side stood a citadel some 130 yards long by 90 yards wide surrounded by a wooden palisade and an earthen moat.

Something about it didn’t quite fit the style of other Native American settlements, however. And the question arose, what could have concentrated Plains Indian trading activities around this otherwise unremarkable spot? The answer fluttered above the citadel in the form of a French flag.194 The French, it soon became clear, were not only trading with and supplying the Comanches, they were facilitating alliances between the Comanches and their Norteño allies. Spain’s worst fears about French meddling in their North American territories had come to life.

At least six hundred warriors opposed Colonel Ortiz and drew up their battle lines on both sides of the Red River. Wisely, Colonel Ortiz called back his forwardmost riders and drew his own battle lines. He deployed his presidial soldiers in the center, his militiamen on the left, and the Apaches and mission Indians on the right.

The Comanches lured the San Antonio expedition forward, onto the sandy river bank and within range of musket fire from the palisaded citadel, where reportedly fourteen Frenchmen directed fire against the expedition.195Outside the walls and on the Texas side of the river, Comanches with French muskets harassed their attackers’ flanks, riding at them at full speed, firing, then returning to their lines to grab a freshly-loaded musket and repeating the cycle.196 These tactics prevented the expedition from getting out of the sandy and boggy embankment and frustrated their attempts to position their artillery. Colonel Ortiz would only get off eleven rounds from his cannon before two of them were captured in the back and forth of the battle.

The San Antonian expedition fought bravely, but they could never make it across the river, or halt the flow of supplies and reinforcements from the northern bank, from which the enemy crossed at invisible fords. As night began to fall and a larger enemy force was seen fording the river at yet another point, Ortiz ordered a withdrawal.197

As night fell, Colonel Ortiz and the other officers took stock of what had happened. At least forty or so of the Comanches lay dead before them, and they could hear the laments and death songs of the Comanches throughout the night.198 The San Antonians certainly didn’t command the field, however, as they had been forced to withdraw overnight to find fresh water and pasture. The prospect of repeating the same attack the next day offered little promise of a favorable result. Nineteen of their men, primarily presidial soldiers, were dead, and another fourteen wounded.199 The four field pieces they still held had proven ineffective against the fort and the Comanches’ mobility. The enemy seemed to have nearly limitless supplies on the north bank of the river. Who knew what reinforcements might be on the way? And Colonel Ortiz’s Apache allies had conspicuously underperformed and seemed to be dissolving into the night.

The next morning, Colonel Ortiz reformed his lines to reconnoiter the area and assess the Comanches’ remaining strength. It became apparent, however, that the Comanches were not inclined to give battle again. The following day, Ortiz and his San Antonians packed up and began their return march.

The Battle of the Twin Villages, as this engagement is remembered owing to confusion as to what side of the Red River the principal village actually occupied, went down in history for 200 years as a Spanish defeat. But that really doesn’t fit the facts.200 When an army pursues an enemy 400 miles into their territory, assaults their largest commercial center, retreats in good order with 150 captives, and is not in turn pursued by that enemy,201 it sure doesn’t look like a defeat. Fortunately, one of Colonel Ortiz’s captains kept a journal of the expedition, which historian Robert Weddle has ably deployed it to redeem the Colonel, whose reputation suffered unfairly at the hands of his successor.202

San Antonians’ boldness in attacking the Comanches in their own territory chastened them and bought some years of peace for San Antonio. Several of the Comanches’ allies even entered into outright peace treaties with the San Antonians, realigning themselves away from the French for their trade as well.203 It was the very gradual beginning of a new Spanish/Comanche alliance of convenience against the Apaches, which allowed for the reestablishment of a military outpost – though not a missionary one – on the San Sabá river, to serve as an early warning trip wire for San Antonio. We also hear no more of French encroachments up the Red River after the battle, suggesting that they pulled back to Louisiana.

The Battle of the Twin Villages was perhaps the largest armed engagement on Texas soil in the eighteenth century. It pitted as many as two thousand men against each other for control of the province. I can’t think of another example in the history of North America where so many volunteers – ciudadanos armados – marched so far out from the edges of civilization to pursue a Native American force so deeply into his own territory. And that that territory was the heart of the great Comanche empire – the largest and most feared Native American empire on the continent– makes it that much more impressive.

Still, even as the San Antonians had much to be proud of, they returned home in November 1759 with fifty fewer men than they had marched out with. Inasmuch as the expedition was an affirmation of New Spanish strength and the hardiness of the men living on that frontier, it was also a reminder of the strength of the growing Comanche empire and the presence of European rivals in their midst. It would help provoke a tour by a royal inspector in the next chapter that would have important implications for San Antonio.

But something more important had been discovered on the march as well: Apache untrustworthiness. Colonel Ortiz’s Apache allies had caused problems during the entire expedition, disappearing at the most inopportune times and reappearing only to deliver bad news or ask for help. Further, in the months following the Comanche destruction of San Sabá, evidence had begun to mount that the Apaches had in fact enticed the Comanches into attacking. By the end of the expedition, Colonel Ortiz was convinced of Apache duplicity and of the fact that they were the true enemy to Spanish advance along the frontier. He became the first – but not the last – to advocate for the policy that several future nation-states would adopt toward the Plains Indians: extermination, which the Spanish would adopt as their official policy toward the Apaches in 1772.204

Despite all of the struggles and failures of the fifty or so Spanish mission attempts in Texas, the San Sabá mission was the only one to be truly annihilated. For all the evidence of Apache and later Comanche hostility to the missions, it raises the question for me as to why these plains Indians hadn’t wiped out more of these missions?

In short, it’s because extermination was not the plains Indians’ objective. On the contrary, they really liked having San Antonio around to trade with/steal from.205Death and destruction were byproducts of their raids, not their objective. What they really wanted was stuff, like textiles and steel and firearms or a nice sugary treat. Indeed, in later years when Comanche pressure on San Antonio returned, they would refer to it as “their town,” which they permitted to exist simply to raise horses for them and bring them finished goods for trade.206

No, I think the better question is, why did Spanish missionaries keep trying so damn hard. What in the world could have ever made these missionaries think that a mission in the middle of Apachería was a good idea? Granted, the Franciscans were zealots, men of God in a hurry to meet Him, and they weren’t intimated by risks to their own lives. Still, by 1759 they should have been questioning the effectiveness of what they were doing.

In the entire century that the missions existed in Texas, probably less than 5,000 Indians were ever converted to the Faith, and the vast majority of these –90+% – were achieved by the San Antonio missions. To be sure, some Indians were integrated into the larger Spanish society as a result of the missionaries’ efforts, but very few of these would become property-holders or taxpayers in the way that the Crown needed them too. The name “mission” should remind us that these were all meant to be temporary affairs, authorized typically for ten years.207 But in the way that such programs often do, they took on a life of their own, and continued well after their populations had peaked in the 1760’s and 70’s. And even the comparatively successful San Antonio missions were consistently recommended for closure by royal inspectors, citing their cost and unsustainability. We can assume that most of the other fifty or so missions established in Texas in the eighteenth century – almost all of which failed - posted even less attractive returns on investment.

But set aside the financial aspect for a second. Life in the missions also seemed to be statistically worse for the Indians that lived there. Birth rates plummeted to way below replacement rate: the average number of children in mission Indian families was only 1.3. And their life expectancy dropped; only 8 of the Indians buried in the Valero cemetery were over the age of 30.208 It’s hard to evaluate the impact of disease too, particularly by the 1700s when many of the Indians had developed immunities. Historian Gilberto Hinojosa claims that by the 1700’s Indian deaths from disease were no greater than those of the rest of the San Antonio population,209 though it still causes you to wonder if those mission Indians might have lived a little longer had they lived a little further away.

And so why in the face of such poor returns on investment and such tragic consequences for the natives did the Spanish remain fixated for so long on their mission model?

Even two hundred years after the falls of Tenochtitlan and Cuzco, the Spanish were still looking for that next Aztec or Incan empire to drop themselves onto as tribute-extracting overlords.210The only comparisons to do justice to the fantastic wealth that Spain had realized in conquering Mexico and Peru is to compare it to the birth of Industrial or Internet Ages in the U.S. Such fantastic fortunes were made almost overnight that it could not help but leave an impression. And yet, there were only so many Tenochtitlans and Cuzcos to be found. The missionary model of the 1600’s had developed in response to the fact that there were no more great empires to be conquered. And if there were no more empires to conquer and extract wealth from, then the task of the imperialist must be to build up whatever peoples they could find so that they might become tribute-paying citizens, though I suppose we call it “tax-paying” when the tribute comes from your own citizens.

And they had some success with this. The Tlaxcalans were a central Mexican tribe that allied themselves with the Spanish from the get-go against their old Aztec oppressors. They embraced Spanish friendship, religion, and cultural practices, and marched up through the central Mexican highlands with them. Indeed, Tlaxcalans were to be found marching alongside San Antonians in the Battle of the Twin Villages we just discussed.211

But the further Spanish got from the seats of the old Aztec empire, the less effective the model became. The fearsome, shining conquistadors marching in formation with their firesticks made quite an impression on a sedentary tribe living in a river valley in Zacatecas: on the South Texas plains, they were reduced to sunburned, slow-moving targets.

It’s easy to snicker at the shortcomings of the mission model in retrospect, especially in its final decades. Indeed, the Spanish mission model – even at its most successful at a place like San Antonio - stands partly as a testament to the ability of trendy, bad ideas to persist well past their useful lives. Yet it drew Spanish civilization far beyond the limits it would have otherwise occupied and it showed Americans of diverse origins how to tame the semi-arid portion of the continent. North Americans today owe a much larger debt to these Spaniards than they might realize. North Americans were woodsmen. Their model worked in wooded areas with fertile soils, reliable rainfall, and ample game. They didn’t know how to run cattle on the open range, they didn’t have a cultural legacy of irrigating dryland either, much less fending off mounted Indians. It wasn’t until the railroad and Samuel Colt – and only after the Spanish had softened up the plains Indians for a century– that the Anglo-American model was able to penetrate the semi-arid half of the north American continent.

And it was these fearless Franciscan missionaries who spearheaded the Spanish advance into this uninhabitable despoblada.

Episode 7: The Capital of Texas

In 1767, as the Marquess de Rubí put the finishing touches on his survey of the New Spanish Frontier, he struggled to find anything good to say. Northern New Spain was a money pit. Most of the missions were jokes – the East Texas missions still hadn’t converted a single Indian. And the East Texas presidio was too sad to even be funny. With a garrison of 61 men it had only two muskets – and not a single uniform. The entire province, according to Rubí, “should be returned to the Indians.” With one exception, he noted: San Antonio, the “only good thing this province has.”212

By 1767, San Antonio’s missions were the jewels in the Franciscan crown, even as they continued to post a dubious return on investment. Collectively they had converted 4,400 Indians since 1718.213Some of these mission Indians had made the jump into civilian Spanish society through intermarriage, comprising as much as 15% of the 2,060 vecinos of the area in 1767, a percentage that would hold steady well into the nineteenth century.214 At Rubi’s recommendation, in 1772 all of the East Texas missions, presidios, and civilian settlers were relocated to the San Antonio area, marking the third time now that San Antonio had absorbed the East Texas missions.215

San Antonio’s presidial force also shined by comparison to anything else in Northern New Spain. Though numbering only twenty-two men, it was nevertheless well-provisioned, well-disciplined, and actively complemented by the mounted citizen compañías volantes. This mounted citizen auxiliary force comprised most of the men of fighting age in the San Antonio area, as many as 350 men.216 This mounted militia supported Rubí’s characterization of San Antonians as comparatively “rich” given that apparently one-fifth of the population could afford to arm themselves, provision themselves, and supply a string of horses for military excursions deep into Indian territory.217 And indeed, their new presidial captain Luis Antonio Menchaca, nephew of the long-serving Toribio de Urrutia who died after twenty-three years as captain in 1763, died the richest man in the province, with wide-ranging land and stock holdings.218

The Spanish King himself had ordered the Marquess de Rubí to undertake an inspection of the frontier following the transfer of Louisiana to Spain at the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763. By 1767 San Antonio had survived a half century of plagues, natural disasters, and Indian attacks. Moreover, San Antonians had actually pushed the borders of New Spain farther out than anyone back on the continent had appreciated. San Antonio was becoming a not insignificant part of Spain’s colonial strategy. When Rubí recommended that San Fernando de Béxar – the most organized of the many communities that made up San Antonio – be made the capital of Texas, he was simply recognizing by law something that had already become true in fact.

This new focus of resources on San Antonio as the capital of Texas produced a major population boom over the next decade. By 1779, more than 2,500 souls called the San Antonio River valley home, with the civilian town growing to 1,203 vecinos in 294 households, a forty percent increase over a nine-year period.219

One-third of these 1,200 vecinos were native San Antonians, with another third born in Coahuila or Nuevo Leon, and the balance hailing from elsewhere.220 53 of the 294 civilian households were headed by women. Put differently, some 1/6 of the women in San Antonio were widows. Many of their husbands had fallen in the never-ending Indian wars, and many others to the myriad other dangers of hacking a living out of the wilderness. This meant that some of the oldest and wealthiest citizens in San Antonio were often women.221Under Spanish law, women could inherit and manage property of their own, some of them in San Antonio did so quite successfully. Two of the ten largest cattle owners in San Antonio in 1779 were women.222 It was still of course a patriarchal society. Marriages were often arranged to cement social and commercial alliances. Dowries were common, and a necessity to ensure the marriage of a daughter to a promising young man. But it also had the happy side effect of softening Spain’s rigid caste system and rewarding ambitious, upwardly mobile men who could convince a future father-in-law of his potential.

Social life revolved around the agricultural calendar. Professor Jesús de La Teja lays out what a typical year looked like in 1770’s San Antonio: January and February would have been dedicated to repairing buildings, mending fences, and working livestock; March, April, and May to planting; June and July to harvesting the first crop and planting the second. August and September to travel to the annual fair in Saltillo with plenty of time to be back in October and November to harvest the second crop. In December the plazas would fill with vendors and the town would busy itself with bull fights, rodeos, and fandangos, bookended by the feast day of the virgin of Guadalupe around December 12th and the festival of the three kings in early January. It was both a great honor and great burden to be the local citizen chosen to underwrite these festivals each December, but one actively sought by the town’s most prominent men, particularly those vying for city council seats in the end-of-year elections.223

San Antonio had always been a Military City, and the presidio remained the most important institution in town following Rubí’s consolidation of Spanish forces into San Antonio. By 1781 the local presidial force had grown to almost 100 men. Their dependents, some 200 in all, accounted for almost 1/5 of the area’s population. Other professions in San Antonio in 1780 included two blacksmiths, four fishermen, six teamsters, six shoemakers, and nine tailors. Ten self-identified merchants vied for the presidio’s coveted supply contracts and provisioned the town with basic necessities like textiles, tobacco, and other dry goods. Sixty heads of household listed their primary occupation as farmers, and pretty much everyone farmed at least enough to feed themselves.224

Farming had experienced a mild boom after 1761 when significant new lands opened up north of modern-day Navarro street and into the horseshoe bend of the San Antonio River. It expanded again in 1776, when private San Antonians took the initiative to open the “Upper Labor Farm” irrigating the lands south of the headwaters of the San Antonio River down the future N. St Mary’s street and west over to San Pedro springs. This was a major private infrastructure project built without a single dollar from the Spanish government. It was led by many old names we’re already familiar with: Leal, Arocha, Curbelo, and Menchaca. But there were some new names as well.

Fernando Veramendi was a Spaniard born in Pamplona in 1743 who arrived in Texas in 1770. He must have arrived with some capital, as he set himself up as a merchant in town, eventually getting into moneylending, and – like all great Texas men of wealth – land speculation.225 By 1776, he had married María Josefa Granados, a Canary Island descendant, and by 1779 he was elected to city council. His life was cut short in 1783 by Apaches, yet he had laid the foundation for a minor San Antonio dynasty that would go on to build the most opulent house in the province, the so-called Veramendi Palace which stood in downtown San Antonio until the twentieth century.226

The man who built the Veramendi Palace would go on to great success himself. Bartolomé Seguín arrived in San Antonio in the 1740’s and listed his occupation as a carpenter. His trade clearly expanded into what we might call a “General Contractor,” and by the 1750’s he had married the daughter of a prosperous old vecino who came to San Antonio in the 1720’s, Luisa de Ocon Trillo. By the 1770’s, he was regularly being elected to the city council. Over time, he would transition into the livestock business, primarily as a cattle buyer and trail driver, driving his herds to markets in Saltillo and Louisiana.227

José Macario Zambrano arrived around 1770 and, like Veramendi and Seguín, married into old vecino and Isleño bloodlines, in Zambrano’s case, to Juana de Ocon y Trillo. Zambrano went almost immediately into the stock business, and owned some 300 cows by the late 1770’s. His profits he recycled back into buying land, particularly irrigated land in the new Upper Labor Farms, of which he would eventually become the largest single landowner. By 1791, we see him suing the presidial commander in court for refusing to buy corn from him even though his price was higher than the other suppliers, the expectation of preferential treatment a sure sign of his position and power by this time.228

And in 1777, a Corsican merchant set up shop just off the Plaza de las Islas in San Antonio and began hawking his wares, primarily textiles. Ángel Navarro would go on to marked success as a merchant and be a fixture on the city council from 1781 until 1807. He would marry María Joséfa Ruiz, their daughter, María Josefa, would marry the son of Fernando Veramendi, Juan Martín, and his four sons (José Ángel, José Antonio, Eugenio, and Luciano) would go on to figure prominently in San Antonio’s history.229

San Antonio was becoming a land of initiative and opportunity. The vast majority of San Antonio’s heads of household were merchants, tradesman, or farmers working for their own account. They were independent, free men and women with some small measure of control over their own destiny. 127 of these 294 heads of household had enough property to pay taxes in 1779, a dubious honor perhaps, but a much larger proportional tax base than was typical in New Spain. Interestingly, none of the top six landowners in 1779 were Canary Islanders and only two of the largest landowners had been in San Antonio for more than twenty years.230 New arrivals were bringing with them new money, new energy, and social mobility.

Notwithstanding these promising signs of economic development and Rubí’s description of San Antonians as comparatively “rich,”231 the town did little to impress a follow-up royal inspection in 1778. The one word that both of the leaders of this tour used to describe the community was “miserable.”232

In May of 1776, General Teodoro de Croix was appointed Comandante of the Internal Provinces, a sort of super-governor for all of the provinces of northern New Spain. In 1778, he was dispatched on a mission to assess the effectiveness of the Marques de Rubí’s reforms made fifteen years earlier, accompanied by a Franciscan observer, Father Juan Agustín de Morfi. Echoing the observations of many who had preceded them, they were moved by the physical beauty of San Antonio’s setting: “We do not hesitate to say that in all of New Spain there is not a place more beautiful, well-situated, or conducive to becoming a great city than the site occupied by San Fernando and the Presidio of San Antonio de Béxar.”233

And yet the beauty of the site – in their opinion – stood in stark contrast to quality of its inhabitants. De Croix wrote disparagingly about the “ignorant” vecinos and their ayuntamiento, which he called the “most ridiculous town council.” He concluded that San Antonio “Does not warrant the concern required for its preservation.”234 Father Morfi described San Antonio contemptibly as composed of fifty-nine small houses of stone and adobe, seventy-nine jacales, and only a few proper homes. Then he got personal. The local vecinos or residents, he affirmed, were universally “lazy and predisposed toward sin and undeserving of the blessings of this land.”235

This is a common refrain from high-born, gachupines forced to spend time amongst our colorful lot of citizen-soldiers settling the frontier by force of arms and their own will. And De Croix and Morfi were probably right that San Antonians were “lazy” farmers. But why shouldn’t they have been? The price for corn was fixed by the presidial captain each year,236 meaning margins were limited, and other markets were too far away for San Antonio’s produce to compete in, meaning surpluses typically went to waste.237

Second, although New Spain abounded in land, it took a literal act of the Governor or even Viceroy to get it turned over into private hands. Well-placed Spaniards like De Croix could get domains the size of small European nation-states granted to them, yet despite the obvious availability of land all around them, San Antonians had to wait nearly twenty years for new lands each time they filled up their town lots.

And, third, the entire Spanish economy was set up to enrich Spaniards and impoverish the colonies,238 and San Antonians knew this. All finished goods were required by law to come from Cádiz in Spain to Veracruz, from there to Mexico City, from there to Queretaro, from there to Saltillo, and from there to San Antonio, having been marked up and taxed at each stop along the way.239 Many products were subject to royal monopolies held by politically-favored friends of the government, further inflating already inflated prices.

Restrained by their own laws from improving their economic lot, San Antonians did what frankly I think any of us would have done today: they circumvented those laws. To be precise, they became smugglers. Or rather, they had always been smugglers, going all the way back to Captain Diego Ramón and his carefully orchestrated Chicken War in 1719 from Chapter 2.

Smuggling was attractive to San Antonians because they were just a few weeks journey from the markets of French Louisiana and the Anglo-American colonies, both of which liked nothing more than to trade with Spaniards accustomed to artificially high prices.240 San Antonians’ access to these non-regulated foreign markets was one of the few competitive advantages they had and served as small recompense for all the dangers of the frontier. And to be clear, we’re not talking about smuggling really illicit items here. The most commonly smuggled import was textiles: cloth. Coffee and tobacco were probably second and third. “Smuggling” is really too strong a word: San Antonians were just practicing free trade.241

Thanks to this circumvention of Spanish trade laws, European goods cost less in San Antonio than they did in Veracruz,242 and San Antonio merchants became quite successful at the annual fair in Saltillo each year peddling their illicit goods.243 Envious competitors in neighboring provinces began to lodge formal complaints about the “traitorous competition” from San Antonio, a sure sign that they were making money.244

But smuggling was still only an option for those with the capital and time to make the journey to New Orleans and then Saltillo and back each year. There was another, illicit way that San Antonians found to make money closer to home.

Horses and cattle left behind by early Spanish expeditions into Texas had run wild over the last century and grown hardy on the Texas plains. Horses were practically free in San Antonio for the first hundred years of its existence to any man willing to capture and break them. And cattle as well needed only be harvested, typically by one of two methods.

The easiest method was to kill it, skin it, tan the hide and melt the fat into tallow. It was horribly wasteful but hides and tallow were much easier to transport long distances. Cow-killers were called carneadores and plied their trade on horseback with a long hocking knife.245 In order not to damage the hide, these carneadores would ride alongside a running bovine and cut the tendons on its hind legs, rendering it immobile. Again, brutal, I know, yet just another demonstration of San Antonians’ skill on horseback. This would also contribute to the development of a quite accomplished leatherworking industry. Indeed, the only instance I have come across of a presidial commander ever declining an offer of supplies was when one such commander refused the offer of leatherworkers from the interior, noting that the local leatherworkers were better than anything to be found elsewhere in New Spain.

The other, more humane method, I suppose, to make money off of cattle was to round them up. The saddle horn first appears on Spanish saddles around this time along this same frontier. And the first documented mention of using a lariat to rope cattle appears in San Antonio itself. These two innovations made it possible to run cattle on Texas’s open ranges. It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, that in San Antonio in the 1770’s we witness the birth of the great Texas cattle drive. Cattle drives east to Louisiana would leave once a month from San Antonio, with as many as 2,000 head at a time. Anyone could round up cattle and entrust them to the drovers, who would return a few months later with precious gold and silver.246 Indeed, the 1770’s and 80’s saw a spike in the demand for cattle in the eastern part of north America as thirteen colonies struggled for independence against their mother country, and innumerable Texas cattle driven by San Antonio drovers made the long march all the way to Spanish Florida to feed those rebel armies.

It should be no surprise, then, that the largest single occupation in San Antonio in 1779, 69 out of the 294 households, was campista – stockman or, if you wish, cowboy.247

Indeed, working cattle was perhaps the most broadly unifying cultural activity in early San Antonio.248 And it was the kind of micro-entrepreneurship that the Spanish mercantile system abhorred and that men like General de Croix and Father Morfi couldn’t understand. Rather than appreciating the hard work required to round-up wild cattle in land that was still roamed by hostile Indians, the Spaniards viewed these ambitious San Antonians as criminal trespassers, poaching the King’s cattle from lands that still technically belonged to the Crown. Never mind that San Antonians had for decades been begging the Governor, the Viceroy, the king – anyone! – to patent some of the millions of acres that were sitting idle in the public domain all around them. The Crown must be paid, De Croix decided, for this illegal creation of wealth. And so, following his 1778 expedition, De Croix ordered that all unbranded livestock were to be considered the property of the Crown, that the unlicensed killing of the Crown’s livestock would be treated as a crime, and that anyone exporting cattle from the province was required to pay a substantial tax.249

De Croix was striking at the very livelihood of the largest single occupation in San Antonio, an occupation that cut across class lines and whose racial composition reflected nearly perfectly the racial composition of the town250 – and he was doing it on purpose. Worse than confirm the vecinos’ fears that government officials were indifferent to their hardships, DeCroix’s decree seemed to suggest active malice toward them. In a fascinating act of defiance and of independence, the most prominent men in San Antonio got together and signed an act of civil protest. Again, the Spaniards couldn’t understand this backlash, and mocked the San Antonians for their attempts to defend their livelihood. Morfi claimed that San Antonians viewed any attempt at imposing “good order as tyranny”, and any enforcement of the King’s laws as persecution.251Yet San Antonians weren’t intimidated, and even the Texas Governor quietly agreed that DeCroix’s tax had the effect of destroying the cattle business in San Antonio. Leal, Curbelo, Travieso, Menchaca, Flores, Veramendi, Zambrano and others united their voices to protest General de Croix’s decree, tie it up in court, and defy royal authorities to enforce it.

And seventeen years later, they would win. In 1795, General DeCroix’s decree was officially overturned, though to be fair it had never been fully observed. In an odd way, his attempt to tax the cattle business had brought it out of the shadows and even legitimated it. It gave rise to more organized registration and branding practices.252 And it gave San Antonians stronger arguments with the Governor to formalize their claims to land that were nominally in the public domain but which they had worked and defended for decades. From 1760 to 1791, only fourteen ranches had been granted in the entire San Antonio area. After the protests of 1778 and the civil disobedience of the 1780s, the crown finally began to more liberally patent “sitios” or pasture lands to San Antonians who immediately put them to good use, setting off another mini-land boom in the 1790s.

Interestingly, San Antonians like other settlers along the Northern New Spanish frontier didn’t call their rather sizeable new sitios latifundios or haciendas. They called them ranchos. As historian Jesus de la Teja reminds us, in Spanish, a rancho historically referred to “a small freehold farm, a rural house or small collection of houses, or a marginal portion of a hacienda rented to an independent livestock raiser.” It implied a landholding that was worked by the owner of the land himself, something that the absentee landowners of the great latifundios in New Spain would never even pretend to do.253 Again, oddly, Father Morfi mocked San Antonians for their pride in their ranchos: “They only aspire to independence…and they call themselves proprietors of extensive ranchos, none of which are worth a damn; yet this is their character, this is their passion; and in order to indulge it, they disregard all danger.”254

We’re starting to see some of the first signs of overt friction between San Antonians and their so-called superiors. It shouldn’t be a surprise as to why. A pure-bred Spanish bureaucrat couldn’t have less in common with a bronze-skinned San Antonian who chose to spend his energies on horseback, braving the hot and dangerous plains chasing wild horses and cattle, and then driving them across rivers, forests, and swamps to return with nefarious goods like cloth, tobacco, and coffee. And so men like Father Morfi could only mock San Antonians for their passions, as when he observed that “[San Antonians] only want to go around on horses, they disdain tilling the soil of their own farms.”255 They made no attempt to understand the challenges of life on the Texas frontier, and seemed to be more interested at times in keeping their subjects poor than in seeing them prosper. And in doing so, the Royal authorities only demonstrated their own short-sightedness towards these upwardly mobile frontiersmen. Because DeCroix and Morfi and the folks back in Spain should have recognized what commentators as far back as Aristotle have known: never underestimate what being on a horse does to a man’s soul. Once a man has sat in a saddle, he will never willingly wear a yoke.

Episode 8: San Antonio Strong

Colonel Domingo Cabello y Robles had first seen combat at the age of 17. Born in Spain, he served for the first part of his career in Cuba, where he would fend off English attacks for seven years. By the age of twenty-four, he had been promoted to major and tasked with the defense of Florida against both European enemies and native ones. In 1762, he was given the governorship of Nicaragua, which he held until 1776 when he was sent to San Antonio to become the new Governor of Texas.

But for all that Cabello y Robles had seen, he hadn’t experienced anything like San Antonio politics. He entered office and walked straight into the hornet’s nest caused by General Teodoro de Croix’s attempt to tax the Texas cattle business out of existence. As the cattle business was one of the few cash-producing activities in the province, the General’s tax was seen as a direct, malicious attack on San Antonians’ livelihoods. It had been was left to Governor Cabello y Robles to enforce it, for which his popularity would permanently suffer.256

In addition, the new Governor noticed a disturbing deterioration of relations with the natives. After a hard-won peace against the Apaches in 1749 and the Battle of the Twin Villages against the Comanches in 1759, a fragile decade of comparative calm allowed San Antonians to catch their breath. But by 1770, a new generation of warriors had come of age on the plains, each itching to live up to the legends of their fathers. The Comanches slowly resumed their horse raiding, which by 1770 they were doing so regularly and frequently that the presidio was unable to mount a response: they didn’t have enough horses left. And with the Apaches, any pretense of alliance or even peace long since vanished. Between 1771 and 1778, Apaches in Texas stole68,256 head of livestock, kidnapped 154 children, and killed 1,674 people, in a province whose population probably barely topped 3,000 during the period!257 And recall that San Antonio essentially is Texas at this time: the east Texas settlements had been withdrawn again to San Antonio a few years before; Goliad had virtually no civilian community and depended heavily on San Antonio; and Laredo, founded in 1755, was considered part of Tamaulipas.

So dire was the situation that at one point, the vecinos of San Fernando, the town center of San Antonio’s many communities, petitioned the governor to move them all elsewhere until the threat could be addressed.258

Governor Cabello y Robles analyzed the situation. By now, public and royal sentiment had turned decisively against the Apaches, who were viewed as entirely untrustworthy. Comanche horse-stealing, by comparison, seemed relatively minor. Additionally, Comanche hatred for the Apaches was a well-known fact, something that would make them natural allies.259 The Governor began to fantasize about a Spanish-Comanche alliance against the Apaches, even as he had no idea how to bring it about. Spanish contacts with Comanches were limited, owing to their late arrival on the scene and their constant movement.

On July 18, 1784, the answer rode into town in the form of a twenty-two-year old man. By the clothes he wore, by the tattoos on his skin, by the piercings in his eyebrows, and by the way he sat he horse, no one had any reason to believe he was anything other than a Taovaya Indian.260

The mystery boy, whose birth name was Francisco Chaves, had been born in Albuquerque in 1762 to a line of Spanish Indian fighters that could trace their descent back to Francisco Vázquez de Coronado. At the age of 8, he was captured by Comanches, whose language he learned amidst a many-year ordeal as their slave. He was eventually sold to the Taovayas, close allies of the Comanches – or was it subjects? – with whom he would live until the age on twenty-two.261

On July 18, 1784, his Taovaya band went a horse-raiding in the San Antonio area. Chaves had, apparently, neither lost his memory of the Spanish language nor his desire to return to the Spanish world. As the Taovayas began to head north back into the Hill Country, Chaves saw his opportunity. He pretended to be having a problem with his saddle. His fellow raiders – fearful of the imminent retaliatory response from the presidio – grew impatient and sped off into the distance without him. Chaves turned and rode into town.

He was brought immediately before Governor Cabello y Robles. Here, the Governor soon, was the opportunity that he had been waiting for, an emissary that he could send forth to speak to the Comanches in their own language and plead the case for a strategic alliance.

The next year, the Governor paired off Chavez with a French trader named Pedro Vial, who claimed that he had traveled extensively in Comanchería and knew exactly which Comanche chiefs they needed to talk to.262And so in the spring of 1785, Chaves and Vial set off. They quickly connected with some Comanche bands that Chaves knew and were guided to a large Comanche camp, possibly the same village on the Red River which was the scene of the Battle of the Twin Villages in Chapter 6.263Upon arrival, they informed the Comanche chiefs that they had come bearing an important message from the Capitan Grande in San Antonio and asked for the honor of sharing that message with any and all that would come hear it. Chaves and Vial then spent an uncomfortable week in the village waiting to see whether anyone would come or, as was the more likely outcome, whether they would simply have their scalps detached from their skulls and be left for the buzzards.264

But a Chief Iron Shirt, a Chief Shaved Head, and a dozen or so lesser chiefs came, albeit with some reluctance and a great deal of skepticism. Fortunately for Chavez and Vial, these chiefs seem to have been men of some standing, worthy of the lofty embassy upon which they had been sent. And though it was Pedro Vial who would later tell the tale, it was Chaves who probably did the talking, being the only one fluent in the Comanche and Taovaya tongues.265

Chaves and Vial began by offering gifts of knives and tobacco from the Capitan Grande in San Antonio, referring to Governor Cabello y Robles. Surely the Comanches knew that they were but trinkets from the great stores of wealth available to the Capitan Grande, Chaves began. He wouldn’t try to deceive these great chiefs, who also had to know that the Capitan Grande’s heart had grown cold toward the Comanches, who continued to raid in his lands. The Capitan Grande was a man who only wanted peace, Chaves continued, yet he wasn’t a man who was afraid of war.

Then, instead of threatening or begging or rationalizing the advantages of an alliance, Chaves and Vial began to cry.266 His crying grew into wails, taking on the tones of a Comanche death song before the assembled chiefs, who inquired as to why he was making such a display. It was because of the profound sadness he felt, Chaves said, at the thought of the Spanish making war on such good people as the Comanches. And yet it seemed inevitable now, Chaves continued, especially as the misunderstandings between these two great empires only compounded.

Chaves claimed that he had tried to explain to the Capitan Grande that the Comanches had never killed a Spaniard without provocation or without proper honor. He had explained to the Capitan Grande that the Comanches, like all great people, were friendly to their allies and ferocious to their enemies. The Spanish were no different! Why couldn’t these great empires focus on all they had in common rather than continue along blindly on a path to war, from which only the villainous Apaches as bystanders would emerge victorious!

Very well, the Capitan Grande had told him, if the Comanches desire friendship I will grant it to them. Let them come to me in San Antonio as friends and in peace and with honest intentions, not like those scoundrel Apaches who know only deceit and war!267

Chaves’ speech was subtle, but brilliant. It provoked a night’s worth of debate by the Comanche chiefs that became so heated and noisy that Chaves and Vial feared at any moment that their hosts might storm into their tent and send their scalps back to San Antonio as their response.

But the omens were favorable, the reasoning sound, and Chaves’ rhetoric masterful. The next morning, the chiefs returned to Vial and Chaves’ tent and said that if the Capitan Grande was willing to forget past injustices, they were too. They would send three chiefs back to San Antonio to talk terms.

In October 1785, Governor Cabello y Robles, Chaves, and three Comanche chiefs sat down in San Antonio and negotiated an extraordinary treaty that the Comanches would largely honor for the rest of Texas’s life as a Spanish province. The terms were as follows:

The Comanches would cease hostilities not just against San Antonio, but against all subjects of the Spanish king.
The Apaches were to be the declared enemies of both, yet each party would seek the permission of the other before entering their territory to make war.
The Spanish would provide annual gifts to the Comanche chiefs and the Comanches were given access to Spanish trade in San Antonio, provided that they committed not to trade with any other Europeans.268

In years past, San Antonio had won its peace through arms; this time, it had won peace through diplomacy and, moreover, secured for itself the position as the gateway to trade with the great Comanche empire. The Crown would eventually recognize San Antonio’s exclusive monopoly on trade with the Comanches, who would come to town several times a year and stay in a lodge 144’ long by 15’ wide that San Antonio merchants built for them.269 San Antonians and Comanches would also hunt buffalo together annually, from which experience San Antonians would only further refine their skills as horsemen.

Chaves would enlist in the San Antonio presidio as a cavalryman and interpreter, where he would serve until 1829. In 1786, he married Juana Padrón, by whom he would eventually father six children, and then an additional five by a subsequent marriage to Micaela Fragoso.270One of his granddaughters, Virginia, would marry the famous Judge Roy Bean, the self-proclaimed law west of the Pecos.271

But peace with the Comanches was not the end-goal of the Chaves-Vial expedition. It was merely a piece of Governor Cabello y Robles’s grand plan to pacify the Apaches. The Apaches had grown increasingly bold in the late 1770’s as they had reunited with their Mescalero cousins to the West, noticeably boosting their strength.272 In 1779, Governor Cabello y Robles announced a policy of total war against the Apaches and coordinated a retaliatory campaign against them with General Juan de Ugalde, Comandante the northern provinces of New Spain. For most of a decade, General Ugalde personally led the pursuit of the Apaches throughout Northern Coahuila, Big Bend, and the Pecos River valley.

After a lull in 1783, Apache raiding resumed with a furor in 1784. In June alone of that year, they killed 46 people and stole 600 horses.273 At one point, the Apaches outmaneuvered General Ugalde and attacked San Antonio in broad daylight, almost managing to kill the Governor in the middle of the Plaza de Armas. In early 1789, however, General Ugalde regained the initiative, and began to harry them mercilessly. The entire countryside was a battlefield, from Monclova up to San Sabá over to Big Bend, and the Apaches found no peace. General Ugalde and his new Comanche allies funneled the Apaches toward a spot on the Sabinal River about 80 miles west of San Antonio, where they met in one final battle. Sometimes referred to as the Battle of Soledad Creek, you might more readily recognize the location as the town of Uvalde, which was a later corruption of the pronunciation of General Ugalde’s name.274 There, on January 9, 1790, Ugalde’s force - which included fifty-two civilian volunteers from San Antonio - surprised and annihilated the last 300 Apaches warriors remaining in the field.275

After the Battle of Soledad Creek, the Apaches were a broken nation. Never again would they menace San Antonio the way they had for the first seventy years of its existence. By some estimates, after a decade of war with General Ugalde and the forces from San Antonio, there might have been as few as 1,000 male Apaches left alive, most of whom retreated into the South Texas monte, never again to threaten San Antonio as they had before.276

For the first time since its founding, San Antonio would know almost an entire generation of peace. Hated though he was at the time for his half-hearted attempts to enforce the unpopular cattle tax, Governor Cabello y Robles deserves credit for his successful strategy in pacifying San Antonio’s historic enemies from the plains. And in truth, his response to the tax protests had been to grant more lands to San Antonians, thus reducing the size of the public domain to which the taxes applied and accelerating the opening of vast new lands to San Antonio’s long-suffering settlers, who could finally make productive use of those lands now that the Indian threat had subsided.

The peace of the 1790’s and early 1800’s finally made the rest of the province safe for development as well, including Nacogdoches and the parts of East Texas that would soon attract the eye of Anglo-Americans. It also heightened for San Antonians the awareness of their own, distinct identity apart from the rest of New Spain. They began to assert themselves more politically – as with their open opposition to the cattle tax – and to take pride in the unique vitality of their local political institutions.

Indeed, if early San Antonio was known for anything in particular to viceregal authorities, it was for the perceived fractiousness of its local politics.277 Sometimes today we’re inclined to lament contentiousness in government as the sign of a dysfunctional political system; I think it might actually be the hallmark of a healthy one, so long as that contentiousness remains contained within the rules of the system itself. And in San Antonio it did. Indeed, San Antonio was remarkable for its relatively honest elections.278 In contrast, historian Vito Alessio Robles notes that in Saltillo at the same time, councilmen could be bought as easily as “banging a drum”; in Parras, the city council positions were just hereditary; in Monterrey, the city council waited for the town crier to tell them how they were supposed to vote based on who had put up the most money; and in Tamaulipas, well, things were “even worse.”279

Second, the frontier had almost entirely dissolved the rigidity of the New Spanish caste system in 1790’s San Antonio, giving San Antonians a nuanced view of their own identities. Father Morfi of the previous episode reminds us that San Antonio’s city council at this time was a “ragged band of men of all colors.”280 If we are to believe census and church records, pure-blooded Spaniards represented 50% of the population of the town by 1793,281 but that number defies credulity, and probably more accurately approximates the number of property-owning, tax-paying citizens. I don’t want to oversell this, because even the most meritocratic societies aren’t nearly so mobile as they like to believe, but we do see interesting signs of social mobility, or at the very least of racial fluidity in early San Antonio.282For example, Francisco de Urrutia is classified as a mestizo in 1744, a coyote in 1754, a Spaniard in 1760, then back to a coyote in 1764.283 (Coyote, recall, is the offspring of a mestizo-Indian pairing.) Joaquin de Medina shows up as a mulatto in 1750, Spaniard in 1754, mulatto again in 1757, mestizo in 1761, and then a Spaniard in 1763. And of course, Pedro Huízar, sculptor of San José’s rose window, began life in San Antonio as a mulatto carpenter in 1778, figures as a Spanish surveyor by 1793, and by 1798 is titled Don Alcalde of the San José mission community.284

Again, in a small, isolated community, hardship, intermarriage, and compradazgo could only have blurred racial and class lines, all of which also served to keep political antagonisms within the bounds of the system. As the ayuntamiento or city council would respond to one outsider’s complaint of nepotism in San Antonio: “Here we are all related.” If blood relations were a disqualifier for holding office or letting government contracts, they continued, we would all be forever disqualified from everything.285

Third, despite internal political factions and even some ideological differences, San Antonians were by now united in their feeling that the Spanish government was unavailable or indifferent when it was really needed, and nothing but intrusive and oppressive when it wasn’t. In 1790, San Antonio reported to San Luis Potosi for tax matters, to Monclova for political matters, to Chihuahua and Monterrey for military matters, and to Guadalajara for legal and religious matters.286 It was downright confusing, and only served to reinforce San Antonians’ feelings of isolation. And over time, isolation can morph into something that looks a lot like independence.

Mexican Historian Alessio Robles concluded that by 1790, San Antonio’s “vinculación racial y económica con el resto de la Nueva España era asaz débil, casi nula.” That is, her “cultural and economic ties to the rest of New Spain were exceedingly weak, and effectively non-existent.”287He continues: “The landscape was admirably well-prepared for a revolution.”288

Episode 9: San Antonio Revolts

On June 4, 1807, a dust-covered American lieutenant arrived in San Antonio under military escort. Texas Governor Manuel Cordero went out personally to receive him, masking his deep suspicion of the interloper with theatrical displays of hospitality. The clean-shaven, fair-featured man from the East claimed he had become lost while exploring the borders of the Louisiana Purchase, acquired by the United States from France just four years prior. He had wandered into Colorado and then down to Santa Fe, where he had been placed under guard and marched down to Chihuahua, where he was politely but firmly reprimanded and returned up the Camino Real to San Antonio en route to New Orleans.289

The American lieutenant, Zebulon Pike, was flattered by the governor’s attentions, and honored by the opportunity to ride in his coach up the Mission Trail and into town. Like so many other visitors to the area, he was enchanted by the country, calling it “one of the richest, most prolific, and best watered countries in North America.” The missions, he observed, “for solidity, accommodation, and even majesty were surpassed by few buildings” he had seen in New Spain.290

Yet in truth, the missions were shells of their former selves. By 1793, Valero was home to just 45 converts; San José 106; Concepción 47; San Juan 31; and Espada 41, a quarter or so of the populations they had supported just a generation earlier. The mission ranches went untended; the fields untilled. The adjustment to mission life had proven difficult for Native Americans. Two-thirds of all the baptisms recorded in this period were children who died before the age of 3, deathbed last rites that falsely inflated the numbers of converts that the missions continued to report. As we have mentioned previously, the birth rate of mission couples was only 1.3 children per pair. Most died before the age of 30.291And in truth there were no more local Indians left to convert.292 The majority of the natives had been decimated by disease or had moved far away. The few that had embraced mission life had assimilated into Spanish society as much as they were able to, and the Franciscans’ attempts to shelter them from the corruption of the secular world had counterproductively ensured that full-on assimilation would always be an uphill battle.

It was General Teodoro de Croix – the royal inspector we followed in Chapter 7 - who in 1779 had first uttered the word “secularization, “the political term for disbanding the missions and distributing their assets.293The missions were, in a technical sense, the property of the crown. The Franciscans merely oversaw them for the benefit of their native charges. And in the opinion of most Royal Observers, the missions had been losing the Crown’s money for long enough. Specifically, General de Croix ordered the secularization of Mission Valero, whose expansive and underutilized lands had long been coveted by the nearby vecinos of San Antonio. In fine Spanish colonial tradition, however, the mission fathers were able to delay implementation of the order for a solid decade.294

But by 1792, neither the Franciscans nor Spanish authorities could ignore the missions’ decline or civilian San Antonio’s pressing need for more lands. One group in particular had been especially vocal about unlocking new lands for settlement, and theirs was a grievance that even the typically aloof Spanish authorities were sympathetic to.

When the Marquess de Rubí had ordered the removal of the East Texas missions and civilians to San Antonio in 1772, he hadn’t given any thought as to how these East Texas evacuees would actually make a living once they got to San Antonio. In East Texas, most had been farmers and landowners. Overnight, they were made landless refugees at the bottom of the socio-economic order. For twenty years they lingered around the edges of San Antonio society, some taking work as day laborers, others taking up new trades, and others still defying Royal authorities and moving back to East Texas on their own. The rest begged to be allowed to return home legally, and many local San Antonians lent their voices in support of their pleas.

When Mission Valero became the first mission to be secularized in 1793, its lands were earmarked for these East Texas families. Finally, after twenty years of patient suffering, these East Texans were incorporated into San Antonio’s economic system. Valero’s lands were actually so extensive that the fifteen remaining mission families were also easily accommodated, with enough left over to reserve a few plots to the town for future growth.295 Valero’s ranch lands south of San Antonio – some 20,000 acres – would come into the possession of Erasmo Seguín, grandson of Bartolomé Seguín from the previous episode and a third-generation San Antonian. And the mission itself - which boasted the thickest walls of any of the missions – was quickly taken over by the royal compañía volante that traced its origins to a small town in Coahuila known as “El Álamo,” which would soon give its name to the decommissioned mission.

In June 1794, Mission Espada was secularized through a similar process, and San Juan followed the next month. Secularization at Concepción would be nominally delayed until 1823 and at San José until 1824, but by then many of the lands had already been taken over by San Antonio citizens.

The old missions, nevertheless, continued to define the communities around them. More than little neighborhoods they were really like separate towns. San José still had its own alcalde or mayor into the 1800’s, in this case, Don Pedro Huízar, the sculptor of the famed Rose Window and the principal surveyor of the mission secularizations,296 whose descendants still live in the shadow of San José. San Juan’s converts maintained their blended, Native American and Catholic practices. And Espada fifty years later still supported an independent community of thirty-seven Indians and fifty-seven Spaniards and mestizos.

The missions’ secularization set off several mini-migrations within San Antonio as well. When the East Texans moved onto Valero’s lands, many of them vacated their homes in the little neighborhood they had settled in just south of the Horseshoe bend of the San Antonio River. Following the Louisiana purchase in 1803 which had brought Lieutenant Pike to San Antonio, Spain offered many of its former citizens in Louisiana financial incentives to move to Texas, and many new of these immigrants – including a self-proclaimed Dutch Baron de Bastrop –moved into this little community on the other side of the river, calling it La Villita or the “little town.”

Spain offered these incentives to their former subjects in Louisiana because they desperately wanted to fill up the vast Texas wilderness as a buffer against their new neighbors to the East. Anglo-Americans were even more menacing than the French, who had been content to trade furs and guns. Anglos-Americans, on the other hand, wanted land. Even as Spain had struggled for one hundred plus years to populate its north American Frontier, in just the twenty years since the Anglo-Americans had won their independence, they had expanded Westward 1,500 miles. They had just doubled the size of their country again with the Louisiana purchase, which placed them for the first time in direct proximity to Spanish Texas.

The first Anglo-Americans had trickled across the border prior to the Louisiana purchase, yet these were mostly smugglers or rowdies looking for cheap cattle and horses. More troubling to men like Governor Cordero were the so-called filibusteros men who coupled their desire for land with the rhetoric of American liberty. Indeed, for Anglo-Americans of this period landownership was inseparable from their conception of individual liberty, and they felt ordained by God to spread their new ideology to the world.

