At this opportune moment, William H. Jack arrived on the field with about a hundred infantrymen. They advanced and forced the Mexican soldiers into a hollow. The firing was at close range as the Mexicans took cover in dense mesquite brush. One of the volunteers was twenty-two-year-old Robert Hancock Hunter, who had come to Texas in 1822 with his family to settle in New Washington, on San Jacinto Bay. He had left home the previous month for San Antonio to join the rebellion against General Cos.
Hunter was armed with a .54-caliber Harpers Ferry Yaeger (Jaeger) musket rifle, its lock tied on with a buckskin string. “We took advantage of the pack mules, and got on the Mexicans before they seen us,” Hunter wrote. “The Mexicans backed down in the hollow, which was about 10 or 12 feet deep. We were not more than 15 feet apart.” The Texians shot down on their opponents and inflicted heavy casualties. Only one volunteer, Mr. Murphy, was slightly wounded by a spent musket ball that glanced off his forehead. He staggered over to Daniel Perry, who asked, “Are you hurt?”26
“No,” said Murphy, as he wiped his hand across his brow. Noticing the heavy blood flow from his forehead, he angrily snapped, “By God!” and commenced loading his gun again.
Jack’s infantrymen exchanged several rounds with the Mexicans concealed in the thick mesquite brush. The Texians moved forward swiftly, sweeping around both enemy flanks, and soon drove their opponents from the hollow. Bowie and Jack’s men chased the dragoons and infantrymen to within three hundred yards of Béxar before they were forced to seek cover in a dry gulch when the Mexican artillery opened fire. “We had a bad show for our lives, eight or ten men to one against us,” said Hunter, “but we pulled through.”
General Cos and his men soon broke off the fight, opting not to test their short-range muskets against the long rifles of the entrenched Texas volunteers. The mule train was captured but the Texians did not find silver. Inside all of the packs was fresh-cut prairie grass. The treasure train was not Ugartechea’s men but merely soldiers sent out that morning to cut fodder for the starving horses of the Béxar garrison. This minor battle was later named the Grass Fight by the disappointed Texians.
Burleson reported only four men wounded in the Grass Fight, while the Mexican losses ranged widely from three to fifty soldiers killed. More important, the foragers proved to the Texians that their siege was working in slowly creating desperation among the Mexican troops as their animals starved. Truth be told, the Texas Army was struggling almost as much to provide for its own mounts.27
Major Robert Morris of the New Orleans Greys estimated that the Texian force had dwindled to 225 men by November 29. During the next few days, Burleson debated on moving his troops back to Goliad due to limited supplies and winter conditions. By the morning of December 4, Samuel Maverick found that the Texas Army was beginning to break up. “The volunteers cursed the officers and 250 or 300 set off for home,” he wrote in his diary. The dejected Texians were finally given a shot of inspiration close to sunset: some of the Mexican soldiers were beginning to desert.28
Scout Ben Milam rode back into camp and found his fellow troops disorganized and preparing to fall back to Gonzales. He sought out Colonel Frank Johnson and argued for the continuation of the effort. The two then proceeded to the tent of Burleson and had a heated exchange. The enemy was weakening, reasoned Milam, and an attack should be made. Burleson finally agreed that Milam could call a meeting of the volunteers. Those in favor could storm the town while he held the remainder of the men to cover a retreat in case the assault failed.29
Outside the colonel’s tent near the old mill, Milam confronted the soldiers. “By the animating manner and untiring zeal of Colonel Milam,” Sam Maverick found that the larger portion of the remaining Texians were still motivated to fight. Milam finally stood and asked, “Who will go with old Ben Milam to Bexár?” He called for those in favor to step to his side of the road. Three hundred of the five hundred present responded to the call, and Milam began organizing the attacking force into two divisions.30
Colonel Milam took charge of the first division, assisted by Lieutenant Colonel Louis B. Franks of the artillery and Major Morris of the New Orleans Greys. They would be guided into Béxar by red-haired local carpenter John W. Smith and Hendrick Arnold, a freed black man and son-in-law of Deaf Smith. The first division company commanders were Captains John York, Thomas Alley, William H. Patton, Almeron Dickinson, John English, and Thomas W. Ward.
