Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire After the Fall of the Alamo

Indeed, and Linnville never came back after that blow, tho John Linn himself went on to prosper, being in the right place at the right time twenty years later when railroads were coming in big.

I am sometimes accused of being politically correct, I prefer to look at it as looking at the whole picture. All sources seem to agree that the blunder Felix Huston made at Plum Creek was to dismount his force so as to form a static line of battle, as if the Comanches and Kiowas would assault their line like cavalry.

The experienced Indian fighters present were dismayed and one, Ed Burleson, had had the foresight to invite Chief Placido and his thirty Tonkawas.

The BEST source for all things Texian I have found is Stephen L. Moore's excellent "Savage Frontier" series, difficult reads precisely because they are filled with such detail.

http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Frontier-Volume-Riflemen-1835-1837/dp/1574412353

The Tonkawas are most often consigned to mere footnotes in the history books, but Ed Burleson and later Texas Ranger Captain RIP Ford reported quite differently.

At that time preying upon Comanches was what the Tonks pretty much did for a living. Moore has it that after running 25 miles on foot overnight to join in the fighting, Placido and his men inflicted most of the Comanche casualties and took possession of ALL the captured horses, plus creeped everybody out later that night by barbecuing one of the Comanche dead.

Birdwatcher

The Tonkawas struck me as being primarily opportunistic since they did serve the Texians well in fighting Comanches, but Wilbarger mentions raids on the settlements by Tonks that were blamed on other tribes.

They were not well treated at their reservation here in Young County, and weren't well received by the other tribes when they were removed to Oklahoma.

I reckon if you eat a feller, it's not a good idea to settle next to his kinfolk.

Tonks borrowed a big wash kettle from "Puss" Webber and cooked one of their captives in it there on Webber's Prairie per Smithwick

Being the opportunists, they would thrash pecans in the bottoms here for the settlers by cutting down the whole tree.

The thing is about Tonkawas is that there were never vary many, and after the Comanches arrived they lived entirely within the reach of Comanche war parties, yet more'n thirty years after Plum Creek there they still were; guiding Ranald Mackenzie's cavalry down on the last free Comanches.

RIP Ford recruited a 100 Tonkawas of the Brazos Reservation in 1860 to go with his rangers against Buffalo Hump's Comanches in the Wichita Mountains. Notwithstanding their grizzly reputation he called 'em superior men with an encyclopedic knowledge of Western geography. Point of trivia; it was a Tonkawa armed with a .54 cal. Mississippi Rifle that dismounted to shoot the famous Comanche Iron Jacket off his horse in his shirt of Spanish mail.

After that Comanche/Kiowa sundance in the summer of '74, Quanah Parker had wanted to go against the Tonkawas but was outvoted, and they ended up going against Adobe Walls instead.

Birdwatcher

Nothing to add to this fine piece , but I want to read all of it later. So I must make a comment to return .

Excellent thread I've enjoyed this immensely. My gratitude towards you Birdy

In case folks ain't caught on yet, a simply phenomenal website on all things Texian is Wallace L. McKeehan's Texas A&M website Sons of Dewitt's Colony....

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/dewitt.htm

San Patricio down there on the Nueces is of particular interest to me, a few hundred Irish settling in the midst of practically nowhere. Being generally familiar with the locale and the climate, it ain't a place I'd want to live in a mud and pole hut with an adobe fireplace and thatched roof, especially if'n I was native to cool, wet and rainy Ireland.

Some quotes via McKeehan...

In Almonte's "Statistical Report of 1834" be gave the population of San Patricio as 600...

..there was bad feeling in some quarters toward the Anglo-Americans. The only bond that the Irish had with them was that of language. Some of the San Patricians considered people from the United States as foreign as the Mexicans, if not more so. In fact, they had a better opportunity to know the Mexicans than they did Austin's colonists. The reason? Their proximity. Mexican rancheros were living among them.....

There was no religious barrier; both were Catholic. The soldiers of the garrison of Lipantitlan could be seen on the streets of San Patricio without causing alarm. Lt. Marcelino Garcia, second in command, was a friend of Empresario James McGloin, and William O'Docharty was on friendly terms with the commandant, Captain Nicolas Rodriguez. The year 1834 was a year of peace and conviviality for San Patricio. John J. Linn has said that Texas was a territorial paradise. He went on to say,

"A tax collector would have been a curiosity. There were no courts in the land, for there was no litigation; sufficient money was in circulation; theft of cattle was unknown; corn cribs knew no locks; and smoke houses stood open. There was Acadian simplicity of manners and purity of morals.".....

San Patricio had no militia, or rather, no evidence can be found of its having had one...

