CHAPTER 18
The aim of the Texan-Santa Fe expedition was twofold. To being with, Texas had claimed all of the area to the Rio Grande—which included Santa Fe—after San Jacinto. While Texas was in no way able to govern the area, Lamar hoped to try. Ol’ Sam himself wasn’t against the idea—just the timing. If the New Mexicans wanted to be governed by Texas—and there was evidence they did—we were ready.
Secondly—and this was probably the more realistic goal—Texas wanted in on the Santa Fe trade. If the New Mexicans wanted to stay under the thumb of Mexico City, that would be fine, as long as Texas got her share of the Texas trade. It wasn’t a bad idea—it was still a good bit less distance to Santa Fe from Indianola, Texas’s most important port, than from Independence, Missouri.
I don’t think I’m cutting it too fine to say that many of us—if not all—had visions of entering Santa Fe with flags flying, a band playing, people cheering, and senoritas flirting. After things had gotten so tough, we may have modified our visions to entering the city quietly, getting a good meal, maybe a taste of “Taos Lightning”, and there would still be the senoritas. I can assure you that none of us had visions of not entering the city at all. Of being arrested and marched under guard to Mexico where we—those who survived the march—would rot in prison. But that is exactly what happened.
We were tricked into surrendering our arms, though in all honesty we could not have fought our way out. What could we have done? Gone back across the Llano, fighting Indians and starvation the whole way? Some blame Captain Lewis for the whole disaster, and there’s no question that he did betray us, but I place the blame on Lamar and the other organizers who understudied and oversold the whole project.
Anyway, after getting General MacLeod and the rest across the plains, we were all arrested and taken prisoner by the Mexican army under Governor Armijo. San Miguel—a little village several miles from Santa Fe was as close as we got to our intended destination. Our weapons and prized possessions were taken from us—sometimes even our boots and our hats! We were still suffering from hunger and the rigors of our journey as we were rounded up and marched toward Mexico.
At each town, the resident would come out to see us go by. Sometimes they threw things or jeered. Some took pity on us. I’ll never forget the first time one of the women broke from the ranks, rushed towards me, and placed tortillas in my hand. With that kind gesture, and the word “Pobrecito”, I admit I broke down and bawled. Here I considered myself a man, was over 700 miles from home, but when that senora did that, all I could think of was my mother, and how many times I had heard her use that word—though often in a gentle mocking way that Anglo mothers may say “poor little thing” to child that feels put upon. A Mexican soldier ran up and pushed her away, knocking the tortillas out of my hand. Though I was starving, I don’t think I could have eaten them anyway with that lump in my throat.
We suffered many indignities on our way to Mexico City. Armijo had given orders that if any man died on the trail, his ears would be cut off to prove that he had not escaped. But I would be unfair if I did not recount that we were also treated well at times—for prisoners of war. I know many of my fellow Texans have nothing good to say about Mexicans or people of Spanish descent, but I can assure you they are like people everywhere. When “men” like Santa Anna and Armijo get into power it leaves a bad taste for sure, but there were many gentlemen among the Mexican officers and men who had authority over us. (Even during the War for Texan Independence many of Santa Anna’s generals attempted to persuade the despot that captured Texans should be treated humanely as prisoners of war, but he would not listen.)
Almost 2000 miles we were marched, from near Santa Fe to Vera Cruz, where we were placed in Perote Prison—the same place Austin had been incarcerated aver two dozen years before. It was a horrible place—whatever horrors the word “dungeon” conjures up, with the exception of out-and-out torture, was at Perote. I tried to keep my mind active, even as my body was wasting away, but I won’t bore you with any more doggerel. I’ve forgotten most of it, anyhow.
Some guys didn’t make it—they died in New Mexico along the “Jornada del Muerte”, or in the Mexican deserts, or in prison. Falconer, being British, obtained an early release through the demand of Her Majesty Queen Vicky’s influence. Kendall also had important friends and became an advocate for the rest of us. Both of those fellow wrote accounts of the whole ordeal, and if you want to know more, I recommend you read them, because I’ve said about all I’m going to about it.
Thanks to pressure from the American and British governments, most of the rest of us got out of prison in April of 1842. We were shipped to New Orleans, then to Texas. I vowed I would never leave the Republic of Texas again—a promise I couldn’t keep.
CHAPTER 19
I made my way back home. I had written and said I was coming, but I didn’t know when. When I walked into the house, Mama was fixing tortillas. She had gotten a little plumper while I had been gone. I said “Mama, estoy en casa.” She whirled to face me, rushed to kiss me, and kept saying “Pobrecito! Pobrecito!” and damned if I didn’t start bawling again. Moni and Mali and Lupe came from somewhere and everyone started talking and crying at once. Moni was now 16 and a beautiful young woman—engaged to a local farmer but putting off the wedding until I could get home. Mali and Lupe would be after the boys pretty soon themselves. From outside came a little six-year old terror, who was already showing signs of taking more after the “Independence” part of his name than the “Jesus” part. I think he had grown a foot in the time I had been gone.
How long had I been gone? Let’s see we left in June ’41 and it was now May…what? Surely not 1842? Hadn’t I been gone about ten years? It sure seemed like it. When Papa came in, he looked like he had aged that long for sure. If possible, I think my ordeal had been harder on him than on me. There was something there that had not been before—a seething, a brooding. He had developed a hatred for Santa Anna and the Mexican government that allowed him to stay in power.
“We should have killed that black-hearted cowardly son-of-a bitch when we had the chance after San Jacinto,” he said many times. “If I had known that’s who that sniveling prisoner was, I would have killed him myself.” I can’t say I cared much for the so-called “Napoleon of the West” myself, but there was something unhealthy about Papa’s anger and I figured no good could come of it. I was right.
…..
“How’s that old Dutchman Bachman?” I asked as soon as the family had had a good look at me—and I had had my fill of Mama’s cooking.
“El es bueno,” Mama said. “He has asked about you often. Did you hear that San Antonio was captured in the spring by General Vasquez? Dios mio, I pray he is no relation! Anyway, he and some Mexican soldiers invaded and attacked San Antonio. Some of the Rangers—Bachman among them—resisted, but there was not enough of them and they had to give it up. Vasquez could not hold onto it, though—he was only making a show.”
Papa chimed in, “Scared the hell out of people though. Sam Houston—you know he’s back in office now—got worried about the government being in Austin out on the frontier and ordered the archives be taken back to Houston. This didn’t set will with the “Austinites”--or whatever the hell you call them—and refused. Damn near started a war over it. Don’t know as how it’s over yet.”
“Well, I think I’ll go over and see Bachman. Looks like we can compare notes on what it’s like to be humiliated by Mexican soldiers.” It wasn’t far to walk, but damn it, I had been walking for what seemed like years, so I took Papa’s horse—saddled out front—and rode him over.
It was a short trip--I did not expect it to change my life.
Showing posts with label Santa Fe Expedition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Santa Fe Expedition. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Texas Forever--Chaps 15, 16, 17--Day 9
CHAPTER 15
We started in late June—too late to be crossing the plains, as some of the waterholes would be dried up, and in the northern reaches the grass would be dead when we got there. But it couldn’t be helped. There was delay after delay. Most of us were under twenty-five and I was by no means the youngest one on the trip. Bachman had weaseled out. Well, not really. He had taken sick and just wasn’t well enough to go. I visited him before I left and really rubbed it in. When I returned, it was his turn.
