Lone Star

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  The institution of a deliberate war of extermination against the Apaches, in which alliances with the Wichitas, Comanches, and other northern tribes should be sought. To secure these alliances, both the abandonment of the country and "French methods" of dealing with the Indians would be helpful. If any Apache women or children survived, they were to be removed to New Spain and civilized by being reared in slavery. With the Apaches removed forever, Rubí thought it would be possible to make peace with the Plains tribes.

  With the exception of the possibility of peace with the Comanches, the Rubí reports were clear-cut reflections of Spanish reality in Texas. With the forces available, nothing else was possible. And in fact, the war against the Apaches, while accepted wholeheartedly by officialdom, was already beyond Spanish power to support.

  In 1772, substantially all the Rubí recommendations were promulgated by the King, in a "New Regulation of the Presidios."

  The New Regulation for the frontier thus marked a Spanish retreat. Ironically, one of the incidents connected with its implementation pointed up the whole nature of the Spanish Texas dilemma—unconquerable Indians, lack of colonists, governmental ineptitude—and unwittingly almost destroyed one of the few genuine Spanish roots in the province.

  The Baron de Ripperdá, who arrived in San Antonio de Béxar as Governor of Texas in 1770, inherited the task of removing the Spanish presence in East Texas to the capital. He marched to the Sabine with a party of soldiers in 1772, with orders to close the four moribund missions in the region and to escort all Spaniards to San Antonio.

  Ripperdá found the presidials and the missionary clergy ready enough to leave. The forts and missions were stripped of valuables and set afire. But since Rubí had inspected the area in 1767, the small Spanish community clustered near the forts had begun to take root and grow, on its own, completely without aid or even the knowledge of the Crown. It already numbered about five hundred persons.

  These people had become small farmers and herders in the rich pine woodlands. The Caddoans left them alone; the Comanches and Wichitas had never smelled them out, and they had created a comfortable life. They raised corn and beans and the ubiquitous rangy Spanish cattle and pigs. They were doing well, and they had no desire to leave their farms and homes in East Texas and move to what was admittedly a less hospitable and far more dangerous frontier.

  Baron de Ripperdá sympathized. Quite probably he saw the removal of these families as a mistake; but he also understood the complete impossibility of getting the orders changed. The Spaniards were routed out with soldiers, their goods and livestock gathered together, and their settlements burned. Protesting and weeping, the settlers were marched to Béxar.

  But settled on new lands along the San Antonio River, they continued to complain. The best lands were admittedly sequestered by the missions, or already appropriated by officials or Canary Islanders. They hated the dry climate and the thin, rocky soil they were allotted, and they were terrified of Apache-Comanche raids, which were admittedly bad. At this time Ripperdá was writing florid, dramatic reports about the Indian terror to outlying farmers and ranchers, and begging for more troops.

  Two leaders of the East Texans, Gil Ybarbo and a man named Flores, petitioned the Viceroy for permission to return to their old homes. This petition, understandably, caused consternation, embarrassment, and some confusion in official circles. Finally, at Ripperdá's suggestion, Ybarbo was told his people were not to return to their former settlement, but they were permitted to emigrate in that general direction. They were not to approach closer than 100 leagues to Natchitoches in Louisiana, now a Spanish fort.

  Ybarbo and the East Texans pushed their mandate to the limit. They packed up and left Béxar and picked a new settlement site on the Trinity River, about as far east as they could go. Ripperdá agreed to this site, since the land was fertile, with good rainfall, and it was east and south of the Wichita and Tonkawa ranges. Both of these tribes were now friendly toward the Spanish, and Ripperdá thought they would create a buffer between Ybarbo and the Plains Indians. The new settlement was named Bucareli, like all the forts, missions, and settlements in Texas, after a prominent Spanish official, a lieutenant general of New Spain, who founded the National Pawnshop of Mexico.