As such, Governor Cordero was careful to control what he showed Lt. Zebulon Pike. He needed to impress the lieutenant with Spain’s strength, while simultaneously emphasizing the town’s foreignness and undesirability as an object of American expansionist ambitions. He paraded the presidial unit before the American Lieutenant in their full field dress and wowed him with displays of San Antonians’ skills on horseback. The Governor housed him in the Spanish Governor’s palace for his ten-day stay, hosting dinner parties nightly and charming him with the nightly paseos and fandangos of which San Antonians were so fond. The American lieutenant was duly impressed with San Antonians’ industry, courtesy, and “urbanity,” believe it or not, though he noted that San Antonian men lacked in conversational skills, talking only of “women, money, and horses.” San Antonio men’s conversation has, of course, since become much more sophisticated.297

Courtesies having been observed, Governor Cordero sent Lt. Pike on his way back East, still under military escort. His public relations campaign had backfired, however, as the town’s exoticism clearly captured Lieutenant Pike’s heart, something that comes through clearly in his widely-published account of his journey. He described San Antonio as “one of the most agreeable places that we met in the province,”298 and Lt. Pike’s account of San Antonio would serve to whet the appetite of many Anglos for the exotic land that they referred to as “the Texas.”

There were forces on the other side of the world destabilizing Spain’s control over San Antonio as well.

In 1808, Napoleon declared war on Spain and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, deposing the Spanish king and placing his own brother on the throne.

In August of that same year, he sent a French general into Texas from Louisiana with the goal of dislodging some of Spain’s colonial possessions thereby denying the resources of New Spain to the mother country.299San Antonians’ reputation for political fractiousness and its long proximity to French Louisiana and its Enlightenment ideals made it fertile soil for revolution, in the eyes of Napoleon.

Two political factions had emerged in San Antonio by 1808. The “Royalist” faction strongly defended the traditional structures of Spanish society, in particular, the Crown and the Church. Most vocal among the Royalist faction were the Zambrano brothers, José Darío Zambrano and Juan Manuel Zambrano. Born to one of the wealthiest families in town, both were ordained priests in 1793, though neither overly concerned himself with strict adherence to his vows of poverty or chastity, for which each would be reprimanded in his own time. By 1811, they were both back in San Antonio with cushy postings which afforded them ample time to pursue their wide-ranging business and extracurricular interests as well.

The most vocal members of the competing “republican” faction were Juan Martin Veramendi, José Antonio Navarro, and José Francisco Ruiz, all three of which were related so heavily by marriage that we might better think of them as a single clan.300 The Veramendi/Navarro/Ruiz clan was enchanted by the republican, liberal301 ideas coming out of Europe and particularly the United States at this time that held out the radical notion that people might actually be able to organize themselves. They held that human society had no need for top-down direction from a monarch or bureaucratic state, and that really a government need do little more than enforce the laws, promote its citizens’ individual prosperity, and stay out of the way.

As was inevitable in a community as small as San Antonio’s, these factions did not cut neatly down family lines. José Antonio Navarro’s brother, Ángel, was much more conservative and initially loyal to the Spanish Crown. Old presidial and Canary Island families, like the Menchacas and Delgados, were inclined toward the conservative ideals endorsed by Royalists, though again, they harbored Republicans in their midst. And Erasmo Seguín – city councilman, commander of the local militia, and man of means – probably would have considered himself a loyal subject of the king, though he showcased a rebellious streak of his own, regularly protesting proposed tax increases by the Crown.

Napoleon had, however, misunderstood the factionalism and contentiousness of San Antonio’s politics. Even as they warred ideologically, San Antonio’s factions were unified in their preference for a Spanish monarch over a French one. Napoleon’s agent was captured by loyalists just a few days after he entered Texas and was marched through the streets of San Antonio under escort just as Lieutenant Pike had been the year before, though to a much different fate.

(Sidebar: On the march to his ultimate execution in New Spain, Napoleon’s agent was held for a time in Dolores, a small town in Guanajuato, where he was ministered to by a priest named Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla.302 More on him later.)

Unfortunately, the very fact that this aborted insurrection happened in this remote frontier province full of known smugglers and individualistic ranchers actually heightened official Spanish suspicions of San Antonians, never mind that they had quite proactive detained him. More troops were sent to the province along with a new Governor, Manuel Salcedo, under orders to keep a close eye on the locals, a move which San Antonians resented deeply.

Back in Spain, a resistance government loyal to the deposed King of Spain formed in Seville, the so-called Central Junta. The Central Junta called a convention of all Spaniards, including representatives from even the most remote provinces on the Northern New Spanish Frontier. The Spanish Viceroy in Mexico City, however, decided that one representative from the relatively central state of Durango would be enough for all of the so-called “Interior Provinces.”303 This was an unnecessary and inflammatory provocation to San Antonians of all ideologies. To Republicans, it would have looked like a clear denial of their rights of representation. To royalists, it would have felt like poor recompense for their continued loyalty to the Crown. Combine this with Governor Cordero’s decision back in 1807 to downsize San Antonio’s city council and circumscribe its responsibilities – a move that actually punished the royalists who held more seats – and Spanish insensitivity continued to find ways to unite the famously fractious San Antonio factions.

On September 16, 1810, that priest from Dolores who had ministered to the condemned French general, Father Miguel Hidalgo, finally set off the tinderbox of revolt when he raised his grito, a primal scream of exasperation and outrage against centuries of perceived Spanish exploitation. Father Hidalgo – like Napoleon –quickly recognized that San Antonio was fertile ground for an independence movement and a critical supply point with the United States of the North. As such, he endorsed the plan of a retired San Antonio militia captain named Juan Bautista de las Casas to capture the town, raise the banner of revolt there, and use it to supply the heartland of Mexico in the battles to come against Spain.

On January 22, 1811, Captain de las Casas, with quiet support from some of the members of republican faction in town arrested the new Texas Governor Manuel Salcedo in front of his house.304De las Casas and his conspirators declared themselves for Father Hidalgo and sent Governor Salcedo and several of the regular Spanish army officers in chains to rebel-controlled Monclova.305

The rebellion, however, soon lost steam, and San Antonians began to second-guess Captain de las Casas. He had not been in San Antonio for long and lacked an appreciation for local political sensitivities. He began confiscating the property of known “Royalists” but eventually cast the net so wide as to threaten the families and associates of many of his original supporters.306 Further, it soon became apparent that Governor Salcedo was not without friends, locally and at the national level, and many began to fear the repercussions of allowing the Casas Revolt to continue.

On March 2 – just five weeks or so after the Casas Revolt began – ten of San Antonio’s leading men met at Juan Manuel Zambrano’s ranch, located today in the River Road neighborhood off of Mulberry and 281. The group included not only the conservative Zambrano brothers and Erasmo Seguín, but also seem to have included Republicans like the Arochas, Delgados, Veramendis, Navarros, and Ruiz as well, many of whom had originally supported Captain de las Casas.307Seguín, as commander of the militia, coordinated with his men to turn on the rebel Captain, which they did the next morning on March 3, after which it was now Captain de las Casas’ turn to march to Monclova in chains.

The uprising had not gone much better for Father Hidalgo. After marching his army to within striking distance of Mexico City, he lost heart and decided not to attack, giving the Royalists time to regroup and turn the tables on him. Pretty soon, it was Father Hidalgo who was on the run, fleeing north back up into the Bajío and eventually Coahuila.

Only his closest advisors knew his true destination. He was headed somewhere he might extend the Royalists’ supply lines and shorten his own; somewhere hostile to Spaniards, both physically and politically; and somewhere where the flame of revolt (or so he thought) still burned bright in the Casas Revolt. Father Hidalgo was headed to San Antonio.

Only he chose his guide poorly. He hired the Baron de Bastrop, a Dutchman who had come to San Antonio in 1803 following the Louisiana purchase. As an associate and business partner of many of the men back in San Antonio who were leading the counterrevolt against de las Casas, the Baron likely knew that de las Casas had been deposed.308 He probably also knew the deposed Governor Salcedo well, and that Salcedo’s allies had recently managed to flip the man on whose ranch he was being held prisoner.

As soon as Governor Salcedo escaped his imprisonment on a ranch near Monterrey, Salcedo rallied Royalist sympathizers in the area to his banner. Aware that Father Hidalgo and his Army of the Americas weren’t far away, they set an ambush on the Camino Real south of Monclova, which they coordinated with the Baron de Bastrop.309 On March 21, 1811 – barely six months after he had raised the grito and less than two months after San Antonio had raised hers – Father Hidalgo was captured.

Father Hidalgo would be executed in Chihuahua on July 30, and Captain de las Casas the very next day. De las Casas’ head would be salted and returned to San Antonio for display in the Plaza de Armas.310 As a reward for the town’s loyalty to the King, the Villa of San Fernando – the principal town amongst San Antonio’s communities – was elevated to the dignity of a Ciudad.

Yet when Governor Salcedo returned on September 11, he was not inclined to be magnanimous. He pushed Zambrano’s ruling junta aside and dismissed it as too soft, having focused on such trifles as funding perhaps the first public school in Northern New Spain. He had scores to settle, and immediately began arresting suspecting rebel sympathizers and confiscating their property. Soon, he began executing those whom he suspected of having rendered aid to Captain de las Casas.311

One of these unfortunates was José Felix Menchaca. His last name should tell you his lineage. On his father’s side, he was descended from the great presidial commanders of the 18th century, a post that had been held by his father, his great uncle, and great great uncle, José de Urrutia. His wife, María Encarnación Rodríguez, descended from the first Canary Islander settlers.312 He was a relative of nearly everyone in town, and he was not the only one to lose his life in Governor Salcedo’s purges. Yet his death and the deaths of so many others in town would radicalize the community, and it would be his son, José, and his nephew, Colonel Miguel Menchaca, who would pick up the fallen banner of Hidalgo.

As before, the Spanish had taken a unique moment of potential unity and patriotism and squandered it through indifference and arrogance.

Episode 10: The First Republic of Texas

The Menchaca family was one of the oldest and most respected in San Antonio. They were direct descendants of José de Urrutia, that Spanish Leatherstocking who had gone native, risen to command the East Texas Indians against the Apaches, and later served as one of San Antonio’s first presidial commanders. Menchaca’s great uncle and father had also served as presidial commanders, the latter of which had been the wealthiest man in the province in his day.

Like all San Antonians of the period, they acutely felt the neglect of the Spanish government. Yet as an established, military family, they were generally conservative, and not inclined toward radical ideologies, and thus largely sat out the Casas Revolt from the previous episode.

That wasn’t good enough for the deposed Governor Manuel Salcedo, however. Upon his return to power in 1811, he executed the patriarch of the family, José Felix Menchaca, for his sympathies with the Republicans who had deposed him. Presumably, like other San Antonians caught up in Salcedo’s retributions, Menchaca was denied access to a priest and a Christian burial. Menchaca’s cousin, Colonel Antonio Delgado, who had been captured by Salcedo personally in the company of Father Hidalgo - was also executed.313 In his case, the vindictive governor compelled his to watch, after which she was sprinkled with blood from her husbands’ severed head, which was then dragged unceremoniously through the streets and stuck on a pike in the center of town.314

Salcedo’s retributions were petty, unnecessary, and counterproductive. Even conservatives like Erasmo Seguín and Ángel Navarro as well as old conservative Isleños struggled to defend them. It may have been what finally flipped José Francisco Ruiz, who remained in service nevertheless as a captain in the local presidial unit. In one stroke the Governor not only horrified the very people who had just returned him to power, he also radicalized a wealthy, prominent family with a lot of soldiers in it. Colonel Delgado’s son, also named Antonio, had served for many years in the San Antonio presidio. The executed José Felix Menchaca’s son, also named José, and his nephew, Miguel Menchaca, had served as officers in the Spanish army at other postings in Texas. After the senior Delgado and Menchaca executions, the Menchaca-Delgados spent the next year ginning up support for a new, homegrown San Antonio revolt amongst known San Antonio Republicans, such as Juan Martin de Veramendi, José Antonio Navarro, and José Francisco Ruiz.315

Miguel Menchaca made contact with Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, an associate of the now dead Miguel Hidalgo. A former blacksmith, rancher, and merchant from near Reynosa, he had been dispatched by Hidalgo to gather aid for the rebellion from the United States.316After Hidalgo’s death, Gutiérrez de Lara resolved to continue his fight. He eventually made his way to Washington D.C., where he met with various high-level U.S. and foreign ministers who offered him cautious support but little in the way of real resources.

By April of 1812, Gutiérrez de Lara was back on the Louisiana-Texas border. Together a with former U.S. army lieutenant, Augustus Magee, and a Spaniard named José Álvarez de Toledo, they raised a force of 150 or so Tejanos, a few dozen Indian allies, and about 150 Anglo-American volunteers.317

Anglo-Americans had begun to build up a mythology about Texas around this time, and accounts like Lieutenant Zebulon Pike’s in the previous chapter only fed their fantasies. Expeditions into the province to round up cattle and horses had returned with details of Texas’s vast underutilized resources, its development retarded by indifferent Spanish bureaucrats who seemed intent to let it lie idle in perpetuity.318

San Antonians of the time wouldn’t have disagreed with this perception and welcomed Anglo-American support to their cause. On August 8, 1812, José Menchaca guided Gutiérrez de Lara’s army – which now titled itself the “Republican Army of the North”– across the Sabine river and down the Camino Real.319 As they marched toward San Antonio, men from throughout the province flocked to their solid green banner, including many other San Antonians, and by the time they reached the Guadalupe River, the Republican Army of the North had swollen to 800 men.320

Governor Salcedo got word of what was happening, mustered what forces he could, and went out to meet them. But Gutiérrez de Lara didn’t oblige. Instead, he maneuvered around the Governor and struck Goliad, capturing it on November 7.

Governor Salcedo now saw that the Republican Army of the North controlled access to the sea and his own supply lines in East Texas and threatened his own supply lines down into the interior. Embarrassed and realizing that he couldn’t leave the Republican Army in the field while it continued to attract recruits, Governor Salcedo decided to march on Goliad. He arrived on November 13 and laid siege to the town and the republicans holed up there while he awaited reinforcements.

Though never able to completely cut off supplies to the Republicans, Governor Salcedo’s forces were slowly augmented by regulars and militia from South of the Rio Grande. At one point, they outnumbered the Republicans 1,500 to 800.321But as fast as his reinforcements came in, many of them went out. Many of the Salcedo’s 1,500 men were, in fact, conscripts without any particular antipathy toward the Republicans. Many more harbored active sympathies with them. Most notable amongst these was San Antonian José Francisco Ruiz. Ruiz had been in contact throughout most of the siege with Gutiérrez de Lara and the Republicans. Ruiz by this time was actively disenchanted with Salcedo’s leadership, and began to pass information and supplies through Gutiérrez de Lara’s lines.322

The primary source of reinforcements for the Republicans during the siege of Goliad became been deserters from the besieging army.323 Governor Salcedo started to feel his army dissolving beneath him, and knew he had to bring things to a head. On February 10, about three months after the siege had begun, Salcedo assaulted the town and was beat back with surprising force. He tried again three days later and was resoundingly repulsed. The Republicans began to feel their strength. Realizing that he was, in fact, in the weaker position, on February 19, Governor Salcedo ordered a hasty withdrawal to San Antonio.

The Republicans smelled blood. Still high on their victories from the previous week and emboldened by the sight of their besiegers frantically packing up, they knew that the momentum had shifted. Each day, more Royalist defectors came into their camp and citizens of San Antonio now actively passed information about the Royalist army through Salcedo’s lines.324 A contingent of 300 Native American allies – largely Tonkawa and Lipan Apache – rode into the Republican camp along the way as well, further strengthening the Republican army and leading them to march perhaps a bit too boldly forward toward San Antonio.325

On March 29, 1813, the Republican Army stumbled into a hastily-prepared and poorly-executed Royalist ambush about eight miles outside of town. The Republicans quickly recovered, formed their battle lines, and assaulted the already-demoralized Royalist army. Some Royalists – such as José Francisco Ruiz’s presidial company – perhaps defected to the Republican side during the battle itself.326Eight miles southeast of San Fernando Church near where Rosillo Creek enters Salado Creek on Goliad Road, Gutiérrez de Lara’s 800-man Republican Army of the North overwhelmed Governor Salcedo’s 1,200-man royalist force at the Battle of Rosillo Crossing. The Republicans lost only 6 men killed and 26 men wounded, to some 330 killed and 60 captured of the Royalists.327.

Governor Salcedo and twelve of his officers fell prisoner to the Republicans in the days following the battle. They were sentenced to death in rapidly convened kangaroo courts. Some San Antonians protested, many of them having known the Governor and his associates in less radical times, while others were fearful of inciting a cycle of retributions. After much pleading by locals, Gutiérrez de Lara agreed to commute the Royalists’ sentences to exile, and ordered the prisoners marched to Matagorda Bay for passage to Havana.328

On April 1, 1813, a60-man escort marched the former governor and his twelve officers out of town. For the second time in just a little over two years, Governor Salcedo found himself marching south in chains. Uppity San Antonio provincials like José Francisco Ruiz and Captain Antonio Delgado, Jr. relished their newfound superiority over the old Spaniard and wore it on their faces. When they stopped at the precise spot where the Battle of Rosillo Creek had just occurred the week before, Governor Salcedo must have grown suspicious. He didn’t have long to ponder his plight, however. The prisoners were yanked down from their mounts, stripped of their clothes, and tied to nearby trees. Realizing what was about to happen, the Spaniards begged for a priest and the comfort of knowing that a Christian burial awaited them. Captain Delgado presumably considered the request with the same charity that Salcedo had considered his own father’s.329 With a brutality that horrified even those who supported the act, the escorting force tore into the gachupines with sabers, knives, and bayonets.330After killing them, they mutilated the corpses in gruesome frontier fashion, and left their bodies on the spot as a warning.331

With those auspicious beginnings, just five days later, on April 6, 1813, San Antonio declared its Independence from Spain. Fittingly, since San Antonio’s city council was the only actual government in Texas and because San Antonio’s communities comprised probably 80% of the state’s population, San Antonio’s city center, San Fernando, was declared the capital of the new republic.

A ruling junta was formed, composed of three Arochas and four Delgados, all of good Canary Island stock. Yet it wasn’t just the elites that supported independence. Historian Raúl Ramos has dug deep into the rolls of the Republican Army and cross-referenced them with local census records to reveal that three-quarters of the Republicans lived in jacales or hide-covered shacks, a proportion that corresponded to the at-large home ownership patterns of the community.332 Although it’s too much to claim ideological homogeneity across San Antonio’s population, this data does suggest rather broad support for Independence and some sort of ideological alignment across San Antonio’s classes, which should come as no surprise for a such a small and relatively egalitarian community.

The first Declaration of Independence of Texas published on April 6, 1813 is a wonderfully rich document, drawing from the Hispanic legal tradition but also from Anglo-American precedents, like the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with which San Antonio’s were broadly familiar thanks to their long trading relationships with Anglo-Americans.

The San Antonio Declaration – published in both Spanish and English – begins with language that evokes both Anglo-American founding documents: “Nos el Pueblo de la provincia de Texas.” In English: “We the people of the province of Texas…declare that the bands that have held us beneath the domination of European Spain are forever dissolved, that we are free and independent; that we have the right to establish our own government; and that hereafter legitimate authority is derived from the people.”

We should compare this to the Constitution of Cádiz promulgated in Spain the year before and the Mexican Declaration of independence which would be issued seven months after San Antonio’s. These documents derive much more clearly from the continental legal tradition and are quick to claim power in the name of the assembly making the declaration of independence, not in the name of the “people.” The Constitution of Cádiz from 1812 in Spain claimed national sovereignty in the name of the Congress against the king. The Mexican declaration of independence similarly declares independence in the name of “Congress…legitimately assembled” and then quickly asserts that Congress’s unlimited power to establish laws. The “people” are never once mentioned, and neither are “Rights.” It’s a subtle but important distinction between the Anglo-American natural law tradition which holds that just power can only arise from the people at-large and the continental tradition, which is more inclined to recognize power where it resides – and therefore, to recognize fewer limitations on it.

But if any North Americans reading the document thought that San Antonians were about to bring Texas into the North American fold, they were quickly disabused of that notion. The next line of the 1813 Declaration plainly affirms that Texas “is free of any obligation to any foreign power,” a characteristic expression of San Antonio individualism and a direct shot at the Spanish king, the Spanish Congress, and at any land-hungry North Americans. It then asserts broadly that Governments do not exist for the “engrandecimiento” of particular individuals. This was a reprimand of the corruption inherent in the Spanish colonial system, yet also another warning short to any foreign powers looking to get-rich-quick off of Texas’s new independence.

They go on to submit their grievances to the “opinion of the world,” a line that invokes the American Declaration of Independence’s early line that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

San Antonians had been forbidden from freely trading in foreign and domestic markets by the “mad, evil, and corrupt” policies of the Spanish king;

they had been consistently impoverished in order to enrich monopoly-holders and favorites of the court;

they had been subject to onerous the taxes and stamped paper requirements which unduly burdened isolated communities like San Antonio’s;

their laws had been applied unevenly, corruptly, and so slowly as to offer them no relief for their injuries;

they were prevented from holding higher offices in their own government by Spain’s prejudicial caste system; and

they had been rewarded for their faithfulness to the king whose rule they had reinstated on their own just two years before by the maniacal and bloodthirsty vengeance of the very Royal governor they had returned to power.

The document is pragmatic, unassailable, and succinct. And it ends too with an important declaration of alignment with their brethren in Mexico and an aspiration for Texas to lead a “rebirth of the Mexican people, taking in our hands the reins of our government,” a fitting horse-based metaphor from a people so derided by royal authorities for the love of the animal.

Following the declaration of independence, Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara was named President, and two Anglo-Americans were inserted into the revolutionary junta, leaving five Tejanos. This group hastily set to work on a new constitution, which they published 11 days later on April 17, 1813.333

The Constitution of the Independent State of Texas was brief, only 18 articles. In the first article, Texas is promoted from a “province” in the old Spanish empire to an “independent state,” though once again we see an unequivocal declaration that Texas was to be a part of a “Mexican Republic, to which it remains inviolably joined.” Of course, no Mexican Republic had actually been declared yet, but other like-minded republicans were at work throughout Mexico to bring it about. The idea amongst these republicans – who will morph into the “Federalist” party in Mexico– seems to have been a sort of confederation of relatively autonomous states, somewhat like the United States’ first Articles of Confederation.

The 2nd article – in fine Hispanic tradition – establishes Catholicism as the state religion, albeit with the rather bland affirmation that “Our Holy Religion will remain unchanged in the way it is now established,” much softer language than that of the Constitution of Cádiz or the Mexican constitution, which forbade the practice in “open or in secret” of any other religion.

Before the Constitution even turns to the structure of government, in Articles 3 and 4 it boldly affirms the civil liberties of all Texans. Article III reads “Private Property and possessions will be inviolable and will never be taken for public use except in urgent cases of necessity, in which instances the proprietor will be duly compensated.” Article IV goes on to affirm that “No man will be arrested for any crime without a formal accusation made in the proper form under oath being first presented. No man will be placed before the Tribunal without first having been examined by the witnesses. Neither will any man be deprived of life without having been heard completely [in court].” Both of these clauses mirror similar clauses in the Constitution of Cádiz yet sandwiched between the two San Antonio articles is the line, “Personal liberty will be held sacred.” That is unlike anything found in the Cádiz document. That is Jeffersonian, a declaration of self-evident and inalienable rights which precede all governments, which governments are constituted to protect, and which no government may infringe upon. By contrast, Articles 24-26 of the Constitution of Cádiz outline the very specific qualifications that a citizen must satisfy to have the right to have rights. Indeed, Article 308 of the Cádiz document fairly well allows the Spanish parliament to circumscribe any and all such rights and due process under “extraordinary circumstances.”

The Constitution of Cádiz spends 40-60 articles explaining the methods for selecting judges, venues, and even details of civil procedure that you would never expect to see in an Anglo-American constitution. The San Antonio document of 1813 foregoes these as well, more in line with a North American constitution. This again stands in contrast to the continental, civil law tradition that San Antonians were well aware of, but were distancing themselves from at the same time.

Only in the last half of the document does the Constitution define the structure of government. Unsurprisingly, the Texas Constitution calls for three branches – executive, legislative, and judicial – in line with both the American and Cádiz constitutions. Reflecting the realities of the moment, the Constitution also commits the new Republic to honor the commitments made by General-now-President Gutiérrez de Lara to his soldiers, namely $40/month and about four thousand acres a head upon victory. It might have made for a rather unexciting constitutional principle, but it serves as a reminder of how important land was to the men fighting for the Republican cause.

San Antonio’s first Texas Declaration of Independence and first Texas Constitution are truly underappreciated documents. They employ the North American language of liberty within a Hispanic legal tradition to establish a government of checks and balances that fits pretty well into either tradition at the time. But they also unequivocally declare the independence of Texas within a new Mexican society. They fit perfectly in the San Antonio we’ve have been studying and are a unique contribution to the political history of the continent, not only in the way that they synchronize two very different legal traditions, but also in how they lay the foundation for events that would come to a head twenty and thirty years later.

While all of this was happening, however, retribution was marching up the Laredo Road.

Episode 11: The Battle of Medina

Colonel Miguel Menchaca salivated at the opportunity that lay before him. Somewhere inside the oak forest a mile in front of him, the hated Spanish Royalist General Joaquin de Arredondo was marching towards him with 1,830 Royalist regulars. Just a few months before, General Arredondo had placed a 1,000-peso bounty on Colonel Menchaca’s head, thinking that such a sum would surely turn one of Menchaca’s fellow San Antonians against him.

But Arredondo hadn’t appreciated how deep Menchaca’s roots ran in his community. His family wasn’t just from San Antonio. San Antonio could be said to owe its existence to his family. Menchaca was a great-great grandson of José de Urrutia, one of San Antonio’s first presidial commanders, and the Menchaca family had led the presidio and the militia in defense of the town for almost a century now. Rather than betray him, San Antonians turned out in force to support him, and some 800-900 mounted vecinos from San Antonio and other Texas settlements stood in formation behind him.

It wasn’t just the opportunity to draw down against the Royalist General who had tried to buy his head that excited Colonel Menchaca. It was a chance to avenge his uncle, and so many other San Antonians who had lost their lives at the hand of the Spanish Royalist governor. In the tumult of San Antonio’s first, aborted attempt at Revolution two years before, his uncle, José Felix Menchaca, had been swept up in a series of general arrests ordered by the Royalist Governor Salcedo. It was the execution of Menchaca’s uncle and Salcedo’s other retributions that pushed many San Antonians over to the side of the Republicans.

In late 1812, Menchaca’s cousin, José, led Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara as commander-in-chief of the Republican Army of the North across the Sabine River and down to San Antonio. San Antonio Republicans – led by Colonel Miguel Menchaca – had flocked to the banner of revolt, and soon constituted the majority of Gutiérrez de Lara’s Republican Army, which was all that remained in the north of Mexico to carry on Father Miguel Hidalgo’s revolt against Spanish rule. After their victory over the Royalist Governor and his subsequent execution at the Battle of Rosillo Crossing in southeast San Antonio, they declared Texas’s independence and established a government in San Antonio, which constituted 80% or more of the population of Texas at the time. Gutiérrez de Lara was chosen to serve as President.

San Antonians knew that it wasn’t going to be this easy, however. The Royalist Comandante of the Internal Provinces in charge of Texas, General Joaquin de Arredondo, was a hard, hard man. Born to a line of Spanish soldiers and administrators that included a Governor of Cuba and a Viceroy of Buenos Aires, he had played a critical role in suppressing Father Hidalgo’s revolt in Mexico. By 1813, he was forty-three years old, the comandante of all the New Spanish northeastern provinces, and at the height of his powers.

As news of the success of the Republican Army of the North reached him in Monterrey, he began to assemble a punitive force. In the meantime, he looked for a way to pin down the Republican Army and gather intelligence on them. Perhaps a preliminary show of force from a Regular royalist army might be enough to send home the rabble, saving the Royalist general a trip.

He landed on the Royalist Colonel Ignacio Elizondo, who had returned to the Royalist fold after an initial flirtation with rebellion by releasing Governor Manuel Salcedo from captivity on his ranch back in Chapter 9 just in time to ambush Father Hidalgo on his flight to San Antonio. Colonel Elizondo still commanded 700 hundred men in the field – many of them the remnants of the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Rosillo Creek a few weeks prior – and was anxious to prove his loyalty to a Spanish Crown that still questioned his loyalty. Royalist General Arredondo ordered him to cross the Rio Grande and march toward San Antonio, but to wait for Arredondo’s force before crossing the Frio River, after which they might bring to bear the full brunt of the Crown’s vengeance on the Republican army together.334

Mounted San Antonio scouts followed the Royalist Colonel Elizondo’s advance all the way up the Camino Real, and soon realized that his force was smaller – albeit better-equipped - than their 1,500-man Republican Army of the North. For now. Conscript reinforcements strengthened the Royalists daily and their 6 artillery pieces were not to be taken lightly. The rest of General Arredondo’s army could arrive any day now as well.

Now-President Gutiérrez de Lara had a brief window in which to strike his blow. The enemy had entered his country and divided his forces. President Gutiérrez de Lara had to find a way to lure the Royalist Colonel Elizondo’s force north, beyond the assistance of his commanding General Arredondo.

Just a year before, Elizondo had been among the first to announce for Father Miguel Hidalgo and Mexican Independence. Then, while holding Texas Governor Manuel Salcedo prisoner at his ranch in Coahuila, he began to have his doubts. He concocted a plan with the imprisoned Salcedo to lure Father Hidalgo up to San Antonio and ambush him on his way there.335

Their plan worked. Elizondo’s flip-flop and subsequent role in silencing Father Hidalgo’s grito was well-known. Yet it meant that Elizondo still felt as though he had something to prove and wanted desperately to strike the finishing blow to the revolt that he had once endorsed to help remove the stain from his name.

Around June 1, 1813, friendly Comanche’s reported back to San Antonians that Colonel Elizondo had crossed the Frio River. On June 12, 1813, Elizondo’s Royalist army arrived within sight of the communities of San Antonio, setting up camp on Alazán Creek in the middle of San Antonio’s future West side. Colonel Elizondo apparently thought very little of Gutiérrez de Lara’s army, as when he pitched camp there, he neither posted pickets nor sent out scouts.336

Early on the morning of June 20, 1813, Gutiérrez de Lara moved his men into position. Before marching into battle, he had decided to integrate his units, mixing Tejanos, Anglos, and Indians in order to improve unit cohesion.337Gutierrez along with Captain Delgado would lead the mixed infantry units in the vanguard himself, creeping with his force to within 200 yards of Elizondo’s center.

In command of the cavalry on the wings, Gutierrez placed Colonel Menchaca, who had proven a critical ally to Gutiérrez de Lara, not only for his connections in the San Antonio community, but also for his ties to the Apaches. His forefathers had spent a century fighting, trading, and dealing with the Apaches, so that by this time, the name “Menchaca” had special meaning to the Apache tribes, who dealt with him more openly and honestly than any other white man.338 In the previous month, he had brought them over to the Republican cause along with a handful of Comanches and Tonkawas, promising them booty and scalps if they would assist in the struggle against the Spanish Royalists. That morning, several hundred of these Native American allies took their position, delighted at their orders to stampede Elizondo’s horse herd and cut-off his retreat.339

The fate of Elizondo and the Royalists army was sealed before most of them had even finished mass that Sunday morning. Many of them in fact woke to the whistle of canister and grape shot fired at close range by Gutiérrez de Lara’s artillery, followed by the horrible surprise of hundreds of riflemen swarming their position before they even knew what was happening. The Royalists discipline served them well, however, and soon they began to push back. Hand-to-hand combat ensued, and soon the Republicans founds themselves falling back.

Assessing the field, Gutiérrez de Lara and Menchaca identified a weak point on the left of Elizondo’s line where an imposing artillery position had been knocked out of commission by republican saboteurs. Gutiérrez de Lara and Menchaca then led their Tejano cavalrymen against Elizondo’s weakened left.340The Royalist lines broke.341 When they fled, however, they fled right into the blood-curdling cries of Menchaca’s Apache allies, who did not fail to scalp their quarry, horrifying the few Spanish survivors of the battle.

350 Spaniards were killed at the Battle of Alazán Creek, and another 150 captured, compared to a few dozen casualties for the Republicans.342 For the third time in the last six months, a better-equipped Royalist army had been convincingly defeated by a ragtag army of provincials and their foreign and Indian allies. Only a few hundred Spanish royalists escaped, including Colonel Elizondo who had two horses shot out from under him during his flight.343Behind him, he left 2,000 horses and mules, 4,000 pounds of flour, 350 muskets, two canon, 5,000 pounds of gunpowder, and some $35,000 in other goods, critical supplies that made the Republican Army of the North stronger than ever.344

Then something strange happened. On July 27, barely a month after the Battle of Alazán Creek, President Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara of the First Independent State of Texas – whoever the previous year had raised a binational army, secured foreign support for his cause, issued a Declaration of the Independence, promulgated a Constitution, and defeated two separate Spanish Royalist armies in the field – was deposed by the ruling San Antonio junta!345 The five Canary Islanders and two Anglo-Americans replaced him with a wealthy, dashing Spanish parliamentarian with no combat experience, José Álvarez de Toledo.

Toledo had actually been on the scene for some time. In some accounts he figures as a staff officer for Gutiérrez de Lara, though he had excused himself from combat duty a few months prior in order to more actively intrigue against his commanding officer in the Louisiana press. There, he played up the horror of the executions of Governor Salcedo and his officers. He claimed that Gutiérrez de Lara had no intention of ever paying his soldiers. And he made sure to highlight to the Anglo-Americans Gutiérrez de Lara’s repeated affirmation of Texas’s independence from all foreign powers, Spanish or American, even as he himself schemed for a commission from a congress in southern Mexico claiming to represent the fledgling new Mexican nation.346

It’s hard to really know what happened or how it all went down so quickly. Clearly, Gutiérrez de Lara had lost some critical support somewhere. Whatever the reason, he didn’t really fight it. With his own staff and his own revolutionary junta against him, he packed up and left, and command passed to General Toledo.

The leadership coup in the Republican Army of the North occurred just as General Arredondo’s army was crossing the Rio Grande. Arredondo’s Royalist army approaching San Antonio in August 1813 was probably the largest regular force that had ever set foot on Texas soil. It consisted of eleven artillery pieces, 635 infantry, and 1,195 regular cavalry, and included the Zambrano brothers and Ángel Navarro, briefly, until he was run out of the army for his brother’s involvement on the Republican side.347 Surely the San Antonians in his army had advised Arredondo on the necessity of a strong mounted force against the accomplished Tejano horsemen that awaited him, and he made sure to bring his best. Regular New Spanish cavalry were renowned the world over, boasting some of the most refined tactics and advanced firearms of the age and were more than a match for a bunch of glorified cowhands.

The now 1,400-man-strong Republican Army of the North may have had an unmatched record on the battlefield, but they sure didn’t look like they were up to fighting a pitched battle with the regular Spanish army. The descriptions provided by contemporaries like José Antonio Navarro of the Republican army are striking because of how similar they sound to later Texian armies and irregular Ranger forces: buckskin attire was widespread, as were short-crowned wide-brimmed felt Cowboy hats (“grises sombreros de fieltro de anchas alas y aplastada copa”) and high-shanked well-tooled leather boots.348 You can almost see the 400 or so remaining Anglo-American volunteers taking note of and admiring the San Antonians’ style.

They also admired the San Antonians’ horsemanship.349 Our image of Anglo-Americans in Texas is strongly tied to the horse and the cowboy, yet we must remember that at this time, as historian Stephen Hardin puts it, Anglo-Americans had not yet learned to “ride like Mexicans.”350 Anglo-Americans at this time were still principally woodsmen and accustomed to doing their fighting on foot. As such, the breakdown of the veteran Republican Army of the North by this point was some 300-400 Anglo-American infantry, about 100 Lipan Apache auxiliaries, and some 800-900 Tejano – principally San Antonian – cavalry.

Despite the Republican Army’s experience, however, political infighting following the replacement of President Gutiérrez de Lara sapped its effectiveness. Toledo – ever the Spaniard – could not resist the temptation to re-organize the army along strictly ethnic lines.351 This sapped the ideological unity of the army, just as many Anglo volunteers were beginning to doubt whether all of this fighting was worth it, and whether they would even survive the Royalist General’s imminent visit. Further, many of the Tejanos were now actively suspicious of the Anglo-Americans, who they suspected of supporting the political maneuvering that had ousted President Gutiérrez de Lara. And there was no love lost at all between the leader of the Tejanos, Colonel Miguel Menchaca, and his new commander, the scheming Toledo. “Sus pensamientos indican perfidia!” he allegedly said of the Spaniard.352

In early August, word reached now-General Toledo in San Antonio that Arredondo’s Royalist army had rendezvoused with the remnants of Colonel Elizondo’s force and was marching north up the Laredo Road. Toledo refused to harass their line of march, infuriating Tejanos accustomed to the mobile warfare of the plains. General Toledo seemed to prefer to wait for Arredondo to come to them, perhaps even to fortify the town and make his stand there, but Colonel Menchaca wasn’t going to let Arredondo bring the war to his people and their homes.353Plus, this army had already defeated three Spanish armies in the field – without Toledo’s help, Menchaca might have noted – by taking the fight to the enemy, not by waiting. In a council of war, Menchaca insisted on riding out, with which the Anglo-American commander agreed. According to Toledo, he only reluctantly endorsed the plan, though we have reason to be skeptical of Toledo’s reliability. Regardless, the Republican Army of the North marched south out of San Antonio down the old Laredo Road and made camp on August 17, 1813, somewhere near the Medina River.354

Early the next morning, the Republicans set an ambush on the Laredo Road for Arredondo’s army a few miles south of the Medina River. The terrain there changed dramatically from South Texas plains to a veritable oak forest, the Encinal de Medina. Prior to emerging from the Encinal de Medina, the Laredo road funneled between two hills down a fairly narrow cut through the thick forest, channeling any army that came through it. On the left were arrayed Colonel Menchacas Tejanos and his old Apache allies.355 On the right the Anglo-American infantrymen took their positions. All of the battle accounts agreed it was an ideal spot for an ambush.356

Arredondo included, it seems. According to his own report, he remembered the terrain feature the morning, and deviated his army at the last minute off of the Laredo Road to cut over to the old Camino Real by which he might flank the Republican force.357

Early on the morning of August 18, a Royalist outrider stumbled up into the ambush site. He was only sixty or seventy yards from the hidden Republican lines. The men debated what to do: he might already have spotted their ambush, and if they killed him now, they might prevent him from revealing it. On the other hand, the armies were close enough to hear rifle shots, and if they fired at the scout, they were bound to give up some of the element of surprise.

A handful of men with itchy trigger fingers decided the issue for everyone when they opened fire on the Royalist officer. They missed, and he wheeled his horse around and rode back to the main cavalry force not far behind him. The Republicans knew that their cover was blown and came out of their hiding places, moving south where they collided with Colonel Elizondo and 180 Spanish Cavalry emerging form the encinal de Medina.

Badly outnumbered, Elizondo didn’t have much of a chance. Once again, his orders had been not to engage, but instead to simply expose the Republican position and draw them back to Arredondo’s main force.358 This time, he listened to his commander. He pulled back, leaving behind his two small cannon, but was soon joined by a few hundred more mounted reinforcements under San Antonian “Reverend Lieutenant Colonel Don Juan Manual Zambrano.”359

Seeing the increasing numbers of Spanish cavalry before them, the Republicans thought they had encountered the main Royalist force and were beating them. They tasted victory. They began to pursue more hotly, the mounted cavalry moving forward, realizing that they had outstripped their infantry, returning, realizing that the infantry was bogged down trying to drag the captured cannon, stopping, realizing that they were now several miles from any water source, sweating, realizing that the sand beneath their feet was so fine as to make it almost impossible to march in, much less to drag a cannon through.

The commanding officers convened and debated returning to their ambush site. Toledo later claimed he advocated turning back, though other contemporary accounts dispute this. Returning would have been pointless anyway, as it appeared that the Royalists had hopped over to the old Camino Real and now had a clear path into San Antonio. Besides, the Republican Army of the North had always owned the momentum of the battlefield by relentlessly attacking. And the sources all agree on Menchaca’s position: Tejanos don’t retreat. In his nephew’s words written many years later, Menchaca resolved that “under no consideration would he…quit until he and his men had either died or conquered.”360

The Republicans continued in hot pursuit through the sugar sand, lured along by Colonel Elizondo. The Republicans’ horses told them that water was on the other side of the slight rise sitting before them, water that Republicans desperately needed.361 So desperate had they become during their pursuit that they had drunk the water used to clean the cannon bores.362

Suddenly, as the Republicans broke into an opening, they ran into Arredondo’s main force. The Royalists had thrown up their baggage train, brush, logs, anything they could to form a sort of “temporary breastworks” on firmer ground.363 They were drawn up now in a soft U-shape, with their artillery sweeping the field from the flanks while the infantry formed up in the center and the cavalry protected the wings. The Republican infantry scrambled to form their battle lines as the first volleys from Arredondo’s cannons tore through their ranks.364The Tejanos and Apaches began to maneuver, seeking to flank Arredondo’s line on either side.365 They were foiled, however, by the heavily wooded terrain which was not conducive to cavalry charges. The Republican infantry moved forward under withering Royalist fire. In some places, they moved to within forty paces.366 From that range, the Anglo riflemen were deadly. They began to pick off the Royalist artillerymen, to good effect. Menchaca tried to turn the Royalist flanks, his Apache and Tejano horsemen easy to follow in their flamboyant attire, no two men dressed alike, no two men colored alike even. They rode as hard as they could through the thick forest, the heavy live oak trees obscuring their movements but continuing to blunt the effectiveness of the tactics they had mastered on the plains. A game of maneuver ensued, Royalists and Republicans trading positions, each seeking to stay in formation while finding an opening around the enemy.

Some Republicans managed to get into Arredondo’s rear. They saw the General mounted on a rise watching the battle transpire, and sensed victory before them. An alert Royalist aide, however, picked up their movements and moved the General to cover.367 The Republicans were forced to ride back to their lines to regroup.

For two to four hours the armies traded volleys in the Texas heat. “The loose soil had been reduced to an impalpable powder; the clouds of dust and the smoke of burned powder formed a dense mantel made lurid by the glare of flaming guns.”368 The Royalists fired 950 cannon balls, and thousands of rifle rounds.369 The Republicans matched them rifle-shot-for-rifle-shot and continued to advance their lines, yet they were never able to effectively deploy their artillery. Instead, they had to inch forward with only the occasional live oak tree for cover, firing, loading, and firing again. The Royalist position appeared to be faltering.370 Menchaca and his Tejanos decided to make one last push around Arredondo’s flanks. They mounted up and rode out of sight.

At that moment, a wisp of wind cleared the smoke of the battlefield just long enough for Arredondo to realize that the Republican riflemen were in a perilous position. Although closing in on his position, he their casualties lay piled up all around them. Their fatigue showed on their faces as well. They had been marching since before dawn that morning through the August sun, across sand that swallowed everything it touched, and without water.

There is a saying in Spanish that “El diablo sabe mas por viejo que por diablo.” (“The Devil knows more because he’s old than because he’s the devil.”) And the devil Arredondo had learned more than a few tricks during a career waging war throughout the hemisphere. Inspired, Arredondo ordered his buglers to sound out the notes of victory. His soldiers took up the ruse, and cried out in unison “Victory is ours,” began to push forward.371

The ploy inspired the Royalists and deflated the Republicans. When they heard the notes of victory ring from on Arredondo’s bugles, they assumed the battle had turned against them. The Republicans caught another stroke of bad luck when grapeshot found Colonel Miguel Menchaca’s neck372 and the gallant San Antonian – “every inch a patriot, wise, brave, and a born leader”373 – fell. Lieutenant Colonel José Francisco Ruiz took over his command, and led the scattered Tejanos in two more charges, coming at one point to within pistol shot of Arredondo himself again.374

Despite Republicans’ conviction that they were dropping Royalist artillerymen left and right, Royalist artillery now commanded the field and Royalist infantry was now descending upon them. Republican officers tried to organize a defense, but panic overtook the lines and shattered their army’s resolve. What began as a pause in the fighting soon turned into full-blown rout.

The next several hours witnessed a ruthless massacre, back to the Medina River and beyond. Captured Republicans were executed and dismembered, their body parts impaled on pikes and tree branches.375 The Republicans – Tejanos, Anglo-Americans, and Apaches – suffered more than a thousand dead, many killed while trying to surrender, compared to only fifty-five Royalists. Maybe only a few hundred Republicans escaped the battlefield.

General Toledo survived and rode his horse back to the Sabine River as fast as it would carry him. He would return to Spain, where he offered to provide testimony against his fellow revolutionaries in exchange for immunity, which he was granted. Within five years, he was back in the royal service. He would die in his bed forty years later as a trusted advisor of the Spanish king in a cushy appointment in Switzerland, the thousands of dead San Antonians left behind him presumably long forgotten.376

Yet General Arredondo wasn’t one to forget the past. The next day, he entered San Antonio and declared martial law. “Homes were invaded, and where resistance was offered, the defenders were butchered on their own threshold in the presence of their horrified families, the women and even tender girls, mere children, were outraged and in numerous instances, cruelly murdered and their nude bodies dragged into the street,” one observer recalled.377San Antonians would refer to it for decades as their own “noche triste.”378Some fled with their native allies up into the Hill Country, where they knew the Spaniards wouldn’t dare venture.379 Others – including the Navarros, Veramendis, Ruiz, and Seguíns –were able to escape to the United States, where they lived for several years and acquainted themselves further with their neighbors’ customs.380The rest weren’t so lucky. Two hundred men from prominent families holed up in San Fernando Church where they claimed sanctuary. Arredondo recognized no such concept, however, and had them removed from the church and imprisoned them in a granary, where eight of them would die from suffocation on the first night.381 Arredondo dispatched Colonel Elizondo to East Texas to pursue the fleeing families, intent on exacting revenge upon all who had betrayed the crown. Elizondo killed at least seventy and captured another one hundred on his expedition, before being killed himself by a disgruntled subordinate.

Arredondo was furious however that so many rebels had escaped his grasp and remained certain that others were hidden nearby. He rounded up the wives and children of men he already held in prison, and with this unholy leverage he tried to pressure them into providing information against their fellow citizens. Just as with the bounty that General Arredondo had placed on Colonel Menchaca’s head, his latest tactic failed to turn San Antonians against one another. They had endured too much together in their experience on the frontier to betray their fellow vecinos in the name of a king who would just as well murder them as see them free.

Arredondo decided that more severe measures were in order. Starting around the first of September, Arredondo pulled three San Antonio men out of prison, lined them up against a wall, and shot them, placing their heads in iron cages in Military plaza for all to see. He repeated this for nearly three months!382 He executed somewhere between 255 and 327 civilians over the next few months.

In some way, the dead got off easy. The wives, daughters, and mothers of the condemned were imprisoned, separated from their children who were left on the streets to beg, and forced to grind twenty-four bushels of corn each day to make tortillas for the very soldiers who were murdering their men.383

And they were systematically raped. Each night brought new horrors for the captives. When one night they tried to resist by locking arms, the jailer dragged the principal instigator out in the street, stripped her bare, and indulged his appetites in front of the entire town.384

The Battle of Medina and its aftermath was the bloodiest episode in Texas history, bloodier in fact than all other battles on Texas soil combined.385 In a province that in 1812 had boasted a male population of less than 2,000 men, some 1,500 had just been killed. Some had been foreigners, but the vast majority were Tejanos, and the vast majority of these were San Antonians. The population of Texas fell to its lowest level in half a century.386 When the Spanish Viceroy ordered Arredondo to re-form a government for San Antonio, he responded matter-of-factly that there were no men left to fill the offices, and the issue was not raised again for several years.

The magnitude of this kind of slaughter is unimaginable, by the standards of any age. What else can we call it except “ethnic cleansing” as historian Donald Chipman and Harriet Joseph do, an attempt to eradicate an entire ideology, if not a people!

A young Royalist Lieutenant in General Arredondo’s army did not fail to notice the prominent role that San Antonians had played in this little rebellion. General Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón – or Santa Anna, as we will come to know him –learned from his experience in the San Antonio campaign to distrust the rebellious and independent citizenry of this town. And he learned the effectiveness of brutality in – temporarily, at least – subduing a population.

The trauma that this episode inflicted on the citizens of San Antonio cannot be overstated. Dan Arrellano calls it a form a collective “post-traumatic stress disorder.”387 Yet the really unfathomable part is that the parade of horrors continued throughout the decade. A series of droughts and pestilences in 1814 combined with the burden of supporting Arredondo’s occupying Royalist force created severe food shortages in San Antonio over the next few years.388 By 1817, they were eating rats and leather just to survive.389 With the Spanish Army uninterested in controlling the plains Indians and San Antonio’s civilians disarmed by Arredondo’s orders, Indian attacks proliferated. Though they uncannily seemed to prefer Royalist targets, the environment of fear and scarcity caused by these attacks permeated the entire province. By 1814, Arredondo ordered the ranches outside of town abandoned.390 The population of the town – of the entire Spanish province of Texas really – fell to its lowest level in nearly a century. The town collapsed in on itself, like the rotting livestock and shriveled produce in its surrounding fields.

