Texas Rising

by Stephen L. Moore

  President Santa Anna, back in control of Mexico, intended to restore Texas under his country’s control as well.

  A second invasion of Texas in 1842 was put in motion in late August. General Adrian Woll—a forty-seven-year-old French-born officer of Mexico’s Army of the North—crossed the Rio Grande with his troops to retake San Antonio. Bigfoot Wallace soon reported to Major Hays that Mexican spies were present about town. Hays’s men arrested several spies and learned that a force of about fifteen hundred Mexican Army soldiers was approaching Béxar.31

  Hays assumed command of the various volunteer forces that assembled in San Antonio. General Woll’s troops slipped through the rough country north of town and surprised the Béxar inhabitants on the morning of September 11 while Hays was out scouting with his rangers. Woll took over the city and held many Texans as prisoners while Hays gathered troops at Seguin, thirty miles to the east. Colonel Paint Caldwell, elected into command of the volunteers, rendezvoused with Jack Hays before dawn on September 13 at their camp eight miles east of Salado Creek.

  The Mexican force and the two-hundred-plus assembled Texans clashed on Sunday, September 18. Hays’s rangers taunted the Mexican cavalry into pursuing them from San Antonio. The frontiersmen were under heavy fire as they raced toward Caldwell’s main force on Salado Creek. The opposing forces squared off, skirmishing for hours with artillery and small arms fire. The Texans boldly advanced in the afternoon until Woll’s force was finally driven back. Former Hays ranger Stephen Jett was killed and eight other Texans were wounded. In return, the Mexicans lost sixty men killed and many more wounded. Among those slain was Vicente Córdova, leader of the 1838 East Texas rebellion.

  During the Salado Creek battle, another company of fifty-four Texans from La Grange under the command of Captain Nicholas M. Dawson marched toward the action. His company was intercepted by a column of several hundred Mexican cavalrymen and a battery of two fieldpieces. Thirty-six of Dawson’s men were killed, three escaped the field, and the remaining fifteen were taken as prisoners. Marched to Perote Prison in Mexico, only nine of the Dawson Massacre survivors would live to make their way back to Texas.32

  Colonel Caldwell and Major Hays sent out a small party on the morning of September 19 to find the mutilated bodies of Captain Dawson’s men on the battleground. General Woll began a retreat from San Antonio the following morning while rangers kept a steady reconnaissance of their movements. Hays and companion Ben McCulloch captured four Mexican prisoners during the day on September 21 while Paint Caldwell reorganized his volunteers.

  Caldwell’s force moved up the Medina River that evening while Hays continued scouting Woll’s movements. He reported at midnight that the Mexicans had broken camp and moved out. The main body of the Texans struggled to cross the river but Hays’s rangers rode hard and caught up with the Mexican rear guard around 3 P.M. on September 22. General Woll had put out a five-hundred-dollar bounty for the head of Jack Hays, and his men nearly claimed the prize. As the rangers approached a bend in the creek, they were suddenly fired upon by Mexican soldiers hidden in the creek bottom.33

  One of the musket shots whizzed past Hays and slammed into the chest of ranger Sam Luckie, who was riding beside his commander. The ball passed out Luckie’s shoulder as the force of the impact threw him from his horse. Other rangers helped secure Luckie to a litter and haul him back to the Medina River. Hays and his advance force—a mile and a half ahead of Colonel Caldwell’s troops—dismounted and prepared for battle. General Woll opted to keep pushing ahead instead of fighting, however. His men crossed Hondo Creek about fifty miles from San Antonio and set up a defensive position below the mouth of Quihi Creek.34

  Old Paint Caldwell sent an additional hundred horsemen to race ahead to support Hays with his charge against Woll’s force. On a bluff on the east side of the Hondo, Woll had placed a cannon with twenty artillerymen while his troops moved over to the west side. Joined by the additional Texans, Hays and his lieutenant, Henry McCulloch, decided to seize the Mexican cannon on the hill.

  “Charge!” Hays shouted.