It started out as a lark, even though there was lots of work. We soldiers were expected to work by smoothing out the trail, cutting the river banks, removing rocks and stumps, etc. As there was no real soldiering to do this early in the trip, I didn’t mind. As we traveled north, we came across the site of Bird’s Creek Battle and I thought again of Bachman and how rough he said that fight was. I had never really fought Indians, but I was pretty sure I could handle myself when the time came—if it came.
I guess I should have seen the signs of disaster early on, when we started throwing away supplies and eating up the beef. And then there was the disparaging of General MacLeod. I can’t say I liked him much myself, but a commander had better have the respect of his men—especially if they’re volunteers—and MacLeod didn’t. I think he got the job because he was Lamar’s brother-in-law or some kind of kin. Of course, that doesn’t make him a bad leader—but it doesn’t increase his standing in the eyes of his men, either. I had signed on for the duration, though, and I was young, tough, and ready for anything. How bad could it get?
Pretty bad, as it turned out. We were heading straight north on somebody’s recommendation—I don’t remember whose. The idea was to strike the Red River, then follow it west to it’s headwaters in the mountains of New Mexico. There were a couple of problems with this. First, no one had been from Austin to the Red. Oh, I think somebody had claimed he had, but he was pretty fuzzy on the details. The other problem is that the Red does not rise in the mountains of New Mexico. This was one of those suppositions for which the Anglo world is so famous. The Mexican-Spanish-Indian world knew it didn’t rise in the mountains, but who was listening to them? It really wasn’t an issue, though, for by the time we stumbled onto the Red River, we were too petered out to do much about it.
As we headed north, we hit what is now called the Cross Timbers. It is a patch of woods and hills separated from similar areas to the east. It fell to the soldiers to make a road for the wagons through it, and I can tell you it was rough country! This delayed us even more and the wagons suffered. The Brit Falconer took lunar observations and figured us a couple hundred miles east of where we should be. He wasn’t confident in his findings, though, so they were disregarded. The thing is, we could have avoided this whole mess of woods, hills, and rocks, if we had stuck to the high ground between the Brazos and the Colorado.
While I’m talking about Falconer, I’ve got to tell you this. He wasn’t all that old—40 or so—when he came to Texas, which was just in time for this trip, but to my young eyes he seemed ancient. He was a good fellow, I suppose. Curious about everything, and funny as hell—though usually not intentionally. It was generally in the way he said things.
Like the time he walked up to the freighter and wanted to know where the man’s master was. Now, thanks to Bachman, I had learned that the word we Americans use for the guy we work for—“boss”—was Dutch, ands essentially meant the same as the English word “master”. After we whipped the Brits we just didn’t like using that word (though we certainly encouraged the slaves to use it) so we took the Dutch term. It didn’t make us sound so subservient. Of course, the English still used their word, and Falconer walked up to this burly freighter and said, “I say, good fellow, can you tell me where your master is?”
The freighter turned to face this Englishman and for a minute I really thought he was going to kill him right there. He looked him up and down for what seemed like five minutes while his fists clenched and unclenched. He finally determined the fancy fellow didn’t mean any harm, so he just growled, “The son of a bitch ain’t been borned yet!” and went back to working on his wagon. Those of us that were standing around nearly died laughing—even Falconer’s buddy Kendall. Maybe Kendall explained the finer points of American and Texan idioms, or maybe Falconer was just a quick study, but he never tried that again.
Anyway we finally emerged from the Cross Timbers, regrouped (we had gotten pretty spread out) and headed northwest to the Red, which we found within a few days. Or so we thought. There was a young Tejano with us named Juan Carlos Lopez, only he didn’t usually tell anyone the Lopez part, since that was part of Santa Anna’s name, and usually just went by Juan Carlos or Carlos. I had gotten to know him pretty well and liked him. He was a little younger than me and liked to talk a lot. I guess he took up with me since I was close to his age and could speak Spanish. As I say he talked a lot, but I always suspected he played a little fast and loose with the truth. Generally, those kinds of folks don’t hurt anything, but this time it did—well, sort of.
When we struck that river northwest of the timbers, Carlos—who had told anyone who would listen that he had spent time with Comancheros in New Mexico—identified it as the Red River so we began to follow it. Before long, it swung to the southwest, and we knew the Red did not do that. One of the men crossed a ridge to the south, headed for a river. He returned the next day, reporting that the waters of that stream were clear and sweet—not muddy and brackish as we knew the river south of the Red would be. It must be the Brazos, and we were on the wrong river.
When Carlos had identified the river as the Red, he was made guide of the expedition, which is another indication of what a sorry lot of explorers we were. When he was proven wrong, he was forgiven, seeing as how he was the only one who could even pretend to have an inkling of where we were. He identified some outcroppings as some he recognized, and some narrow places in the river as the “Angosturas”—a famous landmark in eastern New Mexico. We—and I use that term loosely—believed we had to be only about 75 miles from Santa Fe, so were ready to believe him. (In reality we were nearly 400 miles from the New Mexican settlements.)
To this day, I don’t know if Carlos really thought he knew what he was talking about or not, or just wanted to be important for a while. I guess he really thought so, because it would have been pretty stupid for a Spanish boy to intentionally mislead a bunch of Gringos. (Whoops, there I go again, using that word out of place.) When it became apparent that he was as clueless as the rest of us, he was afraid of recriminations, and slipped away one night. I can’t say as how I blame him, given the circumstances. And chances are that he met up with some Kiowas or Comanches—who all knew Spanish in some form—and made it into New Mexico. I hope so, for I liked him, even if he was a blowhard. (Come to think of it, he may have gotten into politics in New Mexico. He was certainly equipped for it.)
By now we were in one of those situations where you keep going because you think surely things can’t get worse—and then they do. As a matter of fact, if we had known what was coming, we would have enjoyed the night the ammunition wagon caught on fire as high good times and a great show of fireworks. Here we were, lost as hell, further from home than we had ever been in a trackless “desert”. We were running out of supplies and patience. We were being harassed by Indians. What could we do? We kept going. And then…there it was.
CHAPTER 16
We had all heard of the Llano Estacado—the Staked Plains. Some folks said that it was called that because the early conquistadores had to drive stakes in the ground to see where they had been. That is incorrect. The Llano is a great plain considerably higher than the land around it. On certain approaches, it appears to be up on palisades—or stakes. This is certainly true south of the Canadian in New Mexico where Coronado and others first encountered it. It is also true on some of the eastern approaches—like where we found it.
Here we were with freight wagons loaded with goods we knew would sell in Santa Fe—everything from calomel, to violin strings, to combs and a clarinet—and here before us is a great wall of rock. I volunteered with a few others to scout the escarpment, which came to be known as the Caprock. There was no way in hell we were going to get wagons up it.
So what do we do now? We are in a mess and there is no way around it—no way to put a good face on it. We are on the eastern side of the Llano Estacado. We know the western side is in New Mexico, but we don’t know how far it is across it. We are dangerously low on supplies, including food and ammunition. We have been harassed by Indians, who are picking off stragglers. We have no way of getting the wagons up the escarpment, and even if we did, where the hell would we be? We were in a fix. But surely, this is the bottom isn’t it? If only it had been.
General MacLeod was truly at a loss, but to his credit, what could he do? He had little control left of his men, and didn’t know what to do anyway. We could turn back and go back to Austin with our tails between our legs. That wasn’t very appealing—and we knew how rough that road was. We camped at the confluence of a couple of streams. Even good water was hard to come by, most of it in this country being alkalai.