San Antonio would celebrate its 100th anniversary in 1818 in despair. Then, as if to prove that when it rains it pours, on June 5, 1819, San Antonio suffered one of the worst floods in its history.391 Floodwaters swept away fifty-five dwellings and killed nineteen vecinos.392

In the short run, the tragedy in San Antonio and indeed for most of Mexico would be left unredeemed. Mexico would win her independence, to be sure, but only when the faction that had opposed independence turned against the liberal, anti-royalist regime that took over in Spain in 1820. In a curious historical twist that would foreshadow the decades of instability to follow in Mexico, it was old Royalists like General Arredondo and Santa Anna who would lower the Spanish flag and raise the Mexican one in 1821. The old Royalists became “Centralists,” supporters of a highly-centralized Mexican state along the lines of old Spain, and even crowned a short-lived Mexican monarch.

Perhaps no other community suffered so much for Mexican independence as San Antonio. At least one-third of the community’s men had been killed, their heads rotting in cages in the Plaza de Armas or their bones bleaching on the Battlefield along the Medina river where their loved ones were forbidden by Arredondo from collecting them. Almost to a man, the war had turned San Antonians against the central government, regardless of who ruled. They adopted a new term to refer to their fellow citizens: republicanos, they began to call each other, a subtle, defiant act of political protest and a daily reminder of what they had suffered as a community in 1813.393

Episode 12: Mexican San Antonio

In the summer of 1822, a somber procession of San Antonians marched south from town. Nearly every family in town was represented in the convoy. As they crossed the Medina River and the South Texas prairie gave way to oak forest, half-buried, partial skeletons began to appear in the sandy soil, as if the dead were trying to dig their way out of their graves.

In truth, however, they had never known a grave. The hundreds– perhaps as many as a thousand – skeletons scattered throughout the brush had been exposed to the elements for almost a decade now, by order of the same General Arredondo who had massacred them. It had been a part of his policy of terror against San Antonians, along with the executions of some 300 civilians, meant to teach San Antonians the cost of rebellion.

The irony, of course, was that by 1822 General Arredondo was now technically a rebel himself. He retained his authority as a sort of the Comandante of Texas and neighboring provinces, only now he held that authority under a Mexican flag, having abandoned his Spanish loyalties along with most other Mexican royalists in 1821.394 Perhaps self-conscious of his own flip-flop, perhaps out of some sense of Catholic decency, or perhaps just as a political ploy to placate the San Antonians, in 1822, he finally allowed them to venture out to the Medina battlefield and collect the remains of their loved ones. He also issued general pardons to the many families who had fled, acquiescing in some cases to the return of their confiscated property. By 1822, Erasmo Seguín and his son Juan had been allowed to return, as had Ángel and José Antonio Navarro, and their cousins in the Ruiz and Veramendi families, in time to help collect the bones from the Medina battlefield and give them a more fitting final resting place.

San Antonians didn’t miss the opportunity to get in a final, anti-monarchical jab. Underneath the oak tree off the road where they buried the remains of the Republican Army of the North, they placed the below plaque, comparing their fallen dead to the Spartans at Thermopylae:

“Here lie the Mexican heroes who followed the example of Leonidas
Who sacrificed their wealth and lives
Ceaselessly fighting against tyrants.”395

The Royalist faction in San Antonio had in truth always been small, and their numbers only contracted further with Arredondo’s campaign of terror.396The Zambrano brothers remained prominent, yet had won few friends in the intervening years.397The Spanish Royalist faction morphed into the Mexican Centralist faction in other parts of Mexico, yet in San Antonio it fairly well died off with the elder Zambranos in the next decade.398Other old royalists drifted into the Republican camp, like José Antonio Garza. Garza was a land developer and a businessman from an old San Antonio family that built one of the largest private stone buildings in town in 1734, which would stand until the 1900’s. He became the first person to coin money in Texas. On one side of the coin he placed his initials, JAG and the year, 1818. On the obverse, he stamped a single, lone star. These were the only Texas coinage in circulation for the next twenty years or so, and some have speculated that this was the source of the symbol that would come to represent the state.

In a sense, the experience of the previous decade had made all San Antonians republicans in some form or another. The republican faction in the new, independent Mexico morphed into “Federalists,” proponents of a federal political system of limited, devolved powers with decision-making housed at the local level. In San Antonio, at least, this was a relatively moderate position, and one that most San Antonians – who had long suffered from central government neglect– could agree with. Perhaps it was this new consensus that helped heal the wounds of the previous decade, allowing men who just a few years prior were on opposite sides of a civil war to go back into business with each other and sitting next to one another on the city council by 1824.

Of course, we’re talking about a community where almost literally everyone knew everyone, and everyone else was only one or two degrees of marriage or compadrazgo away. Reconciliation in a such a small setting was frankly a necessity.399 In 1824, only about 1,800 people lived in all of San Antonio’s communities, smaller than many high schools in San Antonio today.

San Antonians republicans had mostly ridden out the years following the Battle of Median in the United States. The Navarro/Ruiz/Veramendi clan had taken refuge in Natchitoches, where they continued their fight against Spanish royalists by funneling weapons to Native Americans and even fostering unlikely alliances between historic enemies like the Comanches and Apaches to harass the gachupines.400

José Francisco Ruiz in particular seems to have spent extended periods during these years living with the Comanches and other plains Indians. He learned their language, customs, and even tracking techniques. A later writer accompanying Ruiz on a hunt admired how he could tell the difference between a cow and a buffalo across rocky Hill Country scrub and how he even could tell whether a rider was armed or not – and even what hand he carried his weapon in! – just by his horse’s tracks.401Ruiz would later write the authoritative tract on Texas Indians during the period402 based on his experience living, trading, and gun-running with Native Americans during this period. In 1822, Ruiz was offered a pardon and reinstatement into the army if he could negotiate a peace with the Apaches and Comanches, which he accomplished in barely a year. He led separate delegations of Apaches and Comanches to Mexico City in 1822-3 formalizing the end of the guerilla war in Texas that he had, in some way, provoked. It should be noted that as a condition of this peace, Ruiz made sure to secure San Antonio’s status as the exclusive point of trade with the Comanche empire.403

By the end of the 1820’s, Ruiz had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel and took command of the local compañía volante in the Alamo. With the tumult of the previous decade, almost all regular army forces had been drawn back into the center of the country, and defense of the outer provinces like Texas had been left to locals. In 1825, San Antonio took over responsibility for its own defense, actually refusing the poor-quality conscripts that the regular army continued to send north.404By the late 1820s, the unit stationed in the Alamo was composed almost entirely of San Antonians and all too often funded entirely by San Antonians as well,405as in 1822 when José Antonio Navarro led the formation of the first Texas bank to cover payroll for the soldiers.406

By 1824, José Antonio Navarro, was back to smuggling goods again from Louisiana, speculating in land, and getting himself elected to various city, state, and federal offices.407 His brother, Ángel, was running his family store in town, after having been run out of the Royalist army because of his brother’s republican activities.

Juan Martin de Veramendi married the Navarros’ sister, Josefa, and won election as an alternate to the 1823 Mexican constitutional convention and as a delegate to the Coahuila constitutional convention of 1827.

The 1823 Mexican Constitutional Convention presented San Antonians with the opportunity to create the kind of government that they had sacrificed so much for. The San Antonio city council – essentially the only government in the entire province of Texas408 – chose rancher and former militia commander Erasmo Seguín to represent their state with a broad but unequivocal charge to ensure a “federal, republican form of government.”409

To accomplish this, initially, San Antonio aspired to recognition of Texas as a separate state in the new Mexican Republic. Yet Texas was so scarcely populated – boasting maybe 3,000 people in a nation of 10 MM – the statehood was an impossibility. If it insisted on being an independent political subdivision, it would have most likely been treated as a territory, in which case all of its lands and laws would have been overseen by the national government in Mexico City, a worst-case scenario for San Antonio if there ever was one.

Seguín realized he needed to adopt a different tactic to ensure local control of San Antonio’s land, laws, and people. Early in the constitutional convention, neighboring Coahuila won recognition as a full state within the new Mexican Republic. Coahuila was represented by Miguel Ramos Arizpe, a dynamic former priest and one of the most vocal proponents of Federalism in the new Mexican Republic. In addition to sharing an ideology, Coahuilans shared a long history with San Antonio, which had strong political, cultural, and familial ties with Monclova and Saltillo. After initially opposing the union, Seguín eventually struck up an alliance with Ramos Arizpe, and Coahuila and Texas were unified under one flag, though this union would only be until “such time as [Texas] should be able to figure as a State by itself.”410In the meantime, Texas was established as a quasi-autonomous “department” within the state, whose department chief by convention would always be a San Antonian.411

Many positive things came out of this union with Coahuila, which was, at the time, the poorest in the new Mexican nation.412First, San Antonians were able to finally free up some of the land sitting idle in the public domain all around them.413Thanks to the efforts of San Antonio’s first state legislator, the self-proclaimed Baron de Bastrop, one of Coahuila first acts as a state would be a colonization law opening up vast new lands for settlement.414And this state control of the public domain would leave a valuable legacy for the future American State of Texas, which, unique among American states, retains control of all its public lands.

Second, in joining with Coahuila, San Antonians were able to win important economic concessions to promote trade and industry in their province, the poorest in the Mexican republic. In 1823, Texas won an exemption on import duties for seven years. In 1827, they obtained an exemption from excise taxes on corn, beans, and chiles. In 1831, the state granted them a six-year exemption on livestock taxes.415 These were meager but necessary incentives to private enterprise at the time, and small recompense for the horrors that San Antonians had experienced in 1813 and for the ongoing dangers of living on the frontier.416Trade barriers were collapsing, promising to create fantastic new wealth, especially for a community like San Antonio, which saw itself potentially sitting at the “center of an extensive commercial system linking Louisiana, Coahuila, Chihuahua, and New Mexico,” in the words of historian Jesus de la Teja.

During these early years of the new Mexican republic when everything was wide open and anything was possible, San Antonians took the initiative in other ways to finally create the society they had always dreamed of.

They tried to unify San Antonio’s diverse civilian, presidial, and mission communities into a single government, the Ciudad de San Fernando de Béxar,417 most frequently referred to at the time as “Béxar,” or “Bear” by some of the newer settlers arriving from the East.

Next, they set about all the unglamorous work of running a city. The city council reconfirmed the traditional taxes on fandangos and musical performances of which there was apparently more than one a day in 1827 and set licensing requirements for the freight and retail businesses.418 They conducted an annual census. The city councilmen (or regidores) and mayor (or alcalde) led the volunteer police force, which patrolled the streets nightly from 9 PM to 3 AM and running the city jail.419 They established a junta de sanidad,420 a public health commission, passed laws on public sanitation to protect the acequias that still supplied most of the town’s water, and responded to the smallpox epidemic of 1831 and the cholera epidemic of 1834 with tragic disregard to their own lives. This was a community that was resourceful beyond compare, managing to develop their own smallpox vaccine in 1832 from an infected cow based only on treatises that had slowly made their way to the edge of civilization.

San Antonio was also at the forefront of several initiatives that other Mexican Federalists were still only fantasizing about. Federalists – and most San Antonians – believed that Free public education was a necessity for a free people.421 San Antonio was perhaps the first community in Northern Mexico to establish free public schools.422 The first effort had begun under royalist Juan Manuel Zambrano in 1811 during his brief tenure as interim President of the counterrevolutionary junta. In 1826, lands were set aside to fund these new San Antonio schools which in 1828 were made entirely free to the public.423 The poorest San Antonians struggled to find the time and resources necessary to enroll their children, but an important foundation had been laid.

In terms of legal innovations, San Antonio became the first and maybe only place in Mexico to make use of juries.424 Juries had no place in Spain’s continental, civil legal system. They arose in San Antonio out of practicality.425 Juries or panels of hombres buenos426 made sense for San Antonio, who depended theoretically on courts as far away as Monclova, Saltillo, and Guadalajara. Initially used only for minor matters, juries proved to be quite effective in administering local justice, and their jurisdiction soon began to expand. As it did, the parties involved began to insist on jurors of ygual clase, or a “jury of their peers,”427 as it translates, a direct influence of the North American legal system with which many San Antonians had now become broadly familiar.

San Antonio and Texas courts would exert an interesting influence back on the Anglo-American legal system as well. Following the Spanish example of unified courts of law and equity, the Republic of Texas would become the first English-speaking country “to adopt a permanent and full unitary system of judicial administration,” something that is now in the norm throughout the American judicial system. Further following Spanish custom, Texas was the first English-language legal jurisdiction to allow for “independent executors” to probate wills without having to go through a court each step of the way, another legal instrument that many other American states have followed. Community property laws conferring joint ownership between husband and wife of property acquired during marriage also flows from the Spanish tradition through to Texas and later some American jurisdictions.428 And Texas’s famously expansive homestead protection laws derive from a creative interpretation of Hispanic precedent by Stephen F. Austin during the years of Mexican Texas, which future Texas legislatures would only strengthen.429

San Antonians’ success in finally bringing about their long-held political objectives empowered them and only heightened their sense of their own distinctness. Around 1828, a traveler noted that San Antonians had begun referring to their supposed countrymen from the interior as extranjeros, “foreigners.” Their countrymen in the Valley of Mexico might not have disputed the term. Tejanos’ “ear-bending” dialect grated on Castilian ears.430San Antonians even developed a unique style of dress, favoring a mixture of fashions from Mexico, New Orleans, and North America, all tinged by frontier accents like leather and wide-brimmed, short-crowned felt hats.431

With new colonization laws, generous trade provisions, and dynamic new governments, San Antonians were finally able to attract immigrants to their underpopulated state. And not just any people. Sometime in 1820, San Antonians became vocal proponents of Anglo-American immigration to Texas.432 San Antonians had long trade contacts with their neighbors to the East and Anglo-Americans had precisely what San Antonians most lacked: capital and technology. Spain’s mercantile system had always starved the province of the money it needed to invest in improvements, yet the Anglo-American empire always seemed to be able to find more capital. And these Anglo-Americans were enterprising. They promised technologies like grist mills and cotton gins that could exponentially increase the productivity of the province and the size of the economy.

Lastly, as early as 1820, the San Antonio city council began to actively lobby the Governor to permit Anglo-American immigration into Texas.433 Then in December, the gift of a particularly stubborn empresario fell into their lap. Moses Austin was a fifty-nine-year old, twice-bankrupted businessman who had already been a successful Spanish empresario, albeit in a different land. After his first bankruptcy around 1798, he had become a Spanish subject and brought a large number of American families to Spanish Missouri, which became American Missouri soon thereafter.

After his next bankruptcy in the panic of 1819, Austin looked to New Spain once again, and in December of 1820, he made his way to San Antonio to present a colonization proposal to the then-Spanish Governor. Initially, at least, the proposal did not go well, but Austin had the good fortune of running into an old friend there on the Plaza de Armas. He had first met the ever-present Baron de Bastrop in a boarding house in Spanish Missouri twenty years prior.

The Baron had a complicated history with a strong opportunistic streak and seemed to often move on the edges of the law. But in this instance, he was the man that Austin needed, because the Baron knew that San Antonians had been looking for a test immigration case to rally behind. Austin offered the unique advantage of having already once been a successful empresario in New Spain. Once the Baron brought Austin before the San Antonio city council, they whole-heartedly endorsed his proposal, each signing off individually on his petition.

Of course, a lot was going on in New Spain-slash-Mexican politics at this time. Specifically, allegiances were flip-flopping, monarchs were falling, and a new nation was rising from the ashes. Moses Austin died in June 1821 in the midst of all of this turmoil, and according to legend, begged his son Stephen from his deathbed to carry on the dream. When Stephen – or Don Estevan as he began to call himself – arrived in now-Mexican Texas later that year, he was met by Erasmo Seguín, who had patiently waited for him in Natchitoches for five months,434 so excited was he about the prospect of this new settlement. Although saddened by the news of Austin’s father’s passing, Seguín had the happy privilege of informing Austin that his colony had been approved, the last signature having been – in a sad twist of historical irony – the butcher General Arredondo’s.

It was the San Antonio city council who had kept the dream of Stephen F. Austin’s colony alive. Historian Raúl Ramos says it well: “Austin’s settlement project would not have succeeded, or for that matter even started, without Tejano support and encouragement”435 – and by Tejano, what he means is “San Antonian.” But what this meant too was that San Antonians took a special, protective interest in these Anglo settlers. At the state and federal levels, San Antonians became tireless proponents of Anglo immigration and of these immigrants’ needs. Throughout the 1820’s, San Antonians and Anglo immigrants would cooperate on dozens of colonization projects, to the benefit of each. San Antonians got access to trade, goods, and business partnerships they wouldn’t have otherwise; Anglos got land and new markets. Ideologically, many San Antonians in the 1820’s were, in fact, starting to observe curious similarities between their hard-won republican, liberal, Federalist ideals and the emerging ideals of Jacksonian-age Americans.

Episode 13: Sons of Libertad

Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” stands as the canonical outsider’s perspective of the early American republic in the age of Andrew Jackson. De Tocqueville was enchanted by what he found in the United States. He saw the young republic as the closest realization yet of the ideals of Enlightenment thinkers like Locke, Bentham, and Rousseau. It’s a great read and a great reminder of how radically different the American political experiment was from anything that had preceded it.

But much more relevant to me than the account of a French aristocrat who came and went from the American continent in less than nine months, is the account written one year before de Tocqueville by another keen observer of human nature, and a man who would have a much more direct impact on the course of events on the North American continent.

A Spanish creole born in the Yucatan peninsula in 1788, Lorenzo de Zavala attended seminary intent on becoming a priest. De Zavala’s time at seminary radicalized him, however, introducing him to the works of the French enlightenment and the new contributions to political thought being made across the Gulf of Mexico by men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.436

Upon graduating from seminary, he founded a series of newspapers in which he gave a Mexican voice to the political arguments of republicanism and classical liberalism.437 By 1814, these were dangerous positions to espouse, and he was imprisoned for three years by Royalists to shut him up.438

Imprisonment did nothing to moderate his zeal, however, and he picked up right where he left off upon his release. Luckily for de Zavala, the times were catching up to him, and when the former opponents of Mexican Independence flip-flopped, they turned to de Zavala to frame their arguments. In 1820, it was de Zavala who was chosen to write out Mexico’s grievances against Spanish rule and to present them to the Spanish Parliament and other sympathetic ears on the European continent.439

Once Mexico had achieved independence, De Zavala won a seat in the first Mexican Congress, where he became a constant thorn in the side of Mexican monarchists and Centralists who seemed intent on reinstating the Spanish royal system only under a Mexican flag. When the Mexican monarchy collapsed in 1823, De Zavala was among the loudest agitating for the constitutional convention to which San Antonio ultimately sent Erasmo Seguín, as we saw in the previous chapter.

De Zavala was elected the President of the Constitutional Convention, and with his ally, Coahuilan Ramos Arizpe, they steered the new Mexican constitution in a decidedly liberal direction. De Zavala and Ramos Arizpe became the great voices of Mexican liberalism or, as their faction later became known, “Federalism,” advocating for a system of divided government with limited powers devolved as much as possible to local governments adhering to a generally laissez-faire economic philosophy.

The document that emerged from the 1824 Mexican Constitutional Convention reflects this. Under the 1824 Mexican Constitution, the new Mexican nation is declared to be a “Federal Republic,” and formally named the United Mexican States, plural. In cultural respects it fell more squarely in the Hispanic tradition, as seen by its endorsement of Catholicism as the official state religion and its general length and organization, which clearly derived from the 1812 Spanish Constitution of Cádiz. Yet in other respects, it looked more North American, featuring a system of shared sovereignty between the federal and state governments, as well as checks and balances among the judicial branch, the bicameral legislative branch, and the very weak executive branch.

Things went relatively smoothly for Mexico in the four years following the adoption of the 1824 Constitution. Indeed, things went well. The country grew, the economy prospered, and in some areas such as public education Mexico led. Federalism was working and Mexico – which at this time was almost the exact same size geographically as the United States and slightly bigger in terms of population – seemed on pace to join the ranks of the great world powers.

Despite the early successes of their system, the Federalist party lost the national election of 1828. And Federalists didn’t take it well. Fearful that the new Centralist president-elect would walk back the advances of the previous four years, Federalist mobs (including Lorenzo de Zavala)prevented the popularly elected Centralist from taking office.440 The Federalist-controlled Mexican Congress appointed one of their own to assume the presidency – in absolute violation of the Constitution of 1824 – and the Centralists revolted, eventually overthrowing the Federalists and taking back the reins of government via their own counter-coup in 1830.

A tragic precedent had been set. Mexico would suffer twelve different presidents over the next eighteen years, as the ballot box and the Constitution lost all meaning. Politics devolved into caciquismo, battles between political bosses who used ideologies opportunistically to advance their own claims. And by 1830, Lorenzo de Zavala was on the losing ideological side. He fled Mexico and resolved to spend his exile reflecting and studying the political system of the United States of the North and perhaps (we can’t help but wonder) ponder his own role in bringing down the very Mexican political system he had been so instrumental in creating.

Over the next two years – and one year before de Tocqueville’s journey– de Zavala would travel to New Orleans, up the Mississippi River to the American Midwest, over to Canada and New England and then down to Washington. He would publish his travelogue in 1834 in Paris – again, one year before de Tocqueville– under the name Viajes a los Estados Unidos de Norte de America: “Travels to the United States of North America.”

Like De Tocqueville in Democracy in America, de Zavala in Viajes is in awe of Americans’ tireless enterprise. He describes them as “hard-working, active, reflective, circumspect, tolerant, thrifty, free, proud, and persevering.”441 The symbol of the American, he suggests, should be a craftsman standing proud with a plow in one hand and a newspaper in the other.442 As a former newspaperman himself, he was blown away by the fact that a young nation of twelve million or so people supported thousands of papers, while his homeland of nearly the same population boasted only a few dozen.443 Literacy was near universal and Americans of the time absolutely reveled in their first and most prized right: the freedom of speech. They debated political issues for fun, and the diversity of ideas that de Zavala describes is astounding: from atheism to theocracy, temperance to free love, even communism and anarchism. The variety of political beliefs entertained by these early Americans was exceeded only by the variety of religious beliefs that found expression in the new republic.444

And most fascinating for de Zavala was that almost all of these schools of thought found a way to trace their ideology back to 1776.445 America’s secular religion was in full bloom and actively championed by 1830’s Americans everywhere with the kind of zeal typical of new converts. And why shouldn’t they have been zealous? In fifty years, their system had allowed for a few million farmers pinned against the Eastern seaboard to quadruple the size of their nation, their population, and their economy. No royal prerogative, no petty bureaucrat, no staid cleric stood in the way of any man making a place for himself in this new nation. By securing men in their property no matter the political outcome and removing the thousand little points of political control that existed in systems such as the old Spanish one, it was as though the American system had made of politics a game, and by so doing, blunted politics as a tool of oppression or fear.

De Zavala’s account is a spectacular window into what would come to be known as the Jacksonian age. The irony of calling it the Jacksonian age is that almost half the country would have deeply resented the term. President Andrew Jackson was a polarizing man, an outsider opposed to concentrated power in the hands of elites, but a man who over time concentrated more and more power into himself. Historians aren’t wrong, however, to group Americans of all ideological stripes from this time period together, because fundamentally they were all more alike than they were different. Indeed, one of the best statements of the philosophy of the Jacksonian age comes from one of the most vocal opponents of Andrew Jackson, a congressman from the backwoods of Tennessee named David Crockett. His personal philosophy was simple, he said: “Be always sure you’re right, then go ahead.”446

It was the mantra of the times and the “go-ahead men” that it produced. These weren’t a people that said “Someone should…” They did! And there was nothing standing in their way or slowing them down. We Americans who have grown up in this country take for granted how easy it is to do things here. For the most part, you don’t need a permit or an approval or a patron to do the things you want in this country. It still defies belief for most people from other countries. And it was even more wide open in 1830, when land was abundant, institutions were young, and opportunity seemed limitless.

It served for De Zavala as an affirmation of what classical liberals had long wanted to believe, that a people really could organize itself from the ground-up, without the need for aristocracies of wealth or of intellect to order things for them. We’ve grown numb to how revolutionary this notion was. Smart people as far back as Plato had always managed to convince themselves that for a society to prosper, it needed to be ordered by the smartest or the wealthiest or the most powerful. They debated who should hold the reins of power, not whether anyone should hold them at all. And even today, I fear, when things don’t go our way politically, we are no less seduced by the idea of trying to impose order on those aspects of society we don’t like, as long as the people that will do the ordering are like us.

In the words of John Michael Rivera – who has edited a very accessible translation of De Zavala’s travelogue: “Zavala followed Jackson’s Republican belief in a diffused government, where the nation emerged and maintained its collectivity through the people themselves.”447 Put differently, the early United States showed that the government need not be the nation. That a nation could derive its strength from the people directly and that good governments actually frustrate good politicians whose every incentive is to impose their interest group’s will on the rest of society, and that good governments prevent the tyranny of the mob to which so many historic democracies had succumbed, as De Zavala had just witnessed in 1828 in Mexico.

I’ll share some of De Zavala’s more offbeat observations as well. One, Americans all chewed tobacco – and the spit it everywhere. Floors everywhere were covered with tobacco juice, even as spittoons sat unused in the corners of the rooms. De Zavala found it repulsive and entirely inexplicable, and he wasn’t the only one.448

Two, the downside to American’s industry, De Zavala confessed, was that Americans were downright codiciosos, stingy or even greedy, and quite cold in their business dealings, a classic complaint about Americans by Latin observers through to the present.449

Three, Americans in 1830 were inordinately proud of their prisons. They always wanted to show off their penal systems to newcomers and believed that with their emphasis on due process and rehabilitation, that all offenders could be made good again. Indeed, it was actually America’s prison system that was the impetus for De Tocqueville’s visit the next year.

Fittingly for a man who had just written a nation’s constitution, de Zavala wonks out on the constitutional framework of each state he passes through. For example, instead of saying “Then I arrived in Ohio, which comprises 44,000 square miles and 937,000 souls, is bounded by Pennsylvania to the East, the Ohio River to the south, Indiana to the west, and Michigan to the North,” he begins his chapter in Ohio with: “The constitution of the state of Ohio was drawn up in 1802. There are two chambers. The representatives are elected annually the second Tuesday in October, and the numbers is proportional to the population of males above the age of twenty-one years, but should never exceed seventy-two members, nor fall below thirty-two. The senators are elected ever two years in the same number…The governor is elected by the people every two years on the second Tuesday in October…. the judicial power rests…” and on and on.450 It reminds us that De Zavala isn’t just a political theorist. He’s a technocrat and he’s making this journey to the U.S. as a study, in the hopes that it might serve as a “useful lesson in politics” to the Mexican audience that he is in fact writing for.451

As such, he makes a fairly even-handed assessment of everything he sees. He makes no attempt to hide his admiration for North Americans’ industry and earnestness, even as he unqualifiedly condemns slavery, which Mexico had just abolished.452 He acknowledges North Americans’ odd penchant for isolation and other anti-social behaviors while excusing it as a byproduct of their work ethic. He defends their egalitarianism and simplicity against the condescension of other European observers appalled by Americans’ inability to appreciate leisure. Yet he is openly skeptical that a North American-style political system could work in Mexico. The North American system is, he concedes, “sublime, but not to be imitated.”453

And it was in Texas in particular where De Zavala saw the opportunity for a perfect syncretism of Anglo and Hispanic virtues. While outsiders in both far away Mexico City and in Washington, D.C. kept wanting to make Texas the great battleground of cultures, de Zavala and Seguín and Navarro and Ruiz and Austin and others saw was that Texas was where these two great cultural traditions would converge and perhaps reach their fullest expression. Indeed, Lorenzo de Zavala’s ideological soul brother, Miguel Ramos Arizpe, described his Tejano constituents to the Spanish parliament in much the same way that de Zavala would describe Anglo-American Jacksonians: “employed day and night in the honest and systematic cultivation of the soil…they are truly inflexible to intrigue, virtuously steadfast, haters of tyranny and disorder, justly devoted to true liberty, and naturally the most inclined toward all the moral and political virtues.”454

And when we’re talking about Texas of this period, we are fundamentally talking about San Antonio, the capital of the province and its economic and cultural heart. San Antonio in particular was where this cultural hybridization was already occurring, where Tejanos were putting Anglo capital and technology into old trades and old lands that had long been starved of investment, and where Anglos were picking up the skills to defend themselves and proliferate across the semi-arid open range. They were intermarrying, they were speaking each other’s languages, and they were even beginning to dress alike.

Frederick Jackson Turner famously spelled out his “Frontier Thesis” in 1893, that “[T]he most important effect of the frontier has been in the promotion of democracy... [T]he frontier is productive of individualism…It produces antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct control…The frontier individualism has from the beginning promoted democracy.”455 Of course, if we believe, as Frederick Jackson Turner and William Prescott Webb and others did, that the experience of hacking a living out of the frontier and taming a continent created a national character uniquely well-suited for a liberal, republican government – indeed, that such a people would accept nothing less – and if we believe that San Antonians endured a similar if not even more intense experience in their formative years, then we shouldn’t be surprised if San Antonians felt an uncanny affinity for Jacksonian frontiersmen and their political ideology. In that sense, early San Antonio is the Frontier Thesis’s great validation.

Indeed, Historian Andres Tijerina in his book Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag makes the argument that the San Antonio frontier experience actually took the American frontier experience one step further, drawing it out to its most concentrated form,456 something that I think we see acknowledged indirectly by both the American idealization of the cowboy and the Mexican idealization of the charro – each recognized as a symbol of his respective nation and each deriving no small part of his identity from these early San Antonians.

Again, quoting de Zavala’s biographer, John Michael Rivera: “Zavala turned his eyes to Texas, where he hoped a liberal utopia could be constructed upon enlightened ideas. Texas would serve as an alternative geopolitical space, located culturally and politically between Mexico and the United States. Zavala believed that liberalism would stand as the mediating form of political and cultural organization in such a way that a liberal Texas state could usher the heterogeneity of different individuals into a collective people….In other words, the diverse peoples who colonized Texas would come together and form a heterogeneous people, the Texans, through a collective belief in a democratic state that ensured individual rights.”457

De Zavala was as enchanted by these early San Antonians as we ought to be and decided to cast his lot with them. He secured from sympathetic Federalists in the Coahuila legislature an empresario contract to establish a colony for Anglo-Americans, one of many which were starting to pop up in East Texas thanks to San Antonians’ agitation.

San Antonians in 1830 felt like they were on the cusp of something special. De Zavala agreed and best articulated their collective aspiration for a new “combined regimen of the American system and the Spanish customs and traditions”458 which would represent the triumph of the New World over the tired ideas of the old, and “upon the Gothic ashes and the remains of untenable privileges there will be raised up a glorious and enlightened generation…that will learn to think and to hold in esteem their dignity by lifting their thoughts to a higher level.”459

Episode 14: Illegal Immigration

General Manuel de Mier y Terán was depressed. Three years before, in 1829, he had warned the Mexican government about what was happening in Texas. In 1828, he had been appointed to lead a boundary commission to Mexico’s northeastern border, charged with studying Texas and its prospects for development. On his way to the Texas Louisiana border, however, they found the resources of the state already being actively developed, albeit not by Mexican citizens.

Thousands of Anglo-American immigrants had swarmed across the unguarded Sabine River during the 1820’s. Some had come under colonization contracts granted to men like Stephen F Austin. Many more, however, had come illegally and squatted on the first agreeable piece of real estate they saw. Many were industrious. Some weren’t. And some were frankly just debtors or criminals on the run from the law, as Mier y Terán was quick to observe.

Most of them paid no attention to the conditions which the Mexican government had placed on new immigrants, namely, that they learn to speak Spanish, that they become Catholic, and that they emancipate their slaves. These new immigrants might be prospering and they might be populating the long-empty expanses of Texas, but they seemed to have no real loyalty to the Mexican state. They lived in little Anglo enclaves where the men spent hours railing about their constitutional rights, forgetting sometimes which constitution they lived under. An avowed Centralist himself, it actually bothered Mier y Terán even more when these new immigrants tried to jam the North American language of liberty into a Mexican Federalist package. What unnerved him most wasn’t that they were English-speaking, Protestant, slave owners, but that they seemed to think that any law anywhere was an intrusion on their rights and every tax an indignity unworthy of a free man, even if the only reason that man had anything at all was because the government taxing him had given it to him!

These immigrants were wholly unassimilated, he believed, their only contact with Mexican society being San Antonio, who had shown its fickle loyalty to the central state back in 1813. And now, General Mier y Terán suspected, San Antonians were starting to identify more with than new neighbors than with their fellow citizens. The provincial “lieutenant colonel” that had been assigned to his commission – one José Francisco Ruiz – frankly seemed to get along better with the Anglos than he did with the General and his retinue from the capital, presumably an artifact of his many years spent among them as a smuggler and insurrectionist the previous decade.460

Upon his return to Mexico City, General Mier y Terán published a scathing report on the political situation in Texas. He was convinced that Texas was in very real danger of being pried away from Mexico if something wasn’t done to control its borders. And now, in the clear light of 1832, his dire predictions were coming to fruition. Anglo-Americans in Texas now numbered around 15,000 out of a total population of around 18,000, and they were growing more restless by the day. Down in the center, the Federalists were winning the latest struggles for power both in the ballot box and on the battlefield and threatened to undo all the work that he and his Centralist allies had undertaken to protect the honor of the new Mexican Republic. Let them be damned, he decided. On July 3, 1832, General Mier y Terán fell on his sword in the same churchyard where the short-lived Mexican emperor had been executed a decade prior.

Contributing to General Mier y Terán’s despair had been that for a couple of years it appeared as though things were going his way. The Centralist faction had regained control of the Mexican government in 1830 and had tried to respond to what they saw happening in Texas. Acting on Mier y Terán report, one of the Centralists’ first acts on April 6, 1830 – 17 years to the day after San Antonio had declared its short-lived independence – was to proclaim all future immigration from the U.S. illegal.461Further, they declared all unfulfilled empresario contracts – which was to say, almost all of them–null and void and all lands granted under them now subject to review. New customs agents and more aggressive local department chiefs were appointed to try to enforce these new decrees and, for the first time really, Mexico’s trade laws.

All of this hit San Antonians in their pocketbooks. In the words of historian Jesus F. de la Teja they saw in Anglo immigration “an unprecedented opportunity for Texas to rise from the Depths of the poverty and backwardness in which the Mexican War of Independence had left the province.”462In just a very short time, they had developed deep commercial ties with these new immigrants. More, they had developed an almost paternal view of these Anglo-American settlers, as people brought in upon their recommendation.463

The 1827 Coahuila colonization law carried by San Antonio delegate and self-proclaimed Baron de Bastrop, had truly opened the floodgates of Anglo immigration. Most immigrants were farmers, who stopped at the Brazos or Colorado rivers. A few continued on to San Antonio, however, and began to move in San Antonio society.

Old Ben Milam was only 33 years old when he first came to Mexico to participate in the Mexican War of Independence in 1818.464 Captured and imprisoned in 1819, he was eventually released and awarded a colonization contract in 1826, which he partnered with José Antonio Navarro to develop.465 He was in and out of Texas regularly, yet made San Antonio his base from that time forward.

John W. “El Colorado” Smith earned his nickname because of his flaming red hair. He arrived in Texas in 1826 as a part of the Dewitt Colony, but quickly moved on to San Antonio where he set up shop as a merchant. He married a Canary Island descendant, Maria de Jesús Delgado Curbelo, with whom he would have six children, and eventually acquire enormous tracts of land around San Antonio and the state.466

Erastus Deaf Smith (pronounced “Deef Smith” at the time) was a New Yorker who had lost his hearing to meningitis. He first visited San Antonio in 1817, returned in 1822, and married Guadalupe Ruiz, a last name you should recognize by now.467Deaf Smith became a moderately successful land speculator and rancher, allegedly being among the first to import English Cattle breeds into Texas.

Smith’s stepdaughter, María, would marry Hendrick Arnold, a free black man who had come to Texas in 1826 with Stephen F. Austin’s colony.468

John Twohig was an Irishman who come to San Antonio in 1830 and set up shop on the Plaza de las Islas or Main Plaza.469

Samuel Maverick, a Yale graduate and struggling lawyer, came to San Antonio in March of 1835 and entered into land speculation and local politics.470 His wife, Mary Ann Adams Maverick, would come to San Antonio in 1836 and her diaries offer some of the best first-hand accounts of life in the city during this period.

Jim Bowie was born in Kentucky to the kind of Scotch-Irish stock that predominated amongst Texas’ first Anglo settlers. His father moved him and his brother to Spanish Missouri at an early age, then to Louisiana just as it entered in the Union. His father did well for himself in the timber business, but Jim and his brother developed a taste for riskier ventures, namely, slave-smuggling471 and real estate fraud. In 1827 while serving as a second to another man in a duel on a Sandbar in the Mississippi river outside of Natchez, Bowie was shot twice, stabbed multiple times and – in a superhuman display of grit and strength – still managed to kill the man who had assaulted him. Newspaper accounts of the so-called “Sandbar fight” made Jim Bowie and the custom knife that he had plunged into his assailant’s chest a legend in his own time.

In 1828, he first traveled to San Antonio, likely to avoid legal problems in Louisiana. He quickly befriended Juan Martin de Veramendi, one of the wealthiest men in town and a solid Republican. They offered each other mutual benefit, the San Antonian offering Bowie entrée to San Antonio society, and Bowie offering Veramendi valuable business contacts back in the U.S. Furthermore, Bowie and Veramendi’s 19-year-old daughter seemed to have fallen in love.472 On April 25, 1831, Jim Bowie and Úrsula Veramendi were married in San Fernando Church, after which they took up residence in the so-called Veramendi Palace in town.473

For the next forty years, 10% of the marriages in Béxar County would be between a Hispanic and Anglo surname.474 Intermarriage had always been the most powerful integrator and community-builder in isolated, frontier San Antonio, and it continued to be an effective way for older settlers to absorb newer arrivals while still preserving the character of the town. The second most powerful tool of integration, as we have already talked about, was doing business together, and all of these new arrivals were active, entrepreneurial businessmen.

This is why the April 1830 immigration decree was a such a kick in the teeth to San Antonians of all backgrounds. The Mexican flag might have replaced the Spanish one, yet their government remained out-of-touch with their concerns if not outright antagonistic towards them. Curtailing Anglo immigration, San Antonians knew, threatened to take away the greatest hope of prosperity that San Antonians saw for the economy of their province.

The San Antonio city council convened in December of 1832 to decide on a course of action. The city council had a century-old tradition of active political engagement, too active sometimes, and they did not silence their consciences now either. On December 19, 1832, the city council published which drew a document known today as the “Béxar Remonstrance.”475 The document was published just days before the annual elections and signed by forty-two other prominent citizens, suggesting widespread community support for its content. Ramón Múzquiz, a former Coahuila governor and Béxar Department chief signed on, along with the conservative mayor, Ángel Navarro. José Francisco Ruiz, perhaps the highest-ranking officer in the regular Mexican army from San Antonio signed, risking his commission in so doing. Even former royalists like Erasmo Seguín and José Antonio Garza, creator of the Lone Star on Texas’s first coinage, signed on, as did Erasmo Seguín’s son, Juan Seguín, who at only twenty-six years old was already emerging as the dashing if a bit reckless voice of San Antonio’s aggressive brand of federalism.

Yet it was José Antonio Navarro who actually took the pen in 1832 and drafted the Béxar Remonstrance, with help from his brother Ángel.476José Antonio Navarro and his brother Ángel, then serving as mayor, had been born to a prominent merchant in town. José Antonio had received a good education by the standards of the impoverished frontier province, traveling to Saltillo for schooling. He was crippled at a young age and the wound in his leg would plague him for the rest of his life. Physically limited in a time and place where physicality was a near-necessity for men, José Antonio made up for his bodily limitations with his intellectual vigor. He read voraciously and – like Lorenzo de Zavala from the previous episode – became enchanted by the liberal, republican movements in Europe and especially in the United States. And he was among the leading advocates of Anglo immigration to Texas, having closely befriended and gone into business with many, such as Stephen Austin and Ben Milam.477

Navarro’s “Remonstrance” ravages the 1830 federal anti-immigration law. By disallowing legal immigration, he points out, the government was only guaranteeing that unregulated, illegal immigration by the least desirable types would predominate. The right policy, by contrast, could attract entrepreneurial, well-capitalized Anglos like those that had already introduced new technologies and new energy into the province that frankly was still recovering from the devastation of 1813.

Yet the anti-immigration law was really just one of a series of political trends that reflect ignorance of their needs by the new state and federal governments that they had suffered so much to bring about. San Antonians wanted cheaper and more plentiful land, and programs to encourage settlement of those lands. They wanted the reinstitution of Anglo-American immigration, praising the immigrants’ industry and their hardiness. They wanted increased representation at the state level, where their representatives had at times been denied their seats. They wanted government support for the public schools that they had pioneered. They wanted proper roads to Santa Fe, El Paso, and Chihuahua to promote their position at the nexus of various frontier trading networks. They wanted their tax and import exemptions be extended for ten years to encourage trade. They wanted their jury trials and due process protections made permanent. And they wanted the compañías volantes which had defended San Antonio since its founding refunded and re-empowered. In short, the Remonstrance lays out the classic, Federalist, free-trade complaints of isolated San Antonio against a distant, indifferent government in arguments that frankly wouldn’t have sounded out of place in 1813 or in 1778.

Yet Navarro and the other signatories of the Béxar Remonstrance had to choose their words carefully. San Antonians were well-known by now as rebellious and overly-belligerent. Implicit in any political protest from San Antonians was the memory of what they had done in 1813 when they had felt their demands ignored, something which Navarro plays with artfully. Making overly broad assertions of defiance or independence could result in a Centralist occupation of the state. Yet Navarro also knew that putting down a revolt on the distant frontier would have been a costly distraction for Centralists in Mexico City struggling to consolidate their hold on power in the center. He needed to find a way to threaten civil disobedience without appearing unpatriotic; to make the Central Government pay attention to San Antonians without giving them an excuse to blow off the frontiersmen as radicals:

“Being persuaded, your honors, of the importance and need of this manifesto, you will surely appreciate the language of sincerity and frankness with which this body has explained its cause…It does so openly, without remote thought of calling into question the sweet and valued glory of being Mexican. This body beseeches you to believe that over and above its evident justice, the reason for this presentation is to avoid consequences of immense significance that we can already sense, and that would be very difficult to remedy in the unexpected event that its claims go unattended.”

Navarro loads his language of loyalty and obsequiousness with ominous intimations. Put in my words: “We are 100% loyal, we would never revolt. But we can’t promise a revolt won’t happen if you don’t attend to our demands.”

The Remonstrance makes a much clearer threat to the Coahuila state government. Recalling an important condition of Texas’s union with Coahuila in 1824(namely, that Texas’s marriage to Coahuila was only until “such time as [Texas] should be able to figure as a State by itself”478), the Remonstrance claims that the Coahuila state government’s recent acquiescence and adoption of Centralist-friendly measures violated the state constitution, thereby “directly dissolving the social compact of Coahuila and Texas” – and there’s that Lockean, Jeffersonian natural law language that we saw in San Antonio’s 1813 declaration of independence as well. Navarro’s Remonstrance continues, “The people of Texas could have declared themselves as in a natural state and could have gone on, therefore, to organize a special government adequate to its needs and social situation.” Navarro just leaves that assertion of a pretty extreme unilateral right dangling in the air for his readers to consider.

Several historians I read here claim that the Béxar remonstrance was a tame document that comes up short of calling for Texas’s independence as a state.479 They’re technically right, but as someone who has spent a lot of time dealing with the diplomatic language of Mexican politics and bureaucracy, let me assure you that San Antonians’ threat couldn’t be clearer. San Antonians “could declare themselves independent,” they’re reminding their Coahuilan brothers. Only now they weren’t. Which didn’t mean that they wouldn’t in the future, however! It’s a form a praeteritio, of threatening without threatening, a common tool of negotiation in Mexico. “May heaven grant you foresight and exact justice to examine impartially this pressing matter,” Navarro implores the state and federal governments, without needing to spell out the potential consequences.

The Béxar Remonstrance elegantly backed San Antonians’ Centralist opponents into a corner. The relatively new government in Coahuila no less than the Central Government in Mexico City was in no position to put down a rebellion on a distant frontier in 1832. It’s always bad PR anyway for democratic states to have to force their citizens to accept its legitimacy with a sword. And so the Coahuila and Federal governments allowed San Antonians’ assertion of a right to declare independence at any time to stand. Indeed, they acquiesced to most of their demands.

Their timing of the Bexar Remonstrance also couldn’t have been better and probably wasn’t a coincidence. Five days after they published the Remonstrance, San Antonio Federalist and father-in-law to Jim Bowie, Juan Martín de Veramendi, became governor of Coahuila y Texas. Suddenly San Antonio had the best representation they could have hoped for at the state level, and Veramendi pushed through many of the reforms that San Antonians had long advocated for. He re-activated the colonization contracts, helped set aside state lands to support education, granted tax and import exemptions, passed a law allowing for jury trials, and began the process of returning defense and law enforcement to local authorities, even creating the local position of “cherif,”480 a wonderful example if ever there was of how Hispanic and Anglo legal systems were mixing in Texas. Oh, and he recognized English alongside Spanish as an official language of the state.481

Momentum continued to move in San Antonians favor when in 1834, the Federalist candidate won the presidential election. That candidate, unfortunately, happened to be Santa Anna, who we’ll see might not have been as Federalist as he originally held himself out to be. Upon taking office, however, he handed over his duties to his genuinely Federalist vice president who promptly rescinded the 1830 anti-immigration law.

At the same time as San Antonians were carefully maneuvering the minefield of Mexican politics, Stephen F. Austin took a different approach. Disregarded the advice of his friends in San Antonio,482 he responded to the immigration decree and other Centralist measures by openly advocating for much more open defiance and even for conventions to consider secession.483In a separate letter to the acting Mexico president, Austin claimed that if the evils complained about by Texas are not remedied, they would “to remedy them themselves, without waiting any longer on the ground that self-preservation rendered such a step necessary, and would justify it.” If you’ve ever worked in Mexico – particularly with the government – you can appreciate the inadvisability of Austin’s approach when compared to San Antonians’. Austin’s language is direct, unequivocal, and sounds way too much like the 1813 San Antonio Declaration of Independence to have been acceptable to any Mexican Centralist. The Béxar Remonstrance, on the other hand, is nuanced and conciliatory, even as it makes careful, strategic threats in the indirect language of the Spanish political tradition.

The distinction was not purely academic. It would land Stephen F. Austin in a Mexican jail for much of these next, critical years. In the end, it was San Antonians’ political maneuvering that got for Austin’s constituents what he had advocated for. From his jail cell Austin conceded, “Every evil complained of has been remedied.”

One of Juan Martin de Veramendi’s last measures as Coahuila governor before he – along with most of his family – was struck down by the cholera epidemic of 1833, was to move the capital from Saltillo to Monclova.484 San Antonians had always enjoyed close familial and cultural ties to Monclova, another frontier outpost and the historic capital of Coahuila. Under the new Mexican Constitution of 1824, however, Saltillo had been joined to Coahuila and made the capital. Saltillo, on the other hand, had always boasted closer ties to the center of the country and to the Centralist faction generally.

And the Centralists controlling the national government at the time didn’t look favorably on Veramendi’s relocation of Coahuila’s capital from Centralist Saltillo to a frontier hotbed of federalism like Monclova. In fact, President Antonio López de Santa Anna, who had just switched his allegiance to the Centralist cause, took it personally.

Episode 15: Santa Anna

If Santa Anna had been God, he is alleged to have said, he would have wished to be more.485

Alas, Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón was only the son of an upper middle-class Spanish bureaucrat, born in Xalapa, Veracruz in 1794, and commissioned a lieutenant in the Spanish Army at the age of 16. Santa Anna found his calling in the army, however, rising rapidly through the ranks, and would be repeatedly cited for bravery, including at the Battle of Medina in 1813, from which he emerged with a singular contempt and distrust of the little town on the San Antonio River.

In 1820, like many other Spanish Royalists, he flip-flopped and came over to the side of Mexican independence when the government back in Spain became too republican for his taste, eventually helping crown a new Mexican monarch. In December 1822, sensing an opportunity, he flip-flopped again, rising in revolt against the Mexican monarch and helping set off the events that would lead to the Mexican Constitutional Convention of 1823.486

Cold, self-interested, and opportunistic, Santa Anna married twice in his life without attending either wedding, using the marriages primarily as means of acquiring wealth which he frittered away each time. He became the foremost military man in Mexico, the man to whom the nation repeatedly turned in times of trouble. In 1829, he successfully led Mexican forces against a failed Spanish invasion of Tampico. In 1838, he led a hastily-assembled defense of Veracruz against a French invasion in which he famously lost his leg and had it buried with full military honors. He was always just successful enough in moments of minor crisis to cause people to forget the magnitude of the major national crises that he himself provoked.

