Texas Rising

by Stephen L. Moore

  The first white men she encountered before dusk on January 19 were Smithwick and his party of eighteen rangers, who were camped on the headwaters of Brushy Creek some thirty miles northwest of the future capital city of Austin. The company was commanded by Captain John Tumlinson, one of Major Williamson’s three units of the new Corps of Rangers. He had recruited rangers for a one-year service period and mustered in his original men on January 17 at the settlement of Hornsby’s Station. Noah Smithwick, a veteran of the Battle of Concepción, had returned to Mina in December to recover from a nasty fever, thus missing the battle for Béxar. The rangers of Captain Tumlinson had set out from Hornsby’s Station to build a frontier blockhouse near the head of Brushy Creek, where Sarah Hibbins happened upon them.

  Tumlinson ordered his rangers to finish their supper and to mount up as Sarah pleaded with them to save her boy from the Comanches. They rode hard through the night under the direction of guide Reuben Hornsby, pausing only a short while before daybreak to rest their horses. Scouts found the trail of the Indians after daybreak on January 20. Tumlinson came upon the camp of the thirteen Indians around 9 A.M. on Walnut Creek. “The Indians discovered us just as we discovered them, but had not time to get their horses,” said Captain Tumlinson.12

  He ordered Second Lieutenant Joseph W. Rogers to take eight rangers around the camp to cut off their possible retreat. The Comanches left their horses and raced for the hillside thickets. Tumlinson and Rogers’s two contingents immediately charged. Just as Tumlinson leapt from his horse, it was killed by a rifle ball through the neck. The captain turned his own weapon on the Comanche who had just fired and dropped him dead. Smithwick shot down another fleeing Indian and stopped to load his rifle. “A limb knocked my hat off and one of my comrades, catching a glimpse of me flying bareheaded through the brake on foot, mistook me for a Comanche and raised his gun,” he recalled. “But another ranger dashed the gun aside in time to save me.”13

  The Comanche shot by Smithwick proceeded to reload his gun while lying wounded on the ground. Ranger Conrad Rohrer, a burly Dutchman from Pennsylvania, quickly grabbed the Indian’s own gun and smashed in his skull. In the brief firefight, Private Elijah Ingram had his arm shattered by a musket ball and Methodist minister Hugh Childress was shot through the leg. Captain Tumlinson’s company killed four of the Comanches before the balance, some wounded, escaped into a thicket too dense for safe pursuit. Lieutenant Rogers and several rangers managed to capture all of the Indians’ camp goods and horses. Young John McSherry, wrapped in buffalo robes and tied to a mule, was nearly killed when the beast ran from camp following the battle. Fortunately, the ranger who tried to gun down the fleeing “Indian” missed his mark and only succeeded in bringing down the runaway mule.14

  Joe Rogers and his men selected the best horse from their captured lot to replace the one lost by their captain. The rangers decided that Smithwick’s shot on the wounded Comanche afforded him the honor of scalping his first dead Indian. He modestly waived his claim, saying that Conrad Rohrer had finished off the Comanche with his rifle butt. Rohrer scalped the Indian with his knife but said that the pelt belonged to Smithwick, to whose saddle he tied “the loathsome trophy.” Smithwick later wrote, “I permitted it to remain, thinking it might afford the poor woman, whose family its owner had helped to murder, some satisfaction to see that gory evidence that one of the wretches had paid the penalty of his crime.”

  Tumlinson’s rangers made their way back to Hornsby’s Station to seek medical attention for their wounded. Lieutenant Rogers presented the recovered boy, John McSherry, to his grieving mother, Sarah Hibbins. “Not an eye was dry,” recalled Tumlinson. “She called us brothers, and every other endearing name, and would have fallen on her knees to worship us.”15

  Captain Tumlinson’s rangers would remain in the area during the next two months as they completed construction of their fortification beside a huge live oak tree where the present town of Leander stands. They had no further Indian encounters during the Texas Revolution but maintained vigilant patrols during that time from west of the Colorado River to east of the Brazos River.