  Rangers and volunteer horsemen alike bounded straight into the path of the waiting enemy infantrymen and artillery crew. The cannon roared to life but its nervous gunners did not take the sloping ground into account. The first round of grapeshot sailed high over the Texans’ heads, as did the second round. By then it was too late: the rangers’ Colt pistols began making widows for the Mexican soldiers. Three of Caldwell’s men were wounded in the charge and Arch Gibson, one of Hays’s rangers, was shot through the right cheekbone.

  Hays and his men seized the Mexican cannon but their possession was short-lived. They came under heavy fire from the west side cannon. Hundreds of Woll’s infantrymen then charged forward, forcing Hays to retreat until Paint Caldwell could arrive with more volunteers. The shooting died down as dusk fell over the Hondo Creek area. The Texans tended to their wounded during the night while Woll used the evening time to put miles between himself and Caldwell’s regrouping forces.35

  The following day, General Woll’s force managed to escape the area due to a complete breakdown of control among the Texans. Caldwell, Hays, and others were chomping at the bit to pursue and punish the Mexican invaders. Many of their volunteers, however, were worn down. Major James Mayfield considered it futile to pursue Woll any farther. The battle-hungry volunteers then held a vote and elected John Henry Moore to take command of them. Those who supported Caldwell were upset with the choice and the men became further divided as they bickered over who should lead them. One of the volunteers, Reverend Zachariah Morrell, wrote, “This was certainly one of the most disgraceful affairs that ever occurred in Texas.”36

  Adrian Woll’s invasion force thus escaped to the Rio Grande without another serious fight, carrying a number of Texan prisoners with them. Some of the volunteers who wanted to fight signed on as members of Jack Hays’s ranger company.

  PRESIDENT HOUSTON WAS APPALLED by the Woll invasion. He authorized one of his militia leaders, Brigadier General Alexander Somervell, to organize men and advance into “the enemy territory” if necessary. He advised Somervell to rely upon “the gallant Hays and his companions” to help coordinate their efforts for revenge and in recapturing their fellow Texians.37

  Volunteers began assembling in San Antonio during October, but Somervell spent his time leisurely organizing his forces for many weeks. His expedition finally set out on November 13, 1842. General Somervell had about twelve hundred men when he ventured out to the Medina River to make his first camp. His casual nature prevailed. More days were wasted waiting for an artillery piece, but when it showed up, Somervell refused to take it along. He then set out across open country instead of following the Laredo road toward Mexico. His men struggled through mud and cold weather in November while Jack Hays’s rangers stayed ahead of the pathetic bunch to scout for trouble. Hays was ready as ever for action. His men rode with a hand-fashioned flag stitched with the motto, “We give but ask no quarter.”38

  By late November, tempers were flaring as Somervell’s expedition took a wrong turn that led them farther through mud-bogged prairies. Captain Hays soon set the men on the proper course, but he was challenged by another ranger captain, Samuel Bogart, who desired to have equal status as a leader of the scouts. Hays moved ahead in early December into the border town of Laredo, where his rangers apprehended two Mexican rancheros. General Somervell sent six companies of men across the Rio Grande to engage the Mexican forces at the local garrison. The Mexican soldiers retreated across the river, along with many of the townspeople.39

  Somervell’s troops proceeded to pillage Laredo for two days while the rangers under Hays and Bogart retired to a ravine to rest their horses. The town’s alcalde was apprehended with a rope around his neck while Texans broke down doors and stole everything of value from the citizens’ homes. General Somervell pushed his troops farther into Mexico to the town of Guerrero, located some fifty-four miles below Laredo. By December 19, many of Some
rvell’s troops had become disgusted with the whole campaign, the bitter weather, and the absence of good horses they had hoped to plunder on their expedition. The general then ordered his army to begin a march back toward Gonzales to be disbanded.40

  Five company commanders, however, announced that they would be continuing their expedition into Mexico without Somervell. They elected Colonel William S. Fisher into command and reorganized their forces. Nine of Jack Hays’s rangers split from his company and joined the Fisher expedition. Fisher led his remaining companies down the Rio Grande toward the town of Mier. Captain Hays reconnoitered the town and found it void of Mexican troops. He then advised Fisher that he had completed his obligations in guiding the Texans to Mier and that his services on the southwestern frontier of Texas were his primary concern. Hays warned the colonel that a large Mexican force was reported to be assembling to oppose the Texans, before he departed Mier with most of his rangers on December 24.41