Physically, Santa Anna was comparatively tall, commanding, and handsome, even as he had to instruct his portraitists to obscure his rather bulbous nose.487 He was a consummate collector of Napoleonic artifacts and began to refer to himself as the “Napoleon of the West.” We mock the title now, but maybe we shouldn’t. Like Napoleon, he was the type of egomaniacal and charismatic man that seems to attract power. Even his opponents were always quick to welcome him to their side when he inevitably flipped. He possessed an uncanny ability to inspire personal loyalty amongst his followers at all stages of his career, even as he was losing two-thirds of Mexico’s territory, corrupting its political processes, and bankrupting its treasury. He stands as the finest example our hemisphere has yet produced of how a charismatic man can bring about ruin of the very nation that chooses to worship him.

Yet things were still shiny and bright in 1824 when he aligned himself with the Federalists and the likes of Lorenzo de Zavala. After supporting the Federalist candidate in the 1828 election, he switched allegiances to the Centralist candidate when it looked like he was about to win, then switched back to the Federalist cause as it became clear that they would overthrow the Centralist president-elect.

Several years of instability followed, and a Centralist regained power by another coup in 1830. Rebel, Federalist forces turned for leadership to Santa Anna, fresh off his victory over the Spanish at Tampico. Santa Anna defeated the Centralist armies in December 1832 and entered Mexico City Caesar-like with his army to preside over the election that would see him elected to the first of his dozen or so largely non-consecutive and mostly-uncompleted Presidencies.

After winning the Presidential Election in March 1833, he immediately stepped aside to allow his Vice President to run the show. He retired to his estate in Veracruz, where he watched on as his Vice President began to pursue increasingly radical Federalist reforms. Naturally this riled the more conservative elements of Mexican society such as the church, the army, and the upper class, who began to agitate against the Vice President. They turned to Santa Anna, whose sympathies, in truth, were always rather conservative. He famously said that “A hundred years from now, [Mexicans] will still not be fit for liberty,” and that “A despotism is the proper government for [Mexico].”488 In May of 1834, he acted on this and declared himself in open revolt – against his own administration. Not surprisingly, Santa Anna the Centralist succeeded in overthrowing Santa Anna the Federalist.

Santa Anna the Centralist seemed much more interested in governing, and far less interested in democratic or constitutional processes. One of his first acts was to disarm all of the civilian militias, which is always a prudent step for tyrants to take. Second, he dissolved the Mexican Congress. Third, he abolished the 1824 Constitution and replaced it with a military dictatorship, presided over by himself.489

The outlying states of the Mexican republic protested. San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, Durango, Guanajuato, Michoacán, and Jalisco all announced their opposition to the new dictator. The state of Zacatecas rose in open revolt, which Santa Anna brutally crushed in May of 1835, massacring thousands of Zacatecan Federalists and allowing his army to sack the town for 48 hours, leaving it in ruins. Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon simmered as well and following events that would soon transpire in Texas, they declared their own independence, as would eventually the Yucatan, home state of Lorenzo de Zavala.

Coahuila y Texas was not spared this turmoil either. As soon as Santa Anna the Centralist took office, Centralists in Saltillo saw an opportunity to curry favor with the new dictator. They declared for Santa Anna and they declared Saltillo the new capital of Coahuila, which Santa Anna’s administration endorsed. Saltillans then proceeded to rollback almost all of the Federalist reforms won by San Antonians in 1833.490

During this time, there was one young man out on the frontier who had been warning his fellow citizens with Churchillian persistence about the dangers of Santa Anna. Juan Seguín was a fourth generation San Antonian when he was born in 1806 to one of the most prominent families in town. His father’s tempered, hard-won federalism seemed tame by comparison to his son’s romantic fervor. Fired by the moral clarity of youth, Juan Seguín was barely old enough to remember the horrors of 1813, yet still young enough to think he could do something to avenge them. He was only twenty-eight years old when he was elected Mayor of San Antonio in 1834 and then elevated to Department Chief of Béxar that same year.491 From his earliest involvement in San Antonio politics he had warned against the disturbing trend toward centralism in Mexico City, and in particular, against the anti-democratic personality cult cultivated by Santa Anna.

On October 7, 1834, young Seguín led forty-eight other San Antonians in signing a statement of protest against the unlawful usurpation of power by the Saltillo faction of Coahuila’s government and calling for a convention of all Texas municipalities to convene in San Antonio on November 15, 1834.492 Coming on the heels of the Béxar Remonstrance from December 1832 and coming from a town known for its radicalism, this action drew the attention of the new Centralist government in Mexico City. To a man like Santa Anna who customarily began his own revolts with pronunciamientos not terribly dissimilar to the one San Antonians had just issued, it sure sounded like the little frontier town was about to give him trouble.

Santa Anna had learned well that the only thing that frontiersmen respected was force, and so he dispatched his brother-in-law, General Martín Perfecto de Cos, with an army to Coahuila. When the diminutive, earring-wearing493 General Cos arrived in late 1834, it looked for a moment like he might be inclined to negotiate a peaceful resolution between the Monclova and Saltillo factions, but when the Monclova government convened in March of 1835, General Cos quickly dissolved it and moved to suppress the local Federalist faction.494

In response, Seguín organized a volunteer force of San Antonians to ride to the aid of the Monclova government.495 Twenty-five San Antonians enlisted from some of the town’s oldest families, with names like Arocha, Navarro, Flores, and Menchaca, joined by a few newer arrivals like Ben Milam.496

Centralists in Mexico City learned of what was brewing in San Antonio and tried to neutralize the outrage by offering José Antonio Navarro – the author of the Béxar remonstrance and by now the most respected voice of federalism in the province – a seat in the Mexican Senate if he would calm the waters. Navarro refused, boldly declaring that “Texas, absolutely all of Texas should first be reduced to ashes rather than live in slavery under a despotic government,”497 and instead pulled out his checkbook to underwrite Seguín’s expedition. Seguín’s force left San Antonio in April of 1835 en route to Monclova.

Upon arrival in Monclova, Juan Seguín convened with many of the others in the Federalist faction of the Coahuila government. General Cos’s Centralist army severely outnumbered them and had just started to openly move against them. Like Father Miguel Hidalgo two decades prior, Seguín and the Coahuilan Federalists decided that they needed to pull back to San Antonio. On May 25, 1835, Seguín and his San Antonio volunteers led the Coahuilan Federalists out of Monclova and up the road to San Antonio, which they declared to be the new seat of their state government-in-exile.498

A few months prior to all this, José Antonio Navarro’s brother, Ángel, had succeeded Seguín as Department Chief of Béxar. Ángel, fifty-one years old now and a witness to the horrors of 1813, had counseled restraint and even neutrality in the Monclova-Saltillo dispute. Even as he had leaned Federalist in recent years, Ángel Navarro was known to be generally conservative and General Cos hoped that perhaps this Navarro could be compromised more easily than his brother and convinced to stop Seguín’s march. General Cos issued an order nationalizing Seguín’s unit – which he had no power to do – and then ordering Ángel Navarro to prevent Seguín from leaving the province – an indirect acknowledgement of Cos’s own lack of authority to issue such an order. The order itself and the General’s apparent admission of its legal inconsistency offended even Ángel’s rather restrained notions of federalism. At least as far back as 1829, San Antonians had claimed exemption for their local militia from national service, a claim that had never been disputed and a claim that was in fact a statement of hundreds of years of tradition. And this wasn’t an obscure, legalistic argument San Antonians were making. If the central government could absorb the local militia at their will, what was to prevent San Antonio’s best from one day being drawn down into a political squabble in some entirely different part of the nation and leave frontier San Antonio defenseless against hostile Indians all around them? Ángel refused the order, even as he repeated his commitment to the government and to the constitutional process.

Like his brother-in-law, however, General Cos was disinclined to appreciate nuanced legal arguments. He saw only Ángel’s defiance of the central government. Combined with the news that Juan Seguín and other Federalists had resolved to establish a rival state government in San Antonio, the bejeweled brother-in-law of Santa Anna set off after them with his 800-man army.

On June 5, General Cos caught up to the bulk of the Monclova government before they had even made it out of Coahuila. He imprisoned most of the state government, including the Federalist governor. Seguín’s men narrowly escaped, and Seguín rode day and night to warn Texans about General Cos’s imminent invasion. Only he didn’t just warn: he actively began to recruit them into what he called the “Federal Army of Texas.”499 In San Antonio, he recruited twelve new men, including Juan A. Zambrano, descendant of that traditionally most conservative family in San Antonio.500 Zambrano went to Victoria where he recruited 28 more men. Desertions from the presidial units in San Antonio and Goliad soon added to their numbers, and by late summer, some 150 men had gathered around Gonzales, Texas, as the core of this Federal Army of Texas.

After mopping up the rest of the federalists in Coahuila, General Cos crossed the Rio Grande in September. He ordered the arrest of several Texans, including Lorenzo de Zavala and a hothead from the Anglo-colonies named William Barret Travis, despite the absence of any charges having been leveled against them. He reiterated Santa Anna’s earlier decree disarming the militias, ordering the province to turn in their arms and their artillery to the regular army.

Still, most San Antonians wanted peace. September 16, 1835 was just a few days away and marked the 25th anniversary of Father Miguel Hidalgo’s grito, in what should have been a moment of patriotic national celebration. The anniversary had already become one of the major holidays of the year for San Antonians, who had perhaps suffered more than any other community in Mexico for independence. Ángel Navarro personally underwrote the 1835 celebration, giving speeches that appealed to the community’s century of shared hardship on the frontier and encouraged them not to indulge in reckless warmongering that could only end in misery.501 To outsiders and government officials, Ángel Navarro used the occasion to make very public displays of loyalty to the new Mexican nation even as he reaffirmed the town’s insistence on its constitutional rights and traditional privileges.

Juan Seguín, who was around for the celebration, used the event to push a different message, organizing a subversive theatrical show staged in the same building where twenty-two years before San Antonio’s women had been imprisoned to make tortillas for the soldiers executing their men outside the walls. The symbolism couldn’t have been lost on San Antonians, who knew that General Cos’s Centralist army would arrive in just a few weeks.

Hearing about the ominously named Federal Army of Texas gathering in Gonzales, seventy-five miles to the east of San Antonio, General Cos sent Lieutenant Francisco Castañeda ahead to make a show of force there under the pretense of reclaiming a colonial-era cannon that had been given to the town for defense against Indians.

In the months since Seguín had first sounded the alarm, Gonzales had become a beehive of Texas Federalist activity. Located halfway between the towns of San Antonio and San Felipe, the center of the old Austin colony, it was where rhetoric collided with the hard realities of the moment. To date, most Anglos had sat out or been unaware of the turmoil leading to General Cos’s march into the province. Yet when he began demanding that they turn over their weapons and their fellow citizens, it hit home. Further, Stephen F. Austin had just been released from prison in Mexico City and returned to Texas in August 1835 a changed man. Long a voice of reason and accommodation, he was now convinced of the dangers the Centralists posed to the freedom and security of the entire nation. By lending his voice to the growing Federalist revolt in Texas, he brought over many of his old colonists with him.

On September 27, 1835, Lieutenant Castañeda arrived in Gonzales with 100 or so mounted dragoons, heirs to the fearsome New Spanish regular cavalry’s traditions. Castaneda demanded the return of the cannon to the Mexican army, but the 150 or so men assembled there refused. Invoking King Leonidas at Thermopylae(and perhaps, thereby, the heroic dead from the Battle of Medina just a generation before) who had answered the Persian king’s demand that he lay down his weapons with the cry “Molon labe,” the Gonzales men emblazoned a silhouette of the cannon on a white flag with those same words, translated into English as “Come and Take it.” Lieutenant Castañeda – who had been ordered to avoid a confrontation if possible – demurred, and after a half-hearted engagement, retreated back to San Antonio.

But Anglos had now been mobilized to the Federalist cause. Steeped in the stories of 1776, in Gonzales and the events that followed, Anglos heard the echoes of Lexington and Concord, and the chance to measure up to the memories of their forefathers called to them.502

Of course, the Anglos could always pull back across the Sabine River with their lives if the venture went poorly. San Antonians had no such escape option. If Anglos heard the echoes of Lexington and Concord, San Antonians heard the drumbeat of General Arredondo’s executioners. And they – along with the rest of the Mexican nation – had proof that Santa Anna was cut from the same cloth, as seen in Zacatecas just a few months before.

A terrible decision had been placed before San Antonians. Acquiesce in the hopes that someone else might bring down the tyrant or fight for their principles and risk it all.

And most chose to fight. As José Francisco Ruiz would observe after the Battle of Gonzales, “The die is cast and in a few months will begin the revolution that will forever separate Texas from the Republic of Mexico.”503 This wasn’t a new battle for them. This was the same battle that they had been fighting for a generation, if not more. And they knew the stakes.

People always have and always will look for ways to differentiate themselves from other people. In the past, we’ve used tribe, nationality, religion, party affiliation, race or skin color, among other things. Well 1830’s San Antonians looked across racial, cultural, and religious differences, and found common cause with the new Anglo immigrants in their midst. What men like De Zavala, Navarro, Ruiz, and Seguín shared with men like Ben Milam, Jim Bowie, Stephen F Austin, and Buck Travis was a belief in a political system, not a specific ideology, but a structure of government, trusting that if they could get the structure right, then all of their other differences could be accommodated. United behind this radical idea, San Antonians believed they might now finally win so what many before them had died fighting to achieve.

Episode 16: The Siege of Béxar

San Antonio Mayor Ángel Navarro was a moderate man. Yet the middle, he was discovering, was a perilous place to be.

Mayor Ángel Navarro had tried to remain loyal to the status quo during the tumult of 1813, but when word of his brother José Antonio’s revolutionary fervor got back to his superiors, they ran him out of the Royalist army and declared him a traitor. This pushed him into the fold of Mexican Republicans, and he eventually came to share their Federalist, constitutionalist principles, even as he defended traditional institutions such as the church and the stateHiH. In 1835,the 25th anniversary of Father Hidalgo’s famous grito, he had underwritten the town’s 16 de septiembre celebration and used the occasion to counsel patience and restraint to his vecinos, even as he personally remained leery of the man who had just made himself dictator on an anti-Federalist platform: Santa Anna.

When Santa Anna’s brother-in-law, General Martin Perfecto de Cos, learned of Juan Seguín’s plan to ride to the aid of the Federalists in Monclova with twenty-five volunteers in April of 1835, the General attempted to nationalize Seguín’s San Antonio unit. He sent the order to then-Department Chief Ángel Navarro who, General Cos continued, would be held personally responsible if Seguín and his troop left the province. Ángel Navarro, despite his moderate tendencies, refused General Co’s order on principle, asserting that “the militia depends exclusively on the authorities of the state and are in no manner subject to the orders of military officers,” while again repeating his loyalty to the Mexican nation and to the constitutional process.504

General Cos, like his brother-in-law, however, knew San Antonio’s history and in Navarro’s nuanced refusal he heard only a reminder of the town’s famous contrariness. Just a few months prior, the same Coahuilan Federalists had declared San Antonio the capital of their new government-in-exile before Cos squashed it. And the failure on October 2ndof one hundred Centralist dragoons to take a cannon from the local militia in Gonzales, Texas, he knew, would only further embolden these San Antonians.

And so General Cos and his 400-man army entered San Antonio on October 9, 1835, bootheels first. The General boarded his officers in the homes of the wealthiest citizens and commandeered the homes of those who weren’t present to defend them.505He confiscated the militia’s arms and sequestered them in the Alamo. And he made no effort to distinguish friend from foe, operating under the apparent assumption that all San Antonians were suspect. He gathered the town leaders and told them bluntly that if they didn’t cooperate, he would make the men “sweep the plazas” and the women “grind tortillas for his soldiers,”506 a threat almost certainly meant to recall the fate of San Antonio women in 1813, when they had been forced to grind tortillas in captivity while their fathers, husbands, and sons were executed outside their prison. If San Antonians got any wild ideas about resisting his orders, General Cos let them know, more reinforcements were on the way.

Mayor Navarro quietly encouraged San Antonians to leave town if they could. He even hid some Anglo San Antonians at his own ranch to protect them for Cos’s general arrest order for Anglos.507Most San Antonians took his advice and fled. Many of them made their way toward Gonzales where some 300 men had begun to congregate under Stephen F. Austin.508Austin – like Ángel Navarro, with whom he was good friends – had long been a voice of moderation, but a year in a Mexican jail cell had convinced him that there could be no compromise with Santa Anna’s dictatorship. He had now been elected commander of the Federal Army of Texas, which changed its name to the Revolutionary Army of the People, an echo of 1813’s Republican Army of the North, and a mark of the province’s radicalization in the face of General Cos’s provocations.

The Revolutionary Army was a motley lot. Buckskin was the closest thing to a uniform. The older Texans wore boots, the newer arrivals still sported moccasins.509Broad-brimmed sombreros shaded some faces, while military headgear from earlier wars adorned others. They supplied their own arms, and all bore a shot pouch, bullet-making materials, and a drinking gourd on their belts. Except for the rifling of their long guns and the size of their Bowie knives, they looked not unlike the first San Antonio Revolutionary Army in 1813described in Chapter 11.

Despite Santa Anna’s propaganda, this wasn’t an army of filibusters and pirates. Two-thirds of these men had been in Texas for more than five years. And some had been there their entire lives. Riding out in front of the Revolutionary Army of the People was Juan Seguín and his Tejano rangers. Recruited primarily from San Antonio and local ranches, you will recognize their names: Arocha, Curbelo, Flores, Garza, Navarro, Ruiz, and dozens of others. Their skill on horseback and their knowledge of the countryside made them Austin’s most valuable unit, capable of scouting, foraging, and harassing the enemy,510and he sent them ahead of the army to recruit what aid he could from the town.

On October 12, 1835, the rest of the Revolutionary Army marched west, and by October 27th, they had reached Salado Creek on San Antonio’s east side. There, they encountered the first of General Cos’s pickets, who gave light resistance before pulling back into town. Then, Austin’s Revolutionary Army saw dust on the horizon to the couth. They formed up their ragtag lines as best they could to brace for an attack. But instead of General Cos’s now 650-man army, Juan Seguín and thirty-two or so Tejanos rode over the ridge, bringing with them vital intelligence about the enemy’s strength, position, and supply lines.511General Cos knew that Austin was coming, they reported back, yet rather than ride out to meet them on the plains, he had chosen to make a defensive stand in town.

Seguín had an idea. On October 28, Seguín and his Tejano rangers led an additional sixty men commanded by Jim Bowie, another San Antonian, around the south side of town. There, they planned to probe the soft underbelly of the town’s defenses, but also to cut off General Cos from his supply lines south. General Cos discovered their maneuver, however, and saw his own opportunity. The attacking rebel army had just split its forces. He dispatched almost half of his force, some 275 men, to overwhelm Seguin and Bowie.

Confident in their three to one superiority in numbers, General Cos’s forces moved quickly to give battle. The rebels had taken up a position in a bend in the San Antonio River which protected their flanks and rear. This left the Centralists with no choice but to make a frontal assault. Bowie sent the order down the line that the men should hold their fire until the Centralist men were within deadly range, less than fifty yards or so. Here, the Rebels had an additional advantage over the Centralists. Many of the rebels carried newer, lighter, Kentucky rifles, whose rifled bores in the hands of a skilled operator could kill a squirrel at that range. This meant that Bowie’s men didn’t have to rely upon massed, untrained fire the way that Cos’s conscripts did. Rebel riflemen could pick out individual targets to devastating effect.

The Centralists opened the Battle of Concepción512with their artillery, but the large pecan trees which grew along the riverbank offered cover to the entrenched rebels. Indeed, the primary result of the Centralist artillery barrage was to rain down ripe pecans on the rebels who were happy to have the snack while they held their fire.513 The Centralist infantry began to advance. At 200 yards or so, the first skirmishing units, so-called cazador or “hunter” units began to fire pot-shots at the rebels. The rebel riflemen resisted the temptation to fire back, even as the Centralists drew now to within one hundred yards. Then, the entire Centralist line formed up and fired, but their aim was high, in the manner of nervous new recruits. Still the rebels held their fire. The Centralists mounted bayonets and took up the charge now, resolved to finish the battle with cold hard steel. The bugles called out, the officers pushed their men forward, and the infantry broke into a sprint.

Ninety-two rifles fired at once from the riverbank. The Centralist front line collapsed as if the ground had been pulled out from beneath them. The men behind them tripped over their wounded comrades, and the rear ranks halted. Then a second volley smashed into them, to equal effect. The Centralist soldiers panicked and lost nerve and began to back pedal. The officers would have none of it, and when they saw the line waver, they ordered the attack taken up again. The second Centralist attack fared no better and was beaten back. The Centralist commander then ordered a third charge, but the Centralist line crumbled beneath the constant and deadly rebel marksmanship. This time, after the rebels fired, they came out over the top, despite still being outnumbered by a good two to 1. The Centralists turned to flee, though not before the rebels captured a Centralist cannon and turned it against its former handlers, while Seguín’s rangers mounted up and rode down the stragglers.514

The Centralists left behind 50 dead at the Battle of Concepción, compared to only one dead and one wounded from Seguin and Bowie’s party. The Centralist defeat had an immediate effect on General Cos’s morale. He refused to believe that a force one-third the size of his own had bested his men, and instead assumed that he was now far outnumbered by the Revolutionary Army. He retreated even further back into town, concentrating his forces in the Alamo and around Main Plaza.

Austin moved the rest of the Revolutionary Army up into the future Brackenridge Park and called a council of war. More recruits had trickled in from the east, which combined with the now 150 local recruits brought in by Seguín, increased the Revolutionary Army’s numbers to 600. Austin called for an assault on the town, but the Revolutionary Army’s officers refused.515This was an all-volunteer army, and democratic to a fault. The army fought when its men wanted to fight. And the prospect of assaulting a well-fortified town bursting at the seams with artillery and professional soldiers didn’t appeal to them at that moment. Many thought they could just wait out the Centralist General. They had cut of his supplies and reports of his morale problems were already spreading. And many of the San Antonians in the Army had families in town, hostages to General Cos, whom they feared provoking.

Austin tried once more in mid-November to inspire the Revolutionary Army into an attack. Yet still they declined. On November 24, less than a month after arriving in San Antonio, Austin resigned his command in frustration and reported back to the provisional Texas government that was forming at a town called Washington-on-the Brazos. An old Texan named Ed Burleson was elected to replace him.

The Revolutionary Army settled into what would become known as the Siege of Béxar, or, as the Anglos in the country had begun to pronounce it, “Be-ar.”516Back in town, Mayor Ángel Navarro did his best to keep San Antonio vecinos safe. He called regularly upon General Cos to advocate for the townspeople, even as their relationship had long since turned bitter. Still, this small act of deference may have helped save the town from the fate that had befallen Zacatecas six months before, when that town had defied Santa Anna and been nearly razed to the ground for their impudence.

November turned to December, the days grew shorter, and the nights grew colder, as the winter of 1835-36 proved to be one of the harshest on record. As supplies were running out in the rebel camp, reports arrived of an approaching Centralist army of reinforcement, and San Antonians like Seguín, Bowie, Deaf Smith, and old Ben Milam were becoming increasingly worried about the fate of their loved ones still trapped in the town.

On December 3, Ed Burleson, the new commander of the Revolutionary Army called another council of war. The voices for attacking the city were forceful, but so were the voices in opposition. Again, the council deadlocked, and deadlock meant inaction. With winter arriving and with concerns now that a dwindling rebel force would be overwhelmed by General Cos’s rumored reinforcements, the decision was made to strike camp and pull back the 700-man Revolutionary Army to East Texas.

That day before, however, new information had begun to trickle into the rebel camp. On December 2, Ángel Navarro helped San Antonians John “El Colorado” Smith and Samuel Maverick escape from the house arrest under which Cos had placed all Anglos in town. They made their way out to the rebel lines and reported on the sad state of General Cos’s army, which had shrunk to only 500 or so effective fighting men.517Soldiers were feigning illness or deserting daily, and some units even spoke about deserting in mass to the Revolutionary Army. Yet they also reported on the deteriorating conditions of the civilians in town, who were short on supplies and in growing danger each day of the abuse incumbent upon any occupied people. And they had it on good authority that Cos would never surrender, at least not until his relief army arrived, at which point the rebel opportunity would have surely passed.

The frontiersmen of the Revolutionary Army lived and died by a democratic code. To-date, their commitment to democracy had sunk them into inaction. That’s when one man stepped up and realized that a democratic army didn’t require unanimity. It simply required one man with courage.

Old Ben Milam was fifty years old in 1835, which in frontier years was indeed ancient. He had spent his life fighting: the English, the Spanish, Plains Indians, and pretty well anyone who didn’t subscribe to his particular gospel of liberty. We first met him in Chapter 14 in 1818 when he came to San Antonio to fight for Mexican independence. He wound up in prison but won his freedom at the same time that Mexico won hers, and then was awarded an empresario contract to develop a colony around modern-day San Marcos with José Antonio Navarro. When he got crossways with the Saltillo faction of the Coahuila state government, he found himself imprisoned once again but escaped in early 1835 in time to join up with Juan Seguín on his march to Monclova.

Ben Milam not only understood the history leading up to this Federalist Revolt of 1835, he had lived it. And he knew what was at stake in San Antonio. On December 4th, he marched into Ed Burleson’s tent and laid it out to the commander. Not only was San Antonio important symbolically as the heart of Texas and the cradle of Mexican liberty, he might have told Burleson, but if the Revolutionary Army were to march away, they would be abandoning their San Antonio allies in a fight that belonged now to all of Texas. For the moment, Texas was united in opposition to Santa Anna, Milam knew, and most of the young Mexican republic was with them. There would never be a better time than now to strike a blow against tyranny!

If Milam wanted to storm the town himself, Burleson responded, he couldn’t stop him, and he was more than welcome to try.

Milam took the challenge as sincere. He marched out of Burleson’s tent and whistled for attention. The men milling around the camp snapped their heads around as Milam cried out, “Who will go with Old Ben Milam into San Antonio?” According to some versions, he drew a line in the sand and asked all who would go with him to cross it.518

More than 300 men answered his call – at least forty of whom Tejanos – constituting effectively half of the army whose officers had declined every previous opportunity to attack. Even those who didn’t volunteer resolved to stay and support the assault, including as many as ninety-five Tejanos who served in critical guerilla and scout roles that left General Cos blind throughout most of the battle.519

The next morning, December 5, 1835, at 5 AM, two rebel columns formed north of San Antonio, with Ben Milam in command. One column – guided by Samuel Maverick and Deaf Smith, who had lived in San Antonio since 1821 –would attack down Soledad street. The second column – guided by John “El Colorado Smith and Hendrick Arnold,” a free black man and son-in-law of Deaf Smith– would attack down Main street, paralleling the San Pedro acequia into town.520

An artillery barrage directed at the Alamo’s north wall opened the assault. The bombardment diverted Centralist attention to the east side of the San Antonio River for a moment while the two columns rushed toward town. Soon, however, cries and shots rang out from Centralist sentries and the element of surprise was lost. Centralist artillery and elite sharpshooters moved into position to confront the attacking columns. The assault bogged down as it entered the narrow streets of town crossing modern day Navarro street. That first night, shovels, pickaxes, and knives replaced guns as the attackers began a house-by-house advance, busting through walls and digging trenches between their positions, with progress measured in feet per day.

A slow slog of a battle ensued for the next thirty-six hours. Sleep came sparingly to attackers and defenders alike. The men were covered in mortar dust and smoke, looking more like ghosts than men, their hair singed from powder burns at close range.521Many locals had fled the city when the battle started. Many had nowhere else to go. Those who remained offered discrete aid to the attackers when they could, bringing them food and water and showing them shortcuts through San Antonio’s narrow grid.522 Yet the horrors of war didn’t spare the locals either, whose screams occasionally rang out in the streets when hiding spots were discovered or theirs walls torn down.523

Old Ben Milam had led the attack from the outset and continued to lead it now. He was at the forefront of the advance, wielding axe and rifle, and directing men where he could. That night, December 7, he and several of the other officers had developed a plan to attack the row of houses belonging to the old Zambrano family sitting between Main Plaza and the Veramendi house which the rebels had just captured. He emerged from the famous front doors of the old Veramendi house and into the sights of a Centralist sharpshooter perched in a cypress tree.

Milam died instantly from a fatal shot to the head, collapsing into Samuel Maverick’s arms. Yet the attack went on, and by dawn of December 8, the rebels had captured the houses in Zambrano Row. Main plaza was in sight.

Then, on the morning of December 8 a great cheer went up from the Centralist side. The groggy attackers peered out of their holes just long enough to see General Cos’s long-awaited relief army – some 600 men or more – marching into San Antonio.524 The Centralist invaders now outnumbered the rebels some 1,100 to 700. Newly confident, General Cos raised a black flag over the Alamo, signaling his intention to offer no quarter to the attackers.525He sent out his cavalry to attack the rebel camp, where probably only a couple hundred men remained in reserve.

Around noon on December 8, a group of thirty volunteers from New Orleans, the famed “New Orleans Greys” unit, rushed the Plaza de las Islas and holed up in the so-called Priest’s House at the corner of modern-day Soledad and Commerce streets. The Centralists units in the Plaza de las Islas– which were among General Cos’s most elite units – counterattacked, however, and soon cut off the Greys from the rest of the Revolutionary Army.

The situation became dire. The Centralists soon arrayed three cannons around the building at just a few yards range. They fired into the stone walls of the Priest’s house, which began to crumble on top of the Greys. The Greys threw furniture against the doors and windows, while outside they could see the old Centralist veterans fixing bayonets and preparing to finish them off.

Characteristically, the commander of the beleaguered New Orleans greys put the matter to a vote. The democratic ethos of these men in even life-or-death situations ought to amaze us. And what ought to amaze us even more was what they voted to do. Surrender was the wise option. Notwithstanding General Cos’s no quarter flag, a live prisoner always had a chance to talk his way out of his predicament; a dead defender’s fate was certain. Yet their surrender would have meant the end of the assault on Béxar, the total loss of momentum of the attack, and the failure of the Revolutionary Army to capture San Antonio.

To a man, they refused to yield. It’s one of many reminders of the zealotry of the age, of the passion these men felt for their ideology of personal liberty. “Die or do,” they are reported to said, their assertion to fight to the death.526

Then the sounds outside the Priest’s House changed. Gunfire in other parts of the city petered out. Artillery carriages creaked and began to move off to the east. Hesitantly the rebels came out of the holes. A few brave men rushed forward to reestablish contact with the New Orleans Greys. A pot shot or two rang out from east of the plaza, but no serious resistance was met. After four days and nights of non-stop battle, the Revolutionary Army was surprised to find that they had taken main plaza.

The Centralists hadn’t surrendered, however. General Cos had simply ordered all of his men to pull back to the Alamo to concentrate his forces there. Much to General Cos’s dismay, his assault on the Revolutionary Army’s reserves north of town had gone as poorly as his assault on the New Orleans Greys had. Rebel marksmanship and threats to his supply lines left the Centralists afraid to even leave the town.

Concentrated inside the three-foot-thick walls of the Alamo, with its commanding position and ample artillery, however, the Centralists appeared to have no reason to leave town anytime soon anyway. But the end result of this strategic concentration of men was catastrophic. 1,100 men crammed into 3.5 acres was no longer an army. It was a mob. Of the 600 reinforcements who had just arrived, only 170 were professional soldiers. The rest were conscripts and convicts, and some didn’t even have rifles.

Centralist soldiers soon realized that there wasn’t nearly enough food or provisions to support them. The very night that they were ordered into the Alamo, 200 of Cos’s men – disproportionately those with local ties – deserted.527 When news reached the remaining Centralists that the locals had bailed, panic ensued, and a general mutiny began. General Cos tried to calm his troops, which only aggravated matters. In the commotion, General Cos was actually trampled by his own men. And probably, at that moment when he was face down in the dirt, the diminutive, earring-wearing brother-in-law of Santa Anna realized that he had been defeated.

At 7 AM on December 9, General Cos sent a messenger out to rebel lines under a white flag. General Cos and Ed Burleson and the other Revolutionary Army commanders huddled for the rest of the day in a house in La Villita to negotiate surrender terms.

After five days of continuous battle, the Revolutionary Army was in no condition to extract punitive terms, especially given that they were still outnumbered. Miraculously, given the close quarters of much of the engagement, only five rebels – including Ben Milam – had died, with another thirty or so wounded, compared to 150 killed and wounded for General Cos. Yet that presented another problem now too for the Revolutionary Army: the idea of a volunteer army hanging around to play guard or nurse to a bunch of prisoners of war was too laughable to even bluff with, and General Cos probably knew this.

As such, when the Revolutionary Army accepted General Cos’s surrender the morning of December 10, they offered him rather generous terms. Cos’s entire force was allowed to leave San Antonio intact, under arms, after swearing a solemn oath not to oppose the reestablishment of the Constitution of 1824whose nullification had set off the Texas Federalist revolt. Cos and many of his men would wait exactly two months before violating this oath.

It’s worth noting, of course, that the Revolutionary Army took no revenge on their vanquished Centralist opponents. They massacred no prisoners and felt no need to even acknowledge General Cos’s silly little no quarter flag. On the contrary. Do you know what actually happened the night of the surrender? Mayor Ángel Navarro and the rest of San Antonio threw the mother of all fandangos. Mayor Navarro knew that San Antonians, who were accustomed to nearly nightly fandangos, needed to let out all the fear and suppressed emotions of the siege, and so they got everyone together to celebrate. They invited the defeated Centralists as well, like everyone going to Pizza Hut after a little league game.528There was, in truth, much to celebrate for Ángel Navarro. He felt vindicated in a way: his moderation and diplomacy had kept the townspeople safe, prevented unnecessary bloodshed, and perhaps even contributed to a small victory for his Federalist cause.

After following General Cos’s army to the Rio Grande to make sure they didn’t get lost along the way, Juan Seguín disbanded his ranging company and took office as county judge, in which capacity he oversaw the yearend elections and presided over a mixed revolutionary junta of Tejanos and Anglos, recalling San Antonio’s 1813 revolutionary junta.529 Samuel Maverick, Jesse Badgett, José Francisco Ruiz, and José Antonio Navarro (Brother of Mayor Ángel Navarro)were elected to attend a convention called for March 1 at Washington on the Brazos to decide Texas’s role going forward in Santa Anna’s republic.

Most knew, however, that this would not be the final act in the drama. As long as Santa Anna held the reins of government, he couldn’t ignore the blow that San Antonio had just struck to his prestige. Most likely, retribution would, once again, soon march up the old Camino Real. The Revolutionary Army had captured some much-needed provisions from General Cos, including 300 muskets, 11,000 cartridges, and thousands of pounds of gunpowder.530 More important still was General Cos’s artillery, twenty-one pieces, which now bristled from the walls of the Alamo like the quills of a porcupine.531

Only about 80 men remained under arms to celebrate the 1836 New Year in San Antonio. More than a quarter of those who remained behind were the New Orleans Greys who had stormed and held the Priest’s house in Main Plaza. They were soon put to work repairing the Alamo and preparing it for whatever might come next. Firing platforms, parapets, and lunettes guarding the gates were constructed. A gap between the Alamo church and the southeast corner of the compound was reinforced with a palisade. And they focused particular attention on the now-crumbling north wall which had borne the brunt of the Revolutionary Army’s diversionary barrage at the beginning of the Siege of Béxar.

Back in East Texas, many questioned the wisdom of trying to hold San Antonio at all. The self-declared provisional government of Texas kept sending officers to abandon it. Yet none of them could bring themselves to do it. On February 3, William Barret Travis was sent to San Antonio with orders to withdraw its men and provisions to East Texas. Famously, he wouldn’t. Earlier in January, Bowie had been sent back to the San Antonio by the East Texas government with similar orders. Famously, he wouldn’t either. Each of these men appreciated the strategic significance of the town, no less so than Santa Anna, and realized that whoever held San Antonio would, ultimately, hold Texas. That’s not hyperbole. A Centralist army stationed in San Antonio would have made impossible any pretensions East Texas had toward safety. As Bowie would state in a letter to Sam Houston: “The salvation of Texas depends in great measure in keeping Béxar out of the hands of the enemy. It serves as the frontier picquet guard and if it were in the possession of Santa Anna there is no stronghold from which to repel him in his march to the Sabine.”532

And it wasn’t just the military value of the town that these officers came to appreciate. The men who were actually from San Antonio understood what was owed San Antonians. These were the men who had been fighting this war not just for five months, but for twenty-five years. According to the interim commander of the Alamo, more than 80% of San Antonians had or would support their cause.533 As a differently revolutionary had said two generations before on the Eastern end of the continent, they must all now hang together or surely, they would hang separately.

Episode 17: The Battle of the Alamo

San Antonians were confused when San Fernando’s bells rang out in the middle of the day on Monday, February 22, 1836. It took a minute for people to remember that a lookout had been posted in the bell tower of the old church at the center of Main Plaza. He was watching for the return of the Centralist Army defeated in San Antonio the previous December after five days of brutal house-to-house fighting. The so-called “Siege of Béxar” had left much of the town damaged, particularly the old Mission Valero. Only 80 of the 700 or so members of the victorious Revolutionary Army of the People had stayed around to repair the damaged mission,534 which people more colloquially referred to as the “Alamo.” Although everyone knew that Santa Anna would retaliate, most thought it would take him many months to do so.535

Yet as soon as he learned of his brother-in-law’s defeat in San Antonio, President Santa Anna mobilized his army. His 6,000-man army set out from San Luis Potosi around January 1, 1836, on a Hannibalian march that would see him cover 600 miles in only 45 days – 13 miles per day! - during one of the coldest winters on record. When they crossed the Rio Grande on February 12th at San Juan Bautista – the site of those original Rio Grande missions that seeded San Antonio – there was one foot of snow on the ground. The men, many of them conscripts from southern Mexico, were wholly underdressed for the weather, and the nature of the forced march drew out the column over a couple hundred miles.536Then, the pack animals began to die off. Juan Seguín and his Tejano rangers had burned all the forage they could between the Rio Grande and San Antonio,537 which soon reduced the Centralist army to moving its loads on men’s backs. Then, the enlisted men were put on half-rations,538which the officers pilfered anyway,539 and the thousands of camp followers – women, children, muleteers and profiteers – only further aggravated the shortages.540

According to Santa Anna’s own reports, at least 400 men died on the march. The men that made it to San Antonio arrived exhausted, malnourished, and very near death. This cost Santa Anna the opportunity to take the town by surprise on February 21st, when he first entered the area. The rebels in San Antonio – numbering now 150 or so men – were mostly hungover that Sunday, having blown out a classic San Antonio fandango the night before,541 despite having been warned of Santa Anna’s imminent arrival by Blas Herrera, one of Seguín’s rangers. But Santa Anna hesitated just long enough, and when his dragoons crested the hills west of San Antonio the next day, the element of surprise had been lost.

San Fernando’s bells tolled, alerting San Antonian’s to the Centralist President’s arrival. John “El Colorado” Smith had been among the first to sight the attackers that morning and rode into town at a furious clip to report what he had seen. A torrent of activity ensued. Everything worth anything was pulled into the Alamo: pots, pans, blacksmith supplies, clothes, medical supplies, and more. All the cattle and horses in and around town were herded into the compound. Many San Antonians had, of course, already fled. But some – particularly those whose families were a part of the Alamo fighting force – moved into the Alamo as well. John El Colorado Smith, before seeking safety himself in the Alamo, went to help his compadre, Gregorio Esparza, gather his belongings and move his family into the compound.542 At the same time, Juana Losoya and her mother and younger brother entered the old mission, which her husband, Eliel Melton, and her brother, Toribio, now defended. And Juana and Gertrudis Navarro, daughters of Ángel Navarro and cousins to Jim Bowie by marriage, took refuge in the Alamo as well, Juana having just married an Alamo defender, Dr. Horace Alsbury, who would leave shortly as a messenger to the East.

Ángel Navarro was horrified to learn what his daughters had done. He knew the man who was marching now on his town and knew his capacity for brutality. They had met back in 1813 when the now-dictator was just a young lieutenant on his way to butchering hundreds of San Antonians at the Battle of Medina. May of 1835 had served up more recent proof of his barbarity, when he had crushed a similar Federalist-inspired revolt in Zacatecas and allowed the town to be sacked for forty-eight hours by his vengeful army.

On the evening of February 22, with Santa Anna poised to enter the town at any minute, Ángel Navarro rode out to treat with him. When Santa Anna’s brother in-law, General Cos, had occupied San Antonio the year before, Ángel Navarro pursued a similar strategy of diplomacy that, he believed, had minimized the bloodshed and suffering of all involved.543Navarro attempted to do the same now.

He reassured the dictator of the town’s neutrality – not an entirely true statement, but certainly a wise one to make. He pointed to his own very public and repeated declarations of loyalty to the Mexican nation, even as he occasionally quibbled with the constitutionality of some of Santa Anna’s measures. And he informed Santa Anna that the men in the Alamo had known of his approach for days – implying that the element of surprise had already been lost. This also wasn’t true, but it bought time for noncombatants to flee and for the Alamo to secure its defenses

The Alamo defenders needed all the time they could get, not only to secure the compound, but frankly just to decide who their commanders were. Several men in the garrison had plausible claims to command. The loudest of these was William Barret Travis, known as “Buck Travis,” a rabble rouser who had entered Texas illegally in 1831 at the age of 21 fleeing debt and wedlock. Despite his youth – or maybe because of it – he was charismatic, something attested to by his ability to excite a mob544and by his success with the ladies…he slept with at least fifty-six, if we are to believe his diaries, which he kept in Spanish. In 1832 in East Texas, he led a series of minor protests that would go down as the Anahuac Disturbances, bringing him to the attention of Centralist authorities and earning him a place on General Cos’s list of most wanted Texans.545

Travis fought by Juan Seguín’s side at the Battle of Concepción and then later with his troop escorting General Cos’s army back to the Rio Grande after his defeat in San Antonio. Travis returned to San Antonio on February 3with a commission as a lieutenant colonel and under orders to raise a 100-man mounted legion, presumably modeled after Seguín’s rangers. His orders, however, were to abandon the town and transport anything of value there to East Texas. This he could not bring himself to do, even though it meant missing out on the political intrigue then going on in Washington-on-the-Brazos. Like Bowie in the previous chapter, he recognized that whoever held San Antonio held Texas. In Bowie’s words, “[he would] rather die in these ditches than give them up to the enemy.”546

True to his word, Bowie too had remained in the Alamo despite his orders from Sam Houston to disarm it and return to the East. This is where the similarities with Travis ended, however. Whereas Travis held a commission from the provisional government of Texas, Bowie’s source of authority was less formal. He was a frontier Colonel by dint of his own legendary deeds, including having just led men successfully in the siege of Béxar. Travis was a newcomer to San Antonio, while Bowie was a long-tenured San Antonian with ties to the town’s most prominent families. At 40 years old in 1836, Bowie wasn’t moved by Travis’s rhetorical flourishes or youthful romanticism. Travis had actually done some lawyering for Bowie in earlier years, meaning Bowie probably looked upon his pretensions to command the way we might look on a cubicle-jockey tries to act like he’s the boss.

Yet Jim Bowie’s life wasn’t without color itself, having first come to San Antonio in 1828 to avoid legal problems in Louisiana occasioned by his slave smuggling, land fraud, and deadly feuds.547 The most famous of these feuds occurred on September 19, 1827, on a sandbar in the Mississippi River. Bowie himself was not the duelist that day, yet he had a complicated history with one of the other partisans standing nearby – a Mr. Crain - who had already tried to kill Bowie once. On this day, Crain tried again, pulling his gun, firing, and only narrowly missed Bowie. In the King James Bible style of the day’s newspaper reports, Bowie responded “Crain, you have shot at me, and I will kill you.” Bowie charged him, Crain fired and missed again, but then threw the pistols at Bowie’s head, knocking him down long enough for one of his allies to march over and fire a pistol into Bowie’s chest.

Well, as you might imagine, getting shot in the chest made Bowie really angry. He somehow forced his way to his feet, roared, charged, and got himself shot in the thigh by someone else, who then went to work on him with a sword cane. Shot twice and stabbed at least as many times, Bowie then unsheathed the knife that was about to make him famous. Long, thick, and weighty, Bowie’s knife could slice, strike, stab, and bludgeon. It was part razor, part cleaver, part short sword, and all frontier. The rage-filled Bowie pulled himself up by his attacker’s shirt collar, thrust the knife into his chest, and twisted. The attacker collapsed on top of Bowie, dead, but one of his allies took the opportunity to stab Bowie in the side again, which was stupid, because it alerted Bowie to that man’s presence. Bowie – shot, stabbed, and weighed down now by a dead man bleeding out on top of him – threw the corpse to the side and slashed his new assailant’s side wide open, at which point his attackers decided they had had enough.

The Sandbar Fight,548 as it would become known, passed immediately into legend and made Bowie one of the most famous frontiersmen of his age. His legend preceded him when he fled to San Antonio in 1828 where he quickly befriended one of the wealthiest and best-connected men in the province, Juan Martín de Veramendi. Veramendi and Bowie went into business together, and Bowie soon married Veramendi’s 19-year-old daughter, Úrsula, in what was, by all accounts, a marriage based on genuine love. Five years later, you will recall from Chapter 14, Veramendi became governor of Coahuila and Texas and moved the state capital from Saltillo to Monclova, setting set off General Cos’s march North and all the events to follow.

Only five months after his marriage 1831, however, Bowie had set out in in search of the non-existent lost San Sabá silver mines. After several weeks searching, all he found were hostile Indians. Or more precisely, 160 of them found him. Bowie and his party – several of whom were San Antonians and all of whom were veterans of frontier warfare – hunkered down. For thirteen hours and outnumbered 13 to 1, they held off their foes. Eventually, after Bowie and his party had killed forty of the attackers and wounded another thirty, the Indians gave up.549

Bowie published the account of the battle in Spanish, which helped spread his fame as far south as it had already traveled north. Yet Bowie was not a boastful man, another reason why he probably found Travis’s theatrics off-putting. Bowie was generally humble, reserved, and temperate, which is what makes what happened in the weeks leading up to Santa Anna’s entrance into San Antonio so strange. Soon after Travis’s arrival on February 3, 1836, things came to a head between Bowie and Travis. Out of principle, the 100 or so volunteers gathered in the Alamo declared, they would NOT serve under a commissioned officer like Travis, whose commission only came from a self-proclaimed provisional government of dubious authority anyway. Prodded on by Bowie, on February 14th, the volunteers held an election to choose their commander, and selected Bowie. To celebrate, Bowie went on the bender to end all benders, remaining drunk for nearly two days straight, releasing prisoners from the town jail, destroying property, and generally encouraging disorderly conduct by his own men. Juan Seguín, who was county judge at this point, almost had to have him arrested.550

We don’t have a good explanation for why Bowie drank himself into such a state. The best we have is that it was a byproduct of pent-up stress from the Siege of Béxar and the general turmoil of the times, as well as of the lingering sorrow he still felt at the death of his wife in the 1834 cholera epidemic that killed a fifth of all San Antonians. By the time he sobered up a few days later, he was repentant, and he reached a compromise with Travis whereby Travis would command the so-called “Regular “soldiers and Bowie would command the volunteers.551Almost immediately after the compromise, however, his body failed him, and he sank into a series of feverish comas interspersed with only brief moments of lucidity. On February 23, the day Santa Anna’s first troops marched into view, he had to be carried into the Alamo, where he ensconced himself in a private room along the south wall.

Command devolved onto Buck Travis, but the respect of the men did not. There was another man in the garrison, more famous even than Jim Bowie, whom the rank and file looked to as their natural leader.

Born in 1786, David Crockett was not a young man when he walked into San Antonio. Although one of the oldest men in the garrison at the age of nearly 50, he was one of the newest arrivals to Texas, having crossed the Red River just a month prior. He had the light complexion of a woodsman but moved with the easy athleticism of a man accustomed to work, and by 1836 he had lived perhaps the most celebrated public life in America since Benjamin Franklin.

David Crockett had experienced all the failures and exhilarations of frontier life in a way that only a Disney series could really capture. From Indian wars to personal bankruptcies to feats of marksmanship and storytelling that made him a frontiersman’s frontiersman, he was the kind of man that the famously fractious Scotch-Irish types settling the north American frontier WANTED to represent them in government. In 1817, he first won elected office as a magistrate. By 1821, he was a state legislator and by 1827 he was a U.S. Congressman.