  John Tumlinson’s January 20, 1836, fight near Walnut Creek was the first between Comanches and Texas Rangers. There would be plenty more engagements between these rival frontiersmen in the decades that followed.

  7

  “YOU MAY ALL GO

  TO HELL AND I WILL

  GO TO TEXAS”

  PRESIDENT SANTA ANNA WAS plotting his return to Texas even before he learned of the embarrassing loss General Cos had suffered at San Antonio de Béxar.

  He already had a reputation for saving his people. He moved swiftly after hearing of the seizure of the Goliad presidio and the conflict at Gonzales. Santa Anna now saw the chance to put down the unrest in Texas just as he had crushed opposition in Zacatecas before. He traveled to Mexico City in early November to begin organizing his Army of Operations, which would surpass six thousand men in short order. His country’s war chest was depleted, forcing Santa Anna to finance his new expedition with high-interest loans from the church and private lenders.1

  El Presidente ordered units from around his country to supply men to fill out his Army of Operations’ infantry, cavalry, and artillery forces. His expedition would include an almost equal number of regular army forces or permanentes and the active militia or activos. His senior leaders were veterans he trusted. General Vicente Filisola, a forty-six-year-old born in Italy, was Santa Anna’s second in command. General Manuel Fernández Castrillón, his aide-de-camp, was a seasoned military man who had fought alongside Santa Anna for more than a decade. Castrillón, born in Cuba before changing his allegiance from Spain during the Mexican Revolution, was one of the few who dared stand up to their commander in chief when necessary.2

  News of General Cos’s besiegement at Béxar reached the capital and Santa Anna quickly sent reinforcements to his aid. General Joaquín Ramírez y Sesma, a forty-year-old cavalry leader renowned for his bravery, was sent toward Béxar with a Vanguard Brigade of one cavalry regiment, three battalions of infantry, and a battery of light artillery. His troops departed Zacatecas on November 11 for Laredo, the Rio Grande settlement that would serve as the primary base of operations for the march into Texas. Santa Anna temporarily left his political duties behind in Mexico City and moved to the city of San Luis Potosí in early December to organize his army. Once assembled, the army was moved about 120 miles north to the mountain city of Saltillo for final preparations.

  On December 20, Santa Anna learned of the defeat of Cos at Béxar. He made plans to eventually cross his troops over the Rio Grande at Guerrero, eighty miles upriver from Laredo, to catch the enemy rebels off guard. Days later, Cos’s weary survivors straggled into Laredo, where they were met by General Ramírez y Sesma’s Vanguard Force. Santa Anna’s main contingent of his army remained in Saltillo well into January as the commander in chief worked to bring his soldiers up to military par.

  Many of his men were raw recruits with little or no army experience. The infantrymen were drilled on marching and basic formations but little lead or powder was wasted on practice firing of their muskets. The foot soldiers carried India-pattern Brown Bess smoothbore musket rifles with seventeen-inch bayonets that had been used by British troops for nearly a century. These muzzle-loading flintlocks fired massive .75-caliber lead balls but were not reliable beyond about seventy yards. Inferior Mexican gunpowder often compelled the infantrymen to use double loads of powder that produced a powerful kick and a large powder flash in the pan near a man’s face and eyes.3

  Each infantry battalion, on paper at least, comprised eight companies of eighty men each—although Santa Anna’s army did well to have half that number in most companies. Each battalion included six line companies of regular soldiers and two companies of the elite members, known as the granaderos (grenadiers) and the cazadores (hunters). The granaderos were veteran soldiers usually held in reserve when a conflict commenced. The cazadores were elite marksm
en, often armed with superior British Baker .61-caliber rifles, which were easier to reload and were accurate up to three hundred yards.

  Santa Anna’s Army of Operations was fitted out with colorful uniforms, a striking contrast to the frontier rags worn by the Texians they would face. Mexican cavalrymen wore short red coats and blue cloth trousers, black leather crested helmets with brass plating, waist-belt sabers, long wooden lances with steel tips, holster pistols, and short-barreled British Paget carbines. Infantrymen wore white or blue trousers, blue pigeon-tailed jackets with red trim and white crossbelts, and stiff black shako hats adorned with brass plates and small red plumes.