While we were camped here, I went out to scout and to hunt. I hadn’t gone far—still within sight of the camp, when I heard something whiz past my head. I turned to see an Indian nocking another arrow in his bow, so I spurred my horse and headed for camp, barely missing getting hit by another arrow or two. When I was safe in camp, one man came up to me and questioned me—totally serious—“Why didn’t you try to talk to him—maybe find out where we are?” I never cease to be amazed at the stupidity of the human race. I had barely made it back into camp with my hair on my head and this dumb jackass asks why I didn’t engage a Comanche in polite conversation.
Some of this was the result of Lamar’s harsh policies towards Indians and some of it was due to the natural tendency of any Texan to kill any Indian. Years earlier, the Comanches had come to a council in San Antonio. The idea was to exchange captives and try to work out some peace treaty. Somebody started shooting, and a number of the Comanche chiefs were killed. They retaliated by killing all their captives, and the war was on. From that time on Comanches, Kiowas and most other Indians--though they could be friendly to Americans--hated Texans. We were paying for that now.
You never could tell. A couple of guys, seeing some Indians a ways off, indicated they would like to parley. The Indians were obviously scornful of the expedition, and remarked to the men, “Su jefe es tonto” and refused to help. (As I said, Spanish was spoken and understood by most of the Plains Indians.) When the men returned to the camp, they repeated what the Indian said. I couldn’t help myself and said “Damned clever for a savage.” When those who didn’t speak Spanish understood that the Indian had said “Your leader is a fool” they laughed, too.
(We could laugh, but it was serious business. One group of a half-dozen or so went out to scout and hunt, got cut off by Indians, and were slaughtered to a man.)
General MacLeod finally called a council to determine what to do. All military logic goes against dividing your force while on the defensive, but we really had no choice. It was decided that one party of about a hundred men on horses would ascend to the Llano and try to reach the settlements in New Mexico. The others, numbering about 200, would stay with the wagons and wait for rescue.
As the general and the men resolved that this was the only course, the camp was named Camp Resolution. And future events would test our resolve to the fullest.
CHAPTER 17
Captain Sutton was put in charge of the “Horse Party” as it came to be called. He was a friend of Bachman’s and I guess had heard and seen enough of me that he knew I was good on a horse and good with a gun, so I was one of the ones chosen. It didn’t hurt any that I could speak Spanish like a native, and could maybe even pull my Spanish pedigree if need be. It also didn’t hurt that I was young, wiry, tough, and small enough so as not to eat much or be a burden on a horse. (I don’t know why people think small guys don’t eat much—though God knows this trip sure provided practice in eating light..)
I was sure glad. I had gotten really tired of sitting around that camp waiting to be picked off by some eagle eyed Indian. We dried some meat, molded some bullets, packed some provisions, and headed out. Surely…surely we thought, it can’t possibly be far now to Santa Fe. Little did we know we would never see that city.
We ascended the Caprock and began to make our way across the plains. Now here, Sutton did some things that just didn’t seem right. Almost right away we began to cross some trails. There was one little creek in particular where the trail was worn enough to look like a damn turnpike. It seemed obvious to me that the trail would go somewhere. And since the creek ran toward the east, it seemed logical that following it to the west would be the thing to do. But I was just a dumb kid and kept my thought to myself.
Thinking back now at what that country looked like then…I count myself mightily blessed to have seen it. I wish I could have appreciated it more at the time, but the fact is we were close to starving and trying to get across the Llano as fast as possible. I could sure see why that old fable about driving stakes has lasted so long. Our hundred horses didn’t make a dent in the prairie.
We finally found the other side and descended below the Cap once more. This was rough country, and our rations had run out. We were reduced to eating snakes and lizards, wondering if we were going to starve to death right there. We finally stumbled upon some Comancheros on their way to the plains to trade with the Indians. At first they were terrified of us and we couldn’t figure out why. They finally realized we were peaceful—we were in no shape to be otherwise, even if we had wanted to be—and told us that they had no extra food, but just a few miles further on we would be in the eastern settlements. The people there would provide us with food.
We came to a little adobe and rock placed they called Trementina, which means Turpentine. There was a lot of scrub cedar in the area that they would boil to make turpentine, then take it to the trail where it would be shipped to the States. They also had hundreds—maybe thousands—of sheep. They may have sold wool to Santa Fe traders, too, I don’t know. When I saw those sheep all I could think of was mutton.
These people seemed terrified of us too, for a while. We told them we had just crossed the Llano and were nearly starving. They asked how long it had taken us, and when they found out it was two weeks they were astonished. “Tres o quarto dias, como máximo!” they said—“Three or four days, at the most!”—and they told of the trail that went down the creek of white dirt, or the Tierra Blanca. The way they described it, I knew where they were talking about, and I wanted to tell Captain Sutton “I told you so” but I was still a private, he was still a captain, and I had a mouth full of mutton.
Let’s see, how did I say that later?
“Our leader we called Captain Sutton
Of the Llano he didn’t know nuttin’
I would have called him a fool
But survival’s my rule
And my mouth was plum full of mutton
(You think some strange things sitting in a Mexican prison. I wonder if Ol’ Austin ever thought up limericks?)
While we were being fed, Sutton made arrangements to have a couple of the locals go back to rescue MacLeod and the others. Once again, I was called on for this duty. In some ways I wanted to stay with the others, but in some ways I sort of wanted to get off with these New Mexicans and talk to them on my own. I also had a keen desire to see the quick way across the Llano.
We ascended the Caprock southeast of a little mountain. My companions told me that this was where Coronado himself had approached the Llano. I told them I was a descendant of the old conquistador, but that didn’t impress them much. It seems almost everybody in New Mexico was descended from some conquistador, and in that part of the country you didn’t always brag about it. Just because a fellow had a Spanish name didn’t mean he wasn’t mostly Indian. When I told them I was also an Archibeque, that seemed to make a little impact on them. As a matter of fact, one of them knew some of the Santa Fe Archibeques—distant cousins, I suppose.
We reached the men left behind in three days, just like they had said. It was a good thing, too. They had decided we had been killed or starved to death or were within just a few days of heading back to Austin. I reckon later they wished they had.
Our guides said that the freight wagons would have to be destroyed. Kendall had gotten hurt and couldn’t ride or walk, so we figured out a way to get the light wagon he was riding in up the escarpment and then we were on our way. While we were traveling, I asked the New Mexicans why everyone seemed so scared of us. They told us that the governor, Manuel Armijo, had heard we were coming. He told the New Mexicans that we were an attacking force, and that we would kill their men, rape their women, and eat their babies. I laughed out loud at this. They stared back with stone faces. I stopped laughing and asked “Cierto, usted no cree esto!” (Surely you don’t believe this!)
They just shrugged and said “Quien sabe?”
We started in late June—too late to be crossing the plains, as some of the waterholes would be dried up, and in the northern reaches the grass would be dead when we got there. But it couldn’t be helped. There was delay after delay. Most of us were under twenty-five and I was by no means the youngest one on the trip. Bachman had weaseled out. Well, not really. He had taken sick and just wasn’t well enough to go. I visited him before I left and really rubbed it in. When I returned, it was his turn.
It started out as a lark, even though there was lots of work. We soldiers were expected to work by smoothing out the trail, cutting the river banks, removing rocks and stumps, etc. As there was no real soldiering to do this early in the trip, I didn’t mind. As we traveled north, we came across the site of Bird’s Creek Battle and I thought again of Bachman and how rough he said that fight was. I had never really fought Indians, but I was pretty sure I could handle myself when the time came—if it came.