Almost immediately upon his arrival to Washington, Crockett made an impression. He could hold an audience with his homespun aphorisms and wild tales from the frontier. He was a master of self-promotion in the exaggerated idiom of the time, describing himself as “half horse, half alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lighting, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust.” More than anything, he was funny. When he learned that Congress provided itself free lemonade and charged it out as stationary (back when the perks of office were more modest by far!), he mockingly proposed that whiskey be provided and written up as “fuel.” On a different occasion, he quipped that “There ain’t no ticks like politics. “Yet there was often something profound to his wit, as when he described fame as “like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it’s only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it.”

Crockett became the symbol of what Americans wanted to believe they were: energetic, competent, and decent. “Be always sure you’re right, then go ahead,” was his mantra, and indeed, the mantra of the age.552He was immortalized in 1831 in a popular play called “The Lion of the West” which was complemented by a wildly exaggerated biography of his life. When he wrote his own, actual autobiography in 1834, it contained just as much color and humor as the unauthorized biography, and only elevated his celebrity further still.

Crockett was among those rarest of public figures, a man who was by and large the kind of man that he held himself out to be. Yet politics abhors authenticity, and when Crockett turned his wit on the man who would give his name to the age, President Andrew Jackson, his days were numbered. Jackson’s men began to obstruct Crockett’s issues and to put up opponents in his district to take him down. Still, Crockett refused to compromise the brand that he thought he had been elected to represent, but his disdain for the dirty details of political give-and-take left him without allies.553 In 1835, Jacksonians gerrymandered his district to rid themselves of the backwoodsman from Tennessee.

Crockett made no effort to modify his message to his new district. He campaigned on what had always been his signature cause – making land readily available to common folks, frontiersman like himself who worked the land they held– and he made a simple promise to voters: If elected, he would serve them faithfully. If not, they could all go to hell, and he would go to Texas.554

The new year, 1836, found him crossing the Sabine River in the company of a dozen or so other Tennessee Volunteers. He might very well have stopped in East Texas and fallen in with the political scene there, where his celebrity would have all but guaranteed him an important role in the events to come. No one, in fact, expected a fifty-year old man to take up arms, much less on the front lines. But Crockett insisted. On January 12, he signed on for a six-month stint as a volunteer, though only after he was allowed to insert the word “republican” in the oath by which he pledged his support to any future Texas government. Fittingly, Crockett was dispatched to San Antonio, the town where the citizens called each other republicanos as a mark of respect.

Upon arrival in early February, many in the Alamo urged him to take command in the face of Travis and Bowie’s squabbles. Crockett refused, accepting only an appointment as a “High Private” and requesting assignment to the most vulnerable part of the old mission. He remained throughout most of the battle-to-come the most respected man in the garrison, an important morale-booster, and according to Travis “seen at all points animating men to do their duty.”555 And yet probably Crockett’s most important contribution to the garrison was his endorsement of Travis’s leadership after Bowie’s illness struck him down. Crockett’s support gave Travis an authority that the younger man never could’ve won on his own.

Yet Travis’s relationship with Juan Seguín was more important even than his relationship with Crockett. The two young men were uncannily alike. Travis was twenty-six, Seguín was twenty-nine. They each had probably read a few too many Romance novels. They were each handsome, dashing even, and personally fearless, if not a bit reckless. They had served together now twice, both before and after the Siege of Béxar, and had won some kind of unspoken respect for each other.

Seguín as a judge, ex-mayor, and ex-department chief held far more authority in San Antonio and with San Antonians than Travis, however. Additionally, Seguín was by far the most successful recruiter for the Revolution so far, especially among a key demographic: Tejanos, or Texans of Hispanic descent. According to historian Raúl Ramos, Tejano participation in the Texas Revolution as a percentage of their population in the state exceeded that of Anglos.556And this was due in very large part to Seguín’s efforts. By embracing Seguín early and incorporating him into his decision-making, Travis made an ally of him, and Seguín rewarded Travis’s respect by recognizing his command, bringing in crucial men and supplies, and serving as the link with Tejano civilian leaders, such as José Antonio Navarro, his uncle José Francisco Ruiz, and his son Francisco Antonio Ruiz, who had just taken office as Mayor of San Antonio.

By many curious coincidences and many more winding roads, on February 23, the most amazing collection of larger-than-life personalities had convened inside the walls of an abandoned old mission on the edge of civilization. Each of these men – Crockett, Bowie, Travis, and Seguín – were celebrities in their own time. It’s hard to find a modern analog, the best I can do is compare to like if George Strait, David Robinson, Bruce Springsteen, and Selena had been the heroes of United Flight 93 on September 11. It was all too improbable, even then, that they should all be in the same place at the same time and all aligned against such a cartoonishly perfect villain as Santa Anna. It’s part of what made the Alamo story a legend even before its ending was known.

On the afternoon of February 23, the Alamo commanders and the 150 or so defenders watched as ten times their number of Centralists crossed the San Antonio River and took up positions around the old mission. Santa Anna punctuated his arrival by raising a blood red flag over San Fernando church and ordering his buglers to let loose the strains of El Degüello, which we might translate as “The Throat-cutting.” The song’s meaning was clear: no quarter would be offered the rebels, and any surrender must be unconditional.557

Of course, the men in the Alamo stayed, albeit for different reasons. At least two dozen or so of the men were long-time San Antonians or had deep connections to the town: one, Toribio Losoya, had actually been born in the Alamo.558 San Antonians knew all too well why they were fighting. They had been fighting this war for a generation.

But for the 120 or so newer volunteers, many of whom had no land in Texas and some of whom – like the New Orleans Greys – had only arrived in the preceding months, their motivation was more abstract. We have trouble relating to men like this, and some cynics have tried to view them as Santa Anna did: as pirates or land-grabbers. That doesn’t really hold up though. Even if land was more expensive back in the US, there was still plenty to go around, and it could be had without having to risk your life. There was something else motivating these volunteers: let’s call it the mythology of 1776. They were zealous proselytes of the gospel of liberty and of republican government, which in their minds were inextricably linked to the idea of land ownership.559 If you owned your own land, you controlled your own means of support and were therefore uncorruptible and impervious to political intrigue. One Alamo defender’s quote nicely demonstrates this view of land and liberty, and his own commitment to each: “If we succeed, the Country is ours. It is immense in extent, and fertile in its soil and will amply reward all our toil. If we fail, death in the cause of liberty and humanity is not cause for shuddering.”560

Perhaps as many as two dozen women and children stayed too, huddled now in the Alamo Church, including Gregorio Esparza’s wife, Anna, and children, Enrique, Manuel, and Francisco, as well as Anna’s daughter from a previous marriage, María de Jesus Castro; an elderly possible relative of Anna’s, Petra Gonzales; Susanna Dickinson and her infant daughter, Angelina; Victoria de Salinas and her three small daughters; two young sons of Alamo defender Anthony Wolff; Juana Losoya, her brother Juan, and her mother Concepción; Petra Gonzalez and the Navarro sisters, Gertrudis and Juana, and Juana’s daughter from a previous marriage, Alejo Pérez.561 It’s important to point out that most of these non-combatants probably could have left the compound safely and taken up residence in town for the duration of the battle. They chose to stay, to subject themselves to danger, and to place themselves at the service of the garrison. We would probably be naïve as well to assume that these “non-combatants” didn’t participate in the fighting in some way as well. Twenty-four-year-old Juana Navarro Alsbury in particular rose to take on a sort of leadership role amongst the non-combatants, calming them with her poise, carrying messages to and from town, and even caring for her ailing cousin-in-law, Jim Bowie, who referred to her as “sister.”562

Early the next day on February 24th, Buck Travis took up his pen, and wrote out a series of letters, transmitting to the page the words that he had already employed to steel the resolve of his garrison. He entrusted the below the message to San Antonian John “El Colorado” Smith:

To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World:

Fellow citizens & compatriots—I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Comdt

Travis’s letter deserves deeper analysis.

His opening has always intrigued me: “To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World.” Think about that line for a second, and remember that, of course, Texas was not a part of the United State of America in February of 1836. The “People of Texas” and “All Americans in the World” are not overlapping categories, then. He must, then, be directing this letter to two distinct audiences. And yet “All Americans in the world” is a curious turn of phrase, isn’t it? It almost makes “American” seem like an ideological identifier, not a national or ethnic one, a label for any adherent to Travis’s particular ideology: “Fellow citizens and compatriots” he calls them all. It recalls to me that, even today, Mexicans are quick to remind you that they too consider themselves “Americans,” inhabiting as they do the American continent. There were a large number of Mexicans in 1836 who identified with the “American” ideals of self-government and liberty, particularly in opposition to the dictatorial actions of Santa Anna.563Travis seems acknowledge something like this in his next sentence, referring to his besiegers as “The Mexicans under Santa Anna,” namely, the Centralist faction besieging him now. Travis’s rhetoric reflects an ideological battle between two very different views of the structure of government, with Santa Anna representing the old, Spanish, Centralist system and “The People of Texas” representing the republican, federal system for which San Antonio had revolted many times before. Travis’ letter stops short of directly invoking the “banners of Morales and Hidalgo,” as one of his predecessors as commander of the Alamo had564– that might have reduced the effectiveness of his appeal to East Texans. Yet his opening respects the separation of Texas from the United States – an important point for winning Federalist allies in Mexico– while unifying Texans of all backgrounds behind a single cause.

Travis continues, describing how he answered Santa Anna’s demand for unconditional surrender with a cannon shot and then drops the line that still gives goosebumps 180 years later: “I shall never surrender or retreat.” He underlines it for emphasis, and to make the reader pause on the phrase and recall other lines of great American war oratory, such as “Give me Liberty or Give me Death!” and “I have not yet begun to fight!”

Then, he changes tone. The pace of the letter slows. If he shouts through the first half of the letter, he whispers this next part, imploring the reader in somber tones, “In the name of Liberty, of Patriotism, and of everything dear to the American character to come to our aid, with all dispatch.” Again, the appeal to “Patriotism” and to the “American character” is curious – given that this is still a Mexican Federalist revolt – unless you recall that he is using “American” and even the notion of citizenship and patriotism ideologically, not with respect to a particular nation-state.

“The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily,” he tells the reader, heightening the urgency and make clear that this letter was not simply a rhetorical exercise. He would soon be outnumbered thirty to one! “If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country.” That little closing flourish is a taunt, a jab at the manhood of the men reading the letter from their positions of safety. Would they let others do their fighting for them? Would they not carry the burden of their fight no less than the 150 men inside a crumbling mission?

When Travis wrote this letter, he probably didn’t think he was going to die. He wrote this letter to get reinforcements. And we have every reason to believe that he and the men in the Alamo thought they would come. Just two months prior, 700 Texans had defeated a Centralist Army in San Antonio, and most of them were still within a few days march at Goliad or Gonzales. This was a call-to-action: act now, operators are standing by! “Victory or Death!”

The letter arrived on February 26th to San Felipe de Austin where it was copied, printed, and published. It made it to Washington-on-the Brazos on February 28, the same day that Lorenzo de Zavala and other delegates began arriving in the humble provisional capital. By March 1, 1836, fifty-nine delegates from across the state had arrived, including San Antonians Samuel Maverick, Jesse Badgett, the old Comanchero José Francisco Ruiz and his nephew José Antonio Navarro. The San Antonians decided to bunk together as a show of solidarity.565Their constituents had sent a message in sending these men to the convention, especially Ruiz and Navarro. Ruiz and Navarro were among the most prominent, most respected voices in the state for federalism and – by this point – for independence. There could have been no doubt in San Antonians’ minds how these men would vote if that latter question were called.566 Indeed, it had been Navarro who had drafted – and Ruiz among others who signed – the Béxar Remonstrance in 1832 asserting a unilateral right for Texas to declare independence. That assertion had never been challenged and though it probably meant very little to the dictator marching on San Antonio now, it must have given some justification to men like Navarro and Ruiz for what they were about to do next.

Ruiz and Navarro’s contributions to the 1836 Texas Declaration of Independence have long been underappreciated, as well as those of Lorenzo de Zavala who had, after all, written the 1824 Constitution that Santa Anna had just abolished. The lazy reading of the 1836 Texas Declaration of Independence is as a slapdash overlay of the U.S. Declaration of Independence,567but if you’ve read the 1813 San Antonio Declaration of Independence, the letters of San Antonio’s political class during the drafting of the Mexican and Coahuilan Constitutions in the 1820’s, and the subsequent 1832 Béxar Remonstrance, you see the continuity of grievances borne by San Antonians right through to the 1836 Declaration. In Jeffersonian language, the document justifies the right of revolt in a Mexican Federalist context using the same reasoning the Navarro had supplied in the 1832 Béxar Remonstrance. More specifically, “When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the ever ready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants, “revolt is the only appropriate course!

Then the document sets in with specific grievances – and they are the exact same grievances that San Antonians had laid out in 1832, in the 1820’s, in 1813, and for a full century prior: the lack of government attention to their needs, a corrupt execution of the laws, the absence of due process in their judicial system, no support for their public education system, the confiscation of weapons and disarmament of the local militias, and inadequate representation at the state and federal levels, with a little updating to include the current invasion by Santa Anna’s Centralist army.

Make no mistake, the document exhibits the overwhelming influence of Anglo newcomers, for example, in their rather unfair critique of the Coahuila state government for carrying out its business in an “unknown tongue,” i.e., Spanish. Yet no Mexican Federalist would have disagreed with its opening justification or with the grievances that followed. And the 1836 Declaration’s most important Federalist endorsement came on March 2, 1836, when the old Federalists Ruiz and Navarro were the second and third men to sign their names; De Zavala, was close behind, at tenth. With theirs and the other 56 signatories, a new nation was born.

And it was San Antonians who gave the new nation its name. We have seen how sometime around 1813, San Antonians began to call each other “republicanos,” a subtle act of defiance and commemoration of their republican-inspired revolt that year. This was in keeping with a broader trend which saw the word “republican” take off in the 1820’s and 30’s as the anti-royalist movement in Spain won out and the independence movements in Spanish America spun off a series of new “Republics.” Indeed, the phrase “República de” or “Republic of” quintuples over its normal usage in the Spanish speaking world during that decade, as you’ll see if you plug it into Google’s N-Gram tool.

This is the kind of thing you can never quite prove for sure, but it sure looks to me like San Antonians and their republican tradition were the source of the name the “Republic of Texas. “Undoubtedly, the word would have appealed to Jacksonian Anglos, who had just begun to call themselves “Republicans” as well. But North Americans still called their political subdivisions confederations, states, commonwealths, or nations, not “Republics of” anything. And don’t try to throw the “Republic of Vermont” at me, that’s an anachronism dating from the 1860’s, which you can also verify with Google N-Gram!

After the Republic of Texas came into being, the use of the phrase “Republic of” doubled in the English language. Other Mexican Federalist, separatist movements – in the Yucatan and amongst the Mexican states bordering the Rio Grande – would adopt it as well, many of them using a very similar list of grievances to those of Texans’ when they made their own, less successful breaks.

Once the Republic of Texas was declared, the convention chose Lorenzo de Zavala to serve as its first vice president, a fitting honor for the man who had led the cause of Mexican Federalism longer than anyone. He also drew the task of designing the new republic’s first flag. On a field of dark blue, De Zavala emblazoned José Antonio Garza’s lone star from his 1818 San Antonio minted-coin, and between its five arms he wrote the letters of the nation’s name: T-E-X-A-S.A white and a red bar would later be added, and the letters would fall off, but the lone white star on the blue field would remain.
Of course the men and women in the Alamo would never know any of this. And indeed, the people of San Antonio wouldn’t know for weeks either. They were an occupied people, entering their sixth month now of almost continuous warfare. The city was a ghost town, a shell of its former self, with Centralist officers again forcibly quartered in nearly every building568 and property subject to “requisition” at any moment.569 Further, Santa Anna trusted virtually no one in the town, and placed many of the leaders under house arrest, including former Mayor Ángel Navarro and current mayor Francisco Antonio Ruiz. So suspicious was he of San Antonians’ loyalty that he wouldn’t allow any military units with local ties to participate in the final assault of the Alamo.

Instead, he had to rely on the troops he brought with him, many of whom were of questionable quality. The bulk of the army were conscripts, untrained and unmotivated, and some were in fact convicts who had chosen military service simply to avoid prison. Most were issued massive .75 caliber smoothbore flintlock muskets which lost all accuracy beyond about seventy yards. Aggravating this was the poor quality of Mexican gunpowder, which required men to overcharge their guns to make sure they actually fired but which only compounded their monster kick, increasing the chance of the operator singing his eyebrows if he tried to actually aim it. As a result, many of the Centralists simply fired from their hips, which of course, degraded their accuracy even further.570 And let me remind you that this army had just marched 600 miles in forty-five days through one of the coldest winters on record on half-rations.

Santa Anna’s artillery was better. He fielded twenty modern, European-manufactured cannons to support his army and had enough powder and shot to keep up a night-and-day bombardment of the old mission for most of the siege. That said, his artillerymen were undertrained and again the poor quality of their gunpowder worked against them. Worse still, most of them weren’t even in San Antonio yet. The snow, the lack of forage, and the deaths of many of their pack animals had slowed the advance of his artillery up the Camino Real to a crawl. In particular, his two largest pieces – twelve pounders that could have reduced the Alamo’s walls to rubble in the course of a morning– weren’t scheduled to arrive until mid-March.

Yet Santa Anna’s cavalry was excellent. Mexican Cavalry retained the high equestrian traditions of the Iberian peninsula and were an object of genuine terror for the rebels.571 With black leather helmets topped with Trojan-style crests, quick-loading carbines and pistols, and nine-foot long lances, the so-called Centralist dragoons could ride down and decimate any force of men unfortunate enough to be caught on foot.572 And indeed, throughout the siege, Santa Anna seems to have left the Eastern portion of his lines partly open, perhaps trying to entice the defenders into making a break for the East where his dragoons could cut them up in the open.573

All of this – undertrained infantry, an incomplete complement of artillery, and excellent cavalry that could prevent escape or reinforcement – seemed then as now like a strong argument for Santa Anna to have simply waited out the rebels.574 Or perhaps to have left behind a small force to pin down the Alamo defenders while he continued east with the rest of his army. But Santa Anna wanted to make a statement. He seems to have consciously modeled his iron-fisted approach on that of General Arredondo in 1813.575 And he had already declared that any foreigners found under arms in Texas would be treated as pirates and executed on the spot. He needed to follow through on that declaration to send a message to any American observers thinking of rendering aid to the rebels, but also to send a message to his opponents back in Mexico City who sympathized with these Texas Federalists.576 Which was another reason he couldn’t afford to wait. Every day that he spent away from the Valley of Mexico was a day that his enemies could conspire against him. He needed to put this rebellion down with conspicuous efficiency and return to secure his fragile hold on the center.

On February 25, just two days after entering town, Santa Anna made his first assault on the Alamo. Two of his more elite battalions – cazadores as they were called, or “hunters”–maneuvered into position in La Villita, a few hundred yards southwest of the old mission and advanced. An Alamo picket posted outside the walls observed the movement and sent a few well-placed shots their direction. The artillery on top of the Mission chapel picked up the signal and followed suit. The Centralist artillery elsewhere around the mission tried to use the diversion to advance their own guns but were soundly repulsed by the Alamo’s fixed artillery firing from stationary points with well-studied shot profiles. This left Santa Anna’s cazadores unprotected, and they instinctively sought refuge in the few jacales standing between the Alamo and the La Villita. After an hour or so, some of the Alamo’s defenders sallied forth from the mission and counterattacked the cazadores, beating them back, and ending the day’s attack.577

This was enough to convince Santa Anna that a more elaborate siege plan would be required. Starting on February 26, he set his sappers to work zig-zagging their trenches toward the Alamo’s walls, soon advancing to within about 500 yards. He cut off the acequia supplying water to the mission, though the defenders were able to dig a well. Santa Anna then began continuous artillery bombardment to deny the Alamo defenders rest.

Santa Anna made sure to build in some play time as well and to ensure that he would remain as unsympathetic as possible to future historians of the battle. Somewhere along the march up from Saltillo, his eye had landed on the attractive young daughter of one of his soldiers. He ordered her brought to him and offered her the “honor” of his company, so to speak, but the girl’s mother, being a good catholic, refused the dictator’s advances until he had made her an honest woman. Although Santa Anna was himself already married, he had never been one to let technicalities like that get in his way, and soon found a work-around. Ever-resourceful, Santa Anna sent one of his officers to steal the priests’ robes from San Fernando, dressed the officer up as a cleric, and there in his headquarters in San Antonio’s Plaza de las Islas, Santa Anna fake-married the poor girl.578

Things weren’t nearly so festive inside the Alamo, despite the attempt of some like Crockett to keep spirits high. The men were already growing tired of the corn tortilla and beef diet.579 Santa Anna’s artillery deprived them of sleep. It was also bitterly cold, a blue norther having blown in the night of the 25thand dropped temperatures to below freezing, all while the defenders watched their meager supply of firewood dwindle. And though not a single Alamo defender had died in those first days of the siege, the sick and wounded were starting to pile up, filling the Long Barracks infirmary.580

There weren’t many men that Travis and the other Alamo commanders could turn to for help in those days. Their best hope, they decided was Juan Seguín.581 Not only did Juan Seguín know how to recruit men and from where, he also had the best chance of getting them back into the fort, thanks to his intimate knowledge of the country. On the night of February 25, Seguín crawled out of the old mission through the now dry Alamo acequia ditch and rode east.582

First, he rode to his ranch – which was, coincidentally, the old Mission Valero’s pasture lands583– where he gathered men and supplies. Then, he rode toward Goliad where hundreds of much-needed reinforcements were bumbling about without direction. He met a rider from Goliad on the road, to whom he related the Alamo’s plight and entrusted Travis’s call for aid to Goliad. Seguín then turned and rode for Gonzales, where he called together more of his old rangers and volunteers from the other ranches.584 They, along with others responding to Travis’s letter, began to converge on Gonzales the next day, February 27.

Seventy-two hours later, just as dawn was breaking on March 1st, a single shot rang out from one of the Alamo’s forward picket posts, followed by a string of profanities in English. The first of these reinforcements from Gonzales had arrived! Led in by San Antonian John “El Colorado” Smith, these thirty-two men from Gonzales had picked their way through the 2,000 or more Centralists now tightening the noose around town. The Alamo Defenders greeted the arrival of these “Immortal Thirty-Two” enthusiastically, not so much because thirty-two men really made a difference, but because it meant that Texas had not forgotten them.

The return on March 3 of an additional messenger confirmed that more reinforcements were on the way. Somewhere between San Antonio and Goliad, just a few days’ march the defenders knew, were 500 men, many of them veterans of the Siege of Béxar. Sometime around March 4, 50-60 more men arrived from Gonzales. One account has David Crockett leading them in himself. Other details suggest these may have been repulsed by outriders of Santa Anna’s feared dragoons.

Unfortunately for the Alamo’s defenders, on March 3,1,000 more Centralist Infantry including some of Santa Anna’s most experienced units, marched into San Antonio. Santa Anna made sure that the rebels knew of their arrival as well, ringing the bells of San Fernando Church and parading his new elite units in full view of the Alamo, whose walls stood now only 400 yards from his sappers’ front lines.

William Barret Travis was a romantic, but not a fool. He suffered few illusions about the ability of his tiny, hungry, cold, and sick band of men to withstand an assault from a force twenty times their size. He knew his time was running out.

He called on John “El Colorado” Smith, one last time, sending him with a desperate message to the convention in Washington-on-the-Brazos. His exhaustion after eleven days had moderated his “high-souled” rhetoric, which only comes formulaically after a multi-page battle report and supply request. His frustration comes through when he relates his unanswered entreaties to Goliad and his uncertainty as to who he should even address this letter to. And in his confusion, he misstates the size of his own force, confesses his ignorance as to the size of the enemy army, and mistakes noncommunication by San Antonio’s leaders under house arrest with collaboration with the enemy. He apparently doesn’t even realize that Santa Anna himself is present! Still, he is clear-eyed and correct on one point. “The Power of Santa Anna is to be met here or in the colonies,” he says. “God and Texas,” he concludes, “Victory or Death.”

And he – and many of the other men in the garrison – gave El Colorado a personal letter as well. “Take care of my little boy,” he wrote a close friend. “If the country should be saved, I may make for him a splendid fortune; but if the country be lost and I shall perish, he will have nothing but the proud recollection that he is the son of a man who died for his country.” And once again we see how life, liberty, and property blend together in the ideology of the day.

Remarkably, by March 3, the Alamo garrison still had not lost a man. The old mission whose walls had been built to deter plains Indians on horseback had performed admirably so far in keeping out a more modern army. To picture the Alamo in 1836, conjure in your mind the shape of a very fat letter L, with the top of the L being the north side of the compound.

The north wall had endured the brunt of a rebel artillery barrage during the Siege of Béxar, and still bore the scars. The breached portion had been repaired by laying logs across the opening backed up by rammed earth. Unfortunately, the repair was plainly visible and drew the attention of Centralist artillery almost from the start.

The long uninterrupted west wall looked back across the San Antonio River and towards town. The officers, including Travis, had taken up residence in the quarters built into this wall. On the rooftop on the southwest corner of the compound, the garrison’s massive eighteen-pound cannon commanded La Villita on the east bank of the San Antonio River just a few hundred yards away and fired off a round three times a day to signal to the east that the fort still held.585

The main entrance to the compound was through the south wall, the bottom of the L, which had been well-fortified by a trench and earthen redoubt. But between the south wall and the Alamo church was a gap of maybe 115 feet. During the winter, the Alamo’s engineers had built up an earthen berm there and planted a palisade wall across it with branches strewn in front. It was perhaps just as vulnerable as the north wall, and it was here that David Crockett and his Tennessee volunteers had requested assignment.

Continuing out to the eastern tip of the L was the old chapel, the famed shrine which still stands in downtown San Antonio today. Inside the roofless chapel, the Alamo defenders had built up an earthen ramp where they positioned several cannons and where they mounted their flag: a green, white, and red Mexican tricolor, with the number 1824 in place of the eagle and serpent in reference to the Federalist Constitution of 1824 that Santa Anna had recently abolished. The defenders housed their powder magazine in one of the few rooms of the chapel that had a roof and their non-combatants in the other.

At the elbow of the L on the east side of the compound were the so-called Long Barracks, which also still stand, and which served as an infirmary and quarters for the men. In front of the long barracks, outside the compound, were walled horse and cattle corrals.

The truth is that all things considered, the Alamo had been turned into a fairly imposing fortress. Twenty-one cannon looked down the besiegers from ten-foot high walls, which in places bulged to three feet thick.586 As well, the garrison manned picket posts outside the Alamo acequia as a sort of early warning system. The defenders were blessed with a surplus of firearms thanks to the muskets they had captured from General Cos in December so that each man counted on several rifles at his station. And the defenders’ small-bore, Kentucky rifles had already proven their worth as the Centralist sappers closed in on 200 yards, well within their effective range. Yet the perimeter of the compound presented some 1,320 feet to defend. Once artillerymen and the sick and wounded were accounted for, this left 10 to 20 feet or more between each rifleman.

On the evening of March 4th, Juana Navarro Alsbury stepped to the front of the stage.587Juana Navarro was from one of the oldest, most reliably Federalist families in the state, yet more specifically she was the daughter of a man who had been caught his whole life between loyalty to his town and loyalty to his nation. She was the perfect symbol of the complexities of the moment, but also of the heroism of its principal actors. She entered and –incredibly – returned to the compound perhaps more than any other person during the siege.

That evening, Juana Navarro left the compound again under a flag of truce. When met by one of Santa Anna’s staff officers, she informed him that she had come to negotiate the surrender of the Alamo on terms. It’s unclear if this was a sanctioned effort by the Alamo commanders or whether this was undertaken by Juana on her own initiative. If sanctioned, what a vote of confidence from the Alamo commanders! If unsanctioned – and indeed, it would certainly have fit with what her father had done just a few months before: trying to resolve a violent situation with as little bloodshed and with as little damage to the town as possible – if unsanctioned, what initiative on the part of a twenty-four-year-old young woman.

Her parley failed. Santa Anna’s terms remained unchanged: surrender at discretion, which even the Alamo defenders in their desperate state understood to be a death sentence.588 When Juana Navarro re-entered the compound, no doubt remained in their minds as to the fate that awaited them.

On the morning of March 5, Lt. Colonel William Barrett Travis convened his men in the courtyard of the Alamo. From the walls, the men could see the Centralist army building their scaling ladders and they could hear the sappers inching their positions forward. Somewhere close to 3,000 men now had them surrounded, and the chance of any relief force breaking through was nil, especially with Santa Anna’s feared dragoons patrolling the approaches to the town. A last-ditch effort at a negotiated settlement had just been rebuffed. A new blood red flag had gone up in the field to accompany the original one still flying over San Fernando.

“Our fate is sealed…” Travis supposedly said, and “within a very few days – perhaps a very few hours – we must all be in eternity.” Yet Travis, even as a commander of men in war, was first and foremost a believer in liberty and self-determination. As sons of 1776 and – in the case of the San Antonio defenders –of1813, it was each man’s right to decide his fate, and how he wished to face it.

Travis drew his sword and marked a line in the sand, just as Old Ben Milam had a few months before. “All who would stay,” he instructed them, should cross this line.

And they crossed. One-by-one, two-by-two, riflemen and artillerymen crossed, recently-arrived New Orleans Greys side-by-side with Tejanos who had lived their entire lives in the shadow of the old mission. Even Jim Bowie was carried across on his cot.589

This is the moment that encapsulates the whole drama and explains our fascination with it. Regardless of whether Travis ever drew a line or not, at some point in that thirteen-day siege, each of those defenders knew they were going to die. This horrible, glorious moment is I think what makes the Alamo such a powerful story. The very idea of choosing to die for anything, of knowing that death is coming and yet choosing to go down swinging is so foreign to most of us from our comfortable present that the only natural reaction is cynicism or awe. Maybe it’s because we’re more civilized now. Maybe it’s because we’re less.

Only one man, legend has it, didn’t cross the line. A Frenchman and veteran of the Siege of Béxar, Louis Rose (also called “Moses” because of his advanced age) slipped over the wall that night.590The other men who stayed behind, traditionally 187 of them, gave their valuables and last messages to the women in the compound.591 The officers in particular entrusted theirs to Juana Navarro. And David Crockett dressed himself in his finest clothes, resolving to die like a gentleman.592

On the night of March 5, 1836 at 10 PM, Santa Anna’s artillery fell silent for the first time in more than a week. The exhausted defenders fell asleep. In the cold calm of that unguarded night, Santa Anna positioned his men in four columns at each of the cardinal directions, some 400 men to a column, except for the southern column, where he placed 125 elite cazadores to square off against Crockett’s Tennesseans. 400 of his most elite soldiers he held back in reserve under his personal command and the 375 dragoons he formed up along the eastern side of the old mission to ride down any breakout attempt.593

Around 5 AM the next morning, March 6, 1836, Santa Anna’s Centralist columns began their advance, trying their best to muffle the clanking of muskets, ladders, axes, and crowbars as they inched forward. The three Alamo pickets posted outside the walls were killed in their sleep, allowing the Centralist lines to advance to within two hundred yards before they were detected. At that moment, the bugles sounded, the artillery opened up, and all hell began to rain down on the sleeping defenders of the Alamo.594

The men in the compound arose, groggy, shouting, running to their posts as shells crashed down all around them. An inordinate amount of fire was soon focused on the North wall, the repaired breach attracting shells like an open wound attracts flies. Travis sprang from his quarters clutching his sword and sawed-off shotgun. He yelled to the men “We’ll give them hell,” and “No rendirse, muchachos,” and sprinted toward the north wall.595 Suddenly, the rebel artillery came to life, picking out the long, massed Centralist columns lit by the rockets overhead. Rebel canister shredded the attacker’s lines. And when the Alamo gunners ran out of canister, they threw in door hinges, horseshoes, and scrap iron and fired off their makeshift grapeshot to terrifying effect.

We shouldn’t pass over here the miserable plight of the common soldiers in the Centralist army. Most of them, as we’ve said many times now, weren’t there by choice, and harbored no particular animosity toward the rebels or toward Federalism generally. In many cases, they were more afraid of their own officers, who stole their provisions, abused them, and used bayonets as their primary tool of motivation. Still, they advanced toward the withering fire of the Alamo’s guns. The attack on the west wall floundered as it attempted to cross the now-empty acequia, slowing the attackers before an unbroken field of fire. The attack on the east wall bogged down. When Santa Anna had dammed up the acequia system, it had flooded over the lands to the east of the mission, creating an impassable marsh that now made slow-moving targets of his men.

And Crockett and the Tennesseans were savagely effective on the southeastern wall. The cazadores attacking from the south drifted toward the southwest corner of the compound to avoid their fire, where they came face-to-face instead with the Alamo’s monster eighteen-pound cannon.

Back on the north wall, Travis climbed the parapet and began directing the artillery. As the attackers neared, he leaned over the wall to fire his shotgun and was met by a volley of muskets. There and then the twenty-six-year old serial debtor, failed lawyer, and reader of too much romantic fiction596 met eternity. I’ve never forgotten T.R. Fehrenbach’s description of the moment: “Buck Travis was one of those most fortunate of men; on the grim stone walls of the Alamo he had found his time and place.”597

Travis had fallen, but all Santa Anna could see from his vantage on a slight rise to the northeast of the old mission was 187 rebels beating back ten times as many of his men. Santa Anna didn’t accept failure easily, particularly not when his personal reputation was on the line. As the first attack stalled, he ordered a second push. The bugles sounded and cries of “Viva Santa Anna!” and “Muerte a los Tejanos!”598 rang out from his veterans who pushed forward. Some of them finally reached the walls and pitched their ladders up, only to have them repeatedly thrown down. The fire from the west wall proved devastating once again, and the column attacking from that side faltered. Similarly, the column from the east bogged down and drifted unconsciously toward the north side of the compound, the narrowest of the Alamo’s perimeter walls. Crockett’s unit holding the southeastern corner had decimated the column attacking them, and so repositioned to assist their comrades fighting off a new attack from the southwest.

It was still barely 6 AM, yet in the stern gray light of dawn Santa Anna could see that this second attack was also failing. Even if he was a bit reckless with human life, the dictator was an experienced general, well-attuned to the momentum of the battlefield. He sensed weakness along the north wall and decided to throw all of his reserves at it. 400 fresh troops lined up to attack, supported by the west and east columns which had been ordered to refocus all of their energies north as well. A mass of men surged forward. According to some accounts, it was actually one of Santa Anna’s generals who was the first to summit the wall.599 Others began to batter windows and gun loopholes, and the Alamo’s secret sally ports were soon discovered. Like water breaking through a dam, the attackers suddenly poured over, around, and through the north wall.

Juana Navarro, her sister, and one-year-old nephew had taken refuge in a room in the northwest corner of the compound and, according to her later account, the noise of the conflict – the roar of the artillery, the rattle of small arms – the shouts of the combatants, the groans of the dying, and the moans of the wounded.”600 Suddenly, Centralist soldiers forced their way into the room where they were hiding. Two Alamo defenders – one Anglo and one Tejano– threw themselves between the women and the attackers. The Centralist soldiers ripped them apart and set themselves to robbing the poor women, including of course most of the possessions of the Alamo’s officers. Fortuitously for the Navarro sisters themselves, a Centralist officer who knew their father found them soon thereafter and escorted them out of the compound.601

The cannonplay now opened within the courtyard itself.602The defenders turned the artillery along the south wall inward and the attackers turned the captured artillery from the north wall to meet them. A horrific carnage ensued. Grapeshot, canister, and musket fire filled the compound. With attention focused inward, the south wall was left undefended, and Santa Anna’s elite cazadores finally broke through. The defenders along the west wall were cut off. They pulled back and back and back, firing as they retreated, until finally, they ran out of room. There, according to some accounts, is where Crockett fell.603

The Centralists moved now room by room through the compound. They wheeled captured cannon in front of the doors and fired once, then poked their muskets through to fire again, and then finished off whatever was moving with bayonets. When they reached the Long Barracks, which housed a dozen or more sick and wounded defenders, they loaded a double charge of grapeshot and fired it through the doorway. When they entered, there was no need to do anything more.604

In one of the rooms along the south wall, presumably they found Bowie in his sick bed. We don’t know the specific details of how he died, but it would be a curious thing if the most famous knife fighter on the continent had died any way other than with a weapon in his hand.

With the compound overrun, the remaining Alamo defenders – maybe only 80 or so by this point – retreated toward the chapel to make their last stand. They piled up stones and rubble and pivoted the artillery to face their attackers. Inside the chapel, the noncombatants cowered as children cried and infants screamed. At one point, a sixteen-year-old defender, just a boy himself, ran into try to tell the noncombatants something, but his jaw was broken. He tried to hold the dangling lower half of his face with his hands to try to form words, but couldn’t, gave up, and ran back to his doom.605

The attack slowed momentarily as the Centralist officers tried to restore order to their own forces, who were in some cases now firing on each other in the dim light. They ordered the captured rebel artillery brought up to face off with the last defenders. In the lull, some of the defenders looked over the flimsy palisade wall and decided to make an organized break for it. Perhaps as many as fifty men jumped the wall, rounded the chapel, cleared the acequia, and made it to open ground.606 But Santa Anna’s 375 dragoons were waiting for them. The horsemen with their high-crested helmets appeared on the horizon and rode down the fleeing rebels, who tried in vain to organize a defensive retreat. But they were no match in the open fields for the well-trained dragoons, who slaughtered them to a man.

The Centralists finally opened fire with their captured cannons on the Alamo church itself, the last redoubt of the dozen or so defenders left standing. Almaron Dickinson and Gregorio Esparza fell fighting in the doorway of the shrine, just a few yards from their wives and children. Four of the last defenders rushed to protect the noncombatants but were promptly shot and run through with bayonets and “lifted up [on those bayonets] like a farmer does a bundle of fodder on his pitchfork.”

When the attackers broke into the safe room, they then bayoneted a pair of boys, eleven and twelve years old, who tried pitifully to protect themselves with their blankets.607 The other noncombatants fully expected to die as well and were saved perhaps only by the sudden appearance of some of the more compassionate officers.

By 6:30 AM, the battle was over. The bloodlust, however, ran hot for another half hour. The bugle call to cease fire was ignored. The long-suffering Centralist soldiers took out the frustrations of their forced marches, privation, and senseless slaughter of their comrades on the bodies of the defenders. They bayonetted and shot anything that moved, and then reloaded and shot them again. Some of the wounded they tortured before they dispatched. Some bodies they mutilated after they were dead. Only the rumor of Santa Anna’s imminent entry into the compound finally restored order and ended the bloodletting.

Santa Anna rode into the Alamo and surveyed his victory. Several accounts tell of a handful of captured defenders being brought before Santa Anna. They were summarily and savagely executed.608 He was, on this occasion at least, a man of his word. He had proscribed death for the rebels, and he had given them death. It was as he had wanted it, a bloody and conspicuous message to the Continent. He commended his men loudly for their courage and for this great victory that day. His officers’ diaries suggest that the subsequent Viva Santa Anna!’s were half-hearted at best. At least 600 men, one-third of his fighting force, had been rendered ineffective as a result of the battle, killed, wounded, or otherwise left behind to tend to the aftermath.609 “With another victory like this one,” one of his officers quipped, “we may all end up in hell.”610

The women, children, and Travis’s slave Joe – who had actually participated in the battle but had been spared – were marched out of the compound. Joe’s later accounts suggested there may have been other slaves in the compound as well who survived the battle.611An exhausted Ángel Navarro reunited with his daughters Juana and Gertrudis. He would die just six months later, weakened by the stress of his traumatic final months.

Santa Anna ordered Mayor Francisco Antonio Ruiz to accompany him and point out the bodies of Crockett, Bowie, and Travis, which lay where they had fallen. Then, he ordered the mayor to conscript San Antonians into work parties. Santa Anna wanted to imprint the trauma of the entire episode deep in San Antonians’ psyches. It wasn’t enough for him that they had endured six months of battle, multiple hostile occupations, unwanted confiscations of their property by both sides, and the deaths of their loved ones once again in the cause of liberty. He wanted them to know his brutality up close and personal. He charged San Antonians with disposing of the dead themselves. The floor of San Fernando Church would be stained red for months from the blood of Centralist officers honored there. The corpses of enlisted Centralists were hauled less ceremoniously to a mass grave in the Campo Santo beneath today’s Santa Rosa Children’s hospital. Santa Anna ordered the townsfolk to haul the defenders’ bodies to a spot somewhere near the future site of Joske’s department store. He ordered them to prepare two long funeral pyres, one sixty feet long, one eighty, a layer of men, a layer of wood, a layer of men, a layer of wood.612

Burning the corpses, Santa Anna knew, would serve two purposes: one, it would deny these rebels a proper Christian burial, an honor he would permit of only one defender, Gregorio Esparza, whose brother had been conscripted into Santa Anna’s army.613 And two, burning the rebels’ bodies would obscure their numbers, which Santa Anna had already inflated four times over in his battle report back to the capital.614On top of the pyre, he made sure to place the defenders’ flag, the green, white, and red Mexican tricolor with the year 1824 taunting him from the flames.615

Around 5 pm, twelve hours or so after the battle commenced, Santa Anna ordered the funeral pyres lit and the bodies of the Alamo defenders – Mexican, Anglo, Tejano, and from many other parts of the world – were reduced to ashes and united for eternity.

It would fall to Juan Seguín almost a year later to eulogize his fallen friends, his “heroes…who preferred to die a thousand times rather than submit themselves to a tyrant’s yolk,” and to give their ashes a proper burial in front of San Fernando Church. There, he reminded San Antonians that they had just witnessed the great culmination of their generation-long struggle for freedom. That – at great cost, but to its eternal honor –San Antonio was now – and in truth, always had been –the cradle of Texas liberty. “I invite you to declare to the world,” he said, “that Texas shall be free and independent!”616

Episode 18: Texian San Antonio

After leading the Immortal Thirty-Two from Gonzales into the Alamo just a few days earlier, John “El Colorado” Smith returned with a second relief effort on March 7th. They were turned back by Santa Anna’s dragoons, however, just as Juan Seguín’s relief attempt had been a few days prior. On March 11, two San Antonians brought the news of the Alamo’s fall to East Texas. It was Deaf Smith, that famed scout and citizen of San Antonio since 1821, who discovered the Alamo’s non-combatants plodding sadly across the prairie a few days later.617

Now there was only one thing standing between East Texans and Santa Anna’s advancing army: Juan Seguín and twenty-four or so of his old San Antonian rangers. The Texas provisional government ordered Segu into slow down Santa Anna’s Centralist army and to leave no one and no thing behind, while the rest of the population fled east in the so-called “Runaway Scrape.” For more than a month and across a field of action that spanned more than 200 miles, Seguín outmaneuvered some of the best-trained cavalry in the world and despoiled the countryside, leaving no forage, shelter, bridge, or ferry behind.618 His tactics effectively neutralized Santa Anna’s famed dragoons for the rest of the campaign, leaving them without nourishment, without mobility, and without the ability to protect Santa Anna’s lines of communication. This made it possible in early April of 1836 for Deaf Smith to capture one of Santa Anna’s messengers, who carried with him a detailed accounting of the Centralist Army’s strength and disposition of forces.619Seguín and his rangers soon confirmed that Santa Anna’s 1,400-mancolumn had split off from the rest of the army and was now without artillery or cavalry support. Acting on this intelligence, Deaf Smith rode around Santa Anna’s entire army – which had just made camp on San Jacinto Creek where it entered the future Houston Ship Channel –and destroyed the bridge that was their only escape.620

On April 21, 1836, 930 Texians – the name by which we refer to Republic of Texas-era Texans – surprised Santa Anna’s exhausted Centralist force, which had covered now just shy of 1,000 miles in about three months through one of the coldest, wettest winters on record. The Centralists were caught entirely unprepared and most broke into panicked flight. Only Santa Anna’s right wing put up any organized resistance. They were met, however, by the Texian left and by Juan Seguín and his San Antonio veterans. These were some of the most experienced soldiers in the Texian army at this point, heirs to a hundred years of frontier warfare, and participants in almost every major engagement of the Texas Revolution over the past year. And they did not fail now. They absorbed the Centralist volley fired at them “within pistol shot” and then charged, shouting “Remember the Alamo,” and offering the Centralist soldiers the same mercy that the Centralists had offered the Alamo’s defenders.621

Overall, the Centralists fared far better that day than the Texians would have had the tables been turned. The bloodletting was terrible, to be sure, but some 400 Centralists survived the battle, including Santa Anna himself. Texas Vice President Lorenzo de Zavala’s son was on-hand to translate for his father’s old foe when he sat down with Sam Houston to negotiate. And though Vice President Lorenzo de Zavala would die just a few months later from pneumonia, he would live just long enough to see the tyrant humbled and the new Republic of Texas made free.

Santa Anna recognized Texas’s independence in exchange for his own life, yet it remained to be seen if the several thousand Centralists still under arms in Texas would respect his agreement.622Once again, it fell to Juan Seguín to see it through.623

Seguín was commissioned a lieutenant colonel and given command of a battalion, built around his core of old San Antonians. Seguín’s tiny force pushed cautiously westward, and at the same time sent word ahead into San Antonio, back to Coahuila, and down into Central Mexico of Santa Anna’s defeat. The commotion caused by the news was enough to stir rumblings of revolt from Santa Anna’s opponents and intimations of mutiny within the Centralist forces still remaining in Texas. Seguin’s unit arrived in San Antonio around June 4, 1836.624 With their army collapsing all around them and the local population growing restless, Centralist commanders yielded to Seguín’s entreaties to leave the town without violence.625Coincidentally, it would be now-Captain Castañeda – the same officer who had been sent to take the cannon in Gonzales eight months before – who led the last eighteen Centralists soldiers out of San Antonio. Seguín and his battalion would escort and harass the Centralists all the way to the Rio Grande, just fourteen months after they had crossed that same river in opposition to Centralist usurpations in Coahuila and set off the chain of events that would lead to Texas independence.

San Antonians celebrated, even as they feared that the fight with their cousins to the South was not over. And their celebration was tempered by the sad state of everything around them. The town was in ruins. Everything of value had been carried off by one or the other of the armies that had passed through over the last eight months. Much of the town had been deliberately destroyed by the occupying Centralists to prevent the town being used again as a defensive position, including the entire Alamo compound, save the chapel and the long barracks.

Slowly and resolutely, San Antonians began to put their lives back together. In September, the proud old city council convened once again, conducting its meetings now in both Spanish and English, and elected the great Alamo messenger John “El Colorado” Smith as mayor. On December 22, Béxar County was organized, constituting all of West Texas, eastern New Mexico, the Panhandle, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. And in January of 1837, San Antonio was officially chartered under the Republic of Texas and renamed “San Antonio.” That’s right, recall that the technical name of the central city of San Antonio’s many communities had been San Fernando de Béxar, referred to by most as simply: “Be-ar.”626

The January 1837 census revealed 278 property owners in San Antonio627 out of a population of a little under 2,000, many of them old San Antonio families, but almost a quarter now with Anglo surnames. The same men from the same families continued to play prominent roles: Juan Zambrano would become head of the Béxar County land commission; Juan Seguín, Antonio Menchaca, and Samuel Maverick would serve as mayors in the first years of the Texian Republic; the old Federalist José Antonio Navarro would become the first Congressman from San Antonio; and his uncle and fellow signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence José Francisco Ruiz would become the first Senator.

A few French, Greek, and Russian names soon appeared on the tax rolls as well as a large influx of Irish ones, drawn to the city’s strong catholic culture and lack of an established Anglophone elite.628John Twohig, the old merchant who had been in San Antonio since 1830 remained, and newcomers like Edward Dwyer and Bryan Callaghan soon made an impact as well, each of whom married into the old Ramón family and each of whom became mayor. The Irish in particular favored the area just north of Alamo Plaza, an area that would come to be known as “Irish Flats” and where many of the city’s first multi-story buildings would be constructed.629

Under the new Republic, San Antonio’s economic prospects immediately. The new Texian government acted on one of San Antonians’ oft-repeated petitions to make available the seemingly limitless supply of land all around them. In all the years of Spanish and Mexican rule, only 15.5% of the public domain of Texas (about 26.3 MM acres) had been deeded out to private individuals.630 The new Republic wasted no time in rectifying this. Indeed, every head of household living in Texas prior to the declaration of Texas’s independence on March 2, 1836, was entitled to a league and a labor, or 4,600 acres of land. This created new opportunity for anyone well-capitalized enough to survey and patent a claim. And even those who couldn’t develop these so-called “headright grants” themselves were able to sell them off for a nice little windfall.631In the first two years of the Republic of Texas, 2.3 MM acres was patented in Béxar County alone (which, recall, comprised a sizeable portion of South and West Texas) by some 620 deeds.632

San Antonio also remained a center of international trade, only now, San Antonians had unfettered and untaxed access to the burgeoning markets of North America. Business boomed, and whereas San Antonio had always been plagued by underemployment, under the Texian flag San Antonians found more opportunities than ever for work on newly-patented lands, in newly-opened shops, or along newly-blazed trade routes as freighters.

