Spanish Texas Research Articles

Love, Infidelity, and Correspondence in Spanish Texas, 1734–1737

Love, Infidelity, and Correspondence in Spanish Texas, 1734–1737

In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

In Search of Liberty sheds new light on Black freedom struggles during the nineteenth century, locating them within an international context that testifies to the resilience of those African Americans who forged new identities for themselves far beyond the shores of the United States, whether in Africa, the Caribbean, or Europe. The eleven essays in this collection are divided into four geographical sections. The first of these, North America, opens with Franco Paz and Harvey Amani Whitfield's essay on early Black migration to Nova Scotia, viewed through the harrowing case of Elizabeth Watson, an enslaved African American woman whose search for liberty resulted, perversely, in her reenslavement. Mekala Audain tackles another neglected frontier of liberty in her illuminating essay on Black migration from Louisiana to Spanish Texas during the early nineteenth century, while Thomas Mareite explores in telling detail the risk-laden experiences of Black refugees from slavery in early independent Mexico (1821–1836).

Women’s Lives in a Spanish-Texas Community: San Antonio de Béxar, 1718–1821

Women’s Lives in a Spanish-Texas Community: San Antonio de Béxar, 1718–1821 Jesús F. de la Teja (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Béxar’s women enjoyed a full social life and, under certain circumstances, a public economic life as well. The woman at the center of scene might well be operating a cantina in her home—note the crosses, toys, and household items hanging on the walls—while the young woman on the right, possibly a family member or criada (servant, but literally “raised” or “brought up”) helps with the seemingly perpetual task of making tortillas, while the woman at the lower left holds a child in her arms. General Research Division, The New York Public Library. “Trajes mexicanos, un Fandango = Costumes mexicains = Mexican dresses.” New York Public Library Digital Collections, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-16b9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 [Accessed Aug. 24, 2022]. [End Page 332] Jane Long is not the mother of Texas, although that is how she was identified at least by the 1870s, and that is how she has been depicted in Texas history books for over a century.1 Former U.S. senator Kay Bailey Hutchison repeated this sobriquet in her book, Unflinching Courage: Pioneering Women Who Shaped Texas, which does not include a single Tejana2 or American Indian female. One look at Hutchison’s bibliography tells the story; it does not even list Teresa Palomo Acosta and Ruthe Winegarten’s Las Tejanas: 300 Years of History, published by the University of Texas Press in 2003. Hutchison’s myopia is neither new nor surprising. She represents a vision of what it means to be Texan and sends a very particular message (although one with fewer and fewer adherents all the time): that Jane Long could be the mother of Texas because only Anglo [End Page 333] women are really Texan. While most historians in the academy long ago abandoned this myopic perspective, it remains entrenched in the state’s popular history.3 But history is also driven by the record, and traditional use of the archival record has not been kind to borderlands women generally and Indigenous and Hispanic4 women specifically. Records have been most plentiful about the actions of public men doing public things. Records of statecraft, business, and religion are dominated by the presence of men, who since the time that history became a formal part of the academy have also been its principal writers. Men are also much more abundant in government and legal records, so when historians have looked at social and cultural themes, they have been conditioned to see men first. With the professionalization of history in the nineteenth century and men dominating the academy, historical research and writing became a principally male endeavor, and women and their actions and roles, already poorly represented in many types of records, fell by the wayside. This male-dominated landscape has undergone a substantial transformation in the last half-century, particularly with regard to more recent history, but the farther back in time one looks, the more difficult it becomes to center women in historical narratives.5 Spanish Texas is a particularly good example of how unkind the historical record can be to women’s history, although the situation extends throughout the borderlands. Few local records (where women would be most likely to be found) survive for the province’s first capital, Nuestra Señora de los Adaes, now a historical site in western Louisiana. As Francis [End Page 334] Galán points out, “The women of Los Adaes evidently did not leave behind any wills during the fort’s existence.”6 Likewise, there is almost a complete dearth of local records for La Bahía del Espíritu Santo, now Goliad, and for Nacogdoches. For those places the bulk of the surviving documentation addresses government and military matters and the activities of missionaries. Only San Antonio of the original Spanish Texas communities has a fairly extensive set of local sacramental, legal, and administrative records from which colonial-era gender issues can be identified and analyzed.7 As Donald Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph note in their one chapter...