I guess I should have seen the signs of disaster early on, when we started throwing away supplies and eating up the beef. And then there was the disparaging of General MacLeod. I can’t say I liked him much myself, but a commander had better have the respect of his men—especially if they’re volunteers—and MacLeod didn’t. I think he got the job because he was Lamar’s brother-in-law or some kind of kin. Of course, that doesn’t make him a bad leader—but it doesn’t increase his standing in the eyes of his men, either. I had signed on for the duration, though, and I was young, tough, and ready for anything. How bad could it get?
Pretty bad, as it turned out. We were heading straight north on somebody’s recommendation—I don’t remember whose. The idea was to strike the Red River, then follow it west to it’s headwaters in the mountains of New Mexico. There were a couple of problems with this. First, no one had been from Austin to the Red. Oh, I think somebody had claimed he had, but he was pretty fuzzy on the details. The other problem is that the Red does not rise in the mountains of New Mexico. This was one of those suppositions for which the Anglo world is so famous. The Mexican-Spanish-Indian world knew it didn’t rise in the mountains, but who was listening to them? It really wasn’t an issue, though, for by the time we stumbled onto the Red River, we were too petered out to do much about it.
As we headed north, we hit what is now called the Cross Timbers. It is a patch of woods and hills separated from similar areas to the east. It fell to the soldiers to make a road for the wagons through it, and I can tell you it was rough country! This delayed us even more and the wagons suffered. The Brit Falconer took lunar observations and figured us a couple hundred miles east of where we should be. He wasn’t confident in his findings, though, so they were disregarded. The thing is, we could have avoided this whole mess of woods, hills, and rocks, if we had stuck to the high ground between the Brazos and the Colorado.
While I’m talking about Falconer, I’ve got to tell you this. He wasn’t all that old—40 or so—when he came to Texas, which was just in time for this trip, but to my young eyes he seemed ancient. He was a good fellow, I suppose. Curious about everything, and funny as hell—though usually not intentionally. It was generally in the way he said things.
Like the time he walked up to the freighter and wanted to know where the man’s master was. Now, thanks to Bachman, I had learned that the word we Americans use for the guy we work for—“boss”—was Dutch, ands essentially meant the same as the English word “master”. After we whipped the Brits we just didn’t like using that word (though we certainly encouraged the slaves to use it) so we took the Dutch term. It didn’t make us sound so subservient. Of course, the English still used their word, and Falconer walked up to this burly freighter and said, “I say, good fellow, can you tell me where your master is?”
The freighter turned to face this Englishman and for a minute I really thought he was going to kill him right there. He looked him up and down for what seemed like five minutes while his fists clenched and unclenched. He finally determined the fancy fellow didn’t mean any harm, so he just growled, “The son of a bitch ain’t been borned yet!” and went back to working on his wagon. Those of us that were standing around nearly died laughing—even Falconer’s buddy Kendall. Maybe Kendall explained the finer points of American and Texan idioms, or maybe Falconer was just a quick study, but he never tried that again.
Anyway we finally emerged from the Cross Timbers, regrouped (we had gotten pretty spread out) and headed northwest to the Red, which we found within a few days. Or so we thought. There was a young Tejano with us named Juan Carlos Lopez, only he didn’t usually tell anyone the Lopez part, since that was part of Santa Anna’s name, and usually just went by Juan Carlos or Carlos. I had gotten to know him pretty well and liked him. He was a little younger than me and liked to talk a lot. I guess he took up with me since I was close to his age and could speak Spanish. As I say he talked a lot, but I always suspected he played a little fast and loose with the truth. Generally, those kinds of folks don’t hurt anything, but this time it did—well, sort of.
When we struck that river northwest of the timbers, Carlos—who had told anyone who would listen that he had spent time with Comancheros in New Mexico—identified it as the Red River so we began to follow it. Before long, it swung to the southwest, and we knew the Red did not do that. One of the men crossed a ridge to the south, headed for a river. He returned the next day, reporting that the waters of that stream were clear and sweet—not muddy and brackish as we knew the river south of the Red would be. It must be the Brazos, and we were on the wrong river.
When Carlos had identified the river as the Red, he was made guide of the expedition, which is another indication of what a sorry lot of explorers we were. When he was proven wrong, he was forgiven, seeing as how he was the only one who could even pretend to have an inkling of where we were. He identified some outcroppings as some he recognized, and some narrow places in the river as the “Angosturas”—a famous landmark in eastern New Mexico. We—and I use that term loosely—believed we had to be only about 75 miles from Santa Fe, so were ready to believe him. (In reality we were nearly 400 miles from the New Mexican settlements.)
To this day, I don’t know if Carlos really thought he knew what he was talking about or not, or just wanted to be important for a while. I guess he really thought so, because it would have been pretty stupid for a Spanish boy to intentionally mislead a bunch of Gringos. (Whoops, there I go again, using that word out of place.) When it became apparent that he was as clueless as the rest of us, he was afraid of recriminations, and slipped away one night. I can’t say as how I blame him, given the circumstances. And chances are that he met up with some Kiowas or Comanches—who all knew Spanish in some form—and made it into New Mexico. I hope so, for I liked him, even if he was a blowhard. (Come to think of it, he may have gotten into politics in New Mexico. He was certainly equipped for it.)
By now we were in one of those situations where you keep going because you think surely things can’t get worse—and then they do. As a matter of fact, if we had known what was coming, we would have enjoyed the night the ammunition wagon caught on fire as high good times and a great show of fireworks. Here we were, lost as hell, further from home than we had ever been in a trackless “desert”. We were running out of supplies and patience. We were being harassed by Indians. What could we do? We kept going. And then…there it was.
CHAPTER 16
We had all heard of the Llano Estacado—the Staked Plains. Some folks said that it was called that because the early conquistadores had to drive stakes in the ground to see where they had been. That is incorrect. The Llano is a great plain considerably higher than the land around it. On certain approaches, it appears to be up on palisades—or stakes. This is certainly true south of the Canadian in New Mexico where Coronado and others first encountered it. It is also true on some of the eastern approaches—like where we found it.
Here we were with freight wagons loaded with goods we knew would sell in Santa Fe—everything from calomel, to violin strings, to combs and a clarinet—and here before us is a great wall of rock. I volunteered with a few others to scout the escarpment, which came to be known as the Caprock. There was no way in hell we were going to get wagons up it.
So what do we do now? We are in a mess and there is no way around it—no way to put a good face on it. We are on the eastern side of the Llano Estacado. We know the western side is in New Mexico, but we don’t know how far it is across it. We are dangerously low on supplies, including food and ammunition. We have been harassed by Indians, who are picking off stragglers. We have no way of getting the wagons up the escarpment, and even if we did, where the hell would we be? We were in a fix. But surely, this is the bottom isn’t it? If only it had been.
General MacLeod was truly at a loss, but to his credit, what could he do? He had little control left of his men, and didn’t know what to do anyway. We could turn back and go back to Austin with our tails between our legs. That wasn’t very appealing—and we knew how rough that road was. We camped at the confluence of a couple of streams. Even good water was hard to come by, most of it in this country being alkalai.
