One thing that must have frustrated those Tejanos allied to the Texians was a tendency among the Texians to disregard information provided to them by Tejanos simply because they were Tejanos. This happened before the Alamo and it would happen again at Goliad.
You're a Texian, stationed with a small force at the edge of what amounts to an unknown ocean of grass, knowing there's enemies out there somewhere headed your way, yet you disregard the information provided by the very people who routinely traversed those plains. Only way to figure it is that most Texians had just recently arrived, either from East Texas or the United States proper, and did not know enough to distinguish one Tejano from another.
Throughout the campaign, the Spanish-speakers did not make that error, no better illustration of this than the efficient way Urrea overwhelmed the small force of Texians and Tejanos at San Patricio.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_PatricioUnderstandably, the Tejanos were of divided loyalties in this fight, and of all the White people in Texas, as a group the Irish Catholics were the ones most likely to come down on the side of their fellow Catholics, especially given the fact that these Irish had lived around their Tejano neighbors a whole lot longer than they had been around Americans. Although this was not yet officially a war of independence, there were more than a few folks in San Patricio whose sympathies lay with Mexico.
Urrea crossed the Rio Grande at Matamoras some time between the 13th and 17th of February, at the same time that Santa Anna was crossing at the ford at Piedras Negras, 300 miles upstream. By that time Grant and Johnsons' small force at San Patricio apparently consisted mostly of Federalist-allied Tejanos, if any of these people were aware of Urrea's exact location, Grant and Johnson were not made aware of it.
The night of February 27th was one of frigid temperatures and driving rain, so much so that the Texians posted no sentries. Of the two leaders only Johnson was present in San Patrico, Grant and a party of vaqueros were off out on the plains somewhere to the southwest. Johnson and thirty men were quartered in three houses in San Patricio with another twelve men assigned to watch the horse herd at a rancho four miles downriver.
Moving at night under such difficult conditions must have been apalling (six of Urrea's men got separated and died of exposure), and certainly required the active participation of local guides or else one would become hopelessly lost in the pitch-black conditions.
Urrea's force of 200 men arrived out of the freezing rain and wind in the small hours of the morning, surprise was complete. Forewarned, the loyalists in town had kept lanterns lit in their windows to declare what side they were on, the fact that this could happen without Johnson's men becoming aware of what was afoot indicating that Johnson's force had likely more than worn out their welcome by this point.
Johnson himself was one of six men that managed to escape, at this point he separated himself from the war and would live for another thirty-eight years, after many travels finally passing in Central Mexico at eighty-five years of age. Grant would not get that chance.
Birdwatcher
