Authors: James Donovan
Tags: #History / Military - General, #History / United States - 19th Century
The ten thousand Comanche horse soldiers is a median approximation; estimates vary from six and eight thousand to twenty thousand. Ruíz, in 1828, wrote that there were “1000 to 1500 families,” referring to the Comanches, in Texas at that time (Ruíz,
Report on the Indian Tribes of Texas in 1828,
p. 8). For a lengthier discussion of Comanche population in the mid-nineteenth century, see Noyes,
Los Comanches,
p. 317, n. 12. Ruíz’s book, p. 11, is also the source for the Lobos pledge.
The information on Mexico’s peonage system is derived from Knight, “Mexican Peonage,” pp. 44–50.
Santa Anna’s statement about the Mexican people being unfit for democracy is quoted in Brands,
Lone Star Nation,
p. 227.
The account of the battle at Zacatecas chiefly derives from the excellent material in Roberts and Olson,
A Line in the Sand,
pp. 15–26; details of the attack on foreigners are from the British Foreign Office records, 50/95 f148, R. Ogilvie Auld to J. Backhouse to Foreign Office, Zacatecas, May 20, 1835, courtesy of Joseph Musso. Santa Anna’s quote is from his May 11, 1836, letter reprinted in the
Mercurio del Puerto de Matamoros,
no. 28 (my translation).
Austin’s October 1833 letter to the
ayuntamiento
of Béxar is quoted in Johnson,
A History of Texas and Texans,
vol. 1, p. 121.
Austin’s opinion of Santa Anna’s friendship is quoted in Barker, “Stephen F. Austin and the Independence of Texas,” p. 272. Besides Santa Anna’s comparison of himself to Napoleon when introduced to Sam Houston after the Battle of San Jacinto, another source for the claim is in Gilliam,
Travels in Mexico,
p. 164, where the author writes that Santa Anna declared “it was his intention to march to the city of Washington, and be the Napoleon of America. A gentleman of Zacatecas informed me that he was present, and heard the boasted vaunt of the American Napoleon.”
T
HREE
: “T
HE
C
ELEBRATED
D
ESPERADO
”
The chapter title phrase can be found in Davis, “A Fortnight with James Bowie by the Rev. Benjamin Chase,” p. 2; after meeting a helpful stranger, the reverend is told, “That was the celebrated desperado, James Bowie.” The epigraph is from a description of Bowie reprinted in Speer and Brown,
The Encyclopedia of the New West,
p. 436.
The account of the Sandbar Fight is based on the following sources: Batson,
James Bowie and the Sandbar Fight,
which includes most but not all of the participant accounts of the event that appeared in the years following; Edmondson,
Mr. Bowie with a Knife,
an excellent narrative of the fight that draws from the aforementioned primary sources; Calhoun, “A History of Concordia Parish, Louisiana”; Caiaphas Ham, “Recollections of Col. James Bowie, 1887,” from the John Salmon Ford Papers, BCAH; Thorp,
Bowie Knife;
a September 20, 1827, letter from Samuel Wells to Josiah Stoddard Johnston, from the Josiah Stoddard Johnston Papers at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; and several primary accounts from various eyewitnesses that appeared in the Natchez
Ariel
on October 19, 1827.
The prediction that Bowie was not expected to recover appeared in the
Southern Advocate
of October 12, 1826, as quoted in Batson, p. 4.
Bowie’s quote about killing Wright is from Davis, “A Fortnight with James Bowie by the Rev. Benjamin Chase,” p. 4.
The description of James Bowie’s upbringing and of his mother, Elve Bowie, is from two articles written by Bowie’s oldest brother, John: “The Bowie Family,” in the Washington, Texas,
Lone Star
of October 23, 1852, and “Early Life in the Southwest—the Bowies,” in the October 1852
De Bow’s Review
. Bowie’s eyes are described by his close friend Caiaphas Ham in his “Recollections of Col. James Bowie, 1887,” John Salmon Ford Papers, BCAH. The quote about Bowie’s penchant for settling difficulties quickly is by William H. Sparks, quoted in Ellis,
The Life of Colonel David Crockett,
p. 214.
Bowie’s slave trading and land speculation are best described in Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
. The information about his informal adoption of Carlos Espalier derives from Joseph Musso’s “James Bowie’s Freed Slaves” and the Carlos Espalier File, Memorials and Petitions File, TSLA.
