One can contrast the attitudes of those who had been living in Texas for at least a period of time to those Americans just arrived to take part in the fight.
When the seventy Texians sent by Phillip Dimmit in November of '35 took Fort Lipantitlan at San Patricio, not a shot was fired. Many of the Texian force were of the Refugio Militia, comprised largely of resident Irish. The American militias soon to arrive at Goliad were not yet on the scene.
When Dimmitt's men arrived in San Patricio they found that most of the garrison at the fort had left in an attempt to engage them en route, leaving only sixteen men inside the fort. One James O'Rielly, "a local Irishman" was able to negotiate a bloodless takeover wherein the soldiers inside the fort were simply "set a liberty".
Later that same day the main Mexican force, consisting of ninety men, returned and shots were exchanged, the entrenched Texian riflemen killed more than twenty of the Mexican force in the first few minutes of fire and a standoff resulted.
Mortally wounded in the exchange was the Mexican officer Lt. Marcellino Garcia, a man with many friends on both sides. By common consent he was brought within the Texian lines and all available care was given to him, and when he died he was decently buried in the town cemetery. Shortly thereafter the Texians returned to Goliad and the Mexican troops reoccupied the fort.
Meanwhile, up in San Antonio de Bexar, 600 Texians, most of whom had been prior residents of Texas, were engaged in a two-month siege that would culminate in the expulsion of General Cos and set the stage for the Siege of the Alamo. Their leaders; Steven F. Austin, Jim Bowie, Ed Burleson and Ben Milam were all old Texas hands, and Bowie had been married into the Veramundi family.
Despite the length of the siege and the bloody violence of the final assault, relations between the Texians and the resident Bexarenos seem to have remained surprisingly amicable. Up until the arrival of Santa Anna, Texians and Tejanos mingled freely in the town.
More to the point, when Santa Anna DID arrive, Travis announced that the Texians had been able to round up "80 or 90 bushels" of corn from the vacated houses in Bexar, indicating that the locals HAD that corn, notwithstanding the fact that prior to that the Alamo garrison had been in desperate straights. IOW despite their supply shortages they seem to have respected the property of the locals and thus retained much goodwill, or at least neutrality.
Things were apparently different down in Goliad. There the majority of the locals came down on the Mexican side, by accounts in no small part due to the actions of the American volunteers assembling there.
It can't all be because of that, the local Vaquero leader at Goliad, one Carlos de la Garza, had already declared for Mexico prior to the militias' arrival. Yet de la Garza's relations with his Texian neighbors remained surprisingly cordial. His occupation of Refugio in advance of Urrea's force seems largely bloodless, despite the fact that this move would prompt Fannin to divide his force to rescue Americans reportedly in peril there. Later on, de la Garza himself would save five of his former Texian neighbors from being executed at Goliad on what seems to have been a basis of simple friendship.
De la Garza too was actually able to hang on to his property and prosperity after the war, a thing impossible without the continued regard of his neighbors.
But, things were different in Goliad.
Fannin himself was but a recent arrival, having been in Texas, and that back in East Texas, only a year. The American militias arriving in Goliad were of course totally new to Texas, ignorant of the area, the people, the customs and the language. There was a lot of them too, more than 400 men idle there for weeks in contrast to the modest force quartered for any length of time in San Antonio.
Fannin appears to have had little control over his men (not necessarily a slam on Fannin, Houston would experience the same problem). Goliad was plundered and the residents rendered destitute, at least some women and girls were attacked. It wasn't all the militia members of course, or even most, and Texian settlements weren't immune either, Gonzales itself having been violently looted by American adventurers passing through.
At the massacre, while some among the Mexican forces were doing all they could to rescue the 400 prisoners from execution, a German officer in Urrea's force (who himself rescued every German-speaker he could find) reported that many of the locals were clamoring for their death, on the basis of crimes committed.
And to demonstrate how I'm speaking in generalities here, IIRC at least two of the handful of desperate militia fugitives who fled during the actual massacre would owe their lives to individual Tejanos who helped them during their flight.
Birdwatcher