The second division was placed under Colonel Frank Johnson, assisted by Colonel James Grant and aide-de-camp William T. Austin. Locals Deaf Smith and Sam Maverick would help guide this division into the city, which was unfamiliar to many of the volunteers. The companies of the second division were under captains William Gordon Cooke, Plácido Benavides, Thomas H. Breece, John W. Peacock, James G. Swisher, and Haden Harrison Edwards.31
The morning of December 5 opened with Colonel James Clinton Neill leading a division of artillerymen in a feint against the Alamo, opening fire on it to divert the enemy’s attention. The other two divisions hugged the adobe walls, breaking down thick wooden doors on two stone and adobe houses on the north side of San Antonio’s plaza. The firing became tremendous as the Mexican Army was engaged in what would become a five-day conflict that was occasionally marked by hand-to-hand struggles. During the first day, the Texans suffered one killed, plus twelve privates and three officers wounded. Their enemy kept up a constant firing during the night, while the Texan divisions reinforced their positions.
After daylight on December 6, the Mexicans were discovered to be occupying the rooftops in key positions around the plaza. From there they maintained a steady small arms fire upon the Texans. A detachment under Lieutenant William McDonald from Captain John Crane’s company took a key house after a hard fight and managed to extend the Texan line. Five more Texans were wounded throughout the course of the day, including Captain John Peacock, who later died.
The fighting was intense again on December 7. Mexican defenders held a key house in the path of Johnson’s division, and they poured heavy small arms and artillery fire down on the Texians. A six-pound cannon was wheeled into town and finally pounded the Mexican troops from the house. As it was farther advanced, however, two of its gunners were shot down and three others were wounded. Second Lieutenant William Carey and two other men continued the fight, even when Carey’s skull was creased by a musket ball. Ben Milam led a final push toward Main Plaza, and made his way through the rubble to confer with Johnson at the grand Veramendi house. Dressed in a white blanket coat, Milam stepped into the courtyard with a spyglass to get a better look at the Mexican command post.32
A puff of smoke appeared in a cypress tree a hundred yards away on the bank of the San Antonio River. Ben Milam died instantly as a bullet pierced his right temple. The Mexican sniper, Felix de la Garza, was quickly killed by several Texian riflemen. The stunned volunteers buried Colonel Milam in a trench that evening and selected Frank Johnson to carry out the assault plans that their fallen leader had put in motion.
Mexican artillerymen pinned down a group of Texians near several old houses and an adobe wall in the afternoon of the fourth day. Grapeshot quickly reduced the wall and sent Tennessean Henry Karnes leaping into action. Carrying a rifle in one hand and a crowbar in the other, he dashed across a street under heavy fire toward a crucial position on the north side of the plaza loaded with Mexican sharpshooters. Karnes used his crowbar to smash in the door while Captain York’s company laid down cover fire. Men from the companies of Captains Lewellen, English, Crane, and York charged on foot to take possession of the house, chasing out the enemy soldiers who did not immediately surrender.
On December 8, Colonel Ugartechea returned to San Antonio with more than six hundred replacements, although the majority were untrained conscripts. One of the few career officers, Lieutenant Colonel José Juan Sánchez-Navarro, was shocked by the sight of Cos’s army when his men entered the Alamo. He found the starving cavalry horses were “eating the capes of the troops and e
ven the trails of the artillery.” The Texans pierced the thick partitioning walls between houses and steadily advanced on the key Mexican positions about the central part of town. After dark on December 8, Burleson sent reinforcements to help hold the command of the enemy’s northwest portion of defenses.33
Fighting continued until the remaining Mexicans retreated into the Alamo before daylight on December 9. Four companies of Cos’s cavalry decided not to fight and rode away. Lieutenant Colonel Sánchez-Navarro found that morale was gone. Mexican soldiers were mumbling, “We are lost.” Cos summoned his officer during the predawn hours and determined that a truce was the only way to save his remaining men. He authorized Sánchez-Navarro to approach the rebel commander under a white flag of truce. The more defiant men under Colonel Nicolas Condelle condemned such an action but reluctantly agreed to the orders of General Cos.