Los Adaes, the First Capital of Spanish Texas

Los Adaes, the First Capital of Spanish Texas

Los Adaes: The First Capital of Spanish Texas. Summerfield G. Roberts Texas History Series. By Francis X. Galán

<i>Los Adaes: The First Capital of Spanish Texas</i>. Summerfield G. Roberts Texas History Series. By Francis X. Galán

Los Adaes, the First Capital of Spanish Texas

Los Adaes, the First Capital of Spanish Texas

Los Adaes, the First Capital of Spanish Texas by Francis X. Galán

Reviewed by: Los Adaes, the First Capital of Spanish Texas by Francis X. Galán Juliana Barr Los Adaes, the First Capital of Spanish Texas. By Francis X. Galán. Summerfield G. Roberts Texas History Series. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2020. Pp. xvi, 400. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-62349-878-8.) Francis X. Galán's new book is more than just a history of the Spanish community that was established around a presidio and a mission in the midst of Caddo country—on the ostensible border with French Louisiana—and that served as the capital of the Spanish province of Texas for much of the eighteenth century. If it were simply that, that would be enough, as Galán offers the most deeply researched study ever of Los Adaes, with an endless supply of entertaining, fascinating, and revealing stories of the mad and maddening range of characters who populated its ranks. Yet the book does so much more, providing through its numerous tales of imperial and individual rivalry and chicanery one of the most persuasive portraits yet of the ephemeral nature of borders claimed and drawn by wishful European empires in early America. Really, this is a "people's" history—featuring soldiers defrauded by a long line of Spanish governors who transformed them into debt peonage laborers (p. 8); Franciscans who at best ran their own smuggling rings in hopes of inveigling Native nations into trade ties that might finally lure neophytes into their lonely, long-empty missions (or, at worst, defied Spanish law by running guns and ammunition to Caddo neighbors in exchange for the humble bear grease essential to their households); Bidais and Orcoquisas who entertained any trader no matter their imperial affiliation as long as they produced the most desirable goods, especially French tobacco for their pipes; and Caddos whose sovereign power remained unquestioned through the eighteenth century—proved again and again in fine details such as the fact that it was Adaeseños (Spanish residents) who became conversant in the Caddo language (not the reverse) and who found employment as interpreters for Caddo leaders' diplomatic exchanges with Spanish officials well into the 1780s. And, oh those machinating governors, who reimagined the impoverished province as a petty fiefdom for personal aggrandizement, repurposed presidial forces as minions in illegal trafficking, and reduced the missions to mere storage facilities along supply routes connecting Caddo communities to New Orleans and Saltillo. Local Spanish and French officials did not use trade to expand imperial borders. Rather, they claimed borders to expand their personal trade or impede that of their rivals; accusations of border violations were really excuses to confiscate the others' goods. In such a world, the trade partnerships, kinship ties, church attendance, and desertion rates of community members told a tale of everyday people who had no recourse but to make common cause with others, no matter if they be French, Caddo, Bidai, or later British, and whose daily lives defied and denied any claim to reality for the borders drawn by officials in faraway lands. [End Page 517] Sharpening this community study still further, Galán engages with current historiography throughout the text, providing context for the happenings in Los Adaes through comparisons with other communities across New Spain's northern provinces and Latin America—thus not only Florida, Louisiana, and New Mexico but also Peru, Mexico, and the Yucatan. These well-timed and well-placed contrasts put Los Adaes on a stage far more expansive than that of provincial Texas and, in so doing, illuminate how events across North America and Bourbon Spain could reach into the quotidian struggles of Adaeseños or could measure such distance between them and the imperial core that it might as well have been on the moon. All in all, such compelling tales and arresting comparisons give the reader a far better understanding of what made the Los Adaes community unique and, equally often, what made it typical of Spanish colonial life in the Americas. Juliana Barr Duke University Copyright © 2021 Southern Historical Association

