rfromme@ns1.crl.comrfromme@stic.net
Howdy, Folks!
Sorry I haven't been over for coffee at the ''Spoon'' for a while.
Good to see you all again.
Where have I been, you ask?
Oh, the job took me south for a couple weeks. I had some work down in South
Texas again. Just got in from the drive back up here, yesterday. It sure
is dry down in those parts. Yep, they need rain... bad.
What was that? You asked if there was any news from down that way?
Well, not much that I could see. My work was in the country southeast of
San Antonio. Nothing much seems to ever go on in that area. It is just
peanut farms and ranch country. Not much else there...... Pretty country,
though with its long rolling hills fading off toward the Coast with the old
San Antonio River snaking its way out of the limestone hills, through the
city and then off in its lazy ribbon to the Gulf of Mexico.
In the middle of last week, on the drive into San Antonio, I came speeding
over a rise and abruptly into the middle of a swarm of black lumbering
vultures on a rotting, half devoured carcass of a yesterdays coyote. This is
not an unnatural event in South Central Texas. Mighty happy to report,
that the old pickup and I made it through the gruesome surprise with nary a
crumpled feather and without the blood of a single "spirit bird" on the
windshield. I kind of like these old birds but I choose to think of them
most in all their expert beauty of lazy flight, masters of the winds we
seldom feel, high above my hot and dusty road. They also display great
beauty and mystery in the mornings after a cool and humid sleep. They take
their sentry of display onto the power line poles or at the tops of the old
dry oaks and make their huge, wide, beautiful, bat-like, inverted "W" to dry
the morning's dew from the greenish-blackness that is their wings.
There are so many harsh and beautiful sights out in that old ranch country.
It is almost as if the whole big place is haunted by an unspeakable past
with only the slight hints from nature, like the that vulture feeding
frenzy, to suggest the violence and the suffering which has visited that
ancient place. If these timeless black birds could talk, they would tell of
a another world, there in that great sea of dry grass where they dined on
entree from Spain.
Just a few hundred yards down from the road, "El Fuerte Del Cíbolo'' once
stood as a fragile sentinel for Spain. It was a tiny, hopeless place, an
outpost from the precidio in San Antonio, where twenty men, Spaniards,
strangers in the hostile land, were charged with the protection of the
''Bexar-LaBahia Ranches."
From the time that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492 or, at
least, from 1519 when Alonzo de Pineda visited and named the land,
"Amichel," Spain claimed the area that is now Texas as it's possession.
Their claim of ownership would last for more then three centuries, until
1821 and Mexican independence. It is one thing to claim the vast expanses of
frontier and quite another thing to maintain control over such an extensive
possession. In order to try to keep ownership of Texas, the Spanish Crown
established and maintained three principal outposts of missions and
presidios in this frontier. One of these locations was in situated along
the San Antonio river where the city has developed. A second location was to
the south and east, where the city of Goliad is now located. The third
presidio was near present day city of Nacogdoces. There were many
additional attempts to locate inhabitants, missions, and forts but, as we
look back into the history of the area, these three were where Spain
concentrated a majority of its effort.
Between the missions of San Antonio and Goliad, there is a stretch of land
which came to be called " El Rincon" (accent over the 'o'). In Spanish,
Rincon means corner, nook or narrow valley. The name refers to a wedge of
land in Wilson and Karnes counties where the San Antonio River and Cíbolo
Creek have forked (Cíbolo means Buffalo). In this area there is a great
variety of geography which ranges from almost level land along the river
beds to more rugged country of grassland, mesquite and oak thicket covered
hills. The land reminded the Spaniards of ranching regions in Spain and it
served as a natural place to locate cattle operations to serve the
missions, precidios, and settlers of this area of South Texas. By 1750, the
region between San Antonio and Goliad had become the first major ranching
area in Texas and one of the first in all of North America.
The Spanish developments near Goliad were named, Mission Espiritu Santo de
Zuniga, La Bahia and Nuestra Senora del Rosario. The names for the missions
in the San Antonio area were, San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo), San Jose y
San Miguel de Aguayo, San Francisco Xavier de Najero, Nuestra Senora de la
Purisima Concepcion de Acuna, San Juan Capistrano, San Francisco de la
Espada and Villa de Bexar. When the Spanish Crown established these
missions, large tracts called 'land grants' were given as farm and ranch
land to support the populations of the settlements. However, from the time
that the little San Antonio community was first established there were
constant Indian raids on livestock. The principal culprits were the Lipan
Apaches and the Comanches who had come to enjoy the swift Spanish horses and
the ease with which he could secure this transportation. Then, after
stealing a mount, their developing taste for Spanish beef completed the
seeds of their treachery. The presence of horse and cattle herds near the
missions invited trouble to the area for the mission Indian and Spanish
populations.