Sánchez-Navarro advanced into the streets of San Antonio with his white flag and met with Colonel Burleson. The two sides agreed upon a cease-fire, but the terms of the truce were discussed until 2 A.M. on December 10. For the Mexicans, the terms were quite generous. They would be allowed six days to recover in Béxar. Then they were to retire with their personal arms, ten rounds of ammunition, and one four-pound cannon to protect themselves against Indian attack while retiring toward the Rio Grande.34
The assault on Béxar had cost the Texians the lives of Ben Milam, Captain Peacock, and two others. Another fourteen had been wounded, some seriously. As many as 150 Mexican soldiers had been killed in the conflict. A renewed sense of confidence swept through the volunteer army. James Grant and others pushed the idea of carrying forth with an offensive expedition all the way to Matamoros.
German-born Herman Ehrenberg hoped that the news of the defeat in Béxar would sweep through the Mexican nation, compelling its occupants to “rise in revolt in order to overthrow Santa Anna and his administration.” Many of the volunteers took shelter in the Alamo to protect themselves from the cold. Others, like Colonel Ed Burleson, headed for their homes to take care of their loved ones. Juan Seguín disbanded his mounted tejano company and rejoined his wife and children as numerous Béxareños cautiously made their way back into the battered town to inspect their homes.35
News of the great Texas victory spread through the U.S. papers with reference to the rebels of 1776. By the end of December, theaters in New York and New Orleans were preparing to open plays that celebrated the frontiersmen of the Texas Revolution. It was good that the Texians could finally rejoice for a time, but some were left to wonder if President Santa Anna would sit idly by and accept such a defeat.
6
REVOLUTIONARY RANGERS
JOE PARKER WAS PLEASED to be spending Christmas with his brother. In the past week, he had driven a wagon and horse team some 170 miles from Fort Sterling down the Old San Antonio Road to San Felipe. He was making a supply run for the rangers presided over by his brother Silas back at the Parker family’s fortress.1
Daniel Parker Sr. was pleased to see his brother arrive safely. He was still engaged in the ongoing business of the General Council. On December 19, the council had sent orders to Major Willie Williamson to proceed to Mina to establish his headquarters for his new Corps of Rangers. Orders also went out to the three new ranger captains to begin recruiting their companies for Williamson’s command. Captain Isaac Burton was to proceed to the Sabine River to establish his recruiting station, while Captains John Tumlinson and William Arrington were to similarly organize their rangers in their respective communities of Mina in Robertson’s Colony and Gonzales in DeWitt’s Colony. Major Williamson’s new ranger battalion would require at least some weeks to recruit men fresh from the Béxar campaign. This left the detail of frontier protection largely to the four-district regional ranger system as the new year of 1836 commenced.2
Joe Parker was a full three weeks in making his round-trip covered wagon provision run to San Felipe. His team hauled back one hundred pounds of lead for musket balls, one and a half kegs of black powder, corn meal, bacon, beef, pork, bushels of corn, horse feed, and countless other necessities required of mounted frontiersmen serving in the winter elements.3
By the time Parker unhitched his wagon within the stockade fence of Fort Sterling on January 9, 1836, things had changed. Captain Eli Hillhouse, commander of Silas Parker’s original company, had passed away. In his place the company had been taken over by Captain Eli Seale, who had been with the unit since its creation in October. The General Council had approved a secondary company of rangers in Silas Parker’s region and on January 1 Captain James Wilson Parker (brother to Silas) had mustered in his ten-man unit. They would remain in service through April 27, 1836. Captain Seale’s company completed three months of service in late January 1836, at which time Captain James A. Head took command for another three-month period. The rangers under superintendent Silas Parker thus covered the East Texas frontiers for a full six months of the Texas Revolution from the Parker family’s fortification.4
Another ranger unit was brought into operation on January 1 about sixty miles to the northeast in the adjacent regional ranger district presided over by superintendent Garrison Greenwood. He had been tasked by the General Council to raise ten men to range the frontiers between the Neches and Trinity rivers. Greenwood and five other families had been the first Anglo settlers in this region when they departed Nacogdoches in July 1835 to start a new community fifty miles beyond the extremes of existing frontier settlements. They selected a site eight miles east of the Trinity River with fertile soils and ample water supply from several creeks. They named their town Houston in honor of Sam Houston, the prominent Nacogdoches settler and former Tennessee governor the families had become acquainted with.5