Los Adaes: The First Capital of Spanish Texas by Francis X. Galán

Los Adaes: The First Capital of Spanish Texas by Francis X. Galán

Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal by Gregory D. Smithers

Reviewed by: Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal by Gregory D. Smithers F. Todd Smith Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal. By Gregory D. Smithers. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. Pp. 260. Notes, bibliography, index.) Employing the voluminous amount of secondary works dealing with southern Native Americans that have been published in the last two decades, Gregory D. Smithers has written a short and accessible overview of the southern Indian experience up to 1840 that will have great value for college students and professors alike. Although the book includes details concerning numerous different Indigenous groups of various languages—Muscogean, Southern Iroquoian, Siouan, and Caddoan—the author has done a fine job in clearly presenting his main theme of Native cultural continuity in times of extreme hardship and change. Smithers defines the Native South as extending eastward from the Louisiana-Texas border to the Atlantic Ocean, and southward from the Tennessee River to the Gulf of Mexico. (Although Texas is not included in his definition, the author does provide a bit of information on the Caddo Indians—the Tejas of Spanish Texas—due to the groups that resided in western Louisiana). Chronologically, the book begins with the question of origins and examines how these interrogations relate to issues of storytelling and identity among Native southerners. Throughout the entire work, Smithers intersperses Native oral traditions and viewpoints with the findings of modern secondary research. The author also makes sure to demonstrate how Native southerners coped with fluctuations in climate and local ecosystems, adopting new technologies and agricultural innovations as they saw fit. One of the highlights of the book is Smithers' explanation of the Mississippian chiefdoms that emerged in the centuries prior to European contact, along with concise descriptions of how kinship networks and clan systems functioned while buttressing chiefdom societies, subjects that are often baffling to the modern reader. Smithers also discusses the "Mississippi Shatter Zone" in the early eighteenth century, demonstrating how disease, warfare, and European colonial endeavors that inspired slave raiding caused the chiefdoms to decline and splinter. However, tribes such as the Choctaws, Creeks, and Cherokees built on their communal identities to coalesce during this period, enabling them to overcome the dangerous situation they found themselves in. [End Page 361] The situation became even more threatening for Native southerners during the era of the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War. The violence and warfare that resulted between Indigenous polities, combined with their involvement in the various wars, caused small-scale migrations within the Southeast, notably among the Cherokees. The author also charts the history of the development and migration of the Seminoles into northern Florida as a complex story of ethnogenesis, demonstrating how their emergence amounted to something more than a group of Lower Creeks migrating out of the Creek Confederacy. Instead, he shows how these dynamic communities had their ethnic origins among smaller tribes such as the Oconees, Yamasees, and other Florida Natives. The discussion of the Seminole emergence is an example of the author's commitment to investigating the smaller, forgotten Southern tribes, highlighting how the book is not just concerned with the so-called Five Civilized Tribes that usually dominate the discussion of Native southerners. Late eighteenth-century wars provided the backdrop for rekindling Native religious revivals and attempts to forge pan-Indian alliances as a means of countering the growing power of the American republic. Although these movements failed, ultimately leading to removal in the 1830s, Smithers shows how the Native southerners were able to hold onto their social and cultural traditions, maintained their Native languages, and worked to nurture bonds of kinship and community in Indian Territory. Native Southerners is a sophisticated overview of the history of the region's Indigenous groups, combining the latest historical research with Native oral traditions to provide an excellent introduction to the subject for students and teachers. F. Todd Smith University of North Texas Copyright © 2020 The Texas State Historical Association