Some colonists felt that they, as Mexican citizens, and as Catholics should stand by Mexico and the faith regardless of its form of government. Then there were those who resented a centralist government and deplored Santa Anna's disregard of the national constitution. Some were frightened at the prospect of an invading army led by Santa Anna himself, and would of necessity take up the cause of independence if it should be the only way to rid themselves of his dictatorial program. As had been seen, these San Patricians had just received their grants of land which had been long in coming, but they would fight to save them even though they preferred the plow to the sword....

...if the climate weren't all that, at least their diet had to be a step up from Ireland...

They tended their gardens where they raised corn, melons, yams, and beans. Honey could be had for the finding, and milk was always available from their cows. When it clabbered, the thick, yellow cream was skimmed off and churned into butter and buttermilk. On trips the pioneer's fare was coffee, bacon, and some form of cornbread. Wild game was there for the shooting, and it was plentiful. The colonists were almost self-sufficient except for the drink they most relished-coffee. They had to wait for boats to come from Vera Cruz, a Mexican port at the foot of lofty mountains whose sides were covered with coffee trees, to bring once again the green coffee beans to be roasted and ground which would make the aromatic and stimulating drink they needed in this low coastal region....


We learn that Grant and Johnson had three field pieces...

In January 1836 after the surrender of Bejar by General Cos, an expedition was got up to go to Matamoros, which marched from above place (Bejar) by way of Gollad . . . On their coming there Captain P. Dimitt, then commanding, had the flag of Independence hoisted on the walls of Goliad which was ordered to be taken down by Cols. Johnson and Grant stating that they were Federalists and would stand on the Constitution of 1824; they then marched to the Mission (Refugio) where they expected to meet with Fannin who had started from Valesco with 160 volunteers and provisions, and was to land at Copano to join Cols. Johnson and Grant. There was at this time say, 500 men at the Mission, all willing to go to Matamoros and only awaiting the arrival of Col. Fannin whose forces had not come......

Johnson and Grant with a company of sixty men with three pieces of brass cannon marched to San Patricio with a view, as they then stated, to stop until Col. Fanning could arrive and then proceed to Matamoros.

Urrea's view of the Americans/Texians....

On the first of March I had word from one of my spies that one of the leaders of the rebellious colonies, Don Diego Grant, was on his way to the Nueces River with a very select company of crack riflemen, well-armed and confident.

..and of his campaign at that time...

The excessive cold has affected my infantry and has delayed the ammunition and hardtack that are to come to me from Matamoros. For these reasons I may stay in San Patricio 4 or 5 days more, then march to Refugio and Goliad even though my hardtack has not arrived.

The reason for his surprise strike at San Patricio, 150 miles from his base, and further evidence of his abilities. Obviously, he had good intelligence...

Knowing about the Texian plan to take Matamoros, he had left in haste for San Patricio.

...moving this thread along, and evidence of Urrea's character....

Finally, on the 12th of March General Urrea and his troops marched and rode out of San Patricio much to the relief of the colonists. Santa Anna had ordered Urrea to "take cattle, supplies and the colonist's belongings. " Cattle Urrea took for food (his army was on meager rations), and he came upon quite a lot of arms and ammunition in the defeat of Johnson's men at San Patriclo. But Urrea states in his Diary that "the town and the rest of the inhabitants did not suffer the least damage."

...and another Mexican besides the Angel who would save lives at Goliad.....

Mary O'Boyle had a lingering, but secret, hope that Col. Francisco Garay, to whom she had dispensed hospitality, would somehow save her brother. He had asked her how he could repay her for her kindness. She had asked him that if or when he had the opportunity, would he be kind to her brother, Andrew Michael O'Boyle, who was with Fannin. He had said that he would; she could not help but believe him.

Birdwatcher

IIRC pretty much the SOP for Texas Indians as far back as Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (1520's) at least.

Sorta related, Hamalienen in his excellent book Comanche Empire (a must-read IMHO) has it that by their population peak in the early 19th Century the Comanches in the far reaches of Texas were quickly deforesting the watercourses where they wintered, for fuel, pecans, and to obtain cottonwood bark to feed their horses in the winter months. A degree of inpact that would have been unsustainable and which was already causing them problems before the arrival of the Frontier.

Birdwatcher

Description of a dwelling in San Patricio, which could likely apply to anywhere in South Texas. Certainly log cabins were out of the question.

By the time McMullen came to the capital of his empresa on the Nueces it had been named San Patricio de Hibernia (St. Patrick of Ireland). Furthermore, McGloin had overseen the throwing up of jacales for temporary shelters as well as a few picket cabins. Among them was his own, a prototype of the rest. His cabin stood facing Constitution Square on the block south of it. Eliza, his wife, and his two children, John J., age 4, and Mary Ann, an infant, had to accommodate themselves to a picket cabin which had a palmetto roof, a dirt floor, and a clay chimney.