  Mexican officers wore more formal attire: black riding boots, blue jackets with scarlet frontpieces, cuffs, and high collars, embroidered with golden leaves of olive, palm, and laurel. The staff wore white or gray trousers, golden epaulets, and wide waist sashes of green or blue color. Certainly, the “Great Napoleon of the West”—as Santa Anna fancied himself—had an impressive-looking military.

  The drilling of his troops at Saltillo consumed the better part of January 1836. When his forces prepared to move out, Santa Anna was faced with great difficulties. Scarcity of water was a constant issue, and common men had to be hired to drive the supply carts. A small army of women and children followed the soldiers, with many of the women serving as cooks, nurses, and foragers. When the five-thousand man army pushed north, its artillery corps had but twenty-one pieces of ordnance, the largest being two twelve-pound cannons.4

  Santa Anna’s occupation force finally moved from Saltillo on January 31. The first leg of their journey was through mountain peaks on the old mule trail known as El Camino Real—Spanish for “the Royal Road” or the more Anglican translation of “The King’s Highway.” The Camino Real roadway was the most direct artery from Mexico City, stretching all the way across the Texas territory into Louisiana. The Mexican Army marched some 150 miles north from Mexico City to Monclova. Béxar lay another 300 miles farther, through vast areas with little grass for their animals, little water for their men, and a brutal winter that taxed the foot soldiers as they trudged endlessly through bitter winds and driving rains.

  En route to Monclova, Santa Anna organized his forces into five units. By January 16, General Ramírez y Sesma’s 1,541-man Vanguard Brigade had reached Guerrero on the Rio Grande. General Eugenio Tolsa’s 1,839-man Second Infantry Brigade was on the march from Saltillo by January 31. General Antonio Gaona’s 1,600-man First Infantry Brigade departed on February 1, along with General Santa Anna, his staff, fifty escorting lancers, and, finally, General Juan Andrade’s 437-man Cavalry Brigade.

  Lieutenant José Enrique de la Peña, a twenty-nine-year-old aide for Colonel Francisco Duque’s Toluca Battalion, wrote that Santa Anna “was more renowned for the success with which he stirred up rebellions that tended to destroy his homeland than for his military feats.” The general was a man “whose irascible temperament did not lend itself to discussion.”5

  There would be no mercy for the rebel Texians when the Mexican Army next confronted them. Santa Anna instructed his soldiers on the various bugle calls, including the Spanish degüello (“slit throat”) call for “no quarter.” The commander in chief made his intentions perfectly clear in his issued instructions. The Texas foreigners waging war on Mexico had violated all laws. “No quarter will be given them,” Santa Anna declared. “They have audaciously declared a war of extermination to the Mexicans and should be treated in the same manner.”6

  The Anglo colonists and anyone who assisted them were to be treated just as treasonous barbarians or pirates. They were to be executed.

  THE VOLUNTEER ARMY OF Texas was showing its weaknesses.

  Men not bound to a constant service period had families and private lives to tend to and the provisional government was still in its formative period. By the end of December, a mere hundred men remained on duty in Béxar. The senior officer present was Lieutenant Colonel James Neill, who had most recently commanded artillerymen during the siege. He kept quarters in town while about half his men, led by thirty-year-old Captain William Carey, moved into the vacated Alamo compound.

  The men who had not headed for their homes had taken most of the ammunition, supplies, and horses from the old Spanish mission to follow Dr. James Grant on his planned Matamoros expedition. Colonel Johnson was seeking approval from Governor Henry Smith and the General Council in San Felipe. Neill was left frustrated, and he wrote angry letters to Smith and to Sam Houston about the ill state of affairs at the Alamo. Should the Mexican Army return for a counterattack, he and Carey were managing an unruly bunch of volunteers who continued to dwindle. Their lack of proper winter clothing, sufficient meals, and payment of any kind compelled others in San Antonio to drift away. Those who remained turned to gambling, women, and alcohol to alleviate their boredom.