Faces of Béxar: Early San Antonio and Texas by Jesús F. de la Teja

Reviewed by: Faces of Béxar: Early San Antonio and Texas by Jesús F. de la Teja Linda Noel Faces of Béxar: Early San Antonio and Texas. By Jesús F. de la Teja. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi, 223. $40.00, ISBN 978-1-62349-401-8.) Faces of Béxar: Early San Antonio and Texas is primarily a compilation of Jesús F. de la Teja's previously published essays, assembled with an introduction so that the author's specialized works might reach a broader audience. Focused on colonial San Antonio—which de la Teja labels as the "most successful settlement" in colonial Texas—this book is primarily geared toward specialists (p. 36). Historians of San Antonio, Texas, and Spanish colonial history will appreciate having these articles and an extensive bibliographic [End Page 937] essay in one volume to assist them with their research. The book may also be useful for a graduate or undergraduate class on southwestern history. De la Teja has compiled ten of his essays in one book to educate others on the colonial and early-nineteenth-century history of Texas before the arrival of Americans and the incorporation of Texas into the United States. The author sees that the history of Tejanos (people of Mexican descent who were born or settled in Texas during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) has been ignored by both Mexican historians, who view Texas as no longer part of Mexico and therefore not worthy of extensive examination, and U.S. historians, who find anything before the struggle for Texas independence in the 1830s irrelevant to American history. He aims to encourage historians to include more information about Spanish Texas and Tejanos in their textbooks and to address what he refers to as perspectives from "south to north" rather than solely "east to west," as most narratives currently emphasize in Anglo-American colonial history (p. xi). He argues that understanding early Texas and the border region is critical to comprehending the history of the United States and Mexico today. The essays proceed somewhat chronologically, allowing the reader to acquire some sense of the development of San Antonio and Texas from "the 1710s to the advent of Anglo-American hegemony in the 1830s" (p. 2). De la Teja approaches his subject from a variety of angles, providing rich details on the settlement, environment, military character, demographic change, and even leisurely pursuits in the area, which show continued connections to Spanish and indigenous cultures. The strongest articles in this book are chapter 3, where de la Teja describes military settlement and settlers' interactions with Apaches and other Native groups in San Antonio de Béxar, and chapter 6, which focuses on marriage and is a rich social history of how the caste or casta system worked in early San Antonio. I can imagine using this latter article to foster a rich discussion that will help students understand the factors that went into determining an individual's casta status and how frequently it could change depending on marriage, socioeconomic status, and the arbitrary decisions of government officials. The author has added two other sections of interest in this book. In the preface, which has not been previously published, de la Teja reveals the trajectory of his career and discusses how and why he wrote each article. Graduate students might appreciate the author's detailed description of his path, as it sheds light on the importance of learning from and working with other historians to interpret and understand the past. De la Teja also includes the art of nineteenth-century French painter Theodore Gentilz before each chapter and on the book's cover. De la Teja appreciates how respectfully Gentilz depicted nineteenth-century Tejano life and feels it is important to include a visual narrative in the text. One of the book's flaws is that, at times, it is repetitive. Some of the same background details—and in one case, a long quotation—are provided in multiple chapters. De la Teja's writing style is very clear but at times a bit dry, and the work is very specialized. For example, de la Teja...

“We Never Retreat”: Filibustering Expeditions into Spanish Texas, 1812–1822. By Ed Bradley.

“We Never Retreat”: Filibustering Expeditions into Spanish Texas, 1812–1822 . Elma Dill Russell Spencer Series in the West and Southwest. By Ed Bradley. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2015. xxii + 321 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $47.00.) “ W e Never Retreat” examines the principal Anglo-American filibustering incursions into Texas of the early nineteenth century, especially the Gutierrez-Magee and Long Expeditions. The author has meticulously researched the subject by culling evidence from the Bexar Archives, the U.S. National Archives, the memoirs of individual freebooters, and an array of contemporary U.S. newspapers. Although ably documented, Ed Bradley’s book does not present a unified theme on broad issues regarding U.S. frontier republicanism and evolving U.S.-Mexican relations. “We Never Retreat” is most notable for its insightful narrative of … narrett{at}uta.edu

“We Never Retreat”: Filibustering Expeditions into Spanish Texas, 1812–1822 by Ed Bradley

“We Never Retreat”: Filibustering Expeditions into Spanish Texas, 1812–1822 by Ed Bradley

Riding for the Lone Star: Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822–1865 by Nathan A. Jennings

