The de Soto-Moscoso expedition’s time in Texas was brief, but important in the sense that Moscoso approached the area from the east into what is now the San Augustine and Nacogdoches area. That locality will bring about the first permanent settlements in Texas. Los Adaes will be established and will function as the first Tejas capital for fifty years, from 1721 to 1772. It is here also that the Europeans first encounter Indians of the Hasinai Confederacy. Both the Coronado and de Soto (Moscoso) expeditions were considered failures due to the fact that neither found the wealth they set out to find.
Exploration into Texas was delayed for a few years. Due to an unfortunate event, interest in the area increased. In 1554, a flotilla of four ships sailed for Veracruz en route to Havana. Indications are that some of the passengers may have been going to Havana to visit relatives or on business. Also, some of them may have had plans to board other ships to cross the Atlantic on their way to return to Spain for pleasure, business, or both. Most probably the mood on board was marked by gaiety provided by children playing games of hide-and-seek, and strolling couples out for a walk on the decks of the four boats. None of them had any thought of what awaited them. Because of the unpredictable weather in the Gulf of Mexico, three of the ships were badly damaged and were blown toward the Texas coast where they were wrecked during the terrible storm.
There were about 200 survivors from the Santa Maria de Yciar, San Esteban, and Espiritu Santo. About thirty of them managed to board one of the ship’s boats and sailed it either to Panuco or Veracruz. The rest of the passengers, including men, women, children, friars, and lay brothers, attempted to walk the coastline back to Veracruz. It is uncertain how far these brave souls travelled, constantly harassed and stalked by the local inhabitants. It must have been a most frightful scene. At the point when they reached the Rio Grande they hastily built rafts to cross it. However, the bundles carrying the few weapons and provisions they were carrying slid off the rafts due to the rushing currents of the swollen mouth of the river. One by one, unfriendly natives picked off the weak and the terrified stragglers until no one was alive, except one. Left for dead, one of the lay brothers, Marcos de Mena, somehow was able to nurse himself back to health and walked to Panuco where he told the ghastly story.
The best minds of Hollywood could not have imagined a better story. The difference is that the story of these ill-fated castaways is true. Many of us can picture their dire circumstances, horrendous pain and suffering. However, few of us can feel their anguish and utter fear as children were snatched from the clutches of their screaming agonizing parents. What a horrible experience it must have been for some of them to see the attackers kill and then desecrate their loved ones’ bodies as they were stripped of everything of value. We can only imagine what words were exchanged between husband and wife, or mother and child at the instant of their end in a very desolate, unfriendly place.
It didn’t take long for salvage operations to begin the same year. The mission was two-fold: to track and punish the guilty natives and to try to recover the gold and silver contents of the three ships. When the rescue party arrived at the accident scene, less than half of the precious cargo registered aboard the wrecked ships was ever accounted for. Part of the overarching purpose of the expedition was to also discourage foreign settlements anywhere on the gulf coast. Although such forays were seriously executed, further exploration into Texas from the Gulf of Mexico was limited. Attention focused on the Florida peninsula and so Texas was left out of Spanish plans to colonize and explore the territory for the time being.
Appendix 5
“Tejas is Born”
Texas, as an official entity, goes back to 1691 when Domingo Teran de los Rios was appointed as the first governor of the “Province of Texas”. In a very real sense, that event serves as Texas’ birth certificate. Thirty-two men will serve in the position through 1821. For that reason, it is hard to accept either Stephen F. Austin or Sam Houston as the “Father of Texas” when Domingo Teran is the one who clearly deserves that honor. Two others deserve honorable mention ahead of Austin and Houston. Father Miguel Hidalgo and José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara. Hidalgo’s September 16, 1810 “Grito” inspired Gutiérrez de Lara to be the first visionary to see Texas as independent. In 1813, Don Bernardo then became the first President (Governor) of Texas.