  One of the more valuable men who remained proved to be Green Benjamin “Ben” Jameson, the appointed garrison engineer. He was convinced he could improve the fortifications of what he called the Fortress Alamo. The former attorney took inventory of the necessary materials and drew up plans to repair the crumbling compound. He used the available officers and men to haul the captured Mexican cannon through the main gate and place them on platforms built along the mission’s perimeter. The largest artillery piece was an eighteen-pounder that Captain Philip Dimitt had brought in from the coast shortly after the departure of General Cos. It was hoisted onto a wooden platform erected above a partially collapsed one-story house at the northwest corner of the Alamo compound.7

  Rumors reached San Antonio in early January that a thousand Mexican troops were marching from Laredo on the Rio Grande. Lieutenant Colonel Neill was also visited by a Comanche spokesman on January 8, who informed him that their nation was in a hostile attitude toward the rebels who had stirred up the Mexican forces. Neill continued his correspondence with Governor Smith, seeking relief for his men against two potentially deadly groups.

  The governor and the General Council had in the meantime given in to the pressures of Dr. Grant, Frank Johnson, and other volunteers who desired to move in force against Matamoros. Smith gave the nod to commander in chief Sam Houston to make a “demonstration” against the Mexican town. Houston began making plans in late December to use Jim Bowie’s forces in Goliad and other companies under Colonel James Fannin to carry out the Matamoros expedition. The council proceeded to confuse the entire issue by authorizing both Johnson and Fannin to lead the march, and each man claimed the role of commander. Governor Smith then ordered General Houston to move from Washington-on-the-Brazos to Goliad to personally assume command of the offensive.8

  The confusion spilled over into a division between Henry Smith and his General Council at San Felipe. Harsh words ensued between the leaders, and Smith finally proclaimed the council dissolved. They responded by impeaching Governor Smith and continued to operate with Lieutenant Governor James W. Robinson serving as the acting governor. Confused leaders such as James Neill in the Alamo were left writing to both sides of the quarreling government for support. When Sam Houston reached Goliad on January 14, he found Bowie still in town. The veteran knife fighter had not received the orders to take command of the Matamoros offensive from Dr. Grant. Houston then sent Bowie and a company of volunteers on to Béxar on January 17, with discretionary orders to “blow up the Alamo and abandon the place” if necessary.9

  General Houston then joined Grant’s army on its march to Refugio. His efforts to win over the men were dashed when word reached Refugio that the council had deposed Governor Smith, ousted Houston as the supreme commander of the military, and authorized James Fannin to lead the expedition. Houston departed Refugio on January 28 and reported to Henry Smith two days later. The man who still claimed the title of governor instructed Houston to visit with his old friend Chief Bowles in East Texas. Bowles, known also as Duwali in his native tongue, had led his band of Cherokee people into eastern Texas in 1819. Houston’s goal was to persuade the Cherokees to
remain neutral to the Texians with a treaty that persuaded them to ignore any lures of allegiance to the Mexican Army.

  Bowie’s company, although small in number, was a refreshing site to Alamo commander James Neill when they arrived at Béxar in January. Bowie was impressed with the character of Colonel Neill, and he wrote to Governor Smith that “no other man in the army could have kept men at this post under the neglect they have experienced.” He also found Ben Jameson fully engaged in shoring up the Alamo with his cannon on the walls. Jameson proudly boasted that if the Mexicans should try to storm the fortress, his defenders could whip them ten-to-one with their artillery. Bowie abandoned any orders that he might have received to blow up the Alamo. By February 2, he was so convinced of the fort’s defenses that he wrote to Smith, saying he and Neill would “die in these ditches” before surrendering the Alamo.10

  Smith was in agreement for bolstering the Béxar garrison, as he had already issued orders to Lieutenant Colonel William Travis to raise a company and march to San Antonio. Travis sent a written protest on January 29, even threatening to resign his commission, about having to take such few men without proper provisions. In the end, Travis gave in to the orders and arrived at the Alamo on February 3. Other volunteers began trickling in to Béxar, and Travis soon became more motivated to defend the place.11

  The biggest morale boost for Travis, Bowie, and Neill came on February 8, with the arrival at the Alamo of a group of volunteers led by Davy Crockett, a Tennessee frontier legend.