While we were camped here, I went out to scout and to hunt. I hadn’t gone far—still within sight of the camp, when I heard something whiz past my head. I turned to see an Indian nocking another arrow in his bow, so I spurred my horse and headed for camp, barely missing getting hit by another arrow or two. When I was safe in camp, one man came up to me and questioned me—totally serious—“Why didn’t you try to talk to him—maybe find out where we are?” I never cease to be amazed at the stupidity of the human race. I had barely made it back into camp with my hair on my head and this dumb jackass asks why I didn’t engage a Comanche in polite conversation.
Some of this was the result of Lamar’s harsh policies towards Indians and some of it was due to the natural tendency of any Texan to kill any Indian. Years earlier, the Comanches had come to a council in San Antonio. The idea was to exchange captives and try to work out some peace treaty. Somebody started shooting, and a number of the Comanche chiefs were killed. They retaliated by killing all their captives, and the war was on. From that time on Comanches, Kiowas and most other Indians--though they could be friendly to Americans--hated Texans. We were paying for that now.
You never could tell. A couple of guys, seeing some Indians a ways off, indicated they would like to parley. The Indians were obviously scornful of the expedition, and remarked to the men, “Su jefe es tonto” and refused to help. (As I said, Spanish was spoken and understood by most of the Plains Indians.) When the men returned to the camp, they repeated what the Indian said. I couldn’t help myself and said “Damned clever for a savage.” When those who didn’t speak Spanish understood that the Indian had said “Your leader is a fool” they laughed, too.
(We could laugh, but it was serious business. One group of a half-dozen or so went out to scout and hunt, got cut off by Indians, and were slaughtered to a man.)
General MacLeod finally called a council to determine what to do. All military logic goes against dividing your force while on the defensive, but we really had no choice. It was decided that one party of about a hundred men on horses would ascend to the Llano and try to reach the settlements in New Mexico. The others, numbering about 200, would stay with the wagons and wait for rescue.
As the general and the men resolved that this was the only course, the camp was named Camp Resolution. And future events would test our resolve to the fullest.
CHAPTER 17
Captain Sutton was put in charge of the “Horse Party” as it came to be called. He was a friend of Bachman’s and I guess had heard and seen enough of me that he knew I was good on a horse and good with a gun, so I was one of the ones chosen. It didn’t hurt any that I could speak Spanish like a native, and could maybe even pull my Spanish pedigree if need be. It also didn’t hurt that I was young, wiry, tough, and small enough so as not to eat much or be a burden on a horse. (I don’t know why people think small guys don’t eat much—though God knows this trip sure provided practice in eating light..)
I was sure glad. I had gotten really tired of sitting around that camp waiting to be picked off by some eagle eyed Indian. We dried some meat, molded some bullets, packed some provisions, and headed out. Surely…surely we thought, it can’t possibly be far now to Santa Fe. Little did we know we would never see that city.
We ascended the Caprock and began to make our way across the plains. Now here, Sutton did some things that just didn’t seem right. Almost right away we began to cross some trails. There was one little creek in particular where the trail was worn enough to look like a damn turnpike. It seemed obvious to me that the trail would go somewhere. And since the creek ran toward the east, it seemed logical that following it to the west would be the thing to do. But I was just a dumb kid and kept my thought to myself.
Thinking back now at what that country looked like then…I count myself mightily blessed to have seen it. I wish I could have appreciated it more at the time, but the fact is we were close to starving and trying to get across the Llano as fast as possible. I could sure see why that old fable about driving stakes has lasted so long. Our hundred horses didn’t make a dent in the prairie.
We finally found the other side and descended below the Cap once more. This was rough country, and our rations had run out. We were reduced to eating snakes and lizards, wondering if we were going to starve to death right there. We finally stumbled upon some Comancheros on their way to the plains to trade with the Indians. At first they were terrified of us and we couldn’t figure out why. They finally realized we were peaceful—we were in no shape to be otherwise, even if we had wanted to be—and told us that they had no extra food, but just a few miles further on we would be in the eastern settlements. The people there would provide us with food.
We came to a little adobe and rock placed they called Trementina, which means Turpentine. There was a lot of scrub cedar in the area that they would boil to make turpentine, then take it to the trail where it would be shipped to the States. They also had hundreds—maybe thousands—of sheep. They may have sold wool to Santa Fe traders, too, I don’t know. When I saw those sheep all I could think of was mutton.
These people seemed terrified of us too, for a while. We told them we had just crossed the Llano and were nearly starving. They asked how long it had taken us, and when they found out it was two weeks they were astonished. “Tres o quarto dias, como máximo!” they said—“Three or four days, at the most!”—and they told of the trail that went down the creek of white dirt, or the Tierra Blanca. The way they described it, I knew where they were talking about, and I wanted to tell Captain Sutton “I told you so” but I was still a private, he was still a captain, and I had a mouth full of mutton.
Let’s see, how did I say that later?
“Our leader we called Captain Sutton
Of the Llano he didn’t know nuttin’
I would have called him a fool
But survival’s my rule
And my mouth was plum full of mutton
(You think some strange things sitting in a Mexican prison. I wonder if Ol’ Austin ever thought up limericks?)
While we were being fed, Sutton made arrangements to have a couple of the locals go back to rescue MacLeod and the others. Once again, I was called on for this duty. In some ways I wanted to stay with the others, but in some ways I sort of wanted to get off with these New Mexicans and talk to them on my own. I also had a keen desire to see the quick way across the Llano.
We ascended the Caprock southeast of a little mountain. My companions told me that this was where Coronado himself had approached the Llano. I told them I was a descendant of the old conquistador, but that didn’t impress them much. It seems almost everybody in New Mexico was descended from some conquistador, and in that part of the country you didn’t always brag about it. Just because a fellow had a Spanish name didn’t mean he wasn’t mostly Indian. When I told them I was also an Archibeque, that seemed to make a little impact on them. As a matter of fact, one of them knew some of the Santa Fe Archibeques—distant cousins, I suppose.
We reached the men left behind in three days, just like they had said. It was a good thing, too. They had decided we had been killed or starved to death or were within just a few days of heading back to Austin. I reckon later they wished they had.
Our guides said that the freight wagons would have to be destroyed. Kendall had gotten hurt and couldn’t ride or walk, so we figured out a way to get the light wagon he was riding in up the escarpment and then we were on our way. While we were traveling, I asked the New Mexicans why everyone seemed so scared of us. They told us that the governor, Manuel Armijo, had heard we were coming. He told the New Mexicans that we were an attacking force, and that we would kill their men, rape their women, and eat their babies. I laughed out loud at this. They stared back with stone faces. I stopped laughing and asked “Cierto, usted no cree esto!” (Surely you don’t believe this!)
They just shrugged and said “Quien sabe?”
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Texas Forever -- Day 8 -- Chapters 13, 14
CHAPTER 13
Looking back now, it seems like all we did was scrabble for a living. The Republic of Texas was broke, and President Houston was trying hard to get us out of debt. He curtailed expenses as much as possible, but defense for the nation was essential, so Texas maintained both a navy—to protect the Gulf coast, and an army—to protect against incursions from Mexico and the Indians. It was about this time, I guess, that Ol’ Sam realized the Rangers were cheaper and more effective than a standing army.
You can get a fight going about when exactly the “rangers” came into existence. Some say that Austin started them back in the early colonial days. Some say that they were officially started during the unrest before the War for Texas Independence. I know that there was a bunch of fellows during the Runaway Scrape that were assigned to protect the fleeing settlers as much as possible. That was probably the first time I had much contact with them. A lot of people held them in disregard, since they weren’t fighting in the army, but I’m here to tell you, we needed them in the Scrape, too.