The latter took the place of a kitchen stove in winter. In the summer cooking was done over an open fire outside. Water was carried from the river both for drinking and other purposes until wells were dug. There was little light in the cabin. Usually there were no windows, and, at most, two doors were cut through the upright poles. There was no lumber for window blinds to keep out the cold when a norther came whistling in; besides, a cabin with no windows was a protection against the Indians.

The furniture was crude, handmade, and make-shift. But it was home in a wilderness while they awaited their land grants and until the time came when building materials would be available.

And a 19th Century painting by Gentilz of a Tejano dwelling near the missions in San Antonio, seems typical of the type...



The way these things were built is a trench was dug along the wall lines and rows of small tree trunks and relatively straight branches set in them. The spaces between this lumber then chinked with mud.

About the best that could be done in the absence of any substantial timber, but it should be recalled that winters down here are at best brief, most of the time summer heat being a greater problem.

Birdwatcher

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

One thing that surprises is the size of the communities back then.

600 people at isolated San Patricio, and 1,000 people at Goliad, that latter mostly Tejanos as one does not hear of colonists settling there in numbers.

I have some sense of this; in Africa I lived in a village of 2,000 people, and the next village two miles away had 1,000 people, adobe constuction ("mud-walled") though the roofs were for the most part ancient corrugated tin rather than thatch. Me and a buddy too walked 70 miles on foot across a (then) roadless plain, coming across isolated camps and huts and a small village along the way.

My sense of it is, before independence there was no border region between Mexico and Texas, just more of Mexico continuing north, San Patricio was just the next sizeable town north of Matamoras is all, located on the next river 150 miles to the north. In the absence of a border there was little incentive for smuggling, no refuge for outlaws on either side, ergo less lawlessness.

Indians were a constant, and the possibility of death at their hands probably the greatest hazard faced by those working stock. But communities were growing anyway, and I read somewhere of just one of the leading Irish immigrants at San Patricio claiming ownership of 1,200 cattle before the war broke out, an unimaginable fortune for a regular guy in Ireland.

From which we might infer too that it wouldn't take long before these immigrants and especially their children were developing some serious cowboy skills. In any given year South Texas runs from bountiful on the one hand, to desert on the other depending on the rains. It must have been a wet span of years just then because cows in the area seem common as dirt. The 400+ militia at Goliad were fed, but were eating only beef, no flour,no cornmeal, no beans.

A town or village of 1,000 people would be smaller than you might expect. Mostly children. Figure more like five to ten people per household, houses inside town running closer together and much smaller than they are today.

But still, the volunteers at Goliad had forcibly occupied the town, taken the best dwellings for their own use and bragged upon the fact. Stored foodstuffs and blankets had been taken, people driven out and some women violated. A wave of 1,000 embittered refugees scattered into the surrounding countryside, seriously taxing the resources of friends and relatives in the area ranchos who are indundated with these people..

No wonder Fannin was left blind in a hostile region.

OK, he gets the news of Urrea's victories at San Patrico and Agua Dulce, 60 miles to his southwest, from a handful of ragged survivors of those events. Excusable that he tarried maybe on account of he had more men on hand than those forces reported for Urrea. But then on March 8th he learns the Alamo has fallen and that Santa Anna has at least five times as many men as his own force of 400.

What most at Goliad seems to have been expecting at that point is that Santa Anna was now going to come south and join with Urrea to move against them. It does not seem to have occurred to them that Urrea would have enough of an army on his own so as to render such a move unnecessary. Perhaps the lack of any such movement on Santa Anna's part added to their own false sense of security.

Fannin did have the means to evacuate, after losing all his oxen in the brief attempt to go to the aid of the Alamo at the end of February (easy to imagine those oxen were driven off rather than "strayed" at that first night's camp), John Linn at Victoria had forwarded most of the oxen in that area, twenty teams, to Fannin at Goliad. Sending said oxen a leap of faith and a move of desperation on Linn's part, as it left the Texian refugees gathering at Victoria bereft of most of their own draft animals. Linn was likely expecting to get them back shortly.

For his own part, Fannin at this point becomes the master of wrong moves and incorrect decisions.

On March 10th, two days after learning of the Fall of the Alamo, he dispatches half or more of his available oxen and wagons on what had to have been expected to be at least a five or six day rescue mission to Refugio, accompanied by only 28 men.

Birdwatcher

The things you can only learn around a campfire at Goliad reenactment, where you sit and drink a beer with the guys that write the books.


Who paid for the Texas Revolution?

Follow the money.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dfm01

McKinney, Williams and Company, a mercantile establishment known as the "Barings of Texas," was founded by Thomas F. McKinney and Samuel M. Williams in 1834 at Quintana and moved to Galveston in 1838. As the largest commission-merchant firm in early Texas, it controlled much of the cotton trade at Houston and Galveston.

The company held interests in lands, banking, and industrial and town promotion and helped institute maritime commerce in Texas. It aided the government of Texas during the Texas Revolution by issuing notes to circulate as money. Although neither McKinney nor Williams was wealthy in his own right, each had good credit and wealthy connections in the United States.