Yet for all that things stayed the same or even improved, there were troubling signs as well. Many middle-class Tejanos felt pinched. Unable to speak the language of their new trading partners and unfamiliar with the new legal system, some fled, settling on the South side of the Rio Grande or even in Laredo,633 which was only nominally under Texian control. Some new Texians initiated efforts in the legislature to dispossess old Tejanos of their lands by nullifying Spanish and Mexican land grants.634Senator José Francisco Ruiz, his successor Senator Juan Seguín, and Congressman José Antonio Navarro led the defense of these grants in the legislature635 (with the support of many Anglos, to be fair, who had had their acquired lands under the Spanish and Mexican governments themselves).

This wasn’t the last of the legal challenges the fragile new multi-ethnic republic faced, however. In 1838, the legislature debated whether being “white” should be a requirement to vote in the new Republic. Navarro’s impassioned and clever arguments – notably, he compared these kinds of rights-depriving initiatives to the kind of things that the Mexican government would have done636 – just might have swayed the majority, which ultimately did extend suffrage to all men.637 (Except, of course, to “Africans,” whom everyone agreed had no business voting638. It would take another war to resolve that issue.)

Nevertheless, these and other efforts were examples of San Antonians ‘lasting contributions to justice in Texas. And they waged these fights through a translator and within a legislative system that they were learning on the fly. That is, neither Ruiz, Seguín, nor Navarro spoke English confidently. One of their longest running and ultimately unsuccessful efforts was to get the Republic of Texas to publish its laws in Spanish.639 San Antonians’ legislators – Tejano and Anglo - never relented on this and other issues dear to their constituents, and they never ceased to remind other Texians of San Antonians ’contributions to the new Republic.

This was important because the hard and simple fact was that San Antonio still felt a little foreign to most Texians.640 Some were outright suspicious of its loyalties and when Mexican forces began to raid again across the Rio Grande in October of 1836, even well-meaning Texians were fearful that the town might fall back into Mexican hands. At one point, the commander-in-chief of the Texian army ordered San Antonio burned to the ground, and only Juan Seguín’s vocal opposition and entreaties to his friend, President Sam Houston, prevented the order from being carried out.641

Despite the town being saved, the new Republic struggled to actually make the town safe. In the 1790’s, San Antonians and Comanches had reached a sort of détente. They lived under a fragile but generally respected peace that saw San Antonio become the Comanches’ principal trading center.642They developed a special relationship, hunting buffalo together, and in some cases living together.643They had even collaborated to conduct a sustained guerilla campaign against Spanish Royalist forces from 1813-1821.

Yet new Texian arrivals lacked the context for these relationships and considered the frequent trading visits by the Comanches to San Antonio as inviting trouble. The Texian government decided to cut off the plainsmen’s access to San Antonio.644 This placed the Comanches in a rather desperate situation, as they had come to depend on San Antonio for many goods that had become indispensable to their mode of living. When they couldn’t get what they needed by trading for it, they resorted to stealing it, and these raids set off a terrible cycle of violence.

In March of 1837, the grandson of that old friend of the Comanches, José Francisco Ruiz, was killed and mutilated outside of town, a clear statement of the Comanche’s sense of betrayal by their old trading partners.645 Then in June 1838 a Comanche band attacked San Antonio and killed four citizens over the course of a three-day campaign of terror. Texian leaders decided that something needed to be done and the assignment went – as if always did in these early years of the Republic – to Juan Seguín and his frontier ranging battalion.646

Seguín’s battalion had continued in-service since 1836 and was modeled directly after the old San Antonio compañías volantes. They were mounted minutemen, citizen-soldiers that worked by day, cleaned their weapons by night, and were expected to provide their own string of horses at a moment’s notice if called into action. Self-provisioned, light cavalrymen had a long and noble tradition in the Hispanic world, dating back to the feudal jinetes of old Spain and hardened now by generations of warfare against the plains Indians of North America. It was through service in this unit that the first Texas Anglos, to corrupt author Stephen Hardin’s phrase, “learned to ride like Mexicans.”647 Recall that light cavalry wasn’t really an Anglo-American thing until they got to San Antonio. There’s actually several sad episodes in the first years of Stephen F. Austin’s colony where these Anglo woodsmen tried to pursue mounted plains Indians on foot, with predictably poor results.648Over several years in the saddle with Seguín and his men, however, Texas Anglos had come to embrace the identity and the ideology of these modern-day knights of the plains.649 They began to tack their mounts with Mexican or Western saddles with lariats tied off to their saddle horns and “vied with each other in the absurdity of their dress,” to use Ranger RIP Ford’s phrase, dressing themselves, well, like Old San Antonians, in wide-brimmed hats, high-shanked leather boots, and brush-popping chaparreros.650

In late 1839, these Texas Rangers, as they would come to be known, rode out on the largest retaliatory campaign that had been mounted out of San Antonio in a generation. 111 men, half Tejano, and half Anglo, marched out, supported by a company of Indian auxiliaries, ironically, most of them descendants of the Lipan Apaches against whom San Antonians had waged a war of extermination nearly a century before. Seguin took half of the men west and flushed them out of the areas around modern-day Bandera and Uvalde. The rest of the men went north, including one squadron commanded by a wiry young Tennessean named Jack Hays.

“Devil Jack” Hays, as he came to be known, had arrived in Texas in early 1836 at the age of twenty to participate in the Texas Revolution, which he finished as a sergeant stationed in San Antonio with Seguín’s unit. He became a student of frontier warfare, riding along with the ranging battalion throughout his campaigns of 1836, 1837, and 1838.

Sometime in 1839, the Republic of Texas had acquired some early Colt Patterson No. 5 revolving pistols for their fledgling navy. When the Texas Navy essentially disbanded that year, Hays ended up with a dozen or so of the five-shot, .36 caliber revolvers, which he distributed to his men.651They soon had a chance to put them to good use. While riding along the Pedernales river in early 1840, he and fourteen men were ambushed by seventy Comanche warriors. It was the kind of battle that the Comanches lived for, and the kind of battle their opponents rarely survived. Yet when the Comanches commenced their attack, Hays’s squadron charged them back, despite being outnumbered five-to-one. As they neared the Comanche lines, they pulled out their revolvers and began to fire. A few Comanches fell to the rangers’ first volleys, as could be expected. First volleys were often European-Americans’ last volleys against a fast-riding Comanche horde. Still, Hays’s men kept coming. And, somehow, they kept shooting. The Comanches waited in vain for the moment when the Rangers would have to dismount and reload, but it never came. Instead, the Rangers continued to pick their targets carefully and ride down the Comanches individually now as their formation fell apart.

The battle turned into a rout. Hays and his squadron not only escaped the ambush, they emerged victorious.652It was one of the most resounding defeats of a Comanche force in living memory, and it helped bring the horse lords of the Great Plains to the negotiating table.653

March 19, 1840 was set for a great peace council to be held between Comanche chiefs and representatives of the new Texian government. On that day, twelve chiefs and twenty-one warriors with thirty-two women and children paraded into San Antonio in their finest. Some of the Comanche children playfully entertained the townsfolk with tricks performed with bows and arrows, and old San Antonio vecinos and young Comanche warriors engaged in some impromptu tests of horsemanship in the streets.

Yet when the plainsmen walked into the old Casas Reales on Main Plaza, known now in English as the “Council House,” they were met by looks of unrestrained hatred from the Texian representatives there. This surprised and annoyed the Comanches who felt like they had come in good faith and in the spirit of re-establishing the special relationship that San Antonians and Comanches had long enjoyed. The problem was that the Texian government had placed a condition on the peace negotiations: that the Comanches return all Texian captives in their possession. To the irritation of the Texians, these Comanches had brought with them only two such captives, one boy and one girl. More specifically, they had brought a fifteen-year old girl named Matilda Lockhart whose nose had been burned completely off and “degraded” – we should assume that to mean raped – by her captors.654

The Texian commissioners demanded to know where the other captives were. A Comanche chief named Muk-wah-ruh rose to answer them, explaining to the commissioners something that most San Antonians already knew: That there was no such thing as a single Comanche nation, and that one chief could not oblige another chief to do anything, and that the captives they saw before them were all that were in their bands’ possession and all that they would be getting back today. “How do you like that answer?” the chief asked when he finished explaining, either in direct provocation of the Texians or in an extremely poor choice of words.655

The Texians stood and locked the doors. The Comanches’ interpreter – himself a former captive – went pale.656The commissioners informed the Comanches that they were all now prisoners until such time as the captives should be returned. The Comanches – who had after all come to San Antonio under a flag of truce – struggled to understand what the Texians were doing. Some stood to leave in indignation. They were forcibly detained. They began to whisper to one another. They had been tricked, they soon believed. Tensions heightened. Steel flashed. Shots fired. War cries rang out. Comanche children entertaining townsfolk in the street now nocked their bows with real arrows and started firing on their admirers. San Antonians fired back. The Council House puffed smoke from all sides as shots ricocheted around inside the limestone walls of the building. The fight spilled out into the street, the Comanches slicing their way through town with knives and arrows, San Antonians firing wildly into the street after them.657

When the smoke cleared, seven San Antonians were dead, including the Bexar County Judge and Sheriff. Yet the Comanches had the worst of it. All the Comanche warriors and chiefs had been killed, in addition to three women and children. Twenty-nine survivors were taken prisoner and moved to Mission San José, whose famous walls still stood sentinel over the southside of town. A message was sent to the other Comanche tribes that they had twelve days to return sixteen specific captives that they held. They would respond to the demand by slow-roasting alive thirteen of those captives.

Back on the plains, the Comanches called a war council. There, they decided that these new arrivals needed a demonstration of Comanche strength. Even the colonists that had come with Stephen F. Austin in the 1820’s had been the benefactors of the hard-won peace of the 1780’s and 90’s and had no living memory of what the Comanche empire was really capable of. In August of 1840, 400 Comanche warriors mounted up and rode right through the heart of the new Texian nation. They carefully avoided San Antonio, but on August 6, 1840, they sacked Victoria, and on August 8, they burned the port of Linnville to the ground. The Comanches might have made it back to the plains unpunished as well had they not been so laden down with loot. Instead, a unit of Texas Rangers under a new Captain Ben McCulloch caught up to them near Lockhart on August 12, stripped them of their booty, inflicted some casualties, and sent them retreating back to the plains.

The so-called Great Raid of 1840 would leave 25 Texians dead and hundreds of thousands of dollars of property destroyed. Comanche raids would continue with increased hostility for the next four years, answered by the Ranger station out of San Antonio, where Captain Jack Hays and Captain Ben McCulloch now held command. On June 9, 1844, while on patrol just north of Boerne, TX, Hays McCullough, and only thirteen rangers were suddenly surrounded by 200 Comanches. The Comanches licked their lips at the opportunity before them to eliminate the most effective battle commanders in all of Texas in a single battle. Yet Captain Hays used the small size of his unit to his advantage. He managed to maneuver his outnumbered rangers behind his Comanche attackers, where Hays ordered his men to dismount, steady their rifles, and make each shot count. Fifteen well-placed shots fired in unison. The Comanches looked around and lashed out in all directions, looking for the source of the rifle fire. The Ranger’s second volley gave away their position but brought down another dozen Comanche warriors. The Comanches charged, but the Rangers repulsed them twice. When the Comanche chief himself fell, the attack dissipated, and the Rangers now took the initiative. They remounted, drew their terrible repeating revolvers, and worked up their horses to a gallop. “Powder burn’em!” Hays yelled, encouraging his men to get as close as possible before firing.658

Fifty or so Comanches lay dead after the Battle of Walker’s Creek, as it would be known, compared to only one dead Ranger. And it was one of the few times in recorded history, that Comanches left their dead on the field. After the battle, the plainsmen retreated back to the plains and out of reach, for the moment, of the Texas Rangers.

In the early years of the Texas Rangers, I count at least 125 Tejanos who served in the ranks plus at least four officers. Many if not most of these men were from San Antonio. The Republic of Texas had lost much when they lost San Antonians’ old special relationship with the Comanches, yet they had gained much as well from the fighting techniques that San Antonians taught them.

Which was good, because in 1842, another enemy familiar to old San Antonians came marching up the Camino Real.

Episode 19: The Fall of San Antonio

Juan Seguín had fought longer and harder for Texas independence than any man alive. And now, they called him a traitor.

How quickly people seemed to forget that it was he who had first ridden to the aid of Mexican Federalists in Coahuila in 1835, he who had returned to warn Texans of General Cos’s imminent arrival, he who had provisioned both the Siege of Béxar and the Alamo defenders from his own ranch,659 he who made perhaps the last failed attempt to relieve the Alamo, he who had covered the evacuation of the Anglo settlers ahead of Santa Anna’s advance, he who had led the left wing at San Jacinto, he who had escorted the remnants of the Centralist Army out of Texas with only a few dozen men, he who had defended the new Republic’s tenuous border for its first three years with virtually no money and only volunteers, and he who had prevented that same Republic from burning San Antonio to the ground entirely!

In spite of all that, his fellow San Antonians – his friends! – now seemed more inclined to believe the whisper campaign of an invading Mexican general than the track record of Texas’s most conspicuous patriot. Couldn’t they see it for the ploy that it was by a vengeful Santa Anna to sow dissension between Tejanos and Anglos? Were they ignorant of the lengths to which Mexico was willing to go to pry off San Antonio from the new Texian nation? Texians recovered an Antonio in June of 1836 – under forces led by Juan Seguín – but just three months later a Mexican Cavalry unit rode in and briefly retook the town. Seguín’s ranging battalion eventually drove them off, though this didn’t prevent another Mexican cavalry unit from crossing the Rio Grande again just a few months later in February of 1837. Fellow San Antonio Deaf Smith and twenty rangers beat back this incursion,660 though again, Mexican cavalry would return the next spring too, as reliable as the greening of the grasses on the Texas plains.

In 1838, Mexican forces began to harass San Antonio’s newly prospering freight business, robbing wagon trains or impounding them for lack of proper “paperwork.” They began to conspire with Comanches and other plains Indians to harass the new Republic and may have played a role in provoking some of the Comanche attacks of the previous chapter.661

San Antonians like Juan Seguín and Rip Ford retaliated by supporting the 1840 independence movement of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, led by San Antonian Federalist José Maria Carbajal. Once again, San Antonians flocked to the call of land, liberty, and federalism, though this only engendered further enmity from Mexican Centralists.

In 1841, cockroach-like, Santa Anna returned to power in Mexico. He dispatched Mexican cavalry once again to attack San Antonio and to raid the ranches just South of San Antonio, targeting in particular the mostly-ruined ranch belonging to Juan Seguín,662 for whom he harbored a special enmity. Texas Ranger Captains Jack Hays and Antonio Perez leading a force of only twenty-five rangers – again, half Anglo, half Tejano – defeated the Mexican raiders, though locals sensed that the triumph was temporary.663 They – like Mexican Centralists – appreciated better than many Texians San Antonio’s strategic significance.

Juan Seguín, who had just stepped down from his position as a Texas Senator to serve as San Antonio Mayor again, called upon the Republic to better defend its borders. The Republic’s general staff, however, had grander visions for how the Republic’s limited military might be used.

General Hugh McLeod commanded the regular Texian Army unit stationed in San Antonio. Graduating from West point 56th in a class of 56, he was only twenty-six years old when he was appointed as one of the Republic’s two peace commissioners in the Council House debacle from the previous chapter. Now General McLeod proposed to march on Santa Fe and assert Texas’s claim over it, a 700-mile march away from an undermanned frontier under assault from Mexicans and Comanches forces. Seguín and most San Antonians opposed the expedition, realizing that it would drain precious resources away from frontier defense and that San Antonio would bear the brunt of any retaliation from Mexico. The Texas President himself came to San Antonio in June of 1841 to try to recruit San Antonio’s renowned frontier veterans, but without success. After repeated personal entreaties he was only able to convince the forty-seven-year-old José Antonio Navarro to accompany the expedition. Crippled since childhood, his disformed, suppurating leg made every step of the march an agonizing one for the elder statesman.

The 320-man expedition was a disaster from the start. Lacking experienced guides, the men wandered across the waterless expanses of the Llano Estacado and might very well have died of exposure had not hostile Mexican forces out of Santa Fe found them first. On October 5, exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, the Texians surrendered without a fight and were marched from Santa Fe all the way to Mexico City, where they were imprisoned. The entire expedition was released by the following April, however – except for Navarro, who would linger in chains for three long years.

Immediately following news of the Santa Fe expedition’s surrender, San Antonians began to hear rumors of a retaliatory attack coming up the Camino Real. Mayor Seguín – who along with many other San Antonians retained family and trade contacts south of the border – began to warn the Texian secretary of war that an invasion was imminent. The Secretary’s response was blunt and oddly insensitive: no help was available, and he trusted the town would take the steps necessary to secure itself.664 It sounded like the kind of response that San Antonio had gotten for a hundred and fifty years from authorities in Mexico City.

And so, with much of his old Ranging battalion engaged in a never-ending campaign against the Comanches and otherwise unable to defend the town, Mayor Seguín ordered an evacuation. Irish merchant John Twohig, unable to cart off all of his wares, invited the poor to take what they wanted, starting a tradition that he would uphold every Sunday thereafter of feeding the poor outside his store. What was left behind, he blew up to prevent from falling into Mexican hands.665

On March 5, 1842, Mexican General Rafael Vázquez marched into San Antonio with 500 men and raised the eagle and serpent. Seguin and Captain Jack Hays rallied their old rangers alongside old Ed Burleson, commander from the Siege of Béxar, and on March 9th, this force arrived in San Antonio’s northernmost farms near modern day Mulberry Street. Without putting up really any fight, Vázquez retreated, with Captain Jack Hays’s undersized ranger unit harassing him all the way back to the Rio Grande.

Ostensibly, the objective of the 1842 Vázquez invasion was to capture San Antonio and then renegotiate the borders of the Republic of Texas. Yet Vázquez made no effort to actually hold San Antonio, however, so in truth it appears that the real objective might have been more sinister. When he retreated from San Antonio, Vázquez made sure to steer his retreat through Seguín’s family ranch, which his men stripped bare, leaving Seguín in dire financial straits. And Vázquez made sure to leave behind a baseless yet pernicious rumor amongst San Antonians: that Seguín was secretly working with Santa Anna!666

From the present, it’s a little hard to understand Santa Anna’s resiliency in Mexican politics because of his catastrophic blunders on the battlefield, his total disregard for Mexico’s constitutions and institutions, and his disastrous impact on the Mexican treasury. But that’s only because we don’t see his mastery of small politics. In the words of historian Jeff Long, “he had a genius for finding the holes in reality.”667 His repeated flip-flopping is just an artifact of his rather finely-tuned political senses, even if it betrays a rather naked and unprincipled ambition. He had a wicked talent for undermining political allegiances and reconfiguring them to benefit himself.

This seems to have been a part of his strategy to undermine the new Texas Republic. Santa Anna already held José Antonio Navarro, whose recantations of his participation in the Texas Revolution he planned to use against him. If he could now discredit Seguín, he would have struck perhaps a final blow to Tejano and Anglo unity.668

Seguín’s Texian opponents – and to be honest, he had many – gleefully took up the rumor against him. The Texian Commander-in-Chief who had wanted to burn San Antonio to the ground had never forgiven Seguín for defying him and going over his head to Sam Houston. General Hugh McLeod also had never forgiven him for opposing the Santa Fe expedition,669 especially now that the expedition’s outcome had proven Seguín right. And frankly Seguín’s visibility and brashness had offended many others in town over the years in the course of his commercial and political dealings. They all began to spin his prior warnings of the Mexican invasion – which they had failed to heed – into evidence of his foreknowledge of or complicity with it, despite the fact that he led some of the first and only forces that opposed it!670His creditors took advantage of the situation – and of the ruin of his ranch – to begin foreclosure on some of his property.671The whisper campaign soon erupted into open violence, as when one of his closest associates was nearly murdered in the street.672

Frustrated, broke, and persecuted on all sides, Seguín eventually became what his enemies wanted him to be: a collaborator with the enemy. It’s a little unclear what exactly went down. And even his Texian friends at the time, including Sam Houston and many others, refused to believe he had turned against them until they heard Seguín’s version of events from his own lips, which most of them never would.673

In May of 1842 while in Coahuila trying to recover some of his property stolen by the Vázquez invasion, Seguín was imprisoned by order of Santa Anna. He was given a choice: a lengthy prison sentence or conscription in the Mexican army.674 When he took the latter option, he later claimed, he didn’t know where that army was about to march.

He was made an officer of the “Defensores de Béxar” unit, the Béxar Defenders, which included men with family ties to San Antonio. The Béxar Defenders were attached to a 1,200-man army assembling around Saltillo under Belgian ex-pat Adrian Woll. In late August 1842, just five months after General Vazquez’s invasion, Woll and his army began marching north along the Camino Real, past the same old Rio Grande Missions that had seeded San Antonio’s settlement one hundred and fifty years before.

Rumors of this second Mexican invasion of 1842 ran ahead of Woll’s army, yet the Texas government did nothing. A few legislators tried to secure funds for the defense of the so-called “Western Settlements,” meaning San Antonio, but there was strong doubt among many as to whether San Antonio could even be held against a determined Mexican attempt, and the young Republic frankly had no money to spare anyway. A little harder to explain, however, is why the soldiers already under arms weren’t sent. San Antonians could have been forgiven for feeling like they had once again been left to fend for themselves.

On September 11, 1842, General Adrian Woll and his 1,200 men (including Juan Seguín) entered San Antonio at daylight. Their band marched into the Plaza de Armas and began to play music and to bugle their horns, awakening San Antonians to a terrible surprise. The 1,200-man army had managed to evade detection by the depleted ranging companies which now patrolled almost one-third of the state with only a few dozen men. Even Captain Jack Hays and five scouts sent out the day before to investigate rumors of a Mexican force nearby found nothing, as General Woll had looped west to avoid detection.

The local militia took up their arms, and a brief skirmish ensued. One hundred mounted Tejanos under Captain Antonio Menchaca of that old presidial line counterattacked Woll’s forces, to good effect, killing a few dozen with no losses of their own. But the size of the invading force soon became apparent. General Woll made it known that he would give San Antonians thirty minutes to surrender or he would raze the town. Some escaped, though many had no such opportunity. Moreover, the district court for all of South Texas had just gone into session the week prior, meaning that most of the town’s most prominent men were all concentrated in and around the courthouse in the middle of the Plaza de las Islas.

General Woll took some 200 San Antonians prisoner that morning and began making preparations to march on Austin. Captain Jack Hays, returning from his scouting mission, discovered the disaster and set off to alert other Texians. Within days, 200 men, including many San Antonians, gathered on Cibolo Creek northeast of town. On September 16, they began advancing toward Salado Creek on San Antonio’s east side.

That same day, Woll sent out the Defensores de Béxar and some 200 men to the east to cutoff reported reinforcements. On September 17, the Defensores de Béxar surprised and crushed a 53-man Texian militia unit. Only eighteen or so Texians survived the so-called “Dawson Massacre,” as it would later be known.

On the same day, however – sensing perhaps that General Woll was not at full force – the Texians now on Salado Creek determined to lure General Woll out into battle. Captain Jack Hays, Ben McCulloch, and thirty-six other men rode to within shouting range of the Mexican lines. They began to taunt them, and eventually baited the Mexican cavalry out into the field. In their best imitation of the Comanche tactics with which they had now become familiar, they drew just close enough to provoke an attack from the numerically superior Mexican cavalry, then set themselves to full-fledged flight. They rode on, mile after mile to the East, drawing the Mexican force back to Salado Creek toward a spot between modern-day Austin Highway and Rittiman roads. Just as they crossed the creek, the rest of the Texian volunteers emerged and fired into the Mexican cavalry charge, shredding their formation and halting their charge. The stunned Mexican cavalry absorbed the Texian fire for half an hour or more while General Woll – who had heard the sounds of the engagement –marched out with 400 infantry to support them. Texian marksmanship devastated Woll’s force. Eventually, his soldiers refused to keep fighting. After several hours of battle, some sixty Mexicans lay dead and another sixty wounded, with only one dead and nine wounded on the Texian side.

Woll limped back into town. He realized that the momentum had turned against him and the Texian force would only grow as more reinforcements trickled in. Woll knew that he needed to get out of San Antonio, but he resolved to inflict as much damage to the little frontier town as possible before he did. First, he issued an order declaring that all “Mexicans” – by which he meant Tejanos, of course – were to return to Mexico with him or be considered traitors. This was hardly a choice – General Woll was then holding prisoner 200 San Antonians who had defied him a few days before – and so 200 families dutifully packed up their belongings to go with him. Although most would return once they no longer had guns pointed at their heads, it furthered Santa Anna’s strategy of sowing seeds of mistrust between Tejanos and Anglos.675

As much as he might have liked to, Woll knew he couldn’t march all of his San Antonio prisoners back with him, so he cherry-picked the ones he believed to be the most important. There is some evidence that Juan Seguín played a role here in winning releases for many of the prisoners, including for example Brian Callaghan.676But when Woll finally marched out of San Antonio on September 20th – just fifteen days after he had captured it – he still had with him sixty-seven of the town’s most prominent citizens including Horace Alsbury, Samuel Maverick, and John Twohig.

The so-called “San Antonio prisoners” were in for an ordeal. Over the next four months they would be marched over 1,000 miles, to the old Rio Grande missions, to Monclova, Saltillo, San Luis Potosi, and eventually Mexico City, covering as much as thirty miles a day on some occasions, on foot and in winter. Juana Navarro Alsbury, whose husband was among the prisoners, proved herself as bold as ever, and followed her captured husband’s march as long as she could, halfway through the state of Coahuila, until she eventually turned back to lobby for her husband’s release through other channels.677The prisoners were incarcerated in the same Perote prison where the members of the ill-fated Santa Fe expedition had been held the year before. Some were forced to work at hard labor. Some would be held for almost two years. Some would never make it home.

More Texians soon joined them. A retaliatory expedition had been organized in San Antonio after General Woll’s departure, the so-called Mier Expedition which fared even worse than the Santa Fe Expedition. Three hundred Texians had marched from San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley, captured the inconsequential town of Mier on the Mexican side, but were then captured by Mexican Centralist forces. With his typical brutality, Santa Anna ordered the entire expedition executed, but the capturing officers refused, instead filling a jar with nine white beans to every black one and forcing the prisoners of war to each draw a bean out of the jar. The men who chose the black beans were executed. The rest were marched to Perote prison.

Slowly, however, most did go home. Thanks to Juana’s lobbying, Horace Alsbury was released on March 24. Samuel A. Maverick was released from prison in April 1843 through the efforts of the U. S. Minister to Mexico.678And a few months later, on July 2, 1843, Twohig and about a dozen other San Antonians tunneled their way out of prison, journeyed to Veracruz on foot, and made it home via steamship to New Orleans seven months later.679

All this time, José Antonio Navarro – taken prisoner in 1841, recall – continued wasting away in horrid conditions. Navarro was perhaps the only Texan whom Santa Anna hated more than Seguín. As one of three Tejanos who had signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and given heart to many other Mexican independence movements that rose up in its wake, Santa Anna viewed Navarro as a special breed of traitor.680 Navarro’s memoir and biography edited by David R. McDonald details all that Navarro suffered because of Santa Anna’s wrath. He was held in solitary confinement for months at a time during his three-year imprisonment, his perennially oozing leg was left untreated, and he was forced to recant his involvement in the Texas independence movement, all while Santa Anna openly maneuvered to have him executed. It was only the integrity of a few Mexican judges681 that kept him alive long enough to see Santa Anna deposed – albeit it only temporarily – in 1844. During the confusion surrounding Santa Anna’s removal from office, Navarro was able to escape and make his way back to San Antonio. There, he was greeted with a hero’s welcome, and to his family brand he added a loop of chain as a symbol of what he had suffered for Texas.682

No other community had to bear the burden of Texas independence the way San Antonians did, and no San Antonian was left unscarred by the period. According to Juan Seguín, “There was not one family who did now mourn the loss of a relative, and as culmination of their misfortunes, they found their houses in ruins, their fields laid waste, and their cattle destroyed or dispersed.”683

Worse, the period had tested many of the bonds that had held old San Antonians togethering through previous hardships.684Hundreds of Anglo families had just had their loved ones imprisoned and, in some cases, massacred again by Mexican Centralists, who had then forced hundreds of Tejano families at gunpoint to make a choice that guaranteed them treatment as a traitor no matter which option they chose. Mistrust and ill will began to run wild. As Texas Ranger Captain and historian of the period Rip Ford would later acknowledge, Tejanos did not “always received fair and honorable treatment at the hands of Texians.”685There were continued efforts by land speculators to nullify land titles belonging old Tejano families. To the infinite credit of Texas Courts, most of these suits were dismissed and the courts typically found ways to cure defective Spanish and Mexican titles to honor custom and obvious patterns of use. Yet defending against spurious lawsuits wasn’t cheap for old Tejano landowners, and it would be dishonest to ignore the disadvantages they faced in having to justify their long-held properties in the new, unfamiliar, and essentially foreign court system.686And with Lorenzo de Zavala and José Francisco Ruiz dead, Juan Seguín discredited, and José Antonio Navarro rotting away in a Mexican prison, there were few left to advocate in their name.

You can make a strong argument that this period was the nadir of San Antonio’s history. And I don’t say that lightly. We’re talking about a community here that had just a generation before suffered the genocidal visit of a Spanish Royalist general who had killed a third or more of the men in the city, a town that had endured a century and a half of brutal attacks by plains Indians, and a population that had suffered with tragic regularity epidemics that killed a quarter or more of its inhabitants.

Yet San Antonio in 1844 might have been worse. In that year, its population fell to 800 people,687the lowest in a century. Many of the oldest residents had moved on, some by choice, some not. Even San Antonio’s old lifeline – international trade – had been cut off by all the invasions and counter invasions which subjected every wagon train to the risk of theft or requisition by armies that acted sometimes more like bandits. Violence and murders were common in town. Convictions were not. In Juan Seguín’s words, “In those evil days, San Antonio swarmed with adventurers from every quarter of the globe” and was the “receptacle for the scum of society.”688

Yet curiously, it’s the decade before and after this period that really becomes the defining period of not just San Antonio’s, but of Texas’s mythology. Maybe it’s too much to say that the entire Texas identity comes out of the San Antonio of this period, but the horses, the cattle, the lariats, the chaps, the boots, the spurs, the saddles, the hats, the cowboys, the Indians, the food, the rodeos, the lingo, the land-craziness – they do. They’d been a part of daily life in San Antonio by this point for 150 years, yet sometime around this period, Anglo-Americans began to adopt them as fitting symbols of other dearly-held American ideals.

And interestingly, San Antonio’s influence began to spread south as well. The stylized outfits in charrería came from Central México, but the feats of horsemanship that Charros perform have been informed as much by the ranching techniques developed on the ranges around San Antonio as by old Iberian equestrian traditions refined in the Mexican highlands. Just as rodeo would be later recognized as the national sport of Texas, charrería would later be anointed the national sport of Mexico. And much in the way that America would adopt the cowboy as a symbol of simplicity, honesty, and self-reliance, so too was the charro later adopted in large swaths of Mexico as a uniquely regional expression of certain old Hispanic ideals.

If there’s anything redemptive about this period, it’s that Americans and Mexicans both – independently albeit indirectly – seem to acknowledge that San Antonio during this most tragic period was giving birth to the fullest, highest expressions of each of their cultures. And God bless them for it, San Antonians of this period are worthy of our admiration! They were enterprising and impossibly hard men – and women! Mary Maverick kept a diary for most of her life in San Antonio, and describes women like herself going down to the river with friends – each armed with a brace of pistols and a Bowie knife fixed on their belts.689It’s a shame that cameras came around a few decades too late to capture that picture, and yet the imagery and ideology of the age lives on all around us.

Episode 20: San Antonio on the Brink

Frederick Law Olmstead was among the world’s first landscape architects. Originally from New England, he worked first as a journalist before stumbling into a career that would see him design Central Park in New York, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and hundreds of other parks, campuses, and public places across the United States.

Yet in all his travels to American cities young and old, one place stood out for him for its setting, its “odd and antiquated foreignness,” and it’s “singular composite character.”690San Antonio in 1856 comprised an irregular polygon whose northwest corner sat at the intersection of the future Jackson-Keller and Vance-Jackson Roads, from which it ran southwest along the line later known as Callaghan Road, around the future site of Port San Antonio, back northeast up Somerset/Nogalitos then due east/northeast beneath the future Lone Star Brewery over to where Commerce and Houston streets meet up on the East Side, then back Northwest to join up with Hildebrand where it hits North New Braunfels, and from there more or less along the trajectory of Jackson Keller-back up to its Northwest Corner. Of course, most of the lots within these limits still boasted their own gardens and corrals – defined and made possible by the acequias dug a century before – giving the “town” a pastoral air. (Note that all four of the southern missions were excluded from these city limits, as they remained relatively independent, self-governing communities. This allowed them to preserve some of their unique flavor, though it also meant they were slower to develop.)

In 1856, Olmstead arrived in San Antonio from the northeast and first sighted its rooftops from the hilltop that would later house Trinity University. In the northern part of the city, he passed through new German neighborhoods with tidy orchards and garden plots and single-story houses made from local limestone with continental woodworking finishes. Pushing south into the city proper, he passed through the Anglo-American neighborhoods with their planed lumber houses and picket fences, which pressed down upon the Irish Flats neighborhood north of Alamo Plaza. Passing through the city’s center, he entered Laredito or “Little Laredo” as the Tejano neighborhoods to the southwest became known.

The city’s center itself presented a jumble of tongues and ethnicities, a “picturesque admixture of sallow Yankees, bearded Germans, and sauntering Mexicans,” just to name a few. Laws and street signs were printed in English, German, Spanish, and sometimes French as well,691 and poet Sidney Lanier twenty years later would observe how these signs “unconsciously satirized” the three cultures. One such sign read:

Walk your horse over this bridge, or you will be fined.

Schnelles Reiten uber diese Brucke ist verboten

Anda despacio con su caballo, o teme la ley.

The American warning appeals to the pocketbook, the German need only know that it is forbidden, and the “Mexicano,” as Lanier called him, is threatened in vague terms by “the law.”692

Which is not to say that any of the laws in San Antonio of this period were particularly well-observed. Not a week went by where there wasn’t a murder or gunfight in the paper, and indeed they were so common that often they went unremarked. In Olmsted’s words, “if neither antagonist is seriously injured, they…drink together on the following day, and the town waits for the next excitement.”

San Antonio’s famed plazas were the focus of commercial life and served as a melting pot – or perhaps more aptly, a chili pot. During these years, local vendors, primarily women, set up stands daily in Military Plaza (Plaza de Armas) where they offered soldiers, traders, and locals a regional specialty: large chunks of beef and fat slow cooked in pots over mesquite fires and seasoned with chiles and other spices. Visitors were enchanted by these so-called Chili Queens, both for the dish they served as well as by the “dark-eyed beauties” who served it.

When night fell on the plazas, the fandangos and serenades began. Fandango taxes remained a principal source of municipal revenue, and there were typical three or four each night.693 Olmstead describes them: “At these fandangos may be seen the muleteer, fresh from the coast or the Pass, with gay clothes and a dozen or so of silver dollars; the United States soldiers just from the barracks, abounding in oaths and tobacco; the herdsman, with his blanket and a long knife, which seems a portion of every Mexican; the disbanded ranger, rough, bearded, and armed with his huge holster pistol and long bowie knife, [all] dancing, eating, drinking, swearing, and carousing…”694 Men and women would pasear around the plaza and shoot eyes at each other, “all by the light of torches, making a ruddily picturesque evening group.”695

San Antonio’s peculiar attitudes toward race and ethnicity were remarkable even to Olmsted, who had traveled the world. To be sure, San Antonio in the 1850’s had its own “slave codes” with curfews, anti-loitering provisions, and other prejudicial laws directed at her small slave population, so we shouldn’t romanticize this too much.696Still, Olmsted was surprised to note that San Antonians “consort freely with negros, making no distinction from pride of race.” We can appreciate this as the unsurprising legacy of San Antonio’s history as mixed-race frontier town, a history that would make it possible for San Antonio to become the first town in the “Old South” to voluntarily desegregate its lunch counters, schools, and public transportation a century later.697 And by comparison to other Texas cities at the time, like Austin, which twice during this same decade forcibly expelled its Tejano population,698 San Antonio seemed downright enlightened.

The San Antonio that Olmstead found in 1856 had come a long way from the devastated “ruin” that future President Ruther B Hayes’s term described when he had visited a decade prior.699 As a result of renewed Comanche hostilities and two Mexican invasions in 1842, San Antonio’s population had collapsed to only 800 people by 1844, its lowest point in nearly 100 years. Many of its leading men were rotting in Mexican prisons for much of that period, while many others had fled amidst heightened ethnic tensions. Bullet holes and powder marks scarred San Antonio’s crumbling buildings, with the frontier slowly reclaiming the surrounding farms and ranches.

This was the context from which San Antonians had viewed the hottest topic of 1845 – Annexation to the United States – and they viewed it a bit differently than most Texians.

First, a major downside of annexation for San Antonians would be the removal of decision-making far, far away from San Antonio – farther away even than when they had depended on Mexico City. If they couldn’t get any assistance from their government when it was 90 miles away in Austin, what hope did they have when it was back on the other side of the continent, seated amongst men that couldn’t even conceive of how they lived?

Second, everyone knew that annexation meant near certain war with Mexico. After the last two Mexican invasions had been turned back, albeit with some difficulty, Mexico had been inclined to at last recognize the independence of the Texian republic. But once they heard news of Texas’s flirtations with the United States, they broke off all such discussions and made it clear that they would consider annexation an act of war. And war with Mexico would put San Antonio back on the front line of potentially the largest conflict the continent had ever seen.

Third, many old San Antonians felt like annexation by the United States only confirmed what cynics had said about Texas’s independence movement all along: that it was just a land grab by greedy Americans. Francisco Antonio Ruiz – son of José Francisco Ruiz, signer of the Declaration of Independence and mayor of San Antonio during the battle of the Alamo – felt that annexation was a betrayal of the old republican ideals of devolved power that his father and so many other men had signed the Texas Declaration of Independence to win. When he saw the direction that the annexation movement was going, he followed in his father’s footsteps from 1813 and fled to live amongst the plains Indians for five years, where temporarily at least, men still lived according to a natural law.

On the other hand, most San Antonians, including José Antonio Navarro, saw annexation to the United States as a godsend. It meant access to far greater resources and to a stable treasury. Attachment to the US might be the best possible deterrent to increased Mexican attacks. And frankly, most San Antonians realized, war between the United States and Mexico could offer some unique commercial opportunities for San Antonians.

Despite all the risks and all the uncertainty, San Antonians voted for annexation, 138 to 17. Though an overwhelming majority, it was still the second-lowest margin amongst all Texas counties. José Antonio Navarro – back in Texas for less than a year now following his ordeal in Mexican prison – was elected to represent San Antonio at the state constitutional convention, a fitting assignment for a man who had been involved in drafting more constitutions than perhaps anyone on the continent at that point: Gutiérrez de Lara’s in 1813, the Mexican Federalist Constitution indirectly in 1824, the Coahuilan State Constitution in 1827, and the Republic of Texas’s constitution in 1836. He would go on to serve as San Antonio’s first State Senator.

On December 29, 1845, Texas joined the United States and the stars and stripes ran up flagpoles in San Antonio. A few days prior, the U.S. army had occupied the old Spanish Governor’s palace and begun preparations for war with Mexico.

On January 13, 1846, the first U.S. Army units marched out of San Antonio on their way to the Rio Grande, where Mexican forces were also massing, each asserting its claim to that merciless stretch of wild horse desert known as the Nueces Strip.

Within three months, hostilities had commenced. It’s easy to forget that the outcome of the Mexican War was by no means pre-ordained. The Mexican army was three times the size of the U.S.’s in 1846. Its officer class was superb, many of them educated in Europe, and staffed as well by veterans of Europe’s many wars of the period. It had modernized much of its equipment since 1836, and its artillery continued to be among the best in the world.

By comparison, the U.S. army relied heavily on volunteers, many of them self-provisioned. And they were poorly prepared for the plains of South Texas and Northern Mexico. They came to rely heavily on the successor to Juan Seguín’s old frontier ranging battalion, commanded now by Colonel Jack Hays. Jack Hays had spent the last decade in the saddle fighting Comanches and repelling Mexican invasions. He had learned well the lessons of San Antonio-style frontier warfare, and had made his own contributions to the practice, most notably, with Samuel Colt’s repeating revolver.

The Texas Rangers, as they had come to be known, would lead U.S. General Zachary Taylor’s invasion into Northern Mexico, scouting ahead of the slow-moving U.S. regular army, storming the walls of Monterrey, and beating Santa Anna at the battle of Buena Vista near Saltillo, where General Taylor rendezvoused with another U.S. column marching down from San Antonio and also led by San Antonian scouts. Northern Mexico was, after all, familiar terrain to San Antonians, who had long depended on Monterrey and Saltillo as centers of government and commerce.

Then, word came down of plans for an amphibious assault on Veracruz, to be led by General Winfield Scott. General Scott ordered that one unit in particular be reassigned from General Taylor’s army: Colonel Hays and his Texas Rangers. Colonel Hays returned to San Antonio to re-form his unit and gather more recruits.700 They marched out of San Antonio in early 1847 to the Texas coast and boarded a ship for Veracruz, where they disembarked in one of the U.S.’s first major amphibious operations. Hays and his rangers would scout, forage, and secure General Scott’s lines of communication all the way to Mexico City. Their knowledge of Spanish, their resourcefulness, and their horsemanship were invaluable. If new arrivals to Texas a decade before had had to be taught to “ride like Mexicans” a decade before,701by 1847 they had learned their lesson well. Upon entering new towns along their march, Hays’s rangers would attempt to outdo each other in displays of equestrian skill, whipping their mounts through the main streets, standing up in their saddles,702 and putting a uniquely Anglo-American twist on the old San Antonio carrera del gallo trick. Whereas the original trick involved burying a chicken up to its head and plucking the head off the ground at a full gallop, these modern-day jinetes picked up silver dollars instead.703

Armed with their repeating revolvers, Hays’ Texas Rangers were also the best armed and most mobile forces in the entire U.S. army. They were brutally effective. They earned the nickname los diablos Tejanos from their enemies and you should read Rip Ford’s Texas for a first-hand account of their exploits.704

When los diablos Tejanos marched into Mexico City on September 15th, 1847, it was a remarkable turnabout for a people who just eleven years prior had been at real risk of extermination by the same government whose capital they now occupied. The victory was made all the sweeter by the fact that it had been won against their old nemesis, Santa Anna, who had returned to the presidency of México just in time to lead it to disaster once more.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo concluded the Mexican-American War. The border between the two states would be the Rio Grande River, though the stretch between San Antonio and the Rio Grande would remain a wild and lawless region for another half century. The Treaty also helped to resolve some of the ethnic tension of the previous decade as well. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo expressly granted full citizenship and full rights to all Tejanos who desired them. Of the thousands of Tejanos living in Texas, only 150 declined American citizenship: the vast majority remained, and by remaining, made clear their desire to be Americans.705The fight for equal rights and equal treatment under the law was by no means over for many of these Tejanos, but from 1848 on they voted with their feet. Between 1836 and 1850, it appears that more Hispanic-surnamed individuals entered Texas than had ever done prior to 1836.706Even Juan Seguín returned to Texas, and by 1852, was elected Justice of the Peace in San Antonio.707

The wartime economy had wildly improved San Antonio’s fortunes. The population of the city quadrupled in the five years between annexation and the 1850 census, to 3,500 people. Perhaps more impressively, between 1850 and 1855, the tax base of the city doubled every single year, a truly remarkable statistic that reveals that dynamism of the decade.708Vast quantities of men and supplies passed through the city during the war, and as the war ended, many of those merchants decided to take up residence in San Antonio, which, they found, was ideally situated halfway between the markets of Latin American and Eastern North America and between markets on the Atlantic seaboard and booming California.709Mule trains, sometimes 100 or more wagons long,710 became common sights, and Tejanos in particular came to dominate the trade. Almost half of Tejano heads of household soon found work as arrieros, or teamsters. Texas Ranger Ben McCulloch claimed that a San Antonio teamster could load a 25-mule pack train quicker than a single one of his rangers could load his own gear,711 which should surprise no one who has ever seen a San Antonian fit an entire living room set in the bed of a compact pickup truck.

These new trading opportunities and this new spirit of optimism prompted San Antonio businessmen to underwrite the newly returned war-hero Colonel Jack Hays to blaze a trail to El Paso, which was still only nominally under Texas control.712 It was this expedition that probably secured Texas’s claims to El Paso prior to the Compromise of 1850 which saw Texas otherwise abandon its pretensions west of the Pecos River.713By 1857, San Antonio was an important stop on the transcontinental overland routes regularly traveled by the Wells-Fargo package service and sat on the most promising route for a potential transcontinental railroad.714

San Antonio wasn’t just a waystation, however; it had important products to supply to new markets in the Eastern United States and especially to California, whose population was growing more quickly than it could feed itself.715 Cattle drives from San Antonio became California’s primary source of beef for a decade. As much as we romanticize the great cattle drives to come in the 1870’s, those cattle drives were primarily north, up the Great Plains through flat, unfeatured terrain with few material rivers to speak of. By contrast, the previous century of cattle drives out of Texas had seen San Antonio drovers moving cattle from West to East, to markets in New Orleans or beyond, crossing every Texas river perpendicularly through thickets and piney woods.716 The great cattle drives west out of San Antonio in the 1850’s were even more challenging: they had to cross the Rocky Mountains, survive the great American Desert, and contend with some of the fiercest plains Indians at the height of their power. We’re talking about the Comanches of course.

Even after the Mexican American War, San Antonio remained the base from which Comanche power was met. Just as they always had, slow-moving regular soldiers struggled to keep the Comanches at bay, and frontier defense still fell primarily to the Texas Rangers, commanded now by one of the great historians of the period, RIP Ford.717In 1858, RIP Ford’s Rangers and the Second US Cavalry drove the Comanches all the way to Oklahoma in a campaign that retraced much of the same route worn by San Antonians almost exactly 100 years before on their way to the Battle of the Twin Villages. When the US Cavalry began to lag, however, Ford’s Rangers took the initiative for them, crossed the Red River, and attacked a Comanche force three times their size, killing seventy-six of the enemy at the cost of only two Rangers. When the U.S. Cavalry commander – humiliated by the triumph of a bunch of untrained irregulars718–reprimanded Ford for entering Oklahoma territory and operating outside his jurisdiction as a Texas Ranger, Ford responded that he had been tasked with finding Comanches, not learning geography.719

Yet the US Army brought important resources and stability to the fight against the Comanches as well. Whereas the Rangers were a response force of volunteers that rarely remained in the field once the emergency had been addressed, the Army was able to establish and hold a line of forts to shield the settlements from the fiercest raids. The line ran first from Eagle Pass up through the Hill Country, and by the mid 1850’s had been pushed all the way to Brackettville, Fort Stockton, Abilene, and up to the Red River.

The U.S. Army took over where Spain and Mexico had left off in San Antonio as well, establishing a permanent and meaningful presence in the town. It was during this period that the Army occupied the crumbling Alamo, repairing its pockmarked façade and adding its iconic hump.720 Nine years later, it would begin construction of the much larger U.S. Army Arsenal complex just south of downtown, which serves today as HEB’s headquarters. Because of the ongoing battles with the Comanches and the instability of the border region, at one point in the 1850’s something like one-tenth of the entire U.S. Army – and almost two-thirds of its actual fighting forces721 – was stationed in or reported up through San Antonio. The San Antonio front became a training ground for many of the men who would make their names in the upcoming Civil War. The Second U.S. Cavalry, commanded by then-Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee and stationed in San Antonio, would produce seventeen general officers during the Civil War, more than any other regiment in U.S. history.722

Yet neither the US Army nor the Texas Rangers nor even Samuel Colt’s revolver would have so lasting an impact on the Comanche empire as something else that came out of San Antonio in 1849. A cholera epidemic swept the town that year, killing off 600 people, a quarter or so of the population. While the epidemic was raging, several Comanches came to trade in San Antonio, as had long been their custom. When they returned to the plains, they took back with them the dreaded disease to their long-sheltered brethren, whose remoteness from European settlements had prevented prior exposure.