Reviewed by: Riding for the Lone Star: Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822–1865 by Nathan A. Jennings William Yancey Riding for the Lone Star: Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822–1865. By Nathan A. Jennings. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2016. Pp 407. Maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, index.) Although many books have been written about the Texas Rangers and antebellum frontier warfare in Texas, none approach the subject in the way this book does. Nathan A. Jennings’s book, Riding for the Lone Star, is a military history, but it goes beyond traditional accounts of frontier conflict by placing the Texas military tradition in a broader framework. His purpose is to show how a distinct Texas military tradition emerged from conflicts with nomadic Indians and Mexican lancers, bolstered by the needs of an evolving frontier society. His thesis is clear: “Texan society developed a distinctive way of war defined by armed horsemanship, volunteer militancy, and event-specific mobilization as it engaged both tribal and international opponents” (1). Jennings begins by analyzing campaigns of Anglo settlers in Spanish Texas, first against coastal tribes like the Karankawa and later against plains tribes such as the Comanche and various Wichita bands. He demonstrates that the mobility of mounted Indians necessitated a change in tactics from defensive blockhouses and forts to volunteer expeditions of mounted riflemen. During the Texas Revolution, the provisional government of Texas used mounted volunteers to guard the northwest frontier from Indian raids, and cavalry also played a large role in the Battle of San Jacinto. Jennings continues tracing the development of the Texas Rangers as the Republic of Texas authorized companies of mounted troops to patrol the frontier as a shield against Indian attacks. Tactical evolutions such as the use of Indian auxiliaries and the Colt revolver turned the Rangers into the most effective light cavalry on the continent. The apex of the Texas way of war came during the war with Mexico, when both Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott employed Texas mounted troops to great effect and, to both commanders’ chagrin, great destruction. Frontier warfare continued to change during the 1850s as Texas mounted troops began to actively seek Comanche villages and launch strikes in an attempt to discourage raiding. Finally, Jennings shows how the Texas way of war manifested during the Civil War, when more than twice as many Texans served in cavalry units than infantry. In tracing these developments, Jennings has done an admirable job in placing them within societal contexts, as well as tactical and strategical concerns. For example, he shows that the woeful state of the Texas economy necessitated reliance on short-term volunteer troops. Jennings also demonstrates that there was a strong ethnic component to Texan militancy. Texas troops were often brutal against both Indian and Mexican noncombatants because they believed they had to be to protect their society from what they considered to be barbarians. While this is a valuable [End Page 118] insight into frontier conflict, sometimes Jennings engages in hyperbole, such as referring to Mirabeau Lamar as genocidal. He also tends to use technical military jargon that may detract from the understanding of civilian readers. These are small quibbles, however, and in general, do not detract from the quality of this monograph, which is a valuable contribution to the historiography of nineteenth-century Texas. William Yancey University of North Texas Copyright © 2015 The Texas State Historical Association

Slaves, Spaniards, and Subversion in Early Louisiana: The Persistent Fears of Black Revolt and Spanish Collusion in Territorial Louisiana, 1803–1812

Scholars of the early republic have tended to overlook the extent to which elite U.S. officials feared that enslaved and free people of color might collude with local Spanish officials in the Louisiana borderlands, and in so doing threaten plans for westward expansion. By exposing these fears and explaining the reasons for them, this article attempts to show how enslaved and free people of color, combined with local Spanish officials, posed a serious challenge to the United States’ attempt to gain control over the trans-Appalachian west. Several factors explain why U.S. officials feared Spanish and black collusion: First, U.S. officials worried that Louisiana’s black population might rebel at the loss of the rights granted to them during period of Spanish colonial rule. Second, after the U.S. took control of Louisiana, slaves continually escaped to Spanish Texas with the explicit encouragement of local Spanish officials, who tried to weaken U.S. authority over Louisiana. Last, enslaved and free people of color exploited the tumult unleashed by the Spanish Atlantic empire’s rapid collapse. By the end of the territorial period, U.S. officials’ fears of a slave revolt, I argue, had less to do with the Haitian Revolution than with the Latin American Wars of Independence, which began in 1810. Ultimately, this paper suggests the need to take seriously the joint role played by local Spanish and black actors in the broader imperial struggle for the trans-Appalachian west.