Up until 1830 the Texas colonies had been granted tax-free status, a couple of years later the Mexican govt starts asking for those tarrifs, worse starts enforcing them with armed schooners.

McKinney and Williams, both out of New Orleans, do pretty good for two guys with no personal wealth. They spring into being as a business partnership already with their own fleet of ships. In response to Mexican interdiction they arm their ships too so that they can shoot back, hence the 18 pounder that was brought to the Alamo.

Fortuitous maybe that somebody forgot to offload the ammunition, else that otherwise incongruously heavy piece would have been drug to San Antonio by the New Orleans Greys in time to knock down the walls of the Alamo around General Cos's ears. Holding said mission against a Santa Anna the following February would then have become a moot point. Not much left to defend one would guess.

Because of those armed merchant ships, Mexico no longer had free access to the Texas ports like Copano Bay, so Santa Anna and Urrea both had to walk more than 600 miles to assault Texas instead of coming by ship and using the ports like any sensible person would do.

First thing Urrea does when he gets here is come in along the coast cutting off Texian access to those same ports from the landward side.

Hate to say it, but slavery was in the mix too. Importing slaves into the US had been illegal for more'n twenty years by that point. A major part if not THE most profitable part of McKinney and William's trade was smuggling slaves into Texas from Cuba, and thence into the United States. Cuba was just a way-station in the African slave trade, since bringing in slaves from Africa was still legal there.

Fannin the slave broker? An employee of McKinney and Williams in that endeavor, their agent in Texas, plucked from obscurity in Georgia (nobody knows how he got the job), part of his duties being to foment revolution, or at least autonomous statehood within Mexico.

To that end he writes much correspondence to his native Georgia, resulting in the raising of the Georgia Battalion, said Georgia Battalion actually being armed by the Georgia state armories. Fannin takes command of them when they arrive by boat from New Orleans, and marches them to Refugio intending to join the Matamoras Expedition.

Fannin's connections too likely explain how he gets the job of top dog at Goliad, Commander in Chief of the Texian Army such as it was at that time.

Fifteen years later, Georgia would formally ask Texas for reparations to cover the cost of their rifles lost by the Georgia Battalion at Goliad.

Birdwatcher

Not everybody pouring into Texas to fight was nice people, this applies here because the alleged misdeeds committed by Captain Amos B. King and his men upon the local Tejano population at Refugio affected the subsequent course of events.

Point of interest as to how bad some individuals could get; somewhere in the mix among the Americans at Goliad was the future infamous scalphunter, thief and murderer John Glanton. Can't find much on how this "free scout" for Fannin, just sixteen years old at the time, escaped the massacre but a year earlier in Tennessee, at age fifteen, he was already a wanted man.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgl02

On March 10th, four days after the Fall of the Alamo, and eight days after the ambush of Grant at Agua Dulce, a local Texian settler named Lewis Ayers arrived at Goliad requesting help. One account refers to Ayers as the "notorious Lewis Ayers" but I can find no record of wrongdoing on his part. On the contrary, he had previously been elected by the Irish at San Patricio to be their representative at the Consultation of '35. Whatever his nature, Ayers wold survive all this, leave Texas after the revolution, and spend his remaining thirty years back in Alabama.

Twenty-five miles south of Goliad was a small settlement called Refugio which like Goliad, lay on the road from Copano Bay to San Antonio. The only building of any consequence there was a stone mission church, the last built in Texas just forty year earlier, at the very end of the Spanish mission period. This mission had been built to minister to the fierce, tall, fish oil-smeared and cannibalistic Karankawas of the Texas Gulf Coast, who otherwise seem to have horrified everyone they encountered . Their mission at Refugio had not prospered. Urrea in his account called Refugio a notably poverty-stricken place, the church being the only defensible building.

Amon B. King and his 28 Paducah Volunteers had arrived in Texas from Kentucky the previous December, more to the point they had been sent by ship to Copano Bay and then assigned for two months to garrison the Mission Church at Refugio. For a group of young men who had come a long way in search of adventure and fortune (King himself was just twenty-nine) posting to BFE Refugio had to have been a tedious assignment to say the least.

It seems probable that it also allowed them to become familiar with the local residents, on account of King's subsequent actions at the Battle of Refugio do seem to have been of a personal nature as opposed to fighting a bunch of strangers.

Likely King's familiarity with Refugio, and possible prior acquaintance with Ayers, was why King left or was sent from the mission fort at Goliad to go and evacuate an undetermined number of American families stranded at Refugio amid marauding vaqueros and Karankawas allied to the Tejano leader Carlos de la Garza, who was operating in advance of and in cooperation with Urrea's main force.