  For four years Bucareli thrived. Then, in May 1778, a Comanche war party rode past and stole some horses. Ybarbo, with considerable courage, formed a posse and pursued. He came across a few Comanches and killed them. When he reported this incident to Béxar, he was gravely adjudged to have done the correct thing, since it was considered that no Comanche would be in the vicinity of a Spanish settlement for friendly reasons. However, Ybarbo's people became frightened and called for troops. There were none to spare.

  Then, in the Indian summer of October 1778, a howling horde of Comanches swooped down on Bucareli. They did not kill anyone, but took away 276 horses. Ybarbo sent a new appeal to San Antonio, while some friendly Indians pursued the Comanches, but without success. The Bucareli priest, Padre Garza, wrote that now no Spaniard dared step outside the village, even to plant his crops or to go hunting, unless all the men went along. The whole town was on guard and in constant terror night and day.

  Gil Ybarbo decided not to risk another Comanche spring.

  Defying his orders, he took the Bucarelians back into the East Texas timberlands, to the site of the old presidio of Nacogdoches, arriving in April 1779. Here, they were in familiar territory and deep enough into the woods to be free of Comanche terror. Ybarbo and his five hundred put down new roots. The Royal Government accepted this fait accompli, and the descendants of these folk were still living in the region in the 1960s.

  If there had been more like Ybarbo and his followers, Hispanic civilization might have dominated the land and altered history. As it was, they remained a tiny, isolated outpost in a vast area, soon to be overwhelmed by a new invasion from the east.

  Meanwhile, at Béxar, Ripperdá got more troops, but he was never able to make the country secure. The planned war of extermination against the Lipan Apaches proceeded with massive slowness, always a characteristic of 18th-century Spanish bureaucracy. In 1776, the year the English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard declared themselves independent, all the northern frontier provinces of New Spain were placed under Teodoro de Croix, whose headquarters was at Chihuahua, in north-central Mexico. The new commandant-general—his office was primarily a war post—began his planning the next year. He held three major war councils, at Monclova, San Antonio, and Chihuahua, during 1777–78. He asked each of these councils sixteen questions, and got substantially the same answers, as follows:

  The Apache terror had existed since the first Spaniards entered the country. Each year, instead of seeing improvement, was worse than the last. The Apaches numbered 5,000 fighting men, armed with bows, lances, and guns. They always made war by surprise, and fought like guerrillas—that is, they only attacked when they had the advantage. The Comanches were their enemies, and if an alliance could be made, "by God's grace" they would soon be destroyed. There were not enough troops on the frontier for either attack or defense. There should be a campaign against the Eastern Apaches. It would require at least 3,000 soldiers. The friendship of the Comanches should be cultivated, and the war should proceed. On these statements, virtually all Spanish officers agreed.

  Meanwhile, Spain was employing a new, and temporarily very effective, weapon in the north. Frenchmen from Louisiana, now under Spanish control and citizenship, were used to win friends and influence tribes on the far-northern frontier. The principal architect of this plan, originally conceived by Rubí, was Athanase de Mezières, who significantly enough was a son-in-law of Louis de St. Denis, as well as a brother-in-law of the Duc d'Orleans. In 1769, he had been appointed lieutenant governor of the Natchitoches district. He had lived on the Louisiana frontier for some thirty years.

  De Mezières traveled to north Texas, and with all the French genius for blending with the land and reaching rapport with the savages, by 1771 he
had buried the hatchet with the Wichitas, former allies of the Comanches, by making separate agreements with each Wichita subtribe: Taovayas, Wacos, and Tawakonis. In 1772, he recovered Parilla's lost cannon and sent them on to Bucareli. He voyaged up the dangerous Brazos more than a hundred miles, skirted the regions of the Red, and finally came to Béxar. He was even able to secure a fleeting peace with one Comanche band, in 1774. He worked closely with Ripperdá, and for a time it seemed that the Marqués de Rubí's master plan for a two-front war against the Lipans was taking shape.