The Caddo Archaeology of the San Pedro Creek Valley, Houston County, in East Texas

The Nabedache Caddo that lived on San Pedro Creek in Houston County in the East Texas Pineywoods were a prominent nation during the early years of European contact, from ca. A.D. 1687-1730, if not later. Their villages, hamlets, and farmsteads sat astride an aboriginal Caddo trail that came to be known as El Camino Real de los Tejas, and thus their community was a principal gateway to Europeans and other Native American tribes who came from the west in Spanish Texas to meet with the Tejas or Hasinai Caddo peoples. The first Spanish mission in East Texas was established amidst the Nabedache Caddo community in 1690. According to Swanton, Nabedache means the place of the thorny trees with black berries growing on them (beidatco). The “Na” is the Caddo language locative prefix meaning “the place of;” it can also “refer to the people residing at that place”. Rogers and Sabo indicate that Nabedache means “blackberry place.” The archaeology of the Nabedache Caddo, or that of their pre-A.D. 1542 ancestors, is not well understood, primarily because of the dearth of intensive investigations at a range of Nabedache Caddo sites that likely occur along San Pedro Creek as well as nearby streams in the Neches River basin. Work that has been completed, primarily on sites at Mission Tejas State Park, have included surveys and limited test excavations at a few sites that have Caddo material culture remains (sherds from ceramic vessels, chipped stone tools, etc.) and European trade goods, including glass beads, gunflints, lead balls and sprue, an iron hoe, an iron rowel, a possible strike-a-light, an iron gun cock, trigger plate, butt plate finial, and gun barrel fragments, iron cast iron kettle fragments, iron knife fragments, wrought iron nails, brass tinklers, and Spanish majolica sherds. In this article, I discuss the archaeological material culture remains from ancestral Caddo sites along San Pedro Creek, including those known to have been occupied by the Nabedache Caddo peoples after the mid-1680s.

We Never Retreat: Filibustering Expeditions into Spanish Texas, 1812–1822 by Edward A. Bradley (review)

We Never Retreat: Filibustering Expeditions into Spanish Texas, 1812–1822 by Edward A. Bradley (review)

"We never retreat": filibustering expeditions into Spanish Texas, 1812-1822

"We never retreat": filibustering expeditions into Spanish Texas, 1812-1822

Locating the Battle of Rosillo: A Newly Discovered Map Indicates the Likely Site of the 1813 Battle where the First Republic of Texas Was Born

Locating the Battle of Rosillo: A Newly Discovered Map Indicates the Likely Site of the 1813 Battle where the First Republic of Texas Was Born Robert P. Marshall (bio) The importance of the Battle of Medina—the bloodiest in Texas history—has become more widely recognized in recent years. On August 18, 1813, Spanish royalist commander Joaquín de Arredondo routed a multinational republican army originally organized by José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara and Augustus W. Magee, effectively destroying armed resistance to colonial rule in Texas until the independence of Mexico in 1821. Still overlooked, though, is the Battle of Rosillo, the March 29, 1813, victory for the rebels that led to the first, albeit short-lived, Republic of Texas. This neglect even extends to the misplacement of the monument commemorating the battle, but a new discovery makes knowing the likely location possible. The present author has found a color-coded original of a December 1876 map of the Goliad Road by surveyor W. H. Owen in a stack of maps awaiting cataloging and filing in the Bexar County Spanish Archives. The newly discovered 1876 map (frontispiece) shows the routes of both the “New” and the “Old” roads between San Antonio de Béxar and Goliad. Even the existence of the 1876 map is extremely fortuitous, for Owen’s survey of the Old Goliad Road was an accident of history. As he noted on his original map, Owen had been hired by the Bexar County commissioners in 1876 to survey the New Goliad Road, which they had established in 1853 as a cut-off of the Old Goliad Road. Mistakenly thinking he was on the New Goliad Road route, Owen surveyed most of the Old Goliad Road route before noticing his error. Spanish Texas Governor Manuel [End Page 395] María de Salcedo’s 1809 La Bahía Road crossing Salado Creek and the Old Goliad Road crossing of Salado Creek recognized by the Texas Historical Commission are both the same as the Old Goliad Road crossing of Salado Creek as surveyed by Owen in 1876.1 Therefore, it seems logical to deduce that the newly discovered 1876 map shows the Spanish colonial route of the La Bahía Road astride which, according to participants in the Battle of Rosillo, the royalist leaders, Governor Salcedo and Colonel Simón de Herrera, set an ambush that led to the fight on March 29, 1813. W. H. Owen noted on his map an “Old Road” branching west off of the Old Goliad (La Bahía) Road at a location just west of Rosillo Creek and east of Salado Creek, about eight miles from San Antonio’s main plaza. Its relationship to local terrain features corresponds well with battle participant commentaries in archival records. The Rosillo battleground was reported to be eight miles from San Antonio de Béxar, just north of a westward fork off the La Bahía Road toward the lower Spanish missions, near Rosillo Creek, east of Salado Creek and within nine miles of Bexar.2 Early in the history of San Antonio de Béxar there probably were at least two routes exiting the town, which joined before crossing Calaveras Creek and continued along the left bank of the San Antonio River to the presidio at La Bahía (see Figure 2). The old Goliad Road mapped by Owen in 1876 apparently came to be disused, probably because a more southerly route required one less creek crossing. The more southerly route came to be commonly known as the Goliad Road by the 1840s. In fact, an 1845 deed including the Rosillo battleground showed the La Bahía Road crossing of Salado Creek to be just south of its confluence with Rosillo creek, about five miles south of Governor Salcedo’s 1809 crossing.3 In September 1843, while traveling from Gonzales to San Antonio, William Bollaert wrote that he was “four miles from the battleground where [Samuel] Kemper and his brave associates fought the Spanish royalists” at a location just east of Salado Creek.4 The distance from Bollaert’s location to the Salado’s confluence with Rosillo Creek is about six miles. His account...