The Comanches were defenseless against this invisible enemy. Almost half of the tribe died during the 1849 cholera epidemic, including every chief of any stature.723 The truth is that – as bloody as their raids still were in the 1850’s – after 1849, the Comanches were really only fighting a rearguard action as their tribal structures crumbled. It would take a decade for the Comanches to recover from the devastation of 1849 and by then they had lost valuable time and territory and San Antonio had been removed from the frontline of conflict.

Yet San Antonio still didn’t feel like an “American” city.724 New immigrant groups kept discovering San Antonio before Anglo-Americans could quite take it over.

In a previous episode, we mentioned the Irish who came right after Texas’s independence, drawn to San Antonio’s Catholic heritage. Several of these new immigrants – Brian Callaghan, Sr. and Ed Dwyer – became early mayors. John Twohig, recall, had come to San Antonio in 1830. He had participated in the Siege of Béxar, was captured in the second 1842 Mexican Invasion, and then escaped from Mexican prison and made his way by ship back to Texas in 1844. He had set up shop on Main Plaza, where his business prospered, and he soon transitioned from trading to lending, becoming one of the town’s first quasi-bankers. During the first 1842 Mexican invasion, just prior to the arrival of Mexican forces, he had given away all of his stock to the poor in San Antonio rather than have it fall into enemy hands. That started a tradition of handing out bread to the poor each Saturday in front of his home, which has now been relocated and sits on the grounds of the Witte Museum.

The so-called “breadline banker” was a devout Catholic and helped underwrite the construction of St. Mary’s church, which opened in 1857 as the first English-speaking church in the city. He also became one of the principal benefactors of the Brothers of the Society of Mary, whom he supported in founding a school on the east bank of the San Antonio River. Beginning in 1852 as St. Louis Academy, the school would eventually spin-off into Central Catholic High School and St. Mary’s University.725

The year prior, Magdalen de la Garza – daughter of José Antonio Garza, designer of the original Lone Star on his 1818 Texas coin – had founded Ursuline Academy for girls. The original Ursuline academy was designed and built by Francois Giraud, a French surveyor and architect, who had arrived in San Antonio in 1847 and married María Apolinaria Treviño, a descendant of Canary Islanders. He would become the pre-eminent San Antonio architect of the 19th century and go on to build St. Mary’s Church and St. Mary’s University and lead the restoration of San Fernando Church in 1873.

Another Frenchman would for a time become the wealthiest man in San Antonio. Francois Guilbeau came to San Antonio in 1839 and married Rosaria Ramón, a Canary Islander of the old Ramón line going back to Captain Diego Ramón of the Rio Grande Presidio. He developed a network of ox trains running to Mexico, the Gulf Coast, and back. An amateur botanist in his spare time, he saved the European wine industry thanks to his shipment of several hundred tons of Texas mustang grapes to France during an aphid outbreak that nearly destroyed French viticulture.726

A third Catholic church, St. Michael’s, soon went up to serve a growing Polish community, many of whom had settled in towns surrounding San Antonio such as Panna Maria and St. Hedwig to the southeast and Bandera to the northwest. Aside from Kiolbassa sausage, Poles made another significant contribution to San Antonio culture: the accordion still rings out today in conjunto Tejano music, as San Antonians continued to adopt newcomers’ customs as quickly as newcomers adopted theirs.

Carl Hilmar Guenther was a refugee from the turmoil of 1848 who had apprenticed as a millwright back in Saxony before crossing the Atlantic. Starting in New York, he worked his way across the continent, through Wisconsin, St. Louis, and New Orleans. At any point along the way the ambitious young German probably could have settled down and made for himself a comfortable living yet, as he said, “I can not rest; I am too young for that.”727

Like DeZavala a generation before, he observed with approval Americans’ “zest” for reading newspapers.728Upon entering Texas, he commented – just as De Zavala’s colleague Miguel Ramos Arizpe had – on how the frontier practice of shared self-defense contributed toward civic virtue and served to absorb new immigrants rapidly into an otherwise disparate community. Yet it was San Antonio, he pronounced upon his arrival there in 1851, “where you can make money,” even if he conceded that living in San Antonio was not quite so pleasant as living in more established population centers.729

But for people like Guenther – indeed, as for people like the first San Antonio settlers in 1718, like the Navarros, Veramendis, or Zambranos who came later in the eighteenth century, like Stephen F. Austin and other early Anglos who ventured into a strange and unfamiliar new culture – the coarseness of life in a place like frontier San Antonio was offset by one simple fact: quoting Guenther again, “that it is free!”730We snark so easily at the word “freedom” today because it has been so abused by so many to advance their own self-serving ends, but we should try to remember that it clearly meant something real to the people who settled our city. It was something that they were willing to sacrifice material comfort for and even to risk their life for.

San Antonio’s location at the intersection of several different culture traditions and far-removed from what few power structures actually existed in those days prevented any one group from truly dominating the city.731While in other parts of America, Guenther and other Germans had merely worked as wage laborers and had to fight their way even to the front of the food line on jobsites to make sure they got fed, in San Antonio, they were free to innovate, to become entrepreneurs, and to advance themselves by their industriousness:

“Is it really better in American than in Germany? For me it is better for anyone who wants to work hard…Even those who were in glowing circumstances in Germany and brought plenty of money with them and then lost everything now find themselves entirely happy again after having started over again and worked their way up from the bottom. These are the ones who have become Americanized and understand the advantages of living in freedom. They would not return to Germany for any price, even if everything that was lost would be returned to them.”732

Once the letters like these began circulating in Germany and once men like Prince Carl von Solms-Braunfels organized the Adelsverein or German Emigration Company in 1842, German immigration to Texas really began to take off. Germany’s record in the 20th century can sometimes obscure for us the Germany of the eighteenth century, the Germany of Leibniz, Mozart, and Goethe. It was the center of culture and learning in Europe. These immigrants to San Antonio brought this culture with them, along with a wide diversity of ideas and religious practices, from Catholicism to Lutheranism to free thinkers, which they could debate openly in their new home.

Between 1845 and 1860, 30,000 Germans entered Texas, 7,600 of whom settled in San Antonio and at least as many more in the nearby Hill Country. In addition to the freedom they found in the San Antonio area, they were drawn to its Old World cultural familiarity, which stood in stark contrast to more staid, puritanical American cities on the Eastern seaboard. In San Antonio’s nightly fandangos and serenades, Germans immediately found outlet for their passion for dancing and singing. In 1865, they organized the Beethoven Maanerchor or “singing club,” which continues in existence to this day.

Recall too that San Antonio had the oldest public schools in the state, first forming them in 1811. Lands set aside to support local schools by the State of Coahuila in the 1820’s still supported San Antonio’s fifteen primary and secondary schools in the 1850’s, which enrolled some 750 students and which fit well with these new immigrants’ emphasis on education.733 To this, Germans added a physical component, and their Turn Verein clubs (called Turners for short, as in the Old Turner club on 9th street), and German athletic programs proliferated throughout the region, with the Turn Verein club in nearby Boerne enduring right down through to the present day.

The German population grew rapidly, and they began to impose their instinctive orderliness on the town. They cleaned up the old acequias, whose misuse as open sewers had contributed significantly to the cholera epidemic of 1848-9. And they put the acequias to work. Before the arrival of the Germans only one mill operated along San Antonio’s water ways. Within a generation, dozens sprouted up, again, the area’s gentle gradient uniquely well-suited for controlled water power. The most famous and enduring of these mills was founded by that immigrant whose letters we quoted earlier: Carl Jilmar Guenther. In 1859, he constructed a mill at the spot where the old San Pedro Acequia joined the San Antonio River near the intersection of Main Street and South Alamo street.734His enterprise there would become Pioneer Flour Mills, the name a reminder of his enchantment with the romance of the American frontier, and one of the oldest continuously operating businesses in the state of Texas.

In 1856, Simon Menger started a soap factory along the old Alamo acequia. He soon started brewing beer at the same location, and by 1860, “Western Brewery” was the largest single enterprise in the state of Texas and “Menger Beer” was a staple of San Antonio life. (By the 1870’s, more than a dozen breweries were operating in San Antonio, almost all of them founded by Germans, including Lone Star Beer in 1874 and Pearl Beer in 1881.)

Yet Menger would become most famous for the hotel he constructed over his brewery, adjacent to the Alamo. Soon known as the finest hotel west of the Mississippi, the opulence of the Menger Hotel was a sign of the times in San Antonio. It cost the fantastic sum of $16,000 just to furnish the hotel, and what should make that all the more impressive is to remember that each piece of furniture was hauled to San Antonio by oxcart or mule train. The Menger Hotel continues in operation today, and over its 150-year history, it has played host to Sam Houston, Robert E Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, O. Henry, Sidney Lanier, Oscar Wilde, Lily Langtry and Sarah Bernhardt, and Presidents Taft, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Clinton, who if you ask him, still raves about its mango ice cream.

In 1853, cabinet-maker Wenzel Friedrich took inspiration from San Antonio’s historically most important industry and developed a style of furniture that eventually decorated the palaces of Queen Victoria, Otto von Bismarck, and Kaiser Wilhelm. They apparently found nothing incongruous about lounge chairs made of bull’s horns and deer hides sitting next to fine Old World furniture. Look up Friedrich’s works, they are gaudy and glorious. His son would embrace the style as well, and later found the Buckhorn Saloon still operating on Houston street today.

In 1853, the first German language newspaper, San Antonio Zeitung, was published only five years after the first English language newspaper began publication as “The Western Texan. “In 1855, the first Spanish language newspaper went into circulation, “El Bexareño,” published, interestingly, by a Frenchman, a mark of San Antonio’s multilingualism. That same year, Germans formed the Casino Association at the corner of modern-day Crockett and Presa streets, which would eventually become the premier social club in the region735. In 1861, they formed the Sons of Herman for the state of Texas in San Antonio, becoming one of the first mutual aid societies in Texas, the forerunners of insurance companies.

San Antonio’s healthful climate, large military presence, and significant contingent of European-trained men of letters soon made it a center of military medicine as well. Doctors such as Ferdinand Ludvig von Herff applied the techniques they read about in academic journals published in Vienna and Heidelberg and synthesized them with the practices developing in North America. San Antonio’s frequent epidemics and war casualties also afforded these doctors ample opportunity to put to work their theories, laying the foundations for both military medicine and the biotech industries that still flourish in the city.

In 1858, the German English School was founded by Friedrich Groos, an 1850 arrival who had married Gertrude Rodríguez, of old Canary Islander stock. Earlier in his career, he had partnered with Frenchman Francois Guilbeau and Irishman Brian Callaghan and started a mercantile firm that would, like John Twohig’s business, morph into an early bank. Groos’s passion for education was characteristic of these German immigrants, and the German-English school would become the premier secondary school in the region. For the next half century it would educate the sons of old Tejano statesmen, industrious German shopkeepers, and newly-arrived American ranchers in a trilingual curriculum of German, English, and Spanish.736 One hundred and thirty-four years later, the old German-English school would be the spot where –fittingly for San Antonio’s role as a hub of international commerce - three heads of state would meet to sign a document creating the largest free trade area in the world.

By 1860, almost half of San Antonio’s 8,235 vecinos were Germans, who comfortably outnumbered Tejanos and Anglos. Around that time, San Antonio once again became the largest city in Texas,737a distinction that San Antonio would hold – despite its extreme isolation – until the oil booms of the 1930’s. Yet for all that they contributed to San Antonio and for all that they shared in common with the residents of their adopted state, there was one thing in particular that the German plurality never quite came around to: slavery. These refugees from the oppressive regimes of the Old World had trouble understanding how their adopted country could offer freedom so bountifully to some men, while those same men held other men in bondage. And a conflict was brewing that would bring that question to the forefront, and test even this frontier town’s famed “singular composite unity.”

Episode 21: A City Divided

When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 Presidential Election, Texas – like many other Southern states – put the issue of secession to a vote.

For most of the state, the outcome was never really in question. But San Antonio in 1860 didn’t really look like the rest of Texas, much less the Deep South. In 1860, out of a population of 8,235, only 514 were slaves, about 6%. Less than 4% of San Antonians were actually slave owners. As such, slavery was not an indispensable or even important part of San Antonio’s economy. As the title of historian Larry Knight’s essay on slavery in South Texas suggests, defenders of the peculiar institution in San Antonio were, in reality, “defending the unnecessary.”738

Much of San Antonio’s population, particularly amongst her German plurality, was in fact actively opposed to slavery. In 1854, the German communities of Texas convened in San Antonio at their Staats-Saengerfest, or state singing festival. (Recall, our Texas Germans loved to sing.)Picking up on the hot button issue of the day, fifty-four of the men issued a statement declaring that “slavery is an evil, the removal of which is absolutely necessary according to the principals of democracy” and “if a state determines the removal of this evil, it may call on the federal government for aid.”739 This bold and unequivocal call for abolition was quickly taken up by San Antonio’s German-language newspaper, the San Antonio Zeitung and by a new English-language rag called the Alamo Express, edited by a young newspaperman named James Newcomb. Newcomb was relentless in attacking the “cotton kings” who he believed were leading the state into a war that they and their sons wouldn’t have to fight.

And in truth many “moderate” Anglo San Antonians were leery of secession as well. With her role as a trading hub and with her climate entirely inhospitable to Southern-style plantation agriculture, San Antonio probably had as many immigrants from Northern States as from Southern states in 1860.740 And all of them had heard of the neglect of the Republic years compared to the prosperity that San Antonio had experienced since Annexation to the Union.

Yet San Antonio’s leaders had – in response to a most peculiar episode in 1854 – developed deep ties with other Democratic party leaders in the state, whose constituents saw the issue differently.

In the early 1850’s, a group called the “Know-Nothings” had sprung up throughout the United States espousing anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and anti-Democratic party positions, which perhaps made for a coherent political platform in a generic northeastern city. But San Antonio in 1854 – heavily immigrant, heavily Catholic, and traditionally without political parties that lined up neatly with the national or even state parties – seemed a strange place for the movement to flourish. Yet in the municipal elections of 1854, the Know Nothings won the mayorship and several city council seats. It seems as though San Antonio Know Nothings managed to forge a fragile coalition with German anti-slavery voters741 – despite the anti-immigrant stances elsewhere – and even some Tejano voters742 – despite their anti-Catholic stances elsewhere. The best I can put together is that their brief victories in 1854 were an expression of frustration by San Antonio voters with the political class that had dominated their city since the 1820’s.

San Antonio old political class organized in response to the challenge. In 1855, Samuel Maverick, Juan Seguín, and Ángel Navarro the III (the Harvard-trained son of José Antonio Navarro) formally organized the Béxar County Democratic party, allying themselves with the only other political party in the State and the party that was – despite its unqualified support for slavery – perhaps the more moderate, big-tent party at the time.

In the meantime, the Know Nothings in San Antonio did themselves few favors. First, they began to voice support for a series of increasingly violent attacks against Tejano freighters known to history as the “Cart Wars,” attacks which horrified San Antonians who had long depended on the Tejano-led mule trains to bring virtually everything they needed to their isolated town.743 Next, the Know-Nothings halted Spanish translations of city business, alienating what little Tejano support they had. Then they banned bullfighting and cockfighting, popular activities of the time across ethnicity and class in San Antonio.744 And lastly, they banned fandangos and enforced the ban rigorously.745And I’m not kidding, this seems to have been the final straw. When the Know-Nothings turned themselves into the preacher from Footloose, San Antonians decided they had had enough and put the now formally organized Béxar County Democratic Party into office.

Of course, in the weird political alignment of the day, removing the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic party from power meant replacing them with the pro-slavery party. Subsequently, on the eve of the Civil War, San Antonio’s most powerful political faction found itself bound – for reasons almost entirely unrelated to slavery – to a statewide party charting an extreme course. Full disclosure: Juan Seguín, Samuel Maverick, José Antonio Navarro, and many of the men we’ve been following owned slaves themselves. We’ll never be able to understand how these men who tolled the bells of liberty so loudly in San Antonio’s history could reconcile in their minds holding other men in bondage. That said, each of these men advocated against secession when it went to voters on January 28th, 1861.

In the end, San Antonians voted 827 to 709 in favor of seceding from the United States. It was a close vote, and many opponents of secession alleged fraud by observers brought in by outside groups. It didn’t really matter, however. Statewide, secession won in a landslide, and when the State convention gathered in Austin on February 1, the State of Texas formally left the Union it had joined only fifteen years before.

Most San Antonians – even those who had opposed secession – followed Texas once the decision had been made. Navarro would send all four of his sons to fight for the new Confederate States of America. Maverick would see his four sons in grey uniforms as well and was soon selected as one of the three commissioners charged with securing all U.S. government property in San Antonio for the newly re-independent state of Texas.

On February 8, Maverick met with the commander of U.S. Army forces in San Antonio, General David Twiggs. Twiggs was understandably confused as to what exactly he should do. On the one hand, the men under his command constituted almost 10% of the Regular U.S. army, stationed in San Antonio for the previous decade to confront Comanche incursions and to calm the lawless borderlands. His arms and inventory were valued at $1.3 MM and handing this over to the rebel militia would be a major boon to their new revolt. Yet the seventy-two-year-old Twiggs was reluctant to start the Civil War thousands of miles from reinforcements in the middle of the largest city in Texas by firing on a civilian militia composed of men that his superiors in D.C. technically insisted were still American citizens.

For eight tense days, negotiations continued between Maverick and Twiggs in the old Veramendi House, site of the death of Old Ben Milam, the marriage of Jim Bowie, and many other moments of historical importance. Maverick and Twiggs were genuinely committed to avoiding bloodshed, yet each had honor to protect. On February 16th, just as Texas Ranger Colonel Ben McCullough received the order to assault Twiggs and his forces, Maverick and Twiggs agreed on the terms of a surrender, on the condition that Twiggs’ men be allowed to march out of Texas under arms. When he marched out of San Antonio with the rest of Twiggs’s men the next day, Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee was still wearing blue.

Twiggs was immediately vilified in the North for his refusal to fire on San Antonians, again, more evidence for how high emotions were running in 1861. On March 1, he was dismissed from the U.S. Army for “treachery to the flag of his country,” making him one of the few Generals actually run out of the U.S. Army on the eve of the Civil War.

The Civil War of course quickly grew to a size and scale that even its most bloodthirsty proponents could never have expected. In total, almost 2,000 San Antonians – out of a pre-war population of a little over 8,000 –served under the Confederate flag during the Civil War, which should come as no surprise given that the tradition of armed service amongst San Antonians was as old as the town itself.746 This was the community that in 1759 traipsed 400 miles into the wilderness after the Comanches, that in 1835 sent the sons of its first families to aid their Federalist brothers in Coahuila, that in 1840 responded to the call of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande,747 and that in 1847 helped conquer the city that had at least four times had sent armies to assault their own town. Yet this was the furthest afield that San Antonians had ever marched, and the Civil War would ultimately pull San Antonians to battlefields as distant as Tucson, Arizona and Franklin, Tennessee. Almost one-third of the San Antonians who marched out to fight in this war wouldn’t return home.

In addition to Navarro’s and Maverick’s sons, many other old families furnished soldiers to the cause. Lorenzo De Zavala’s son joined the Confederate Navy. Francisco and Manuel Esparza, sons of Alamo defender Gregorio Esparza and non-combatants inside the mission during the battle, enlisted in the Confederate Army. Ángel Navarro the III would rise to command a company of Tejanos. Others like Joséph de la Garza, Manuel Yturri, and the Bustillos brothers would win recognition for their gallantry in the Arkansas theater.748

The Second Texas Mounted Rifles took over the duties of the old Second U.S. Cavalry in defending the frontier forts. Composed of some 800 men drawn primarily from South Texas, including at least thirty San Antonio Tejano artillerymen and thirty San Antonio Tejano infantryman, in late 1861, the unit marched west to conquer New Mexico and Arizona. They captured Mesilla, Albuquerque, and Tucson before being turned back at the Battle of Glorieta Pass. Decimated by casualties and disease, they would end the war down to only 150 men defending the area between San Antonio, Eagle Pass, and Brackettville against Comanche attacks.

The home front in San Antonio during the Civil War was almost as dangerous as some of its battlefields. Many Texans were already suspicious of the town.749 San Antonio didn’t really feel like the rest of the state and the fact that it lay on the road to Mexico – or freedom, if you were a slave – gave some slaveowners reason to fear that San Antonians were actively siphoning slaves out of their bondage. South of San Antonio, the Union had some success in recruiting regiments from locals who felt ignored or oppressed by the party structures in Austin. And though more Texas Germans served with the Confederacy than against it, the most vocal opponents of the Confederacy in Texas came from German Communities.

All of this led to the stationing of pro-Confederate vigilante units in San Antonio early in the war. In September 1861, they lynched a vocal German unionist in front of San Fernando Church. Unphased, in July of 1862, German unionists openly protested the newly-instituted Confederate draft. Then in August of 1862, sixty-five German men and boys fleeing to Mexico to avoid the draft gave rise to rumors of a German Unionist regiment organizing in the Hill Country. The vigilantes assembled in San Antonio rode out after them and slaughtered twenty-five of their number near Comfort, Texas, plus nine others whom they executed after they had surrendered. This brutal episode set off protests in the city,750with San Antonio Unionists marching through the streets of town singing the abolitionist anthem “John Brown’s Body,” and even taking pot-shots at city leaders from rooftops.751 Pro-confederate forces of course retaliated, hanging suspected unionists from oak trees in Military Plaza.752 According to Texas Ranger and historian RIP Ford, “violence prevailed in the Alamo City until the end of the War.”753

RIP Ford – whose real name was John Salmon Ford – actually earned his moniker RIP around this time because so many of his letters concluded with his abbreviation of the phrase “Rest in Peace. “Early in the war, he had been charged with the defense of the frontier but had been left with virtually no men and no funds to do so. The Confederate draft begun in 1862 only further depleted the forces available for frontier service. In December 1863, Colonel RIP Ford set up camp in Alamo plaza and began a formal recruitment drive to enlist 1,300 men from San Antonio and surrounding areas into his “Cavalry of the West. “Effectively, the only men available for service in the Cavalry of the West were draft-exempts, men who were too old, too young, or too otherwise infirm to be wanted in the Eastern theaters. Yet these were also men who – like their forefathers - had known warfare almost their entire lives, through service in Ranger companies or lessons learned as old veterans of San Antonio’s famed compañías volantes, and they answered the call once again.

Union forces in the Rio Grande Valley had begun to gain ground against the sparse Confederate forces protecting the critical cotton trade routes to Mexico. In March of 1864, the Cavalry of the West marched out of San Antonio to meet them. Over the course of the next year – and outnumbered four to one – the Cavalry of the West would sweep Union forces almost entirely out of South Texas, despite the absence of aid from the state or Confederate government and despite Ford’s personal flare-ups of the malaria he had contracted during the Mexican-American war.754The Cavalry of the West would ultimately fight and win the final battle of the Civil War at Palo Alto in the Rio Grande Valley on May 13, 1865, more than a month after General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.755 Their only pay for the entire period was the proceeds from the sale of their weapons to Mexican Imperial forces across the river.

San Antonio bore the costs of the Civil War in men and materiel just like everyone else, yet it’s remoteness from the primary fields of action spared it the devastation visited on many proper Southern cities. If anything, San Antonio experienced a mild economic boom.756A cartridge factory on the east side went into business manufacturing ammunition for the confederate army. San Antonians’ famed leatherworkers were put to work in an industrial tannery which processed enough leather for 15,000 pairs of shoes per month.757And when the Union navy blockaded the Confederacy’s ports, this left the only access to foreign markets through Mexico, a trade which San Antonio had long controlled. The road from San Antonio to Matamoros became known as the “Wisps of Cotton Road” because of all the stray cotton fibers adorning the brush, as locals like George Brackenridge realized fantastic profits moving stranded Confederate cotton to foreign buyers just across the Rio Grande. This new trade led to the reopening of trade relations between San Antonio and Mexico and the establishment of the first Mexican Consulate in San Antonio.

When the war ended and Union troops entered San Antonio on June 2, 1865, the scars of the conflict were not quick to heal. Reconstruction placed an abused, Unionist minority in control of a defeated, ex-Confederate majority, and neither was quick to forgive or forget.758 James Newcomb, the Unionist newspaperman, had been forced to flee for his life to Mexico around 1863, but returned in 1867 to take the helm of the newly founded San Antonio Express-News. Neither time nor the war had moderated his views. He and other old unionists – funded now by the new wealth of men like George Brackenridge, recently returned from exile himself – began to advocate for San Antonio’s secession from Texas!759At the 1868 Texas Constitutional Convention, the counties of the Hill Country and Southwest Texas proposed their own state with San Antonio as the capital.760Coming from San Antonio, this was a uniquely credible threat: by my count San Antonio had threatened, attempted, and on at least two occasions successfully managed to secede at least a half a dozen times in the previous fifty-seven years! They even drafted a “Constitution of West Texas,” as they called the new state. The movement was endorsed by Republicans in Washington, excited by the idea of two extra votes in the Senate, by some San Antonians merchants who had always been lukewarm in their support for the Confederacy, and frankly by some ex-Confederate San Antonians who were just eager to have the constraints of Reconstruction lifted.

Local Democrats and the old political network beat back the movement, however, and indeed, Reconstruction in San Antonio would come to an end on its own in 1872, two years before the rest of the state. The new Republican party had developed some momentum locally and had even succeeded in recruiting growing numbers of Tejanos into the fold including men like E. Mondragón and former legislator Juan A. F. Chávez,761but then the Reconstruction mayor got caught up in a scandal in which he attempted to buy a piece of land from a politically-connected ally at an inflated price, a move that appalled the upright German plurality and undermined what little support remained for Reconstruction even amongst the victors.762 And the truth was that – as in the past when San Antonian had been turned against San Antonian – a few years of doing business together and marrying each other was often enough to gloss over past conflicts.

It also helped that San Antonians still had a shared enemy. The Comanches, as we alluded to, picked up on the vulnerability of the frontier during the years of the Civil War, and in 1861, they began to raid the ranches around San Antonio, inciting a fair amount of panic. According to José Antonio Navarro – who had lived through many such Comanche scares by this point – “Never was in the whole history of the frontier so great a panic.”763When they organized the largest raid since the 1840 Great Raid right through the center of the state in 1862, the Second Mounted Texas Rifles were called back from Louisiana in response. Still, nearly every wagon train leaving San Antonio for points west during the War would be harassed by the plainsmen. By the end of the Civil War Comanches had pushed the settlement line back 100 miles, back to where it was before the 1849 cholera epidemic had decimated their tribe.764

Yet the end of the Civil War allowed the city and the state to redirect resources to deal with the Comanches. The two ranger captains of the period reflect the ethnic composition of the town at the time. Captain H.R. von Bibberstein and Captain Cesar de la Garza Falcón, the latter a descendant of one of the original settlers of the Rio Grande Valley, took up the fight that San Antonians had been waging for a century. They dogged the Comanches in their homes, harried them on their hunting grounds, and overwhelmed them with firepower. After suffering several defeats in South Texas and the Hill Country in the years immediately following the Civil War, in 1868 the Comanches accepted relocation to a reservation in Oklahoma. Soon, however, the horse lords of the Great Plains realized that for a free, mounted, people like themselves, this was a death sentence by another name. In 1871, reasoning that their peace with the American father did not carry over to their ancient enemies, the Tejanos, they rode off their reservation and launched a series of horrific raids that would yield some of the most sustained violence that the frontier had seen in a generation. Yet for once, San Antonio was at the periphery of the violence, serving primarily as a supply depot and jumping off point.

The removal of the fearsome Comanches also opened up the range for San Antonians to practice another familiar old trade: ranching. Eastern and foreign capital flooded in, anxious to take advantage of the wide-open spaces that could support enormous commercial herds. And yet it wasn’t cattle that most of these capitalists initially wanted to run. Anglo-Americans still retained the tastes and prejudices of the British Isles and tried for several decades to establish sheep stations throughout South Texas. They did better in the Hill Country, but mostly they just overgrazed the native grasses down to their roots and allowed the now-familiar scrub brush to take over.

Still, San Antonio would become the major focal point for wool production in Texas, processing one-third of the wool output of the entire state by 1870.765Soon, the men buying up these enormous ranches, as they anglicized the old San Antonio word, found an even hardier animal that could survive even on the scrub brush that now outcompeted the native grasses. It was cattle that had sustained San Antonio in her early years, when it served as the primary source of income generation for the isolated frontier community. And it was cattle that would save San Antonio once again, this time, from the economic depression that settled in over the rest of the defeated Confederate states.

Cattle had run wild during the Civil War years across the Texas plains. Wild Spanish corriente cattle bred with escaped continental breeds left untended during the Civil War years. And as if to prove that the Texas frontier hardened not only men, but also animals, they evolved enormous, out-of-proportion longhorns which soon gave them their name.

Longhorn cattle roamed the plains now in numbers that the state hadn’t seen since the 1790’s, the last time that San Antonians had won a definitive peace from their Native American opponents. San Antonians of course, had been running cattle on the open range for generations now, and their time-honored cattle-working techniques soon emanated out from the town as far as horses would carry them. By osmosis or by design, even new, English-speaking cowboys adopted the old jinete code, and before long the nation would adopt as the paragon of American machismo this figure who, unwittingly perhaps, looked and acted a whole lot like an 18th century San Antonio vecino.766

Fittingly, San Antonio became the focal point for this new cattle business. A steer that could be bought for three dollars in South Texas – or had for free if you were enterprising enough – sold for ten times that much in Northern American cities.767Between 1865 and 1890, ten million head of cattle and one million horses moved through San Antonio to northern markets, the last frontier for San Antonio drovers who had long driven cattle east and west.768 San Antonio merchants and manufacturers grew wealthy off the new activity and began to build what are still some of the most beautiful houses in the city in the King William area (or König Wilhelmstrasse, as it was originally called) and old Irish Flats neighborhood.

With a population of 12,256 people in 1870, San Antonio remained the largest city in the state.769 And yet it remained also stubbornly poor, with perhaps the highest illiteracy rates in the country and with an average per capita wealth of only 1/8th that of nearby Austin,770 which was, by the way, advertising its new railroad connection in an attempt to lure the Military away from its centuries-old attachment to San Antonio.

Perversely, the increased trade and connection with the East that had brought prosperity to San Antonio started to make San Antonians embarrassed by their own provincialism. The isolation that had defined San Antonio now came to be seen as the greatest hindrance to its development. The Express-News opined, “Only the snort of the iron horse can save us from barbarism.”

Episode 22: The Past is Present

San Antonio is falling behind. Incomes are growing, and yet per capita wealth is only a fraction of other similar-sized American cities. It boasts some of the oldest public schools in the state – if not the continent – and yet enrollment flounders and literacy lags.771While other cities like New Orleans and San Francisco have been able to carefully package their history while cultivating a distinctly modern, and global image, San Antonians remain a “ragged band of men of all colors,” proud it seems of their own provincialism. Sure, people keep moving here, but for how much longer, when neighboring cities like Austin and Houston seem to have so much more to offer to the kind of people that think seriously about these things?

Summarizing the complaints of San Antonio boosters in 1877, the Express-News concluded, “Only the snort of the iron horse can save us from barbarism.”

On February 19, 1877, 8,000 San Antonians – half the town – turned out to celebrate the arrival of the railroad with a party that lasted for two days straight.772Even Spurs Championship parades don’t turn out such a high proportion of the population, though to be fair, Spurs Championships occur with much greater frequency than does the arrival of an entirely new mode of transportation.

“With her railroad in operation, San Antonio can now take a position in the great family of first-class cities of the American continent and move grandly on to that greatness and prosperity that could never have been reached without the aid of the iron horse,” the Express-News proclaimed.

San Antonio was the largest city in Texas in 1877 – a remarkable fact really when you consider its isolation – yet it was also the last major city in the United States to be connected to the nation’s growing rail network. When the locomotive for the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railroad finally pulled into San Antonio, city leaders felt once and for all that they had finally joined, well, civilization.

The railroad made heavy industry possible in San Antonio. It brought in the lumber that John Kampmann ran through his furniture factory and that Edward Steves milled into doors. It brought the steel-slabs that Alamo Ironworks, founded in 1876, would roll into the beams that framed out San Antonio’s first multi-story buildings. It brought the latest machinery and technology for the Alamo Cement Company launched in 1880 to exploit the same limestone formations that San Antonio’s first missionaries had quarried to build the UNESCO World Heritage Missions. The railroad gave San Antonians access to new markets for their goods too, such as the beer coming off of its dozen or so breweries, including the Lone Star and Pearl Breweries. And it cut 1,000 miles off the journey for San Antonio’s stock raisers, who could now put their animals on a railcar in San Antonio instead of having to drive them up the Great Plains.

The cattle business that had sustained early San Antonio and indeed forged much of her identity immediately boomed, as San Antonio now became the destination rather than just a waystation for livestock.

Yet San Antonio’s cultural footprint by 1877 was even larger than the railroads’. Cowboys running cattle in the Texas Panhandle, or Wyoming, or even all the way up into Canada probably didn’t know that they were employing stock raising techniques developed by early San Antonio friars, native converts, and vecinos. They probably didn’t realize where their low-crowned wide-brimmed hats, tooled, high-shanked leather boots, all-purpose lariats and brush-popping chaps came from. And they probably didn’t appreciate the etymological roots of their Cowboy vocabulary, even as they talked with the same pride 18th century San Antonians did of their ranches, mustangs, and rodeos.

Yet they called their unbranded cattle Mavericks after San Antonian Samuel Maverick’s rather disorganized cattle management across the 300,000 acres he held by his death in 1870.773 They tacked their horses with gear from L. Frank Saddlery, founded in San Antonio that same year.774 They wore boots made in San Antonio by Salvatorre Lucchese and others. And in 1876, they came to Alamo Plaza to see Pete McManus and John “Bet-a-Million” Gates demonstrate a new invention that was “Light as air, stronger than whiskey, and cheap as dirt.” To the skeptical eye of the San Antonians gathered around them, McManus and Gates penned in a herd of notoriously fierce and famously wild Texas longhorns, descended from those wild cattle left behind by Spaniards two hundred years before. When their so-called “barbed wire” held in the angry and confused animals to the satisfaction of a community that had spent one hundred and fifty years running them wild on the plains, McManus and Gates knew they had nothing left to prove.775

San Antonio’s cattle culture spun off entirely new businesses as well. Wenzel Friedrich found ways to upscale the longhorns’ long-horns into luxury furniture that soon adorned the finest royal houses of Europe. His son, Albert, inherited his fathers’ fascination with big horns and in 1881 he opened his collection to the public in a bar on Houston street that would become the Buckhorn Saloon, which still serves bankers and cowboys and passers-through to this day. His cousin, Ed Friedrich, would develop a perhaps even more effective means of cooling off after a day on the trail: in 1883, Friedrich Air Conditioning was founded.

In 1881, the International and Great Northern railroad arrived, by which time San Antonio’s population had already increased 50% from just four years before when the first railroad arrived, to over 30,000 people. Three more railroads would arrive in the years to follow, and San Antonio eventually found itself at the hub of several continental rail and road systems connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Artic to the Gulf. In 1889, Union Stockyards was founded at the point where all of these roads met.

The wealth generated from livestock soon founded San Antonio first banks. Samuel Maverick, Jr. founded Maverick National Bank in 1884 and the next year constructed for it the tallest building west of the Mississippi.776 Daniel and Anton Oppenheimer had first come to San Antonio after the Civil War to sell general goods to stock raisers, then got into ranching themselves, and eventually founded D. and A. Oppenheimer Bank. And a wool merchant named Colonel T.C. Frost who had been buying, trading, and lending on wool at his store on Main Plaza since 1868, would eventually charter Frost National Bank at that same location.

Others came into banking from San Antonio’s role as a center of international trade. Our old friend the Irish breadline banker John Twohig, you will recall, first opened his general store on Main Plaza in 1830. By 1869, he was engaged almost exclusively in banking, with correspondent banks in New Orleans, New York, St. Louis, San Francisco and London. By the time this little Irishman who had tunneled his way out of a Mexican prison died in 1891, he was one of the wealthiest men in the state. Friedrich Groos had first come to San Antonio in 1850 where he went to work for early Irish immigrant mayor Bryan Callaghan and the French-born savior of the European wine industry, Francois Guilbeau. He spun off his own merchandising and freight company in 1854, eventually opening offices in San Antonio, Eagle Pass, and Monterrey, where he rode out the Civil War. In 1874, F. Groos and Company transitioned from mercantile to banking operations. Additionally, Groos went on to serve as President of the German-English school and President of the first municipal gas company in San Antonio when it was founded in 1879.

And the post-Civil War years had also seen George Brackenridge, that old Unionist cotton-smuggler, lay the foundations of his commercial empire. Returning to San Antonio in 1866, he chartered San Antonio’s first National Bank, appropriately called the First National Bank. In 1883, he reorganized and took control of the San Antonio Water works company, a sort of public-private partnership which began to supply San Antonians with groundwater from the Edwards aquifer instead of her old acequias.777 His estate became the University of the Incarnate Word and, of course, also yielded the city Brackenridge Park.

In 1881, lights began to go on throughout the city, as the San Antonio Electric Company was chartered. The Express News shut down its relatively printing presses run by the San Antonio River in favor of steam power. That same year, the San Antonio Telephone Exchange opened, later of course becoming known as Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Company, and later still as Southwestern Bell. The civic push behind these utilities companies’ formations also manifested itself in a renewed focus on public safety and health codes. In 1869, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word opened Santa Rosa hospital. In the name of public health, in 1889 the famed Chili Queens were relocated from Military Plaza to Market Square to the west. Shootouts and gunfights were still tragically common, particularly at the northwest corner of Main Plaza – coincidentally, where Santa Anna had made his headquarters during the Battle of the Alamo – at a spot that become known as the “Fatal Corner.” After turning a blind eye to the particularly bloody and well-publicized shootout that left gunslingers Ben Thompson and John King Fisher dead in 1884, however, the San Antonio police department was truly funded, expanded, and held accountable for public safety. In 1891, the municipal San Antonio Fire Department took over from the volunteer fire brigades originally organized by longhorn furniture-maker Wenzel Friedrich.

The last of San Antonio’s acequia systems – the Alazán Ditch – was actually completed as late as 1876. Yet the Alazán system was only in-service a few years, as following the cholera outbreak of 1866, Dr. Ferdinand Herff and other public health advocates established the link between these recurring epidemics and San Antonio’s open acequias.778 By 1890, most of the old acequias– now so unimaginatively called “ditches” – were paved over, albeit initially with the more readily-available mesquite blocks rather than asphalt.779Mission Concepción’s acequia became Roosevelt Street. The Alamo acequia became River Avenue and later Broadway. The San Pedro or Main Acequia became Acequia Street and later Main Street. The road which paralleled the San Pedro acequia for most of its path up to San Pedro springs became known as “Calle de las Flores” or “Flores” Street because of its perennially blooming flowers growing along the acequia’s banks. Another road following San Pedro Creek’s trajectory to the north of town became, predictably, San Pedro Avenue. Presidio and Alameda streets were aspirationally renamed “Commerce Street” as colonial San Antonio yielded to the new industrial age.

Old San Fernando Church now looked across the Plaza de las Islas – by then, renamed Main Plaza –at the new Béxar County Courthouse, completed in 1882 and designed by that most famous architect of Texas courthouses, San Antonian James Riely Gordon. The even older Spanish Governor’s palace watched passively as, in 1889, the cornerstone for the new City Hall was laid in the center of the Plaza de Armas – by then, renamed Military Plaza.

Not surprisingly, the military remained a constant and important presence in Military City, USA. With its railroad connection secured, San Antonians were able to lure the U.S. Army back from its flirtations with Austin by the gift of a 93-acre tract of land just northeast of the city.780 Renamed Fort Sam Houston in 1890, twenty years later an entire new branch of warfare would be born there: military aviation. It was fitting somehow that the city that had introduced highly-mobile, mounted warfare to North America should birth military aviation, just as it was fitting that the town that had been the most contested point on the continent for a century and a half would later house the US Department of Defense’s largest single installation, Joint Base San Antonio. And given this history, it was no accident that Teddy Roosevelt – a student of history himself – chose San Antonio from which to recruit his famed Roughriders regiment in 1898. Setting up his recruiting table in Alamo Plaza, he knew that he was amongst the toughest men on the continent, the product of an almost two-hundred-year history of mounted frontier warfare.

Yet old San Antonians and their enemies were slowly riding into the sunset. September 28, 1874 saw the final defeat of the Comanche empire at the Battle of Palo Duro. On June 21, 1876, an eighty-two-year old man with a wooden leg, cataracts, and eleven or so Mexican presidential sashes in his closet, died in Mexico City. Having overseen the loss of half of his nation’s territory, Santa Anna spent most of the final twenty years of his life in exile in Cuba and New York City. He was allowed to return to Mexico only in the final years of his life, though his return, fittingly, went unheralded.

Most of his great Tejano opponents, however, would pass into the next life to substantial acclaim. Captain Antonio Menchaca of the old presidial line dating back to José de Urrutia and Diego Ramón died in 1879, an outspoken advocate for Tejanos’ contributions to Texas’s independence. Francisco Antonio Ruiz, mayor of San Antonio during the battle of the Alamo and son of José Francisco Ruiz, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, eventually reconciled to Texas’s annexation to the United States and returned from his self-imposed exile amongst the plains Indians to die in San Antonio in 1876. Agustín De Zavala, son of Mexican Federalist and first Texas Vice President Lorenzo de Zavala, returned to San Antonio in 1873 and helped settle the northwest part of the town where a street bearing his name now runs.

Leonardo Garza, the son of José Antonio Garza who had placed a single, lone star on the state’s first coinage, went off to Williams College, and eventually became one of the wealthiest men in the city. The sons of José Antonio Navarro did similarly well, one going off to Harvard before returning to serve multiple terms as a state legislator.781

When José Antonio Navarro himself died in 1871, the funeral procession was perhaps the largest the city had ever seen.782 He had participated in every meaningful moment of political change during the city’s last sixty years, witnessed five different changes of the flag over San Antonio, and helped draft a half dozen different constitutions for his community. And though his fellow revolutionary Juan Seguín had left San Antonio for good in 1870, by the time he died in 1890 even his reputation had been rehabilitated and his contributions to his city and his state honored.

The changes in the religious life of the town told the story as well. The first English language church didn’t open until St. Mary’ Church was complete in 1857. In 1866, St. Michael’s opened its doors to serve the Polish community, and ten years later, St. Joseph’s opened for the Germans. Joske’s Department Store, founded in 1867, moved next door twenty years later and would eventually grow to become the largest department store west of the Mississippi, surrounding St. Joseph’s on three sides, and leading locals to rechristen the church “St. Joske’s.”

By the 1880’s, the first great protestant churches were going up as well, including St. Mark’s Episcopal church in 1877 and Travis Park Methodist Church in 1886.Yet the spiritual heart of the city remained San Fernando Church, whose dome still serves as the point from which all distances in San Antonio are measured. In 1874, it was elevated to the dignity of a Cathedral and made the seat of the new Diocese of San Antonio. From 1868 to 1873 it had been renovated, significantly expanding its nave and adding its second bell-tower, with the construction overseen by Francois Giraud, a Frenchman who had already constructed St. Mary’s Church and whose brother was actually the one constructing St. Joseph’s Church nearby.783

German remained widely-spoken in San Antonio well into the twentieth century. The Freie Presse fuer Texas, also incidentally published by the Express-News’s James Newcomb, would remain in daily circulation as the leading German language news outlet until 1918 and in weekly circulation until 1945.784 Yet 1877 would mark the year that English finally took over as the most commonly-spoken language in the city, though English-speakers wouldn’t become the majority until sometime in the 1880’s. Even then, it would be inaccurate to describe San Antonio as having ever been anything other than a multi-lingual community.

In actuality, San Antonio even after the railroad remained a defiantly mixed town. As one visitor in 1877 wrote, “I have never seen a population so mixed…of the twenty thousand population, they assign one-third to the Americans, one-third to the Germans and Slavs, and one-third to the Mexicans and French, with batches of every other race under the sun,” not to mention sizeable African-American, Polish, Italian, and Chinese communities.785 Each settled in their own neighborhoods, and with their own schools, establishing socioeconomic patterns that continue in SA to this day. Even in 1877 San Antonio could simultaneously give the impression of being a town of extreme diversity, but also of marked segregation.

Yet a large reason for this statistical segregation was that the many communities making up San Antonio never balkanized into separate municipalities. San Antonio remained, in truth, many San Antonios, a collection of several, largely-independent communities united as much by a shared way of life as by their civic government. This stands in marked contrast to most other major American cities particularly in the twentieth century, whose different communities often splintered into competing municipalities and suburbs. It’s the reason why today San Antonio is technically the seventh-largest city in the United States, while being perhaps only the twenty-fifth-largest metropolitan area.

In a way, the man elected mayor of San Antonio in 1885 embodied this diversity and this history perfectly. Brian Callaghan Jr. spoke fluent English, Spanish, French, and German, and had ties to almost every ethnic group in the city. Callaghan, Jr. was of course the son of the first Brian Callaghan who had come to San Antonio during the years of the Texas Republic and risen to become a quite successful merchant and eventually mayor of the town. Callaghan Jr.’s mother was Concepción Ramón, a Canary Islander and direct descendant of that great presidial commander Captain Diego Ramón whose Chicken War might very well have been the catalyzing force that populated San Antonio one hundred and sixty-some odd years earlier. Brian Callaghan Jr. married Adele Guilbeau, the daughter of his father’s partner in business and savior of the European wine industry, Francois Guilbeau.786 And their daughter, Antonia Carolina, would marry Leonardo Garza, the increasingly prominent local banker and son of José Antonio Garza.787

Callaghan Jr. didn’t line up cleanly with the old Democratic Party or with the rising corporate faction, carving a sort of populist middle path, that both calls to mind the coming machine politics in other American cities while retaining a distinctly San Antonio flavor. It's unclear if anyone other than Callaghan and the curious coalition that he built could have mobilized the stingy and frankly still poor frontier town to invest in the infrastructure and municipal services that it did under his tenure. “King Callaghan”788 would be elected mayor nine different times before his death in 1912, the first Tejano mayor since Juan Seguín, and the last until Henry Cisneros.

There was nothing like the Callahan machine anywhere in Texas or the rest of the United States for that matter, a blend between American political bossism and the old Mexican patrón system.789The progress of the Callaghan years came at a cost, though it was a cost that many San Antonians were willing to pay. For these people, the arrival of the railroad didn’t do nearly enough to propel San Antonio into the future. For many, San Antonio’s disorderly plazas and crumbling missions were a reminder of a backward past that they would just as well forget. The 1873 map that serves as the cover art for this chapter conspicuously excludes the four southern, non-Alamo missions, which were most commonly used in the 1870’s sites for collecting free building materials. In 1874, Mission San José’s magnificent dome collapsed, the victim of a half century of neglect.

Other historic buildings disappeared entirely. The old La Quinta building south of the plaza where San Antonio’s women had been imprisoned and forced to make tortillas while their men were executed outside by Spanish Royalists gave way to Dwyer Avenue.790The “Council House” where Texians and Comanches had reopened a generation of warfare, was abandoned and later razed. The Garza compound where the Lone Star first entered circulation in Texas gave way to Houston street’s development as the principal commercial thoroughfare of the town.791And the Veramendi house where Juan Veramendi had been born, where Jim Bowie had lived, where Ben Milam had died, and where the first shots of the American Civil War were temporarily avoided made it into the first decade of the twentieth century, but no further.792

Yet while many remained embarrassed by San Antonio’s “odd and antiquated foreignness,” some began to realize that San Antonio’s history made it unique among American cities. American culture has always enjoyed taking on and playing up its regional differences by appropriating token symbols of non-American culture, yet San Antonio wasn’t just an American town with a Spanish name. It was a collection of communities with a continuous, unbroken connection to their two-hundred-year old history, the ultimate frontier town with its own mythology whose culture, by contrast, appropriated newcomers as much as they appropriated it.

The 1879 abandonment of the Alamo by the U.S. Army when they decamped for Fort Sam Houston brought the issue to a head. That the most sacred symbol of the town itself was at risk of purchase by the highest bidder or even demolition provoked a crisis of civic conscience and set off San Antonio’s Conservation movement.

The Alamo Monument Association was formed and elected as its first president Mary Ann Adams Maverick, a frontierswoman who had lived the town’s growth over the previous forty years. In 1883, the Alamo Monument Association finally convinced the state to buy the Alamo, the first purchase west of the Mississippi river of a building for historic conservation purposes.793 And soon after, they began restoration of Mission San José’s church, bringing renewed attention to the San Antonio missions that had done so much to seed the town’s early settlement.