Most of the Irish and American residents of Refugio had reportedly already fled northeast forty miles to Victoria, the largest town in the area. I wonder though if there was some unknown back-story behind Ayers and King taking most of Fannin's wagons, just to evacuate a few remaining families while leaving Fannin without transport.

It is true that at that point, the 400 men at Goliad had been expecting to hold the place and were even then actively preparing for a siege. It is also true that the degree to which Fannin actively commanded anything himself is in doubt. It may have been that if King and his men had decided to take those wagons, Fannin may have had little choice but to go along with it.

It sounds crazy now in hindsight to have dispatched possibly as many as eleven slow ox-drawn wagons on a lengthy expedition, guarded by just twenty-eight men. Evidence of just how little intel as to the regional situation Fannin's command had at that point.

On their arrival at Refugio two days later, King's men found themselves opposed by eighty or ninety of del la Garza's vaqueros and took refuge in the mission church, sending a messenger back to Goliad to request reinforcements.

Birdwatcher

It would be interesting to know the exact relationship between whatever financial conglomerate was bankrolling the war and the state of Georgia, from whence Fannin for one was hired.

In November of ’35, in the Macon area one William Ward, exact age unknown, raised and equipped, at his own expense, a force of 120 volunteer, grown to 220 men by the time it reached Texas. This Georgia Battalion of Permanent Volunteers were the men armed with rifles from the Georgia State Arsenal.

Upon their arrival in Texas, Fannin took command and this force landed at Copano Bay in early February to join the forces then assembling at Refugio for the Matamoras Expedition. In Fannin’s possession were a further 625 muskets and a considerable quantity of lead and powder. Shortly thereafter, with the collapse of the Matamoras Expedition, the various militias assembling at Refugio moved to fortify Goliad.

The messenger from Amos King, pinned down by de la Garza’s men inside the church at Refugio, arrived on March 12th. At that time Fannin’s available strength was around 400 men, most of his transport had been committed to King’s rescue/salvage mission. In response to King’s call for help, Fannin dispatched about one-third of his force, 120 men of Ward’s Georgia Battalion, to go and assist King.

Delayed by heavy rains, these men left Goliad at 3am on March 13th for the 27 mile forced march to Refugio, arriving there just twelve hours later and scattering de la Garza’s force.

Ward and King remained at Refugio that night, their combined force totaling about 150 men, not far off what had been available to Travis at the Alamo. What they didn’t know was that same night Urrea had begun a forced march of his own towards Refugio, backed by 1,500 Mexican soldados.

Birdwatcher

Urrea is commonly credited by those who have studied the topic as being the best commander on either side during this short war. In fairness to the Texans tho it should be noted that he had the luxury of commanding men who followed orders.

Of Ward and King at Refugio, whose orders at that point had been to return to Goliad, John Linn later wrote "A difference of opinion arose between the two commanders in relation to the command, which seemed to be irreconcilable, as they could not be coerced into a concert of action, even by the perils that threatened them both so imminently.". One thing both men and their respective militias all had in common at that point was a desire to engage in combat, all had come to fight but thus far had seen precious little of it.

On the morning of the 14th of March, King took most of his own men and some of Ward's and set out on a strategically useless but probably personally gratifying strike at a Tejano camp some miles downriver, nine Tejanos were surprised and killed. Ward waited at Refugio but did send out a patrol to reconnoiter the area. All of the men of both parties were unaware of the catastrophe about to fall upon them.

Today one can hop in a car at San Antonio and easily see all these communities relevant to this campaign in a day, so it is easy to forget how empty and open the country was back then.

Urrea for his part was receiving a constant stream of intelligence but he wasn't omniscient, and the fog of war applied to him too.

It is a maxim of human nature that we tend to expect others to act in a similar way that we would. At the start of the campaign two weeks before, when he launched his preemptive strike on the Matamoras Expedition he had put himself 150 miles away from reinforcements with only a few hundred men at his back. At that point he was obliged to pause at San Patricio while the rest of his force caught up. Of course he was anticipating that Fannin on his part would likely strike back and reacted in a typically proactive manner.

From the account of Colonel Garay (who would later intervene to save a number of men at Goliad) with Urrea....

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/goliadurrea.htm

On the night of the 7th, Jesus Cuéllar, known as el Comanche, presented himself in San Patricio claiming that he had abandoned Fannin's force to throw himself upon the clemency of the Mexican government.... He told General Urrea that Fannin had decided to attack him and that by this time he had probably effected a juncture with the force at the mission. Consequently he promised to take us to a spot where we could lay in ambush while he went and brought the enemy into our hands....

General Urrea, confiding in his sincerity, ordered 200 men, 1 cannon, and 150 cavalry to set out early in the morning of the 8th of March for Las Ratas, 8 leagues away, on the San Refugio road. When our destination was reached, Cuéllar left us and Gen. Urrea proceeded to arrange the small force to carry out his plan.