Sources consulted for this account of the San Saba fight include “James Bowie’s Indian Fight” by Rezin Bowie, reprinted in Brown,
Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas,
pp. 19–23; and James Bowie’s report to the political chief of Béxar, December 10, 1831, Nacogdoches Archives, BCAH, reprinted in Brown,
History of Texas
vol. 1, pp. 170–75.
Though there is no hard evidence for any Bowie progeny, at least two people close to him claimed that his wife, Ursula, bore him two children. One of the people making this claim was Bowie’s good friend Caiaphas Ham (Ham, “Recollections of Col. James Bowie, 1887”); the other was his oldest brother, John, who wrote: “Two children sprung from this union died in infancy, followed by the death of their mother in 1833 at Monclova, Mexico” (A. R. Kilpatrick, “Early Life in the Southwest—the Bowies,”
De Bow’s Southern and Western Review
1, October 1852). There are no records of baptism for these children, which would be consistent with their dying soon after birth. Bowie’s grief concerning his wife is mentioned in the memoirs of José Antonio Menchaca, in the José Antonio Menchaca Reminiscences, 1807–1836, “Memoirs of A. Menchaca,” p. 14, A. Menchaca Biographical File, BCAH.
Bowie provides a brief description of his escape from Matamoros in a letter to James B. Miller dated June 22, 1835 (box 2B120 [Transcriptions and Notes, Anahuac, June–August 1835], Eugene Campbell Barker Papers, BCAH).
F
OUR
: “T
HE
B
URLY
I
S
B
EGUN
”
The chapter title phrase is from a letter by James Fannin, quoted in Young, “James Walker Fannin: The West Point Connection,” p. 7. The epigraph is from a letter by Burr Duval to his father, William P. Duval, dated March 9, 1836, and reprinted in PTR 5, p. 35.
The quoted description of the DeWitt colony area is by Elias R. Wightman, Stephen F. Austin’s official surveyor, and found in Baumgartner, “History of the Alsey Silvanus Miller Homestead and Surrounding Area, 1700/1992,” p. 9.
The only extant mention of Luna is on a map of Gonzales drawn by early resident David Darst that is reprinted in Rather, “De Witt’s Colony,” and still exists in the Gonzales County Museum. But Adam Zumwalt bought the Luna lot in the town of Gonzales from Benjamin Fuqua in April 1835 (the bill of sale is in the Gonzales County Archives). There was a long tradition of moonshining in the Zumwalt family: another Adam Zumwalt, probably an uncle of Adam Zumwalt of Gonzales, trained as an innkeeper and distiller and set up two still houses in the early 1800s, from which he sold liquor to Black Hawk and other Indians (Bryan and Rose,
A History of the Pioneer Families of Missouri,
p. 195). According to Gonzales city records, a few years later “John Goss’s tavern stand” stood on the same lot (Zumwalt’s) as Luna had.
Sources for Gonzales in 1835 include Rather, “De Witt’s Colony”; Lukes,
DeWitt Colony of Texas;
and the voluminous vertical files of the Gonzales County Records Center and Archives, primarily the vertical files for Gonzales and the individual files of the many early families of the town. The description of the 1834 ball is from a 1912 manuscript by Walker, “Early Life in Gonzales,” pp. 2–3, which derives much of its information from early Gonzales resident David Darst, who also provided the information about Kimble and Dickinson’s hats in an interview in the December 8, 1901, edition of the
Houston Daily Post.
The Gonzales
ayuntamiento
’s resistance to the independence movement is from Barker, “Stephen F. Austin and the Independence of Texas,” p. 62. Jesse McCoy’s involvement in the Gonzales militia is mentioned in the report of Andrew Ponton to J. B. Miller, chief of the Department of the Brazos, dated July 26, 1835 (Julia Lee Sinks Papers, BCAH). The attack on McCoy is described in an undated letter from Ponton to Ugartechea in the Gonzales
ayuntamiento
minutes (box 3M11, folder 5, Julia Lee Sinks Papers, BCAH).
The actions of the Mexican army at Gonzales are described in an October 1, 1835, report from Ugartechea to Cós, reprinted in PTR 2, p. 12, and in several other Mexican reports included in that volume. Texian eyewitness accounts of the battle of Gonzales include a letter from William DeWees dated December 25, 1835, and reprinted in PTR 3, p. 317, and the report of Andrew Ponton to J. B. Miller (see above). The best recent account is in Hardin,
Texian Iliad,
pp. 7–13, which is based on several earlier Texas histories.