  The Hays rangers made their way back to San Antonio by the end of December, happy to be free from the strains of the much-troubled Somervell and Mier expeditions. Soon after their departure, Colonel Fisher’s men fought a battle with Mexican troops on December 25–26. Heavily outnumbered, Fisher’s troops inflicted severe casualties on the Mexicans before they were forced to surrender. The Texas prisoners, including former Hays rangers Bigfoot Wallace and Thomas Jefferson Green, endured a long march toward Mexico City during early 1843. They were jailed briefly at a prison at Hacienda del Salado, but the Texans overpowered their guards and escaped toward the mountains.

  Most of them were captured during the next two weeks and were marched to a new prison at Saltillo. President Santa Anna, infuriated by such actions, sent orders that every tenth man of the remaining 176 Texan prisoners should be shot to death. On March 25, the ragged convicts were forced to determine their own fate by drawing a colored bean from an earthen pot. The 159 who pulled a white bean would live. The unlucky seventeen who drew a black bean would face the firing squad. Bigfoot Wallace, carefully watching the process, noticed that the lethal black beans pulled by the unlucky Texans appeared to be larger than the white ones. When his time came, the former ranger carefully sifted beans through his fingers until he found one of smaller size. Bigfoot survived but seventeen Texans—including three former Texas Rangers—pulled black beans and were summarily executed.42

  The Mier Expedition survivors were marched deeper into Mexico to the little village of Perote, where they were held in an old castle converted into a prison. Eight Texans would manage to escape the Perote castle and return to their republic homes. Twenty others perished during their next eight months of captivity. More than one hundred Mier Expedition prisoners would remain imprisoned in Mexico until they were released in September 1844. The treatment endured by these men would not be forgotten by Texans when the next opportunity arose to fight the country of Santa Anna.

  20

  TRIUMPH AT

  WALKER’S CREEK

  THE ENTIRE REPUBLIC OF Texas was patrolled by only one company of Texas Rangers during 1843.

  It was no surprise that this distinction fell upon the most revered frontier fighter of his time, Captain Jack Hays. Most of his company had followed him back to San Antonio in late December 1842, leaving the ill-fated Mier Expedition rebels to their fates. President Sam Houston spent the latter part of the year struggling with a nation plagued by fears from the Mexican invasions. The Vásquez raid had compelled the republic to move its capital from Austin to Washington-on-the-Brazos.

  The Seventh Congress of the young nation passed a new frontier act on January 16, 1843, to organize six militia brigades throughout Texas. The legislators also approved funding for one spy company to protect the southwestern frontier until the militia act could be passed. President Houston, however, refused to sign the militia act and no other military forces would be legally organized in 1843. Houston thus handed sole military authority in Texas to Hays, whose men were to maintain order throughout the vast Nueces–Rio Grande river countryside.1

  He began recruiting new men from the Béxar area during February and had fifteen men in active service by the first of March. Among them were Sam Luckie—wounded during the Woll invasion—and brothers Matt and William Jett, whose brother Stephen had been killed on the Salado. Sam Houston and his representatives worked hard to make peace treaties with the Texas Indians in 1843 and found the most resistance to come from the Wichitas and Comanches.

  Captain Hays spent much of his time combating Mexican bandits who preyed on the settlements from San Antonio to the Rio Grande. While camped on the Nueces River with a recaptured herd of horses and mules, Hays’s rangers were confronted by a band of more than one hundred Mexican soldiers. They were led by bandit Agatón Quinoñes—who had faced Hays in 1842 at Hondo Creek. The next day, Quinoñes skirmished with the rangers in a mounted shoot-out. Hays and his men wounded some of their opponents and escaped without loss. “It was a hot time for a little while,” admitted ranger Rufe Perry.2

  Hays thereafter moved his men back toward the settlements to replenish supplies they had lost during the scrape with the Mexican bandits. En route, they were forced to eat an old mustang to survive. “It was the hardest meal to swallow I ever tried,” said Perry. Once they reached the Guadalupe River settlements, the rangers were taken in and fed by Andy Lockhart’s family. Perry found Matilda Lockhart, the eighteen-year-old former Comanche hostage, to be a very hospitable hostess.