  De Mezières enthusiastically supported the concept. His reports on Texas Indians north of the San Antonio region revealed that these fell into three broad groups: the maritime (coastal) tribes; the eastern inland nations; and the frontier, or northern bands. De Mezières stated that the coastal tribes, such as Coahuiltecans and Karankawas and Atakapans, were useless to Spain and should be ignored. Of the Eastern, inland tribes—the Caddo confederacies—two had been virtually wiped out by disease and vice, and the remaining, which he called the Tejas, were on friendly terms, but not much use for war. The third group, the frontier Indians that included the Tonkawa and Wichita tribes and the Comanches, were all warlike and dangerous to the Apaches. Of these, only the Comanches were hostile to Spain, and he was working on this problem.

  The Spanish authorities were much impressed by this Frenchman, who was the best European frontiersman in Texas since St. Denis. He was permanently transferred to Texas, and appointed governor to succeed the Baron de Ripperdá. This was an enormous concession by the jealous hidalgos of Spain, who rarely permitted even highborn Spanish colonials to hold office. Unfortunately for Spain, however, he died before he could take office. His great work, which might have created an enduring alliance between the Spanish-Mexican civilization and the Plains tribes against all comers, was never completed.

  Teodoro de Croix, councils completed, now drew up his plan of campaign. All the Spanish troops that could be scraped up from the frontier, including settlers and militia from New Mexico and the northern settlements of New Spain, were to advance on Apachería from the west and south. All the presidial soldiers in Texas, and the allied northern tribes (including, it was hoped, Comanches) making up the strongest contingent, were to attack from the north. The Apaches were to be swept up and pressed into a trap along the Rio Bravo. Three thousand troops in all were to be used.

  De Croix did not believe that such a campaign would actually exterminate the Apaches, but he did think it would "secure the happiness of the province." At the very least, it would further reduce the Lipans, damage their spirit, and teach respect for the power of Spain. He ordered that the war must come to the enemy as a surprise, and to achieve this, both the Commandant-General and the governing councils agreed that sincere-sounding protestations of peace and friendship be sent immediately to the Apaches to throw them off guard.

  De Croix stated that once the Apaches were reduced, he had hopes of straightening out the embarrassingly bowed frontier. In the future, it would run directly from Louisiana along the Red River on a line with Santa Fé. At one swoop, he would secure a country larger than the size of Old Spain. The new frontier along the Red would still be a "frontier of war," but Hispanic settlement could pour freely into the vacuum, and Béxar and all northern Mexico would be relieved of Indian wars.

  The grand plan of Apache extermination was never carried out. The reasons were several: the alliances with the northern tribes were never cemented; there were bureaucratic delays; and most important, De Croix could never find the men and money for operations of the magnitude required. A few minor military expeditions were mounted, sometimes with Indian allies, and a few peace treaties were made with various Comanche bands. Both produced ephemeral results.

  Significantly, in the year 1780, Domingo Cabello, who took Ripperdá's post as Governor of Texas, wrote the Viceroy: "There is no instant by day or by night when reports of barbarities and disorders from the ranches do not arrive. Totally unprotected as we are, this can only result in the complete destruction and loss of this province."

  The frontier communities could survive, clinging to a stultified Spanish-Mexican ranching culture at Béxar and at Santa Fé. They could not grow or flourish. Meanwhile, their simple maintenance cost the Crown millions of gold escudos and returned nothing. Hoping to ease the military threat, the authorities now tried a policy Spain had never resorted to before, that of giving presents to the Indians to buy peace. Trade goods and gimmicks were distributed to Apache and Comanche chiefs, but the raids did not cease. Actually, Indian social organization was such that this practice could not succeed. No chief had that kind of control over the warriors, who raided when they either needed horses or felt like it. In 1792, a new Governor, Manuel Muñoz, reported that peace treaties and lavish gifts were having no beneficial results at all.

  The presidio at Béxar was materially strengthened, however. At one time, as many as eight companies of troops were dispatched from New Spain. These were supposed to form powerful, mobile units capable of pursuing and defeating Apache and Comanche raiders. One detachment of Spanish troops was sent from a post in northern Mexico, which was called Pueblo de San Carlos del Alamo de Parras or, in the Spanish fashion, Alamo for short.