Eight leagues would be about twenty miles, more or less, and about thirty miles from Goliad.

The surprise would have been difficult in the location chosen, for the woods where we were to hide was extremely sparse and all the trees were dry and devoid of foliage. The enemy would have detected us long before its approach. Our front, left, and rear were immense plains with not even a blade of grass, while the creek was dry and so shallow that it did not cover the infantry placed in it.

Of course Fannin did not show, but this ambush episode had taken up 48 hours. On the morning of the 10th, the same day Fannin was receiving Ayer's request for assistance at Refugio, Urrea records that he received the following report...

March 10. I received news that the enemy had changed its plan and was making ready to march, with 400 men, to the aid of those who were besieged by our army in the fortress of the Alamo. I countermarched to San Patricio and ordered the cavalry to make ready to fight the enemy on the march.....

March 12. Our whole division set out, leaving a small detachment there.

So as of the 12th Urrea was on the move, intending to intercept Fannin and 400 men he believed were heading north to San Antonio. The following day, the same day Ward and 120 men were force-marching south to Refugio, Urrea recieved the follownig intelligence, and again reacted in his typically proactive manner... another all-night movement across an open plain in preparation for a surprise attack.

March 13. I marched towards Goliad and was informed enroute that the enemy had dispatched a strong detachment to occupy the port of Cópano and that they would halt at Refugio Mission.

It would be natural for an outside observer to assume that King, travelling towards Refugio with a train of empty wagons, shortly followed by Ward and 120 men, were on their way to the strategically vital port at Copano Bay. Certainly Refugio itself had little strategic value.

I dispatched a picket commanded by Captain Pretalia and thirty civilians headed by Don Guadalupe de los Santos with instructions for the first group to hold the enemy at the mission until I arrived with my division. I selected 100 mounted men and 180 infantry; and, with our four-pounder, continued the march during the night, leaving the rest of our troops encamped on the Aranzazu Creek.

In hindsight we know how things turned out and that Urrea would prevail handily against the outnumbered, disorganized and poorly-led Texians. For his own part Urrea preceded with an admirable balance of both initiative and caution. Hard not to give the guy credit even though he was on the wrong side.

But, from Urrea's perspective, he was advancing on unfamiliar ground into hostile territory, with the constant prospect of further enemy reinforcements arriving from the east.

On a different topic, much has been debated as to Urrea's brutality or lack thereof in association with the Goliad massacre. By his own report he had sent thirty men captured at San Patricio and Goliad to imprisonment at Matamoras rather than shoot them out of hand as ordered.

From Urrea's diary entry of March 16th, we learn that he WOULD shoot prisoners if he perceived it as necessary to the mission, and also how precarious he felt his own position was despite the 1,500 men by then at his disposal.

This from after his defeat of Ward and King at Refugio, when his next priority became to locate and engage Fannin at Goliad with all possible haste.

March 16. Leaving the wounded and the baggage under the care of Col. Rafael de la Vara, and instructing him to keep a watch on the port of Cópano, for which purpose I left the necessary guard, I marched with 200 men, infantry and cavalry, to Goliad, sending out scouts to reconnoiter the road to the town. The parties dispatched to pursue the enemy captured fourteen.

A messenger of Fannin was intercepted and we learned beyond all doubt that the enemy intended to abandon the fort at Goliad and concentrate its force at Victoria; that they only awaited the 200 men that had been sent to Refugio to execute this operation. On the 14th and 15th I had fought and dispersed the latter force.

In order to observe the enemy and cut off its communication with Victoria, I ordered Capt. Mariano Iraeta and sixty men to take a position on the road between that place and Goliad to watch it. I halted that night at San Nicolás.

The many hardships endured by my division, and the rigor of the climate that was felt particularly by the troops accustomed to one more mild, made my position extremely difficult because of the necessity of properly guarding the adventurers that I had taken prisoners. I constantly heard complaints, and I perceived the vexation of my troops. I received petitions from the officers asking me to comply with the orders of the general-in-chief and those of the supreme government regarding prisoners.

These complaints were more loud on this day, because, as our position was not improved, I found myself threatened from El Cópano, Goliad, and Victoria. I was obliged to move with rapidity in order to save my division and destroy the forces that threatened us.

Ward had escaped with 200 men; the infantry was very poor and found itself much affected by the climate. I was unable, therefore, to carry out the good intentions dictated by my feelings, and I was overcome by the difficult circumstances that surrounded me. I authorized the execution, after my departure from camp, of thirty adventurers taken prisoners during the previous engagements, setting free those who were colonists or Mexicans.

Birdwatcher

At the Alamo there was perhaps 200 defenders spread out around a three acre compound. At Refugio there were 100 defenders inside just one stone church. Unfortunately this structure is gone now, and much of its original footprint covered is by a more modern Catholic church.