The approach of winter kept the pioneers busy. They constructed proper log homes and also a pine blockhouse, for protection against Indians, which was named Fort Houston. Greenwood selected William Turner Sadler, one of the bachelor pioneers with experience in the Seminole and Creek Indian wars, to command his new ranger unit. Born in Lincoln County, North Carolina, thirty-eight-year-old Sadler had first surveyed this area of East Texas in 1822 before selling his Georgia farm to settle permanently in the new frontier. He traveled over land and water en route with another Texas-bound immigrant named Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, a fellow Georgian who was destined for great fame in the Mexican-owned territory. Lamar, who learned that he was distantly related to William Sadler by marriage, considered his companion to be “an unassuming and intelligent gentleman.”6
Captain Sadler formally enrolled his ten-man ranger company on January 1, 1836, at the Fort Houston settlement. Among his volunteers were Dickerson Parker and Daniel Parker Jr., sons of the San Felipe representative who had introduced the act to form the regional rangers months earlier. Sadler’s rangers had little trouble with Indians during early 1836 and worked on fortifying their blockhouse in between scouting patrols.
In the district to the west of those presided over by Greenwood and Silas Parker was that of Captain Daniel Friar. His ranger company operated from the settlement at the Falls of the Brazos River during early 1836, using Fort Viesca as their staging post. The town’s only fortified blockhouse was renamed Fort Milam in December 1835 in honor of Ben Milam’s sacrifice during the recent Béxar siege. Friar’s rangers were armed with both traditional flintlock and percussion cap rifles and they drew provisions as needed from San Felipe. The General Council considered Friar’s company and his superintendence to be a temporary condition, existing only until Major Williamson could properly raise his new ranging corps. Daniel Friar’s men served through February 1, covering three months of duty during the Texas Revolution.7
One other ad hoc ranging company was formed in January in Robertson’s Colony to handle a temporary Indian crisis. James and Thomas Riley, a pair of brothers in the business of surveying, were attacked by about forty Caddos and Comanches near the San Gabriel River. Thomas was killed but James Riley escaped with four severe wounds. Empresario Sterlin
g Robertson took to the field with sixty-five volunteer rangers for several weeks but did not manage to engage any of the hostile forces.8
It would be one of Willie Williamson’s new companies that carried out the first successful Indian battle of 1836 for the Texas Rangers.
THE TATTERED, BLOND-HAIRED WOMAN was bloodied and looked to be in a state of shock.
Noah Smithwick was preparing his supper over a campfire when young Sarah Creath Hibbins stumbled from the brush. Her arms and legs were caked with dried blood, her flesh and clothing lacerated by thorns. The woman dragged herself into the little ranger camp and collapsed. “It was some time before she could give a coherent explanation of her situation,” Smithwick recalled.9
Once she could control her emotions, Sarah Hibbins said that she had been traveling in an oxcart from Columbia-on-the-Brazos with her husband, John, her son John McSherry Jr. (from a previous marriage), her new infant, and her brother, George Creath. They were still about fifteen miles from their home when they stopped to make camp for the night on Rocky Creek. They were attacked by a party of about thirteen Comanches, who swiftly killed the two older men. Sarah, her infant, and three-year-old John McSherry were taken captive while the Comanches plundered the settlers’ belongings.10
Smithwick listened in horror as Sarah described how the Comanches became irritated with the wailing of the Hibbins baby. “The Indians snatched it from her and dashed its brains out against a tree,” he recalled. A bitter norther set in and the Indians made camp near where the city of Austin now stands. Once they were sound asleep in their buffalo robes, Sarah escaped from camp at night—leaving her young son behind. She fled on foot, covering her tracks by moving along the cold Colorado River toward the nearest settlements. She moved nearly ten miles in twenty-four hours, working through heavy brush and unforgiving briars until she came upon a herd of grazing cattle late the next afternoon.11
Texas Rising Page 7