It has always been disappointing to Spanish Mexican-descent citizens in Texas that only English-named governors are recognized as Texas heads of state and only Anglo Saxon history since 1836 seems to matter to mainstream historians. If the thirty-two Spanish-surnamed officials were added to the forty-seven Anglos means that Texas has had seventy-nine governors in its seamless history from 1691. That is one record that other states could never equal.
To understand the fundamental depths of these Spanish roots in Texas history, we need to go back in time. Although, in historical terms, it had taken a fairly short six generations to have an identity, the New Spain territory of Texas itself remained relatively an unknown investment for the Spanish crown in the latter 1500’s and early to mid 1600’s. It remained largely unknown due to its synonymous relation to the area known as Comancheria. Stories abounded by that time as to the wildness of this part of New Spain. Except for divinely inspired Catholic priests, few dared to explore without significant number of soldiers and firearms. Sometimes, even that was not enough to venture into Tejas. It will take about another 100 years for San Antonio, Nacogdoches, Los Adaes, La Bahia (Goliad), and the Villas del Norte in the Rio Grande. These intrepid settlers will be the first citizens were the first to establish communities ‘deep in the heart of Texas’.
Other geographic areas close by were expanding by leaps and bounds. These were New Mexico where great strides in mining, ranching, and farming had begun and were making the Spanish Crown, its viceroys, and rich investors even richer. A strong mission and presidio presence had also been stamped all around Santa Fe. After several violent initial contacts, indigenous people living within the walls of the European religious and military settlements lived fairly securely. Plus, they provided a ready manpower pool for the labor intensive industries, especially mining and ranching.
To the east, Florida was abuzz with activity. Ponce de Leon discovered Florida when he saw its coast in 1513 and thought that it was an island. History has not been kind to de León since he is unfairly remembered for supposedly chasing after the elusive fountain of youth. That claim has been debunked, since nowhere is it recorded that he did. What is known is that a myth existed in Europe at the time of such a place, but only de León is remembered of seeking it. Thus, it’s sufficient to say indeed that the unfortunate tale has been proven to be false.
De León attempted to settle Florida; however, due to repeated attacks by the Florida indigenous tribes, his temporary settlement was abandoned. Likewise, Pánfilo de Narváez’ efforts in 1528 proved to be costly and in vain. It was not until 1539 that Hernando de Soto made a serious effort to settle the area. In 1565, San Agustin (St. Augustine), Florida was established by the Spanish explorer Menendez de Aviles and where the first meal among Europeans and indigenous people (first Thanksgiving) was held. San Agustin is the oldest continuously lived in European city in the U.S. It has been established that the first child of European ancestry was born in 1566 in what is now the continental U.S.
That is not to say that Spanish influence was absent in Texas. One of the first visionary expansionists in the territory was a man by the name of Luis de Carvajal. Ready to exploit any opportunity to increase his fame and wealth, he explored the land and coastal areas between the rivers of Panuco and Rio de las Palmas in the 1570s. He crossed the Rio Grande, most probably around present-day Matamoros and Brownsville. Here, he set about to continue to punish the unfriendly natives who it was said were the most liable for the slaughter of two hundred shipwreck survivors a few years before.
Unfortunately, turf battles with other Spanish agents, his reluctance to accept royal direction o
n his expeditions, and his Jewish background led him to be suspected of treason. He was charged with heresy during the Inquisition in 1590. Brought to trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to six years of exile away from New Spain. Sadly, he died while in prison within a year. Of significance, is the fact that he was a very productive colonizer. He founded several important outposts in the northern territories, including Monclova.
oOo
Two industries about to erupt in the Spanish economy are mining and ranching in New Spain. They will act for a long time as the aorta and vena cava of the Spanish financial heart infusing a seemingly never-ending supply of capital. From the time that the first indigenous people brought ore samples to the Spanish explorers, there was little doubt that New Spain held vast deposits of gold, silver, and iron. Thus, mining will become the aorta of the Spanish economy. However, those deposits existed far to the south and so mining per se had little impact on the development of Texas.