What it appears to have been is a medieval-looking stone edifice, two stories tall and 100 feet long on the long axis. The long hall pictured in the diagram may or may not have been intact in 1836, but there was a substantial structure just fifteen yards from the church building, substantial enough to offer some cover to the attackers, but not enough apparently to serve as a rallying point...



Taken completely by surprise that morning, Ward did succeed in burning some of the surrounding wooden structures to clear a field of fire, and at one point at least, had a body of men outside the church firing volleys from cover at the opposing Mexicans, this squad of men being backed by men firing from inside the church.

At the opening of the fight, the Texians had been attempting to haul a wagon or cart bearing two large barrels of water from the adjacent river into the church, so critical was this water that at least than half the men present were deployed in its defense. They did succeed in bringing the barrels into the church though most of the water was lost due to the barrels being perforated by flying bullets.

During the fight, King's 30 men returned from downriver, hurrying towards the sound of gunfire, not suspecting that there would be 1,500 Mexicans present. They were seen and engaged, but likewise held their own, forted up in the dense riparian woodlands along the river channel.

Though the physical premises upon which the battle was fought are gone, we are left with pretty good descriptions of the fight, from both sides.

From Colonel Francisco Garay....

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/goliadurrea.htm

That day we pitched camp on the Arroyo Aransas from which at two o'clock in the morning (on the fourteenth) the general undertook the march against the mission with two hundred foot soldiers, the cannon and two hundred horses. The rest of the division with the supplies and equipment set out at seven o'clock.

The enemy in the number of one hundred men were occupying the church, the only defensible point in that poverty stricken town. On their left, and at a distance of an eighth of a league, we had another fifty men in ambush.

The other 'fifty men' being King's force, the assumption being that their presence outside the mission compound was deliberate.

And from Urrea, note the language difficulties when communicating wit the Indians from the Yucatan...

I arrived at the said mission at daybreak where I found Capt. Pretalia holding the enemy in the church where they had taken refuge. The moment they saw me they set the houses in their immediate vicinity on fire.

I reconnoitered their position to my satisfaction; and, convinced that it afforded means for a good defense, I realized that in order to take it I would be obliged to suffer heavy losses. I at once decided to lay siege to it and to fatigue the enemy all that day and night in order to surprise them at dawn the following day. But the pitiful stories which the civilians of the place related about the thefts and abuses they had suffered at the hands of the enemy, excited the indignation of the officers and troops of my division, and decided me to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by the coming out of a party of eighty men to get water at a creek situated about a gunshot from their fortification to order a group of infantry and another of cavalry to start a skirmish, hoping to draw out the rest of the enemy from their entrenchment.

The eighty men retreated immediately to the fort. The officers and troops manifested a great desire to attack the enemy; and, wishing to take advantage of their enthusiasm, I immediately ordered a column of infantry to make the charge, protected by the fire of our cannon which had been moved forward sufficiently to destroy the door of the church. With our cavalry covering our flanks, our advance was so successful that the infantry arrived within ten paces of the cemetery without a single man being wounded.

The enemy, coming out of its lethargy, opened up a lively fire upon our men.

Translation: Ward, by accounts an excellent marksman as well, reacted swiftly and decisively when surprised that morning. First thing is, he attempted to obtain water, anticipating a long siege. Secondly, he apparently had his men withhold their fire during that first assault, opening up from point-blank range. This tactic resulted in the Mexican field piece being left close to the walls and unavailable to the Mexicans until later in the day.

We know from the American accounts (next post) that as the day progressed and their ammunition dwindled that Ward instructed his men to reserve their fire unless they were sure of their targets.

Ward's 120 had left Goliad with a reported 36 rounds per man. So 3,600 rounds expended that day give or take, in return for high Texian estimates of 200 casualties on the Mexican side, some of those casualties inflicted by King's men from the woods along the river.

Urrea himself said the Mexicans sustained 48 casualties that day, Garay said close to 70. Even if the high Texian estimates were correct, that ballbarks to less than one hit per fifteen rounds, seems likely that much of the day the actionconsisted of guys sniping at each other from behind cover between the four separate assaults.

Throughout this war of independence Texian rifles got the Mexicans' attention and are mentioned in accounts, but it is unknown how many of the Texians at Refugio were armed with smoothbores; either Fannin's 625 muskets or civilian weapons.

Point of interest, note the language difficulty on the Mexican side..

The troops, being mostly recruits from Yucatán, stopped spellbound the moment their first impetus was spent, and all efforts to force them to advance were unavailing, for the greater part of their native officers who a moment before had been so eager disappeared at the critical moment. These men were, as a rule, unable to understand Spanish, except in a few cases, and the other officers, not being able to speak their language, were handicapped in giving the commands.

...as the day progressed...