We were running for our lives, scared to death of the Mexican Army, but that wasn’t the only danger. We never knew when the Indians might spring on us, but the worst was the renegades. There are always folks ready to take advantage of other people’s misfortunes, and the Runaway Scrape was no different. It was bad enough that we had to leave our farms and homes. It was bad enough to think that some Mexican soldier might make off with the things you couldn’t take with you. But there were men—white men, Texans (so-called)—who not only pilfered the stuff left behind, but would actually follow the runaways picking up stuff they left. Some were even rotten enough to rob the runaways face-to-face, and I heard of a case or two where they…well, I hate to say, but let’s just say that the rangers were needed and appreciated—especially by the women.
That may be where I began to admire the Rangers, but I really think it came earlier. Men would come back from a fight with the Indians, talking about how many they had killed, and how they were making the country safe. That, to a young boy’s ears, was heady stuff. Of course, I never thought much about the ones who came back laying across their saddles, or bleeding form a wound, or the ones who didn’t come back at all. Or if I did think about them, it was with a measure of pride, and a thought of the glory they befell them.
I used to think about that a lot when I lay rotting in that Yankee prisoner of war camp. Why is it we make war so glorious? I daresay that most of that comes from folks who were never in the heat of the battle—from folks who never saw the flash of a rifle or cannon and realize that the shot was headed your way. I believe there are times when fighting must be done—but not anywhere near as often as we do it.
But anyway, I admired the Rangers, and Bachman didn’t help any. As a matter of fact, he’s probably the main fellow responsible for me wanting to be one so bad. Between admiring the Rangers and hating the plantation, it wasn’t hard to see where the direction of my life was headed. By the time I was sixteen, I could ride like a Mexican, trail like an Indian, shoot like a Tennessean, and fight like the devil, as the saying goes, so there was no doubt what I would do. Mama cried and cried. Papa didn’t really like it much, but he understood. As a matter of fact, he had rode with them a time or two himself.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. I forgot to mention that Houston—who could only serve one term as President (that’s what the law was) was succeed by Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. So help me God, that was his real name, and how he ever told it to anybody with a straight face, I’ll never know. At least my brother had a couple of nicknames he could fall back on, but I guess Lamar had to live with his.
Lamar was a fighter—he had proved it in the war—and was smart as a whip. He could sell a buffalo robe to an Indian, and he wrote poetry too. And he was one of those fellows that you didn’t have to stay around long to find out what they were thinking. Papa had been in the army with him at San Jacinto. He admitted he was a good soldier, but wouldn’t say much beyond that. That may be because Papa was, without question, a Houston man and Lamar fought Houston as hard as he fought the Mexicans. Houston believed we could live peacefully with the Indians, while Lamar was ready to kill them all. There were other differences, as well.
Houston had tried to be fiscally responsible with the Republic’s money—or lack of it—but Lamar spent like a sailor in port. And speaking of sailors, that was another difference. Houston grudgingly supported the navy as a necessity for defense. Lamar saw it—and used it—as a means to attack Mexico. Lamar sent the navy, under Commodore Edwin Moore, to support Mexican revolutionaries in the Yucatan peninsula and elsewhere.
As a matter of fact, there was one time when Moore sailed the navy up a river in Mexico to some town, aimed his cannons, and sent a message to the city leaders to empty their coffers of gold and bring them to the ship. Not wanting to see their town leveled, they complied. Moore took the gold in the name of Texas and high-tailed it back to Texas. In a way, that’s kind of funny, but it’s not really the way to build better relations between nations. It should be remembered that Mexico had never recognized Texas independence (the concept, I mean, not my brother—though Mexico had never recognized him, either), so a state of war still existed. But taking gold at gunpoint sounds like piracy to me. Houston thought so, too, and decommissioned the navy. But that was in his second term, and I’m getting ahead of myself again.
One of the biggest differences in Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar was that Ol’ Sam had wanted to annex Texas to the U.s. from the beginning. As a matter of fact, there’s some evidence to indicate that’s what Houston was doing in Texas to begin with—to tey and acquirre Texas for the United States. I don’t know if Mexico would ever have sold it or not, but when it became apparent that there were unresolvable differences between Texas and Mexico, Andy Jackson stepped up his efforts. When the Texans declared independence, however, Jackson was stymied. He didn’t mind putting a little pressure on Mexico to sell, but the couldn’t aid a government in rebellion against a sovereign state—and that’s what Texas was.
Lamar, though, he wanted the Republic of Texas to remain so, and become an empire stretching to the Pacific Ocean. That’s why he ran the Cherokees out of Texas and made all the other Indians mad. That’s why he encouraged Commodore Moore’s questionable acts with the Texas Navy. And that’s why he endorsed a couple of acts that turned out to be real blunders.
Nov 5 10062)
CHAPTER 14
The first was what was called “The Texian-Santa Fe Expedition”. Now before I go any further, let me clarify something here, as far as what residents of Texans are called. Generally, before the days of the Republic they were called “Texicnas”. I don’t know if that’s a combination of Texan and Mexican or not—it’s just what we were called. During the Republic, the term became “Texian”, but after annexation, that just sort of faded into “Texan”, which is fine with me and a hell of a lot easier to say. I might also mention that the Spanish and native-born Mexicans who lived in and fought for Texas were generally called “Tejanos”. I guess you could say that I was born a Texican, became a Texian, but will die a Texan.
You remember that I told you that when Texas conquered Santa Anna at San Jacinto, one of the terms of the treaty was that the southern and western boundary would be the Rio Grande. At the time it didn’t make much sense, seeing as how the land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande was all desert, but now it became clear.
You see, about the time Austin was working out a deal with Mexico to settle Texas, a fellow named William Becknell showed up in Missouri with saddlebags full of Spanish silver. He had made his way from Franklin to Santa Fe on the banks of the Rio Grande—the east banks of the Rio Grande. The Spanish had not wanted trade with the U. S., forcing all residents of the Spanish provinces—especially those in New Mexico—to accept only goods that had come through the proper channels through Mexico. The proper channels always made sure a tax was imposed, so finer things were pretty pricey in Santa Fe.
The Mexican government was much more lenient, so Becknell loaded up some mules with trade goods, sold them in Santa Fe, and returned to Missouri with the silver, and the Santa Fe Trail was opened. Lots of money was being made—by freighters, by merchants, by eastern manufacturers. The folks in New Mexico, and even down into northern Mexico were getting things they couldn’t before. It was a lucrative operation and it seemed almost everybody was coming out ahead. This was not overlooked by the founders of Texas.
By the time the Republic of Texas was established in 1836, the trade had been going on for 15 years, with no signs of stopping. The route had been shortened to avoid the mountains, and made it possible to move the goods in huge freight wagons. When Lamar came into office, he began to agitate for an expedition to Santa Fe. After all, the city was on the east bank of the Rio Grande, making it in the portion that Texas claimed. Of course, Texas had never been able to “prove up” the claim—it was having a tough enough time with what was settled—but Lamar thought big.
Houston, since he couldn’t be president, was in the Texas House of Representatives, and opposed the plan as being fiscally irresponsible—the nation just couldn’t afford it. A lot of his colleagues agreed, and Lamar couldn’t get the congressional support he needed. After the session ended, however, Lamar—I told you he was smart--put out a call for volunteers. The expedition was to be made up of freighters, with a complement of volunteer soldiers. If it was successful, it would solve a lot of Texas’ financial woes, bringing badly needed money into the national coffers.