Caddo Archaeological Sites on San Pedro Creek in Houston County, Texas: San Pedro de los Nabedaches

The Nabedache Caddo that lived on San Pedro Creek in Houston County in the East Texas Pineywoods were a prominent nation during the early years of European contact, from ca. A.D. 1687-1730. Their villages, hamlets, and farmsteads sat astride an aboriginal trail that came to be known as El Camino Real de los Tejas, and thus their community was a principal gateway to Europeans and other Native American tribes who came from the west in Spanish Texas to meet with the Tejas or Hasinai Caddo peoples. The first Spanish mission in East Texas was established amidst the Nabedache Caddo community. The archaeology of the Nabedache Caddo, or that of their pre-A.D. 1542 ancestors, is not well understood, primarily because of the dearth of intensive investigations at a range of Nabedache Caddo sites. Work that has been completed, primarily on sites at Mission Tejas State Park, have included surveys and limited test excavations at a few sites that have Caddo material culture remains (sherds from ceramic vessels, chipped stone tools, etc.) and European trade goods, including glass beads, gunflints, lead balls and sprue, an iron hoe, an iron rowel, a possible strike-a-light, an iron gun cock, trigger plate, butt plate finial, and gun barrel fragments, iron cast iron kettle fragments, iron knife fragments, wrought iron nails, brass tinklers, and Spanish majolica sherds. In this article, I discuss the archaeological material culture remains from several Nabedache Caddo sites along San Pedro Creek that are in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin.

“A motley collection of all nations”: the Napoleonic soldiers of Champ d'Asile as citizens of the world

In 1818, following Napoleon's fall and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France, a band of French veterans exiled in the United States established Champ d'Asile [“Field of Asylum”], a short-lived colony on the edge of Spanish Texas. Led by General Charle Lallemand, the settlers intrigued observers around the Atlantic and inspired a romantic, indeed utopian, mythology celebrating them as soldat-laboureurs [“farming soldiers”]. The adventure proved to be a social experiment through which the Napoleonic veterans embraced collectivist, egalitarian, and anti-capitalist ideas and practices as they redefined their own political identity. Marooned on the Texas frontier, they lived and labored alongside Native Americans and African Americans, on whom their survival depended. This essay argues that the international origins and experience of these Napoleonic veterans, and their association with Jean Laffite's ragtag band of freebooters, made them “a motley collection of all nations” – practical cosmopolitans, or citizens of the world, who challenged the limits of national allegiance. Their engagement with liberty and equality, race and slavery, and citizenship and cosmopolitanism in the south-western borderlands of North America generated an explosion of documents in French, Spanish, and English, which illuminate the French Atlantic in the Age of Revolution.