The infantry took refuge in a house and corral situated about fifteen paces from. the church. I ordered a part of the cavalry to dismount in order to encourage the former by their example. Not succeeding in making them advance, and the dismounted cavalry being insufficient to take the position of the enemy, the moments were becoming precious, for at that very moment another party, coming from Cópano, was threatening my rear guard....

I ordered Col. Gabriel Núñez, with a part of the cavalry in our reserve, to go out to meet the enemy that was approaching in our rear. The enemy had taken refuge in a woods which a large creek made inaccessible. I ordered sixty infantry, commanded by Col. Garay, to dislodge them. They killed eleven and took seven prisoners, but the thickness of the woods did not permit a more decisive victory before darkness enabled the enemy to escape.

That would be King's men.

I, therefore, ordered a retreat. This operation was not carried out with the order that might have been expected from better disciplined troops. In the meantime our cannon had been moved forward to within twenty paces of the cemetery, but my brave dragoons removed it in order to continue harassing the enemy from a distance, where the enemy fire could cause us no damage.

Translation: "We got whupped."

If you have ever spend much time dressed in period clothing, handled black powder in the rain, or walked any distance in all-leather footwear through water you can appreciate the hardships endured here by the men on both sides.

The weather during this interval was cold, wet, and miserable. Ward's march on Refugio had been delayed by heavy rain, and an account mentions them walking through long stretches of ankle-deep water during that 27-mile, 12 hour forced march to Refugio.

No small feat for King's men either to launch that morning foray against the Tejano camp under those conditions, and it explains how they were able to surprise nine men around a fire.

On the Mexican side, the Indians from the Yucatan, presumbably often barefoot and/or in sandals, are noted to have particularly suffered.

According to all the information I secured, the number of the enemy that had shut themselves in the church was 200 and they lacked water and supplies. This would make it imperative, unless they succeeded in escaping during the night, for them either to come out and fight us the following day or surrender.

In order to prevent their escape, I placed several lookouts at the points through which they might effect it, but the necessary vigilance was not exercised by all of them and the enemy escaped, favored by the darkness of the night which a strong norther and the rain made more impenetrable and unbearable. On the other hand, our troops were very much fatigued as a result of having marched all the day and the night before and of having spent the 14th in constant fighting without taking food.

Birdwatcher

Dunno how many have been actively reading this thread but I took a drive around on Sunday to actually go look at the places of which I have been writing.

Apologies in advance for the poor-quality photos, this is my very last cheap pawn shop digital camera, I join the smart phone revolution in a couple of weeks.

First off, San Patricio Texas, just west of I 37, maybe 20 miles north of Corpus on the Nueces. Twice as many people now as back then, when it was a scattering of thatched jacales and wattle and post huts.



The highway to hell? It is how you get there, perhaps TXDot was trying to drive down property values I dunno



...and the reason why San Patricio was where it was, the ford on the Nueces on the Matamoras Road.



...and the Nueces, flood-controlled now for the most part by the dam on Lake Corpus Christi. A whole lot more timber now than there reportedly was back then, when San Patricio was an oasis on a vast plain.



Not a whole lot of elevation I thought between the river and the place where the old town was, seemed like it must have been flooded from time to time. As far as buildings no sense of the old settlement remains, the highway dominating the landscape, but just like back then the Catholic Church still seems the center of the landscape, this being the fourth one on the original site, fires and hurricanes having obliterated the rest. Not enough of a congregation for a regular Sunday mass tho.





Birdwatcher

The tangible past though can be found written on tombstones.

Following independence, when it became a de-facto Border outpost at the edge of the notorious Nueces Strip, San Patricio was all but abandoned for a decade, Texian and Mexican bridgands causing what Indian raids had not. The "new' cemetery behind the church dates from the resettlement in the 1870's.

Still, a lot of sad history is written in the tombstones. Mother and infant, 1888....



Ya wont find the old 1830's cemetery unless you ask around, it sits on a low hill along a back road maybe a mile away, up an unmarked track through a hayfield.





I wonder if Larry McMurty had passed this way; McFall from Scotland.....



...and a listing of those either from San Patricio and/or those who were killed elsewhere in the War of Independence...



I have to say it seemed a fine thing to find so many Irish names there among what tombstones remained. The Sullivan's are there, and the Dougherties too who legend had it were plagued by a banshee. James McGloin, Irish Emprasario and founder of the Irish colony there, died of a fever in 1856 but his grave for what ever reason was not marked with stone and is lost today.

His children however, plainly took root....



Not so with Lewis Ayers, who figures prominently in the tale. Tragically all four of their children are likely buried in unmarked graves there too, carried off in the space of a single week by infectious strep (scarlet fever), which may explain why the Ayers left the state shortly thereafter, never to return.

OK, enough graves.....

....Oxen figure prominently in this tale, they were how you moved stuff back then.

Well, turns out San Patricio still has a couple





Birdwatcher

damn mike you were just down the rd and didn't call .