Ranching, of course, is a different story. That is what will forever define Texas. Although we Tejanos are proud of our ancestors’ refinement of this much-celebrated Texas way of life, its real birth was further south in the states of Zacatecas, Durango, Chihuahua, and Coahuila. By 1550, this new industry had already taken off. It is important to note that on his second voyage in 1493, Columbus brought a significant colonization flotilla of nearly 20 ships, including the first cattle. Acting as the main gem on a royal tiara, cattle represented the central diamond in the wide open crown of Texas. It was a marriage made in heaven that has endured to this day.
Thus, it took a fairly short fifty years for the large-scale breeding to occur. To encourage its development, ranchers were granted large tracts of land of approximately 5, 000 acres each. As such, the two lucrative industries fed on each other. The mines provided capital and the ranches provided the beef, leather, and other products to the mine owners to feed their hungry crews.
The origin of the ranching industry and the cowboy way of life in Texas is truly unique. The most unlikely men and women will become the first ranchers, cowboys, cowgirls. To start the discussion, we must first go back to the beginning. When the first Spanish settlers left the interior of Mexico to come to the wilds of Tejas, they met a number of clans and tribes that practiced a generally nomadic life style. However, some had their own territories, so long as other tribes that ventured in followed certain protocols. These are the natives that the missionaries will first draw to their missions for safety, long-term security, and food.
When talking about or referring to Native Americans, most white Anglo-Saxon Americans expect every tribe to have a chief, but that is sadly a Hollywood invention. To be sure, some individuals did enjoy wide respect as leaders among their people, such as, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, and Geronimo to name a few. However, in many tribes throughout the Continent, there was no such thing. Many a mistake was made by early white settlers when they made arrangements with one individual “chief”, only to find out that he was not speaking for the other members of his tribe. Elders were highly respected, as were medicine men and women. However, rarely was there a “Big Chief” created in movie sets and popularized in so many Anglo Saxon western movies.
The following discussion involves brief details on a few of those indigenous people that are pertinent to our story. What follows are concise descriptions. For more information read the book “A Land so Strange (The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca)” by Andres Resendez, and “The Indians of Texas” by W.W. Newcomb, Jr. These books are two of the best sources of information on the early tribes of Texas that I have read. The first tribe that we will visit with is the Karankawas, simply because it was members of this tribe that Cabeza de Vaca and his shipmates first encountered in 1528.
The Karankawas. One can only imagine the fear in ship-wrecked Spanish sailors’ eyes as they sprawled on the sandy shore of one of the islands on the Texas Gulf Coast. As they struggle to spit out sea water, shivering in their wet clothes, and tired from swimming a great distance to reach safety, their first instinct was pure panic. Coming toward them through the marshes are humans that to them seem like giants. The sight was enough to send some of the castaways into a loss of consciousness. Taller than most members of tribes in Texas, the Karankawas were an advanced and creative people. Highly adorned with tattoos, necklaces, ear rings, and nipple and nose pieces, the muscular and totally naked Karankawas must have at first looked like bronze-skinned Greek gods to the castaways. While their children likewise were unclothed, the Karankawa women wore loincloths that covered most of their bodies from their torso to their ankles.
Although linguistically related to other tribes, they were an independent group of natives that made their living near the coastal area. While they may not have had a written language, tattooing may have served as a sort of communication and identity. Each marking on the body stood for some meaning, presumably identification as to clan, family, etc… Their dugout canoes were sleek and fast and they cleverly used them to maneuver the zigzags of the marshland where they fished and tended their seine traps. They also used them effectively to fish in the ocean where they used sea shell hooks. Their long bows and projectiles were prized and the Karankawa warrior always had his bow and arrows by his side. Their self relying appearance is proof that they were comfortably confident. Up to then, they probably considered themselves as masters of their world.