Information about Francisco de Castañeda and his house in the Alamo can be found in the Bexar Archives, BCAH, and Lemon,
The Illustrated Alamo 1836,
p. 46. Castañeda’s admission that he, too, was a federalist is in the DeWees letter mentioned above: “The Mexican made answer, that he was himself in favor of the Constitution of 1824.”
The number of DeWitt colonists is from Field,
Three Years in Texas,
p. 14.
Sources for the battle of Gonzales include Rather, “De Witt’s Colony”; Bennet, “The Battle of Gonzales”; Foote,
Texas and the Texans
, vol. 2; Ornish,
Ehrenberg: Goliad Survivor
; DeShields,
Tall Men with Long Rifles
; Johnson,
A History of Texas and Texans,
vol. 1; and the other sources listed above. Turner’s hotel as a rallying point is mentioned in the
Gonzales Inquirer
of August 30, 1879, in an article entitled “Thrilling Scenes of Gonzales in Early Days of Texas.” Castañeda’s report to Ugartechea dated October 3, 1835, in PTR 2, p. 15, mentions the single casualty. The quote concerning the lack of consensus of opinion on Mexico is by Noah Smithwick, from his book
Evolution of a State,
p. 71.
The estimate of the number of Cós’s troops is contained in a report from Bowie and Fannin to Austin dated October 22, 1835: “Their whole force does not reach 600, according to the report of a respectable gentleman, who escaped, with his family, from town this morning, and now with us” (PTR 2, p. 191). Another estimate of the number of Cós’s troops comes from Samuel Maverick, a resident of Béxar, who counted 647 men on October 18, and seven hundred on October 26 (Green,
Samuel Maverick,
p. 30). The description of Cós is in Robinson,
Mexico and Her Military Chieftains,
p. 46, and also in Kuykendall, “Sketches of Early Texians” (box 3F82, folder 6, Jonathan Hampton Kuykendall Papers, BCAH). In a letter written on September 2, 1835, Béxar resident John W. Smith reported 150 Morelos infantrymen, a third of them officers, and between three hundred and 350 cavalry, “which have come from Monterey and the town on the Riogrande” (box 2B42, Don Carlos Barrett Papers, BCAH).
The Austin broadside is quoted in Barker, “Stephen F. Austin and the Independence of Texas,” p. 275. Austin’s private letter declaring his feelings about Mexico was written to William Hardin on October 5, 1835 (Hardin Family Collection, BCAH).
The males left in Gonzales after the Army of the People departed for Béxar were described as “12 men, most of them invalids” (in a letter from John Fisher to Stephen Austin dated November 3, 1835, reprinted in Barker,
The Austin Papers,
p. 233). The quotes regarding both the sorry condition of the army’s weapons and its appearance can be found in Smithwick,
The Evolution of a State,
p. 75.
F
IVE
: T
HE
A
RMY OF THE
P
EOPLE
The epigraph is from a letter by William Barret Travis to John Rice Jones dated October 3, 1835, and reprinted in PTR 2, p. 28.
The road between Gonzales and Béxar—Lockhart’s blazed trail—is described in Berlandier,
Journey to Mexico,
p. 302.
The lack of tents and shelter is mentioned in Greer, “Journal of Ammon Underwood,” p. 139. Samuel Maverick stated in his diary on October 18: “The actual number, officers, soldiers, guards, etc. of Effectives is 647” (Green,
Samuel Maverick, Texan,
p. 30).
The information regarding Erasmo Seguín’s Casa Blanca, and his treatment by Cós, is from de la Teja,
A Revolution Remembered,
pp. 5, 88. The fourteen deserters are mentioned in Garcia and Garcia,
Tejano Participants in the Texas Revolution,
pp. 171–72: “They were joined by fourteen privates of the old Company of the Alamo for the most part, sons of San Antonio who deserted from Mexican forces of General Cos and joined Seguin’s command with arms and baggage.” See also “Notes for Manuel-Antonio-Santiogo Tarin-Leal” in “Descendants of Don Francisco Joseph de Arocha” at
www.somosprimos.com/inclan/arocha.htm
, accessed December 1, 2009.