Adina DeZavala, the granddaughter of the foremost theorist of Texan liberty, Lorenzo DeZavala, soon took up the fight. DeZavala was a firebrand, at one point locking herself in the Alamo Long Barracks to prevent their sale, and she was also one of the most vocal champions of San Antonio’s pre-Alamo past. She authored one of the first histories of the pre-Alamo period, and she showed San Antonians how the sons and daughters of old Native Americans, Spanish missionaries, and homegrown vecinos still gave the city it’s character; how the uncanny ideological similarity between the Tejanos who in the 1820’s celebrated their fallen from the Battle of Medina as “imitators of Leonidas” and the Texians of 1835 who dared a Mexican Centralist Army in Leonidas’s words to “come and take” their cannon found common ideological cause and a common fate in their own Thermopylae behind the walls of the Alamo; and how the legacy of these first fearless frontiersman had now given the state that owed them so much its identity.

Adina De Zavala would go on to found the Texas Historical and Landmarks Association, 16,000 of whose descriptive plaques now decorate Texas roads. She was a charter member of the Texas State Historical Association, whose Handbook of Texas online I have used more than any other single reference for this project. In 1891, de Zavala and other women’s groups formed the organization that would throw the first Battle of Flowers Parade, the city’s annual weeklong celebration where the city shuts down, well, just to celebrate itself and its many communities. And these groups would give birth to the San Antonio Conservation Society in 1924 which would be instrumental in the planning and development of the Riverwalk, a project that now seems two generations ahead of its time in the way that it featuresthe city’s natural environment rather than trying to hide it. It’s wonderfully poetic, in my mind, that a city whose water had always driven its development should be known the world over for its River.

With time and with proponents like Adina De Zavala giving San Antonio’s history its proper context, San Antonians came to appreciate what had been in front of their noses all along. As a guidebook from the time put it: “San Antonio is not well-ordered, not entirely beautiful, not wholly anything. It is, and always has been, a meeting place, on the verge, between France and Spain, between Spain and England, between the Indian and the White, between the South and the West, the old and the new.”794 It was the way that San Antonio’s different cultural strains refused to yield to each other, the way the community’s past so insistently protruded onto its present that gave it its charm.

It was the place to which the entire state instinctively turned for its birth narrative, if not its larger identity. The Alamo, of course, was the Cradle of Texas Liberty, and as the great Texas Folklorist J Frank Dobie said, “Every Texan has two hometowns, his own and San Antonio”. By 1884, Old Texas Rangers like RIP Ford were choosing to retire to San Antonio to be near others who had ridden the range in that older, disappearing age.795RIP Ford set himself the task of capturing the stories of earlier San Antonians, like first-hand Alamo accounts by Juana Navarro, Enrique Esparza, and Francisco Antonio Ruiz, vital accounts that – like De Zavala’s work – helped San Antonians root their present in the past.796

That same year, San Antonio hosted the first meeting of the Old Trail Drivers Association, a recognition that the heyday of the Texas cowboy had, in some way, already passed.797 The great cattle drives from South Texas to northern markets had, in truth, only lasted a couple of decades, yet they left an impression on the psyche of the entire nation, who saw in the San Antonio cowboy the perfect expression of American self-reliance and personal liberty.

Yet it wasn’t just to Anglo-Americans that San Antonio called. No city in New Spain suffered the way that San Antonio did for Mexican independence in 1813. Almost 100 years later, it would become the cradle of Mexican liberty as well when it played host to Coahuilan Francisco Madero, who had fled Mexico in 1910 to escape the agents of Mexican President Porfirio Diaz. It was no accident that Madero chose San Antonio, which in the early 1900’s still celebrated 16 de septiembre as a vital part of its own history,798 and which was at the height of its adulation of the 187 men who had died opposing another Mexican tyrant’s usurpation of power. Taking up residence in the old Hutchins Hotel just outside of La Villita, Madero would there write the Plan de San Luis Potosi, which Mexicans would take up as their rallying cry in deposing Porfirio Diaz the following year.

I’ve lived in San Antonio pretty much since I was four years old, and yet I continue to find new communities, new vecinos, and new histories to fascinate me. The soldiers and traders and roughriders that walk our streets today are the sons and daughters of those who came before. No other American city can boast the same continuous, unbroken connection to its past. This is, I think, part of what makes this town so easy to love and so hard to leave. Here, the past is still present, enchanting you, challenging you, begging you to engage with it.

Looking back over my own life here, I see now how much time and energy I’ve spent trying to connect with these people I’ve just spent the last XXX pages talking about. As if by digging a single irrigation canal off the still-operating Béxar-Medina-Atascosa water system, I might feel what it was like for a Native American convert to confront an entirely new way of life. As if by staking a well or carving a pipeline through an untamed stretch of Northern Mexico, that I might know what it was like for those earliest Spanish settlers alone in the wilderness. As if by working cattle or playing cowboy, I might actually be honoring the trade that sustained and defined early San Antonians.

But in a way, reenacting the past is as futile as mining it for grievances or sanctifying it beyond all recognition. The past is messy and the past defies easy generalizations. And I know that filling in gaps, skipping over footnotes, and inventing explanations for events that we would otherwise never be able to understand – all of which I’ve done in this book – are not the proper way to practice history. Yet they are – for me, anyway – a richer way to relate to it. And I believe that the best way to truly honor the past and the men and women who made our city what it is today is for each of us to find a way to relate to their story, to embrace it with all its blemishes, and to wear it like armor against whatever new challenges may come our way.

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Folsom, Bradley. Arredondo: Last Spanish Ruler of Texas and Northeastern New Spain. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017.

Garrett, Julia Kathryn. Green Flag over Texas: A Story of the Last Years of Spain in Texas. Dallas and New York: The Cordova Press, Inc., 1939.

Glasrud, Bruce A, ed. African Americans in South Texas History. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011.

Guedea, Virginia. “La declaración de independencia de la provincia de Texas (6 de abril de 1813),” in Alfredo Ávila, Jordana Dym, and Erika Pani, eds., Las Declaraciones de independencia: Los textos fundamentales de las independencias americanas. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2013.

Hardin, Stephen L. Texan Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution, 1835-1836. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.

Hämäläinen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

Hunter, John Warren. “Some Early Tragedies of San Antonio: Autobiography of Carlos Beltran,” Frontier Times, Vol. 3: No. 1 (October 1925), 41-48.

_______. “The Battle of Medina: Continuing the Narrative of Mr. Beltran,” Frontier Times Vol. 3: No. 3 (December 1925), 9-16.

Long, Jeff. Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1990.

McDonald, David R. José Antonio Navarro: In Search of the American Dream in Nineteenth-Century Texas. College Station: Texas State Historical Association, 2013.

Pérez, Aminta Inelda. “Tejano Rangers: The Development and Evolution of Ranging Tradition, 1540-1880.” PhD Dissertation, University of Iowa, 2012.

Porter, Charles R. Spanish Water, Anglo Water: Early Development in San Antonio. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011.

Poyo, Gerald Eugene, and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds. Tejano Origins in Eighteenth-Century San Antonio. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Ramos, Raúl A. Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Schwarz, Ted, and Robert H. Thonhoff. Forgotten Battlefield of the First Texas Revolution: The Battle of Medina, August 18, 1813. Austin: Eakin Press, 1985.

Sibley, Marilyn McAdams. George W. Brackenridge: Maverick Philanthropist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973.

Texas State Historical Association. The Handbook of Texas Online. Tshaonline.org/handbook

Tijerina, Andrés. Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 1821-1836. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994.

Tinkle, Lon. 13 Days to Glory: The Siege of the Alamo. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1985.

UNESCO. World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466 for the San Antonio Missions, 2015.

Waller, Randall Lionel. “The Callaghan Machine and San Antonio Politics, 1885-1912.” Master’s Thesis, Texas Tech University, 1973.

Weddle, Robert S. After the Massacre: The Violent Legacy of the San Sabá Mission. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007.

Wheeler, Kenneth W. To Wear a City’s Crown: The Beginnings of Urban Growth in Texas, 1836-1865. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968.

Raúl Ramos, Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 15.↩︎
Journal of Manuel Terán de los Ríos, quoted in Frank W. Jennings, “Naming San Antonio,” UIW.edu, http://www.uiw.edu/sanantonio/jenningsnaming.html,accessed August 21, 2018.↩︎
Donald E. Chipman, Spanish Texas, 1519-1821, revised ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), Kindle, Loc 422 of 5000.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, “Coahuiltecan Indians,” accessed August 16, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bmcah.↩︎
David L. Frye, trans., Alvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca: Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition: A New Translation, Context, Criticism, ed. By Ilan Stavans (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), Kindle, Loc 1390 of 2414.↩︎
Frye, Trans., Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition, Kindle, Loc 120 of 2414.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Russell M. Magnaghi, “Hasinai Indians,” accessed August 16, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bmh08.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1427 of 5000.↩︎
Andrés Tijerina,Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 1821-1836, (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994), 66.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1623 of 5000.↩︎
Vito Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1978), 419.↩︎
For the most comprehensive primary account of the period, see Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa, Crónica De Los Colegios De Propaganda Fide De La Nueva España, new ed. with notes and introduction by Lino G. Canedo (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1964).↩︎
Aminta Inelda Pérez, “Tejano Rangers: The Development and Evolution of Ranging Tradition, 1540-1880,” PhD Dissertation, University of Iowa, 2012, 57.↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 126.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 71.↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 131-2.↩︎
Gerald E. Poyo and Gilberto Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins in Eighteenth-Century San Antonio (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), Kindle, Loc 750 of 4665.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1568 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1516 of 5000.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 429.↩︎
Ibid., 430.↩︎
Ibid., 431; Handbook of Texas Online, Donald E. Chipman and Patricia R. Lemée, "ST. DENIS, LOUIS JUCHEREAU DE," accessed February 06, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fst01.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 440.↩︎
Ibid., 436-441. Alessio Robles outlines this “commercial conspiracy theory” more clearly and convincingly than any of the English-language sources I have found.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1679 of 5000.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 438.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1543 of 5000.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 757of 4665.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 449.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 887 of 4665.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1983 of 5000.↩︎
Jesus F. de la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar: A Community on New Spain's Northern Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 153.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 1274 of 4665.↩︎
T.R. Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story: A Pictorial and Entertaining Commentary on the Growth and Development of San Antonio, Texas (Tulsa: Continental Heritage, Inc., 1978), Kindle, Loc 326 of 5000.↩︎
Charles E. Porter, Jr., Spanish Water, Anglo Water: Early Development in San Antonio (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009), 6-10.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2680 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 3.↩︎
“Joint Base San Antonio,”available at http://www.jbsa.mil/Information/Fact-Sheets/Article-View/Article/598508/joint-base-san-antonio/,accessed August 19, 2018.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 58 of 4314.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 444.↩︎
The Handbook of Texas Online, Robert S. Weddle, “The Chicken War,”https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qfc02,accessed August 21, 2018.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1724 of 5000.↩︎
Porter, Spanish Water, Anglo Water, 21.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 231 of 4313.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 1366 of 4665.↩︎
Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 123.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1756 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1748 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1757.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1766 of 5000.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 879 of 4665.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1889 of 5000.↩︎
Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman, 122.↩︎
Mission Espada’s ranching legacy is most visible at the Rancho de las Cabras site in Wilson County, which is opened to the public on limited days each year.↩︎
For a list of names, see Mary Austin Alice, “Government of San Fernando de Bexar, 1730-1800,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 8: no. 4 (April 1905), 331-338.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 470.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 231 of 4313.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 260 of 4313.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojoso, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 893 of 4665.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 159.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 1088-94 of 4665.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1990 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1984 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 47.↩︎
Ibid., 35.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2026 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 90.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2035 of 5000.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 301 of 4313.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 301 of 4313.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2045-6 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2065 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 11.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2047-8 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2067-8 of 5000.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 1043-4 of 4665.↩︎
Compromise between the missions and cabildo of San Fernando de Béxar pertaining to the limits of the settlement and resolution of other disputes, 14 August 1745, Box 122, Folder 5, Records of the Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 143.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466 for the San Antonio Missions (2015), 119, available at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1466,accessed on June 4, 2019.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 116.↩︎
Ibid., 44.↩︎
Ibid., 44.↩︎
Ibid., 122.↩︎
Ibid., 118.↩︎
Ibid., 119.↩︎
Ibid., 117.↩︎
Porter, Spanish Water, Anglo Water,31.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 31, 39.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 53.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 133.↩︎
Ibid., 118.↩︎
Ibid., 44, 55.↩︎
Ibid., 47-8.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 170 of 4313.↩︎
Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman, 138.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 263 of 4665.↩︎
Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman,123↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 120.↩︎
Ibid., 112.↩︎
Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman, 116.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 113.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 1420 of 4665.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2069 of 4665↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1507 of 4665.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 110.↩︎
Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman, 142.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 1392 of 4665.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3706 of 5000.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 2095 of 4665.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2113 of 4665.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2148 of 4665.↩︎
Father Solís, quoted in UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 120.↩︎
Ibid., 135.↩︎
Ibid., 63.↩︎
Ibid., 63.↩︎
Ibid., 135.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2831 of 5000.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 66.↩︎
Ibid., 66.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Rebecca H. Green, rev. by Rudy H. Gonzales, “Pedro Huízar,” accessed on September 6, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fhu22..↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 1806 of 4665.↩︎
Porter, Spanish Water, Anglo Water, 13.↩︎
Ibid., 116.↩︎
Ibid., 129.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 116.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 54.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 142.↩︎
Ibid., 75.↩︎
Ibid..↩︎
Ibid., 77.↩︎
Ibid., 110.↩︎
Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman, 131.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Designation Nomination File 1466, 84.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 18.↩︎
Ibid., 24.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2766 of 5000.↩︎
David R. McDonald, José Antonio Navarro: In Search of the American Dream in Nineteenth-Century Texas (College Station: Texas State Historical Association, 2013), Kindle, Loc 435 of 7817.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 72.↩︎
Ibid., 71-2.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 137.↩︎
Ibid., 21.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3014 and 3067 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 20.↩︎
Ibid., 148.↩︎
Personal conversation with Father David García, February 6, 2019, former rector of San Fernando Cathedral.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 40.↩︎
Ibid., 139.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 475; Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2471 of 5000.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1844 of 5000.↩︎
Andrew Forest Muir, ed., Texas in 1837: An Anonymous, Contemporary Narrative (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958), 94.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 23.↩︎
Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman, 135.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 657 of 4665.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Jeffrey D. Carlisle, “Apache Indians,”accessed on August 31, 2018,https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bma33.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1962-3 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1969 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2238 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 10.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2073 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 11.↩︎
Ibid., 11.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 146.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Carol A. Lipscomb, “Comanche Indians,”accessed on August 31, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bmc72.↩︎
George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, Written during Eight Years’ Travel Amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America in 1832, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, and 39, vol. 2,(London: Egyptian Hall, 1841), 66.↩︎
Art Martínez De Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers (Von Ormy: Alamo Press, 2014), 105.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 102, 105.↩︎
See Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009).↩︎
T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The Destruction of a People (Bridgewater: Replica Books, 1999), 94.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 1914 of 5000.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 54.↩︎
Ibid., 54.↩︎
Ibid., 110.↩︎
Ibid., 70.↩︎
Ibid., 127-9.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2088 of 5000.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 2243 of 4665.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 133.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2299 and 2534 of 5000.↩︎
Robert S. Weddle, After the Massacre: The Violent Legacy of the San Sabá Mission, trans. Carol Lipscomb (Lubbock: Texas Tech Unversity Press, 2007), 6.↩︎
Weddle, After the Massacre, 131. [CHECK ACCURACY OF CITATION, FIRST WORD]↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 131-2.↩︎
Ibid., 129.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 71.↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 160.↩︎
Weddle, After the Massacre, 12-13; Handbook of Texas Online, Robert S. Weddle, “Ortiz Parrilla Red River Campaign,” accessed on September 9, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/poo01.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 61.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Robert S. Weddle, “Diego Ortiz Parrilla,” accessed on September 9, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/for12.↩︎
Weddle, After the Massacre, 110.↩︎
Ibid., 120.↩︎
Ibid., 123.↩︎
Ibid., 124.↩︎
Ibid., 127.↩︎
Ibid., 128.↩︎
Ibid., 146.↩︎
Ibid., 124.↩︎
Ibid., 126.↩︎
Ibid., 132.↩︎
Ibid., 133.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2344 of 5000.↩︎
Weddle, After the Massacre, 34.↩︎
Taking this one step further: in 1779, twenty years later, the Governor of New Mexico, Juan Bautista de Anza, led a successful punitive expedition against the Comanches several hundred miles into the future state of Colorado and defeated them, winning a measure of peace and trade concessions for the New Mexico province. Fehrenbach and others compare this with the early Texas experience, as an example of boldness in dealing with the Comanches in contrast to Tejano passivity, but in retrospect that seems inaccurate. Indeed, it would be interesting to learn what knowledge de Anza had of Ortiz’s expedition discussed in this chapter.↩︎
Weddle, After the Massacre, 84.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2591 and 2633 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 10.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 232.↩︎
Fehrenbach, ed. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 394 of 4314.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 1506 of 4665.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1513 of 4665.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 164 of 4313.↩︎
Weddle, After the Massacre, 9, 11.↩︎
Jack Jackson, ed., Imaginary Kingdom: Texas as Seen by the Rivera and Rubí Military Expeditions, 1727 and 1767 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1995).↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2421 of 5000.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins,Kindle, Loc 370 of 4665.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 14.↩︎
Inference based on population numbers cited in the previous chapter.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2555 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 116.↩︎
Ibid., 21.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 13.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3046 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 92.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 92.↩︎
Ibid., 47.↩︎
Ibid., 133.↩︎
Jesús F. De La Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguín (Austin, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2002), 1-2.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 116.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 197 of 7817.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 44.↩︎
Jackson, ed., Imaginary Kingdom [INSERT PAGE NUMBER(S)!].↩︎
Ibid, [INSERT PAGE NUMBER(S)!].↩︎
Quoted in Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 526. The translation is mine.↩︎
Quoted in De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 45.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 96 of 4665.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 94.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3067-9 of 5000.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 27.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 609.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 628 of 4665.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1215 of 7817.↩︎
400% cheaper according to Bradley Folsom, Arredondo: Last Spanish Ruler of Texas and Northeastern New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 105.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 621.↩︎
Ibid., 612.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2010 of 5000.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 68.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3077 of 5000.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 1158 and 1224 of 4665.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2999 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 122.↩︎
Quoted in Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 527.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3000 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 98.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 99.↩︎
Quoted in Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 527.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3011 of 5000.↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 52.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 394 of 4313.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2591 of 5000.↩︎
Weddle, After the Massacre, 91.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Elizabeth A. H. John and Jesús F. de la Teja, “Francisco Xavier Chaves,” accessed August 29, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fchav.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2924 of 5000.↩︎
Weddle, After the Massacre, 92.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2920 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2917 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2926 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2930 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2939-41 of 5000; Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 62-3.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 2274 of 4665.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Elizabeth A.H. John and Jesús F. de la Teja, “Francisco Xavier Chaves,” accessed August 29, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fchav.↩︎
Paula Allen, “History: Scoundrel Bean, bride wed San Fernando,” My San Antonio Online, updated March 29, 2013, accessed February 6, 2019, available at https://www.mysanantonio.com/life/life_columnists/paula_allen/article/Roy-Bean-was-married-in-San-Fernando-Cathedral-4392930.php.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2950 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2951 of 5000.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 570.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2960 of 5000.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 228.↩︎
According to Art Martinez Vara, “Bexareños were notably litigious and frequently sued over issues involving personal character, perceived stains to family honor, and gossip.” See Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 22.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 140.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 611.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 24.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3085 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 3090 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 25.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 28.↩︎
1793 Letter from Ayuntamiento responding to vicregal inquiries regarding nepotism, [INSERT FULL CITATION!].↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 595.↩︎
Ibid., 528.↩︎
Ibid., 613.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3358 of 5000.↩︎
Elliott Coues, ed., The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike to the Headwaters of the Mississippi, through Louisiana Territory, and in New Spain during the Years 1805-6-7, new ed., vol. 2 (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1895), 784.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 2069 of 4665.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 2985 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2990 of 5000.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 85.↩︎
Ibid., 86.↩︎
Ibid., 85.↩︎
Coues, ed., The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, vol. 2, 790.↩︎
Ibid., 786.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 524 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 205 of 7817.↩︎
It goes without saying that I am using these terms in their classical sense, with no relation to their modern American usages.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 620.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3414 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 3447 of 5000.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Laura Caldwell, “Casas Revolt,” accessed August 29, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jcc02.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3451 of 5000; Julia Kathryn Garrett, Green Flag over Texas: A Story of the Last Years of Spain in Texas (Dallas and New York: The Cordova Press, Inc., 1939), 44.↩︎
McDonald,José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 587 of 7817.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 641. Navarro in his memoirs also suggests that the conspiracy to capture Hidalgo was known to others in San Antonio. See [insert Navarro memoir citation here!]. Garrett suggests that Hidalgo as well knew by March 16, 1811 of the overthrow of De las Casas. See Green Flag over Texas, 62-4.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 640.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3463 of 5000.↩︎
Garrett, Green Flag over Texas, 77.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Jack Jackson, "José Menchaca," accessed February 06, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fme11.↩︎
John Warren Hunter, “Some Early Tragedies of San Antonio: Autobiography of Carlos Beltran,” Frontier Times Vol. 3: No. 1 (October 1925), 44.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 30.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Jack Jackson, “Miguel Menchaca,” accessed on August 30, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fme15.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 655.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3487 of 5000.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 3064 of 5000.↩︎
Jackson, “José Menchaca.”↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 656.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 28.↩︎
Garrett, Green Flag over Texas, 172.↩︎
“Information derived from Juan Villars, Native of Kentucky, San Buenaventura, México,” in The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Edited from the Original Papers of the Texas State Library (Austin: A. C. Baldwin Printers, 1921-1927), Vol. VI, (145-155), 150.↩︎
For a general overview of accounts of the battle, see I. Waynne Cox, "Field Survey and Archival Research for the Rosillo Creek Battleground Area, Southeast San Antonio, Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State, Vol. 1990, Article 1, i-39.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 29.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3495 of 5000.↩︎
Hunter, “Some Early Tragedies of San Antonio.”↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 30.↩︎
Quoted in McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 639 of 7817.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3499 of 5000.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 45.↩︎
For the text of the 1813 Texas Constitution, see Kathryn Garrett, “The First Constitution of Texas, April 17, 1813,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 40: Vol. 4 (April 1937), 305-308..↩︎
Joaquín de Arredondo, Report to Viceroy Calleja, reporting his victory in the Battle of Medina, Béxar, September 13, 1813, Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN) Transcripts Collection , Tom. 4, Transcripts 2Q194, No. 423, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.↩︎
Hunter, “Some Early Tragedies of San Antonio.”↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 33.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins,Kindle, Loc 2288 of 4665.↩︎
Hunter, “Some Early Tragedies of San Antonio.”↩︎
Ibid. “Immediately combing our forces under Menchaca and Gutierrez, while Taylor made a feint against the bastion on our left, the stronghold on our right after desperate resistance was retaken.”↩︎
Ted Schwarz and Robert H. Thonhoff, Forgotten Battlefield of the First Texas Revolution: The Battle of Medina, August 18, 1813 (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1985), 52.
Hunter, “Some Early Tragedies of San Antonio” “When the battle opened, the Indians, as per directions, swept forward and cut off the Spanish mulada and caballada…fell upon the flying Spaniards, dealing out death and destruction, not sparing age, sex or even the wounded.”↩︎
Casualty numbers are hard to square up for this battle. Ruiz claims single-digit casualties for the Republicans, yet Beltran’s account of the battle references hours of hand-to-hand fighting and at least three dead just from his unit. He counts 76 Republican dead. See Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 34↩︎
Schwarz, Forgotten Battlefield of the First Texas Revolution, 53-4.↩︎
Ibid., 54.↩︎
Ibid., 59.↩︎
Hunter, “Some Early Tragedies of San Antonio.” “About the middle of June courier from La Bahia arrived bearing a message from the Mexican Congress, then sitting at Apatzingan, announcing that General Jose Maria Alvarez de Toledo was then on his way from the United States with strong reinforcements and would succeed General Gutierrez in command of the Republican Army of the North.”↩︎
José Antonio Navarro’s biographer David McDonald places Ángel in the Royalist army at the Batle of Medina. [insert citation for McDonald]. Camilla Campbellrecords Arredondo running him out of the Royalist army once he learned of his family’s republican sympathies. That the Navarro family felt the need to flee after Arredondo’s victory inclines me toward Campbell’s version. See Handbook of Texas Online, Camilla Campbell, “Ángel Navarro,” accessed [insert date], https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fna17.↩︎
Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial, 629.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 71.↩︎
Stephen Hardin, Texan Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 249.↩︎
Schwarz, Forgotten Battlefield of the First Texas Revolution, 62.↩︎
Hunter, “Some Early Tragedies of San Antonio.”↩︎
Henry Adams Bullard, “Mexico and Texas,” A.MS (unsigned), [n.p.], 1836, North American Review Papers, 1831-1843, MS Am 1704.10, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.↩︎
Bullard, “Mexico and Texas.” “The Republican army crossed this stream and occupied such a position as to watch the only two fords by which San Antonio could be approached.”↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins,Kindle, Loc 2288 of 4665.↩︎
[Anonymous], “Señor Edictor.” Translation into Spanish of a letter appearing in the Lexington [Kentucky] Reporter, n.d., forwarded by Toledo, New Orleans, n.d. Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla, Indiferente General de Nueva España, 136-7-9, Transcripts 2Q162, No. 170,[INSERT REPOSITORY HERE], The University of Texas at Austin, Austin. TX. “The army remained extremely satisfied with the selected position.”↩︎
Joaquín de Arredondo, Report to Viceroy Calleja, reporting his victory in the Battle of Medina, Béxar, September 13, 1813, AGN Transcripts Collection , Tom. 4, Transcripts 2Q194, No. 423, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.“…el 18 antes de emprehender mi marcha q.e la dirígia al Rio de Medina, habiendome propuesto extrabiar camino p.a pasarlo por diferente paso q.e el recto, en atención á ser este un cañon q.e faciltaba demaciadisima bentaja al enemigo, si este intentaba emboscarse en la espesa arboleda que lo cubre.”↩︎
Joaquín de Arredondo, Report to Viceroy Calleja, reporting his victory in the Battle of Medina, Béxar, September 13, 1813, AGN Transcripts Collection, Tom. 4, Transcripts 2Q194, No. 423, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.“Hice salir con ciento ochenta hombres de caballeria al Teniente Coronel D. Ygn.o Elizondo, previniendole á este Xefe fuese con la mayor precaucion y vigilancia hasta avistar al enemigo, haciendo en lo posible una escrupulosa obersvacion de su numero, no empeñandose en accion alg.a a menos de q.e se juzgase suficiente para escarmentarlo, y de no, 2a solo [stricken] 1- fuese manteniendo el fuego en retirada, dandome pronto aviso para mis disposiciones, advirtiendole el rumbo que tenia dispuesto para pasar el Rio de Medina y cam.o q.e cortaba á fin de q.e lo siguiese en su retirada para reunirseme”↩︎
Ibid. “Al Subdiacono Teniente Coronel D. Juan Manuel Zambrano.”↩︎
Timothy Matovina and Jesús F. de la Teja, eds., Recollections of a Tejano Life: Antonio Menchaca in Texas History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 51.↩︎
William Shaler, Letters and Enclosures, Special Agents, Vol. 2, folio 20, State Department Manuscripts, Microfilm Publications M-37, reel 2, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Quote reads: “. . .but it being ascertained there was water just ahead, we marched on to it.”↩︎
Matovina and de la Teja, eds., Recollections on a Tejano Life, 52.↩︎
Henry Walker, “William McLane's Narrative of the Magee-Gutierrez Expedition, 1812-1813,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 66: no. 4 (April, 1963), 476.↩︎
Walker, “William McLane's Narrative of the Magee-Gutierrez Expedition, 476.↩︎
William Shaler, Letters and Enclosures, Special Agents, Vol. 2, folio 20, State Department Manuscripts, Microfilm Publications M-37, reel 2, National Archives, Washington, D.C. “The action as I before observed was commenced by our Spanish Cavalary and Indians…”↩︎
Joaquín de Arredondo, Report to Viceroy Calleja, reporting his victory in the Battle of Medina, Béxar, September 13, 1813, AGN Transcripts Collection, Tom. 4, Transcripts 2Q194, No. 423, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. Passage reads, “…llegando al extremo de colocar ellos su artillería á quarenta pasos de la nuestra…”↩︎
Ibid. “Al Sarg.to de la 1.a Comp.a Vte Tiburcio Garcia, y cabo de Milicias del Nvo Santander Mateo Sotelo, quienes me libertaron de perder la vida, pues como yendo mis ordenanzas hivan á mi Espalda, y obserbaron q.e uno de los enemigos dirigia asia mi la punteria y abisandome al momento p.r cuyo abiso mude de sitio.”↩︎
John Warren Hunter, “The Battle of Medina. Continuing the Narrative of Mr. Beltran,” Frontier Times 3: no. 3 (December 1925), 13.↩︎
Joaquín de Arredondo, Report to Viceroy Calleja, reporting his victory in the Battle of Medina, Béxar, September 13, 1813, AGN Transcripts Collection, Tom. 4, Transcripts 2Q194, No. 423, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. Passage reads “pues en las quatro horas que duró la accion se tiraron nobecientos cinquenta tiros q.e benian listos á prebencion, por lo q.e se sabe el numero, y estos disparados por siete cañones, pues aunq.e ntro num.o hera el de once, dos fueron tomados por el enemigo, y dos q.e nos desmontaron.”↩︎
William Shaler, Letters and Enclosures, Special Agents, Vol. 2, folio 20, State Department Manuscripts, Microfilm Publications M-37, reel 2, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Passage reads “fifteen minutes more would have given victory entirely into our hands…” Emphasis in original.↩︎
[Anonymous], “Memoria de las Cosas mas notables que Acaesieron en Béxar el Año 13 mandando el Tirano Arredondo,” BANC MSS P-O 811, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.↩︎
Matovina and de la Teja, eds., Recollections of a Tejano Life, 52.↩︎
Hunter, “The Battle of Medina,” 10.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 35.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 36.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Timothy Palmer, “José Álvarez de Toledo y Dubois,” accessed August 30, 2018,https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fto10.↩︎
Hunter, “The Battle of Medina,” 15.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Hunter, “The Battle of Medina,” [Insert page number!]↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 709 of 7817.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3526 of 5000.↩︎
Folsom, Arredondo, 96.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 678 of 7817.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3528 of 5000.↩︎
Folsom, Arredondo, 108.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 770 of 7817.↩︎
Folsom, Arredondo, 175.↩︎
Ibid., 103.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1017 of 7817.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 498 of 4665.↩︎
De la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar, 142.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1106 of 7817.↩︎
“The Memoirs of José Antonio Navarro, Originally Appearing in the San Antonio Ledger in 1853,” Sons of DeWitt Colonywebsite,available at http://www.sonsofdewittcolony.org/adp/history/bios/navarro/navarro3.html, accessed on June 5, 2019.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3529 of 5000.↩︎
José Antonio Navarro described Juan Manuel Zambrano as “Gigantic and obsese, arrogant in manner, dynamic and volatile as mercury, he possessed a special talent for total disorder.” See McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 5707 of 7817.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1420 of 7817.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1055 of 7817.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 10, 47. See also Handbook of Texas Online, Bernice Strong, “José Francisco Ruiz,” accessed on September 8, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fru11 . Rumors have also long persisted of their participation or support for Andrew Jackson’s forces at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. They would not have been the only refugees from the First Republic of Texas to have done so. Former President Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara’s active participation in the battle is well-documented. TSHAOnline.org. Handbook of Texas Online, “José Bernardo Maximiliano Gutiérrez de Lara,” accessed on September 8, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgu11.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 80, 83.↩︎
José Francisco Ruiz, Report on the Indian Tribes of Texas in 1828, ed. John C. Ewers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972).↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 53-56.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 342 of 4665.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 11.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 412-6 of 4665.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 847 of 7817.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 393 of 4665.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 97.↩︎
Ibid., 98.↩︎
Ibid., 104.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 9.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 101.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 105-8.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 659 of 4665.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 657 of 4665.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, , 11.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 407 of 4665.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 38.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 483 of 4665.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, , 61.↩︎
Ibid., 63.↩︎
Ibid., 61.↩︎
Ibid., 41.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 440 of 4665.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1237 of 7817.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 40.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3732-8 of 5000. See also Handbook of Texas Online, Joseph W. McKnight, “Spanish Law,” accessed on August 30, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jss01.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1796 of 7817.↩︎
Jeff Long, Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1990), 17. See also Porter, Spanish Water, Anglo Water, 89; and Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 36-7. Corruptions of place names like “Uvalde” from “Ugalde” and charming misspellings of words like “arbitrios” as “advitrios” may also be windows into local pronunciation patterns.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, 322. Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 48.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 294 of 7817.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 94.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 6.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 81.↩︎
Lorenzo De Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America: Viaje a los Estados Unidos del Norte de América, Michael Woolsey, trans., and John-Michael Rivera ed. (Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 2005), Kindle, Loc 249 of 4764.↩︎
De Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, Kindle, Loc 265 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 279 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 284 of 4764.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1774 of 7817.↩︎
De Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, Kindle, Loc 764-5 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1774-7 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1195 of 4764, 2212 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1661-1716 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1744 of 4764.↩︎
James Donovan, The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo – and the Sacrifice that Forged a Nation (New York: Little Brown and Co., 2012), 154.↩︎
De Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, Kindle, Loc 309 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1279 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2488 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1780 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 729 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 1135 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 512 of 4764.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 19.↩︎
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” paper delivered at the meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, during the World Columbian Exposition, excerpts published by National Humanities Center available at http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/gilded/empire/text1/turner.pdf, accessed on June 5, 2019.↩︎
Tijerina. Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, ix.↩︎
De Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, Kindle, Loc 532 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 4742 of 4764.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 4757 of 4764.↩︎
Martínez de Vara, ed., The José Francisco Ruiz Papers, 70.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1947 of 7817.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 7.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 645 of 4665; Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 113.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Lois Garver, "MILAM, BENJAMIN RUSH," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmi03.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1964 of 7817.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Cecil Collins Scanlan, "SMITH, JOHN WILLIAM," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsm30.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Thomas W. Cutrer, "SMITH, ERASTUS [DEAF]," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsm10.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Nolan Thompson, "ARNOLD, HENDRICK," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/far15.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Erma Baker, "TWOHIG, JOHN," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ftw04.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Paula Mitchell Marks, "MAVERICK, SAMUEL AUGUSTUS," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fma84.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 30.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 48.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, William R. Williamson, "BOWIE, JAMES," accessed June 05, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbo45.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 195.↩︎
“Representación dirigida por el ilustre Ayuntamiento de la ciudad de Béxar,” December 19, 1832, Bexar Archives 154:360-7, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. The full text English translation of this document is available athttp://colfa.utsa.edu/users/jreynolds/HIS6913/Martin/Bexar%20Remonstrance%20Translation.htm, accessed June 4, 2019.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2287 of 7817.↩︎
See generally McDonald, José Antonio Navarro.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 98.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2287 of 7817; Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 124.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 43.↩︎
Ibid., 135.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2409 of 7817.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 126.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2314 of 7817.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 119.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 1317 of 7817.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 120.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 37.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2444 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2449 of 7817.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 20.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2467 of 7817.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 60.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 23.↩︎
Ibid., 76.↩︎
Ibid., 23, 76, 136.↩︎
José Antonio Navarro memoir, quoted in McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2476 of 7817.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 24.↩︎
Ibid., 24.↩︎
Ibid., 76.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 146.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 251.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2521 of 7817.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Camilla Campbell, “José Ángel Navarro,” accessed on September 9, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fna16. This was not only consistent with long-standing custom, it also recalled a precedent dating back explicitly to San Antonians endorsement of the Plan de Jalapa in 1829.↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 189.↩︎
Ibid., 190.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Crystal Sasse Ragsdale, "ALSBURY, HORACE ARLINGTON," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fal48.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 158.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 62.↩︎
Hardin, Texan Iliad, 28.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 77.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Alwyn Barr, “The Battle of Concepción,” accessed on September 9, 2018 https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qec02.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 68.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 68.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Alwyn Barr, "BEXAR, SIEGE OF," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qeb01.↩︎
Mary A. Maverick, Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick (Eastbourne: Gardners Books, 2007), Kindle, Loc 200 of 1954.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Paula Mitchell Marks, "MAVERICK, SAMUEL AUGUSTUS," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fma84.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 270.↩︎
Ibid., 65, 82.↩︎
Ibid., 81.↩︎
Ibid., 84↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 148.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 84.↩︎
Barr, "BEXAR, SIEGE OF.".↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 86.↩︎
Ibid., 89.↩︎
Ibid., 87.↩︎
Ibid., 91.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 25.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 91.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Stephen L. Hardin, "ALAMO, BATTLE OF THE," accessed September 11, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qea02.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 114.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 97.↩︎
Hardin, "ALAMO, BATTLE OF THE.".↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 274.↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 186.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 133.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 265.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 139.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 217.↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 188; Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 200.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2557 of 7817; Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 160.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 10.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 24.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 664 of 4314.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 47-8.↩︎
See Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 43-45. See also Handbook of Texas Online, William R. Williamson, "BOWIE, JAMES," accessed June 05, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbo45.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 49.↩︎
Ibid., 181.↩︎
Hardin, "ALAMO, BATTLE OF THE.".↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 154.↩︎
Ibid., 155.↩︎
Ibid., 160.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 191.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 161. Aminta Inelda Pérez, citing Tim Todish, claims that 1 out of 3 Tejanos participated compared to 1 out of 7 Anglos. Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 14.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 201.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Randell G. Tarín, "LOSOYA, JOSE TORIBIO," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/flo63.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 252-3.↩︎
Ibid., 116.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Bill Groneman, "ALAMO NONCOMBATANTS," accessed February 06, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qsa01.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 102.↩︎
De Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, Kindle, Loc 370 of 4764.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 74.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 214.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 298 of 7817.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 208.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 204.↩︎
Ibid., 209.↩︎
Ibid., 131.↩︎
Ibid., 63.↩︎
Ibid., 132↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 4524 of 7817.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Stephen L. Hardin, "ALAMO, BATTLE OF THE.".↩︎
Folsom, Arredondo, 219, 228.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 222.↩︎
Ibid., 191.↩︎
Ibid., 221.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 237.↩︎
Ibid., 269.↩︎
Ibid., 219.↩︎
Ibid., 220.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 4.↩︎
Ibid., 195.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 244.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Stephen L. Hardin, "ALAMO, BATTLE OF THE.".↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Crystal Sasse Ragsdale, "ALSBURY, JUANA GERTRUDIS NAVARRO," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fal49.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 232, places this event on the evening of March 5th.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 270↩︎
Ibid., 270-1.↩︎
Ibid., 272.↩︎
Ibid., 272.↩︎
Ibid., 265-6.↩︎
Ibid., 274.↩︎
Lon Tinkle, 13 Days to Glory: The Siege of the Alamo (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1985).↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 36.↩︎
T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: The Story of Texas (Needham: Prentice Hall, 2003), 208.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 281.↩︎
Ibid., 284.↩︎
John S. Ford, “Mrs. Alsbury’s Recollections of The Alamo,” in Todd Hansen, ed., The Alamo Reader: A Study in History (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2003).↩︎
Ford, “Mrs. Alsbury’s Recollections of The Alamo.”↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 286.↩︎
Ibid., 292.↩︎
Ibid., 289.↩︎
Ibid., 286.↩︎
Ibid., 287.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Bill Groneman, "WOLF, ANTHONY," accessed September 11, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fwo44.↩︎
Hardin, "ALAMO, BATTLE OF THE."↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 297.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Bill Groneman, "ALAMO NONCOMBATANTS," accessed February 06, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qsa01.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 294.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Reynaldo J. Esparza, "ESPARZA, JOSE MARIA," accessed September 11, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fes02.↩︎
Donovan, The Blood of Heroes, 295.↩︎
Ibid., 296.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 156.↩︎
Cutrer, "SMITH, ERASTUS [DEAF].".↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 81.↩︎
Ibid., 81.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 309.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 82.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 325.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 28.↩︎
Ibid., 85.↩︎
Ibid., 141.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 202 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2872 of 7817.↩︎
Kenneth W. Wheeler, To Wear a City’s Crown: The Beginnings of Urban Growth in Texas, 1836-1865 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 110-1.↩︎
Lewis Fisher, Saving San Antonio: The Preservation of a Heritage (San Antonio: Maverick Publishing Company, 2016), Kindle, Loc 663 of 14108.↩︎
Porter, Spanish Water, Anglo Water, 127.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2879 and 2889 of 7817. Jeff Long also makes the important point that “Texas lands represented a risky investment in danger of Mexican repossession.” Long, Duel of Eagles, 330.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 2900 of 7817.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 190.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 4294 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 3107 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 4136 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 4189 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 4178 of 7817.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 174.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 23.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 86.↩︎
Poyo and Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins, Kindle, Loc 2307 of 4665.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2267 of 4665.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 2408 of 4665.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 168.↩︎
Ibid., 29.↩︎
Hardin, Texan Iliad, 249.↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 164; Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, , 88.↩︎
Pérez, “Tejano Rangers,” 208.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, x.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 318.↩︎
Ibid., 318-9.↩︎
Ibid., 321.↩︎
Maverick, Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick, Kindle, Loc 549 of 1954.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 327.↩︎
Ibid., 327.↩︎
Ibid., 328.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Thomas W. Cutrer, “Battle of Walker’s Creek,” accessed on September 3, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/btw02.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 11.↩︎
Cutrer, "SMITH, ERASTUS [DEAF].".↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 313.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 40.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 185.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 178.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Erma Baker, "TWOHIG, JOHN," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ftw04.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 94.↩︎
Long, Duel of Eagles, 94.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 101.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 3289 of 7817.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 43-4.↩︎
Ibid., 93.↩︎
Ibid., 95.↩︎
Ibid., 49.↩︎
Ibid., 74.↩︎
Ibid., 48.↩︎
Ibid., 46.↩︎
Ragsdale, "ALSBURY, JUANA GERTRUDIS NAVARRO.".↩︎
Marks, "MAVERICK, SAMUEL AUGUSTUS."↩︎
Baker, "TWOHIG, JOHN."↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 3588 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 3827 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 3891 of 7817.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 167.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 3999-4002 of 7817.↩︎
John Salmon Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, 2nd ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), Kindle, Loc 1292 of ???.↩︎
Bradley Folsom, "The Rise and Fall of Ignacio Perez Sr. and Jr., Patriarchs of the Most Powerful Family in Early Nineteenth-Century Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 122, no. 2 (2018), 144-75.↩︎
Porter, Spanish Water, Anglo Water, 90.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 90.↩︎
Mary Maverick, Memoirs of Mary Maverick [INSERT PUBLISHER INFO, YEAR], Kindle, Loc 327 of 1954.↩︎
Frederick Law Olmstead, A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-trip on the Southwestern Frontier, with a Statistical Appendix (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1857), 149-150.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 193.↩︎
Sidney Lanier, “San Antonio de Bexar,” in Retrospects and Prospects: Descriptive and Historical Essays by Sidney Lanier (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1899), 34, 76.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 173.↩︎
Olmstead, A Journey through Texas, [INSERT PAGE NUMBER AND CONFIRM SOURCE!].↩︎
Ibid., 159.↩︎
Larry P. Knight, “Defending the Unnecesary,” in Bruce A. Glasrud, ed., African Americans in South Texas History (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2011), 32.↩︎
Glasrud, ed., African Americans in South Texas History, 20.↩︎
Wheeler, To Wear a City’s Crown, 147.↩︎
Fisher, Saving San Antonio, Kindle, Loc 652 of 14108.↩︎
Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, Kindle, Loc 1764 of 12663.↩︎
Hardin, Texan Iliad, 249.↩︎
Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, Kindle, Loc 2192 of 12663.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 91.↩︎
Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, Kindle, Loc 2109 of ????.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 203.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 141, 144.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, vii.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 207.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Lone Star, 320.↩︎
Wheeler, To Wear a City’s Crown, 43.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 72.↩︎
Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, Kindle, Loc 270 of ???.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 288 of ???.↩︎
Wheeler, To Wear a City’s Crown, 154.↩︎
Ibid., 84.↩︎
Chipman, Spanish Texas, Kindle, Loc 3058 of 5000.↩︎
Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, Kindle, Loc 4624 of ???.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 432.↩︎
Ibid., 430.↩︎
UNESCO, World Heritage Nomination File 1466, 152.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 439.↩︎
Ibid., 422.↩︎
Ibid., 390.↩︎
Wheeler. To Wear a City’s Crown, 25.↩︎
Fehrenbach, San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 998 of 4313.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Betje Black Klier, "GUILBEAU, FRANCOIS, JR.," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgumu.↩︎
Walter D. Kamphoefner, ed., An Immigrant Miller Picks Texas: The Letters of Carl Hilmar Guenther, trans. by Regina Beckmann Hurst (San Antonio: Maverick Publishing Company, 2001), ix.↩︎
Kamphoefner, An Immigrant Miller Picks Texas, 17.↩︎
Ibid., 33.↩︎
Ibid., 21.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 1013 of 4313.↩︎
Kamphoefner, An Immigrant Miller Picks Texas, 63.↩︎
Wheeler, To Wear a City’s Crown, 137.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 1368 of 4313.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 981 of 4313.↩︎
Kamphoefner, An Immigrant Miller Picks Texas, xi.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Lone Star, 320.↩︎
Knight, “Defending the Unnecesary,” 37.↩︎
Ibid., 35.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 885 of 4314.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 4756 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 4685 of 7817.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 224.↩︎
Ibid., 209.↩︎
Ibid., 210.↩︎
Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 5.↩︎
De la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered, 40.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 229.↩︎
Wheeler, To Wear a City’s Crown, 35; Fehrenbach, Lone Star, 363.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Lone Star, 364.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 1147 of 4313.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 1148 of 4314.↩︎
Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, Kindle, Loc 6925 of ???.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 519 of ???.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 537 of ???.↩︎
Wheeler, To Wear a City’s Crown, 151.↩︎
Ibid., 152.↩︎
Randall Lionel Waller, “The Callaghan Machine and San Antonio Politics, 1885-1912,” Master’s Thesis, Texas Tech University, 1973, 31.↩︎
Marilyn Sibley, George W. Brackenridge: Maverick Philanthropist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973), 86.↩︎
Fisher, Saving San Antonio, Kindle, Loc 669-670 of 14108.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 5105 of 7817.↩︎
Waller, “The Callaghan Machine,” 34.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 4973 of 7817.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 452.↩︎
Waller, “The Callaghan Machine,” 18.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Comanches, 297.↩︎
Sibley, George W. Brackenridge, 91.↩︎
Wheeler, To Wear a City’s Crown, 156.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 1237 of 4314.↩︎
Wheeler, To Wear a City’s Crown, 113.↩︎
Waller, “The Callaghan Machine,” 36.↩︎
Fisher, Saving San Antonio, Kindle, Loc 894 of 14108.↩︎
Marks, "MAVERICK, SAMUEL AUGUSTUS."↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 3960 of 4313.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, Frances T. McCallum and James Mulkey Owens, "BARBED WIRE," accessed June 06, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/aob01.↩︎
Fisher, Saving San Antonio, Kindle, Loc 1166 of 14108.↩︎
Porter, Spanish Water, Anglo Water, 121.↩︎
Sibley, George W. Brackenridge, 130.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 1452 of 4313.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 1466 of 4314.↩︎
McDonald, José Antonio Navarro, Kindle, Loc 337 of 7817.↩︎
Ibid., Kindle, Loc 5224 of 7817.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, John W. Clark, Jr., "GIRAUD, FRANCOIS P.," accessed September 09, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgi35.↩︎
Kamphoefner, An Immigrant Miller Picks Texas, xi.↩︎
Fisher, Saving San Antonio, Kindle, Loc 663 of 14108.↩︎
Handbook of Texas Online, J. Kaaz Doyle, “Brian Callaghan,” accessed on September 5, 2018, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fcadw.↩︎
Waller, “The Callaghan Machine,” 73.↩︎
Sibley, George W. Brackenridge, 151.↩︎
Waller, “The Callaghan Machine,” 138.↩︎
Fisher, Saving San Antonio, Kindle, Loc 1606 of 14108.↩︎
Fisher, Saving San Antonio, Kindle, Loc 1706 of 14108.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 1781 of 4313.↩︎
Fisher, Saving San Antonio, Kindle, Loc 958 of 14108.↩︎
Sibley, George W. Brackenridge, 147.↩︎
Fehrenbach, Lone Star, 601.↩︎
Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, Kindle, Loc 625 of ???.↩︎
Fehrenbach, et. al., The San Antonio Story, Kindle, Loc 1466 of 4313.↩︎
Ramos, Beyond the Alamo, 260.↩︎

Brandon writes and records stories about Texas and México.

Contents

Episode 1: Founding San Antonio