It wasn’t a bad idea. Texas didn’t manufacture much, but goods could be shipped to Galveston or Linnville, then transported overland to Santa Fe. It was a much shorter route than the one that left from Missouri. Part of the problem was that no one knew exactly how to get from Austin to Santa Fe. (I forgot to mention that Lamar had moved the capital of Texas to Austin—which was still pretty much on the frontier—during his administration.)
I’m not sure why Austin was chosen as the jumping off place. (Really, it was a place north of Austin on Brushy Creek that later got the name of Roundrock.) It’s probably because Lamar wanted his new capital to be the one to benefit, but the fact is that we had known about a passage between Santa Fe and San Antonio for a long time. A Frenchman named Vial had blazed a trail between the two cities in the late 1700s. (He had also traveled what became the Santa Fe Trail long before Becknell.) So did a man named Mares a little later. Heck, if I remember right, Abuelo Archibeque once told me about the time he served in the army under a man named Amangual and they traveled from San Antonio up onto the Llano Estacado and into Santa Fe—and Amangual was an old man at the time.
What I think is this: Lamar, and a lot of his compatriots, did not like Mexicans or the Spanish Texans and did not like San Antonio. They probably knew that there was a route, or at least somebody who knew of the route, but they would be of Spanish descent, and therefore suspect. They wanted to find a new way—a way from Austin. “Surely” I can almost hear them say, “If those Meskins can find a way from San Antonio to Santa Fe, we can find a way from Austin.” They thought all that had to be done was to go north until they hit the Red River, then turn west.
That might’ve worked—if they had known the country between Brushy Creek and the Red. It might’ve worked if they had realized that Santa Fe was several hundred miles to the west of where they thought. And it might’ve worked if anybody on the trip had been over even some of the route before. But nobody did.
But, man, did they promote it! They made it sound like a cakewalk—like we were all going to get rich. And yes, I said “we”. I was young then, and aching for adventure, and it sounded like a good time. Me and Bachman made plans to go together. We could see ourselves marching into Santa Fe to cheering crowds and smiling senoritas.
You see, Lamar had gotten word that the folks in Santa Fe did not being under Mexican rule any more than we Texans had, and part of the idea behind the expedition was to claim the east bank of the Rio Grande in reality as we had in theory. Since we would be crossing the plains, which were dominated by Kiowas and Comanches, a military force was recruited to protect the freighters and merchants. There was one Brit who had just come to Texas and gotten wind of the expedition. He buddied up with that New Orleans newspaperman Kendall. They were to be the group’s journalists, I guess. Altogether—merchants, freighters, soldiers, politicos, and adventurers, the number came to over 300.
Hugh MacLeod was in charge over the army—a brave man, but maybe not the best choice for this trip. For an incursion into what might be considered Mexican territory, we were woefully lacking people of Spanish descent. Navarro was along as a commissioner, along with three others were to be the civil commissioners, just in case the tales we heard about the Santa Feans ready to be governed by Texas were true. There were on or two others that could truly be called “Tejanos” or Texans of Spanish descent. I guess I would have qualified—and I certainly knew how to speak Spanish—but, hell I was just a kid, a few months beyond my seventeenth birthday. Altogether, there were over 300 of us. And to think that not a one had a clue as to how to get from Austin to Santa Fe. But man, what an adventure it would be!
Looking back now, it seems like all we did was scrabble for a living. The Republic of Texas was broke, and President Houston was trying hard to get us out of debt. He curtailed expenses as much as possible, but defense for the nation was essential, so Texas maintained both a navy—to protect the Gulf coast, and an army—to protect against incursions from Mexico and the Indians. It was about this time, I guess, that Ol’ Sam realized the Rangers were cheaper and more effective than a standing army.
You can get a fight going about when exactly the “rangers” came into existence. Some say that Austin started them back in the early colonial days. Some say that they were officially started during the unrest before the War for Texas Independence. I know that there was a bunch of fellows during the Runaway Scrape that were assigned to protect the fleeing settlers as much as possible. That was probably the first time I had much contact with them. A lot of people held them in disregard, since they weren’t fighting in the army, but I’m here to tell you, we needed them in the Scrape, too.
We were running for our lives, scared to death of the Mexican Army, but that wasn’t the only danger. We never knew when the Indians might spring on us, but the worst was the renegades. There are always folks ready to take advantage of other people’s misfortunes, and the Runaway Scrape was no different. It was bad enough that we had to leave our farms and homes. It was bad enough to think that some Mexican soldier might make off with the things you couldn’t take with you. But there were men—white men, Texans (so-called)—who not only pilfered the stuff left behind, but would actually follow the runaways picking up stuff they left. Some were even rotten enough to rob the runaways face-to-face, and I heard of a case or two where they…well, I hate to say, but let’s just say that the rangers were needed and appreciated—especially by the women.
That may be where I began to admire the Rangers, but I really think it came earlier. Men would come back from a fight with the Indians, talking about how many they had killed, and how they were making the country safe. That, to a young boy’s ears, was heady stuff. Of course, I never thought much about the ones who came back laying across their saddles, or bleeding form a wound, or the ones who didn’t come back at all. Or if I did think about them, it was with a measure of pride, and a thought of the glory they befell them.
I used to think about that a lot when I lay rotting in that Yankee prisoner of war camp. Why is it we make war so glorious? I daresay that most of that comes from folks who were never in the heat of the battle—from folks who never saw the flash of a rifle or cannon and realize that the shot was headed your way. I believe there are times when fighting must be done—but not anywhere near as often as we do it.
But anyway, I admired the Rangers, and Bachman didn’t help any. As a matter of fact, he’s probably the main fellow responsible for me wanting to be one so bad. Between admiring the Rangers and hating the plantation, it wasn’t hard to see where the direction of my life was headed. By the time I was sixteen, I could ride like a Mexican, trail like an Indian, shoot like a Tennessean, and fight like the devil, as the saying goes, so there was no doubt what I would do. Mama cried and cried. Papa didn’t really like it much, but he understood. As a matter of fact, he had rode with them a time or two himself.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. I forgot to mention that Houston—who could only serve one term as President (that’s what the law was) was succeed by Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. So help me God, that was his real name, and how he ever told it to anybody with a straight face, I’ll never know. At least my brother had a couple of nicknames he could fall back on, but I guess Lamar had to live with his.
Lamar was a fighter—he had proved it in the war—and was smart as a whip. He could sell a buffalo robe to an Indian, and he wrote poetry too. And he was one of those fellows that you didn’t have to stay around long to find out what they were thinking. Papa had been in the army with him at San Jacinto. He admitted he was a good soldier, but wouldn’t say much beyond that. That may be because Papa was, without question, a Houston man and Lamar fought Houston as hard as he fought the Mexicans. Houston believed we could live peacefully with the Indians, while Lamar was ready to kill them all. There were other differences, as well.
Houston had tried to be fiscally responsible with the Republic’s money—or lack of it—but Lamar spent like a sailor in port. And speaking of sailors, that was another difference. Houston grudgingly supported the navy as a necessity for defense. Lamar saw it—and used it—as a means to attack Mexico. Lamar sent the navy, under Commodore Edwin Moore, to support Mexican revolutionaries in the Yucatan peninsula and elsewhere.