Although they had never seen white people before, the Karankawas assertively walked up to the ship-wreck victims. Talking encouragingly in their own language, they offered food and fresh water to drink. Although they save the strange people on their shores, the Karankawas will continue to be a perplexing challenge to the Europeans. Because they were part of a loose grouping of various clans and extended family groups, no two groups had the same disposition. Some were curious and friendly, as those who comforted Cabeza de Vaca and his shipmates. However, other related groups had a nasty disposition. It was this kind of Karankawas that attacked the Spanish without provocation. They also proved to be very unwilling to join the missions. While a few did join, most of them elected to live the nomadic life of their ancestors. Eventually, the Spanish Mexican settlers co-existed with their not-so-friendly neighbors in a “live and let live” arrangement. All in all, most of these independent tribes maintained their identities throughout the Spanish Mexican period. That was not to be with a new breed of European newcomers.
The Anglo Saxon arrivals were quite experienced in dealing with the Native Americans. They considered them as no different as the tribes that they have driven from the large territory of the East Coast to the Mississippi River. They disdained the Karankawas and treated them as less than humans. As such, the new Anglo settlers in Texas will drive the Karankawas out for good. They will forcibly march them into reservations, making no distinction as to those who had assimilated with the Spanish and those who did not. They may not have had a complex society, but Karankawas were never hungry and were as one with their environment. In that manner they had existed for thousands of years. All of that came to an inglorious end as they were killed, driven from their lands, or blended in with other tribes and the Spanish Mexican culture.
The Caddos. Too bad that Hernando de Soto was not a Marco Polo. If he had been, perhaps he would have recorded the history of one of the most fascinating people in America. Marco Polo and his entourage were on a mission to learn and establish a trade route with the secretive Chinese. Quite clearly, that was not the case with the mysterious Caddos, since their civilization was not known in Europe. In actuality, the Caddos were not just one tribe, but rather were grouped into what are now called confederacies. At least three distinct groups occupied the territory of what is now East Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Indeed, it was the Hasinai Confederacy that had a word in their language, Tayshas, meaning friends. The Spanish pronounced the word as Tejas or Texas, which later became the name of the New Spain Province of Tejas.
As a whole, they represented on
ly one of many different civilizations that the Spanish explorers had encountered when they explored further inland. As mentioned earlier, de Soto did not come here to observe and to learn, but to explore and if need be to plunder. Such were the stories he had heard. At the beginning, de Soto reports that the Caddos for obvious reasons were not friendly. After all, the Spanish were invading their land.
When the Spanish and French missionaries began to interact with the Caddos, they found a neatly organized society of agrarian people. These first accounts of the Caddos tell that they were an advanced, agricultural people. They built thatch-roofed homes not unlike those of early Europeans. If only the first Europeans to meet the Caddos had taken time to learn from them. For example, other than knowing bits and pieces of the Caddo culture, their existence is one of the great mysteries of the New World. For instance, the early Caddos had been mound builders. Why had they stopped building their communities in that fashion? Did they have a direct connection with other mound builders, for example, the great Cahokia society whose settlements thrived for centuries along the Mississippi River as far north as present day St. Louis? What else could they have learned and written about their history?
The Coahuiltecans. As far as early Texas history is concerned, these resourceful people are the most overlooked and underappreciated. However, if they merited Cabeza de Vaca’s genuine respect (he wrote extensively about them), they deserve our attention. The Coahuiltecans were actually a consolidated alliance of dozens of separate groups. They lived in a spread out territory of the southwestern part of the Texas coastal plain and into Northern Mexico. The Rio Grande was not a political boundary in those days and Coahuiltecans lived on both sides of the Rio in their quest for anything of nutritional value. Hot and arid, living in the area was not for the weak. Yet, the Coahuiltecans had lived there for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years exploiting the limited food resources. That is why they deserve our respect. In a place where drinking water was rarely found, they learned to dig for roots and eat other plants rich in nutrients and moisture. Using the blazing sun to their advantage, they learned to dry-cure meat on rocks and wooden planks. In this manner, they were never short of food. Through generations of using the resources of their environment, they learned how to eat most of the animals they found. They were adept bow and arrow hunters when stalking small game such as birds, rabbits, and javelinas.
Friendly Betrayal Page 23