  President Houston proclaimed martial law in the region from the Nueces and Frio rivers to the Rio Grande on April 27. Captain Hays’s company ranged against Mexican bandits during the spring with orders to arrest any armed group in the region operating without authority from the Texas government. His unit more than doubled in size during the summer as veteran frontiersmen like Mike Chevallie, Ben McCulloch, and George Howard signed on with him. During early June, the rangers apprehended three armed Mexican bandits scouting for Agatón Quinoñes’s gang. Hays, upon interrogating them and finding that they had committed murders and had stolen horses from the settlers, exercised his new authority by having the marauders executed.3

  LIFE AS A TEXAS Ranger had its moments of humor.

  One such episode occurred during an 1843 scouting expedition involving Jack Hays and one of his rangers, Alligator Davis—who earned his nickname by once wrestling an alligator on the Medina River. The pair chased two little bear cubs up a tree. Davis offered to tie one up and take it back to town for Mrs. William B. Jaques, an elegant lady fond of pets who was much admired by the rangers. Captain Hays shook the cub from the tree and then howled with laughter as he watched ’Gator Davis wrestle with the frightened beast. They lashed the bear to the horse of Davis but failed to secure its mouth. When the cub bit into the horse, Davis was thrown to the ground as his mount raced away with the bear tied to its back.4

  The rangers had more gunfights with Mexican bandits during August and September as they kept the peace in the region. In one of his reports to the government, made November 12, Hays detailed some of his success. “The western settlements for several months past enjoyed, so far as I have been able to ascertain, almost an entire immunity from the incursions of the Indians,” he wrote. “The only source from which danger is now apprehended is the robbing parties of Mexicans.”5

  Captain Hays was forced to disband his spy company that month due to insufficient funds to pay them for their daily service. Most of the supplies and services needed to keep his rangers in operation came from San Antonio–area merchants who desired their protection. The Texas government deemed that the rangers under Hays, although small in number, had been “active, vigilant and efficient” in keeping Mexican and Indian forces under control.6

  Jack Hays spent the 1843 holidays finally relaxing in company with the Judge Jeremiah H. Calvert family of Washington-on-the-Brazos. He had previously met young Susan Calvert in San Antonio, and his thoughts remained with the attractive brown-eyed brunette. Susan, whose family had recently mov
ed to Texas from Alabama, began a courtship that would last for several years with the most famous Texas Ranger.

  While Hays passed the holidays in Washington and Seguin, the newly seated Eighth Congress of the Republic of Texas worked out legislation to finally pay the rangers for their previous year’s service. Sam Houston met with Hays in early January and listened to his plans on how to maintain order on the southwestern prairies. Houston was an old friend of Hays’s father, and he continued to show loyalty to his favored ranger leader. On January 23, 1844, Congress authorized Hays to raise a forty-man ranger company to patrol the frontier from Béxar County to Refugio and westward as needed.7

  Hays organized his new ranger unit, the only one in operation in Texas, during the spring of 1844. He made Ben McCulloch his first lieutenant and took in many veteran frontiersmen as privates, including Rufe Perry, Matt Jett, William Jett, Mike Chevallie, and Christopher Black “Kit” Acklin. One of his new rangers was Samuel Hamilton Walker, a participant of the Mier Expedition who had but recently escaped from a Mexican prison. Walker—who had endured great hardships in his internment—had little desire to take any prisoners when he fought.

  Captain Hays made a brief visit to see President Houston in early March 1844. When he signed the guest book at the local hotel in Houston, Hays was hardly recognizable as a feared ranger. John W. Lockhart was surprised to see that the fabled “Captain Jack” of the Texas newspaper stories was a “small, boyish-looking youngster, with not a particle of beard on his face.”8

  Those who had encountered Devil Jack on the plains knew better than to discount the baby-faced ranger. Hays’s 1844 company was better equipped than ever. His men were now fully furnished with the deadly five-shot Colt revolvers. Sam Walker later praised the Colt factory, saying that their fine weapons enabled his rangers to be so confident “that they are willing to engage four times their number.”9