As a matter of fact, there was one time when Moore sailed the navy up a river in Mexico to some town, aimed his cannons, and sent a message to the city leaders to empty their coffers of gold and bring them to the ship. Not wanting to see their town leveled, they complied. Moore took the gold in the name of Texas and high-tailed it back to Texas. In a way, that’s kind of funny, but it’s not really the way to build better relations between nations. It should be remembered that Mexico had never recognized Texas independence (the concept, I mean, not my brother—though Mexico had never recognized him, either), so a state of war still existed. But taking gold at gunpoint sounds like piracy to me. Houston thought so, too, and decommissioned the navy. But that was in his second term, and I’m getting ahead of myself again.
One of the biggest differences in Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar was that Ol’ Sam had wanted to annex Texas to the U.s. from the beginning. As a matter of fact, there’s some evidence to indicate that’s what Houston was doing in Texas to begin with—to tey and acquirre Texas for the United States. I don’t know if Mexico would ever have sold it or not, but when it became apparent that there were unresolvable differences between Texas and Mexico, Andy Jackson stepped up his efforts. When the Texans declared independence, however, Jackson was stymied. He didn’t mind putting a little pressure on Mexico to sell, but the couldn’t aid a government in rebellion against a sovereign state—and that’s what Texas was.
Lamar, though, he wanted the Republic of Texas to remain so, and become an empire stretching to the Pacific Ocean. That’s why he ran the Cherokees out of Texas and made all the other Indians mad. That’s why he encouraged Commodore Moore’s questionable acts with the Texas Navy. And that’s why he endorsed a couple of acts that turned out to be real blunders.
Nov 5 10062)
CHAPTER 14
The first was what was called “The Texian-Santa Fe Expedition”. Now before I go any further, let me clarify something here, as far as what residents of Texans are called. Generally, before the days of the Republic they were called “Texicnas”. I don’t know if that’s a combination of Texan and Mexican or not—it’s just what we were called. During the Republic, the term became “Texian”, but after annexation, that just sort of faded into “Texan”, which is fine with me and a hell of a lot easier to say. I might also mention that the Spanish and native-born Mexicans who lived in and fought for Texas were generally called “Tejanos”. I guess you could say that I was born a Texican, became a Texian, but will die a Texan.
You remember that I told you that when Texas conquered Santa Anna at San Jacinto, one of the terms of the treaty was that the southern and western boundary would be the Rio Grande. At the time it didn’t make much sense, seeing as how the land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande was all desert, but now it became clear.
You see, about the time Austin was working out a deal with Mexico to settle Texas, a fellow named William Becknell showed up in Missouri with saddlebags full of Spanish silver. He had made his way from Franklin to Santa Fe on the banks of the Rio Grande—the east banks of the Rio Grande. The Spanish had not wanted trade with the U. S., forcing all residents of the Spanish provinces—especially those in New Mexico—to accept only goods that had come through the proper channels through Mexico. The proper channels always made sure a tax was imposed, so finer things were pretty pricey in Santa Fe.
The Mexican government was much more lenient, so Becknell loaded up some mules with trade goods, sold them in Santa Fe, and returned to Missouri with the silver, and the Santa Fe Trail was opened. Lots of money was being made—by freighters, by merchants, by eastern manufacturers. The folks in New Mexico, and even down into northern Mexico were getting things they couldn’t before. It was a lucrative operation and it seemed almost everybody was coming out ahead. This was not overlooked by the founders of Texas.
By the time the Republic of Texas was established in 1836, the trade had been going on for 15 years, with no signs of stopping. The route had been shortened to avoid the mountains, and made it possible to move the goods in huge freight wagons. When Lamar came into office, he began to agitate for an expedition to Santa Fe. After all, the city was on the east bank of the Rio Grande, making it in the portion that Texas claimed. Of course, Texas had never been able to “prove up” the claim—it was having a tough enough time with what was settled—but Lamar thought big.
Houston, since he couldn’t be president, was in the Texas House of Representatives, and opposed the plan as being fiscally irresponsible—the nation just couldn’t afford it. A lot of his colleagues agreed, and Lamar couldn’t get the congressional support he needed. After the session ended, however, Lamar—I told you he was smart--put out a call for volunteers. The expedition was to be made up of freighters, with a complement of volunteer soldiers. If it was successful, it would solve a lot of Texas’ financial woes, bringing badly needed money into the national coffers.
It wasn’t a bad idea. Texas didn’t manufacture much, but goods could be shipped to Galveston or Linnville, then transported overland to Santa Fe. It was a much shorter route than the one that left from Missouri. Part of the problem was that no one knew exactly how to get from Austin to Santa Fe. (I forgot to mention that Lamar had moved the capital of Texas to Austin—which was still pretty much on the frontier—during his administration.)
I’m not sure why Austin was chosen as the jumping off place. (Really, it was a place north of Austin on Brushy Creek that later got the name of Roundrock.) It’s probably because Lamar wanted his new capital to be the one to benefit, but the fact is that we had known about a passage between Santa Fe and San Antonio for a long time. A Frenchman named Vial had blazed a trail between the two cities in the late 1700s. (He had also traveled what became the Santa Fe Trail long before Becknell.) So did a man named Mares a little later. Heck, if I remember right, Abuelo Archibeque once told me about the time he served in the army under a man named Amangual and they traveled from San Antonio up onto the Llano Estacado and into Santa Fe—and Amangual was an old man at the time.
What I think is this: Lamar, and a lot of his compatriots, did not like Mexicans or the Spanish Texans and did not like San Antonio. They probably knew that there was a route, or at least somebody who knew of the route, but they would be of Spanish descent, and therefore suspect. They wanted to find a new way—a way from Austin. “Surely” I can almost hear them say, “If those Meskins can find a way from San Antonio to Santa Fe, we can find a way from Austin.” They thought all that had to be done was to go north until they hit the Red River, then turn west.
That might’ve worked—if they had known the country between Brushy Creek and the Red. It might’ve worked if they had realized that Santa Fe was several hundred miles to the west of where they thought. And it might’ve worked if anybody on the trip had been over even some of the route before. But nobody did.
But, man, did they promote it! They made it sound like a cakewalk—like we were all going to get rich. And yes, I said “we”. I was young then, and aching for adventure, and it sounded like a good time. Me and Bachman made plans to go together. We could see ourselves marching into Santa Fe to cheering crowds and smiling senoritas.
You see, Lamar had gotten word that the folks in Santa Fe did not being under Mexican rule any more than we Texans had, and part of the idea behind the expedition was to claim the east bank of the Rio Grande in reality as we had in theory. Since we would be crossing the plains, which were dominated by Kiowas and Comanches, a military force was recruited to protect the freighters and merchants. There was one Brit who had just come to Texas and gotten wind of the expedition. He buddied up with that New Orleans newspaperman Kendall. They were to be the group’s journalists, I guess. Altogether—merchants, freighters, soldiers, politicos, and adventurers, the number came to over 300.
Hugh MacLeod was in charge over the army—a brave man, but maybe not the best choice for this trip. For an incursion into what might be considered Mexican territory, we were woefully lacking people of Spanish descent. Navarro was along as a commissioner, along with three others were to be the civil commissioners, just in case the tales we heard about the Santa Feans ready to be governed by Texas were true. There were on or two others that could truly be called “Tejanos” or Texans of Spanish descent. I guess I would have qualified—and I certainly knew how to speak Spanish—but, hell I was just a kid, a few months beyond my seventeenth birthday. Altogether, there were over 300 of us. And to think that not a one had a clue as to how to get from Austin to Santa Fe. But man, what an adventure it would be!
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