  The commander was horrified to find that over all the years, no one had ever gotten around to building a genuine presidio at Béxar. Soldiers had always merely been billeted in the villa. This officer appropriated the old mission of San Antonio de Valero, just east of the San Antonio River from the town proper, which had just been secularized. The few Coahuiltecan squatters who were still clinging to the grounds were driven off by force.

  Here, as in a few other places surrounding Béxar, the Franciscans had erected a strong compound and chapel out of native stone. The walls had fallen into disrepair, but were easily put right. The living quarters of the mission were turned into a barracks, and the chapel into an armory. This new presidio was called the Alamo by the soldiers, in nostalgic recollection of the post in Mexico where they had served. In this way, the generations-old work of the missionary friars passed into the hands of the military, and even the name of San Antonio de Valero was forgotten.

  The outbreak of a general European war in 1793 brought further interest in development by the Spanish Crown to an end. A century of Spanish colonization had resulted in a population of about 4,000 citizens, of which 1,000 were soldiers, in an area larger than Spain itself.

  The historian Richardson wrote that Spain suffered most "because of a lack of realism in her policies"—the presidio-mission was doggedly retained, although it soon proved useless in Texas; trade was never permitted with Louisiana, Texas's natural commercial partner; firearms were never sold to friendly Indians, thus making them allies not of Spain but of the French; and to the last the fiction was maintained that poorly paid officers commanding isolated posts would be both vigorous and honest. Another Texas historian, Walter Prescott Webb, laid most of the problem to the savage and incorrigible Indians, which Spain, for the first time in its history, could not conquer, convert, or destroy.

  Rigid adherence to outmoded ideas—always the mark of a society in decline—certainly played a major role in Spanish failure. In Texas Spain met new and different conditions, and the Spanish secular and ecclesiastical mind was never able to adjust.

  The Texas tribes could not be tamed or Hispanicized; they could not be used to populate the land. Only an expanding, pragmatic, decentralized, adaptable culture could have penetrated the region and put down roots in the face of the Apache-Comanche threat. And this was precisely what Spain lacked. Spain failed to put people in Texas. Gil Ybarbo's five hundred, acting on their own initiative, showed what several thousand Spanish peasants, had they moved into the fertile forest areas, might have done.

  The violent entradas and explorations, the friars, the council-calling civil servants, and generations of presidio soldiers left only romantic legends and a dotting of Spanish place names. A few attractive structures of native sto
ne survived around Béxar, for the Franciscans did build for the ages. But the quiet, gentle beauty of these crumbling mission walls remained the principal monument to the dreams of Spain.

  Ironically, while millions of pesos duros were spent keeping soldiers and missionaries in Texas, a separate Hispanic advance occurring at the same time was to have vastly more influence on North America.

  The 18th-century Spanish-Mexican frontier, as the Marqués de Rubí saw, still lay far south of the Rio Grande. But along this frontier, a genuine Mexican civilization, differentiated in many ways from the Spanish, was beginning to take shape and expand. A way of life, and a value system, were evolving that would eventually reach as far north as Calgary in Canada.

  The dry, mountainous, thinly populated regions of northern New Spain had never been suited for the hoe or for the encomienda. Here the Spanish met conditions similar to those they would find further north. Before the close of the 17th century, the encomienda had become valueless, and after this colonial system was officially abolished in 1720, the frontier was pushed north in other ways. The presidio and mission played a big role, and a more successful one, in New Spain than they did in Texas. But even here they could not adequately populate or hold the land. Conquered and converted Indians were not declared free subjects of Spain until almost the close of the 18th century, but there was already a large class of Mexican peasants or laborers who were not slaves but were bound to the hacienda system. Their status—peonage, or debt slavery—was eventually codified into Mexican law, probably inevitably, because of the class, caste, and paternalistic trends of Hispanic society. No worker or servant could leave a master to whom he was in debt, and most Mexicans of the lower class were almost literally born into debt.