So the ''Lancers for the Spanish King'' from the presidio at San Antonio de
Bexar were an authorized detachment whose numbers ranged from seven to
twenty-one men "to be stationed permanently on the banks of the Arroyo del
Cíbolo'' in order to guard the ranches belonging to various inhabitants of
San Antonio and to make less vulnerable the intervening area of almost fifty
leagues between the villa and the presidio ''La Bahia del Espiritu Santo".
In the Royal Regulations of 1772, the future fort is called several names
including Arroyo del Cíbolo, El Fuerte de Santa Cruz del Cíbolo and El
Fuerte del Cíbolo.
The uniform was to be the same of each soldier. They had a short blue
woolen jacket with small cuffs and a red collar, blue woolen breeches, a
blue cloth cap, a pouch for their cartridges ,a leather jacket and a
antelope hide bandoleer embroidered with the name of their presidio. They
also had a black neckerchief, hat, shoes and leggings. Each man had a broad
sword, lance, shield, musket and pistol. Six serviceable horses, one colt
and one mule were also issued to each man. Each soldier on garrison duty
was expected to have one of his horses tied ready and maintained with food
and water with a saddle on it both day and night. Each soldier was granted
three pounds of gunpowder per year which was placed in cartridges with bullets.
At the fort on the Cíbolo, the jobs that the soldiers were expected to do
were numerous. Some duties included, construction, repair and guarding the
perilous little wood and stone structure, guarding the herd of soldiers'
horses and mules, gathering food, water and fuel for livestock and men at
the fort, gathering shell fish, berries and nuts. They also went fishing
and hunting for deer and small game for food. Sometimes, when times were
hard and the ranches were deserted, they had to go hunting for wild
unbranded cattle (orejanas) from the oyal, unappropriated lands (realengas).
The soldiers at the fort were also expected to help enforce the ranching
regulations in the area. They went on scouting expeditions, escorted
provisions on the Spanish road and delivered mail. On occasion they were to
resolve friction between civilians and investigate cattle and horse thieves
(usually Indians). Their presence was to serve as an ever present reminder
of the power of the Spanish Crown in the area. These men may have also been
involved in the rounding up and herding of cattle in this area to be taken
to East Texas as food for the army of Spanish Gen. Bernardo de Galvaz who
helped fight the British during the American Revolution.
Problems with Indians seem to ebb and flow for the ranches and for the
soldiers at the lost and lonely little Spanish fort. Two hundred years have
passed. The blood and suffering has had plenty of time to soak into the dry,
thirsty sod of this place.
At 3:30 P.M. on a cold and windy February 6, 1781, a lone dark wondering
form broke out of the mesquite to spot the distant prairie several miles
south of the presidio at Bexar. Thirty minutes later, the little meandering
spot had taken the figure of a half naked man, riding an unsaddled and
bloody pin-cushion of a horse, shot through with arrows. Slowly, the soldier
and his staggering, tired mount came toward the presidio. The man,
blackened by musket powder and by his own dried and matted tangle of blood
and hair had ridden from the fort at Cíbolo. He was carrying only his musket.
Most of the red fluid of life had been drained out of the horse in the fifty
miles from the fort. The man on the mount fought to keep the faltering animal
moving in the general direction of the presidio. In the last two hundred
yards, the pathetic beast fell, sending the dazed, shivering trooper
tumbling out into the wind blown dust of the street.
Don Marcelo Valdez had been summoned to the door of the little adobe building by an aid who had been watching the approaching man on the horse. Two garrison soldiers were ordered to bring the man up to him for questioning. A third trooper was
told to take the pathetic mount down the river and put it out of its distress with a well placed musket ball delivered into its brain through the usual spot just ahead of its ear.
The man was forced to take a swig of vinegar to wake him from his confusion.
A gourd full of cold rainwater was tossed into his face before he was taken
to a spot near the fire where he could tremble and cough his way through his
report from under several layers of buffalo robes and blankets.
Around 5 o'clock that morning seven soldiers opened the huge wooden stockade
doors of ''El Fuerte de Santa Cruz del Cíbolo''and walked into the faint
light of morning with their mounts. The morning chill was accompanied by an
unusual quiet as the line of men and horses worked their way down to the
stream to cut fodder for the livestock at the fort. In the hour of work that
followed, the mounts seemed restless. The troopers tried to convince
themselves that it was the presence of alligators at the edge of the Cíbolo
which were tearing at the rotting hide of a little black calf from one of
the ranches above them on the river.
By 6 o'clock, they were on their way back to the fort. Most of the men were
still sleepy, thinking of a warm breakfast of tortillas and beans. The
horses, laden with their bundles of marsh grass, were stamping and blowing
nervous snorts and lazy curls of steam in the crisp winter morning.
At first they heard the terrible cry of the Indians. They halted and turned
to see a wave of death curl over the hill. It was a dreadful line, more
then one hundred mounted, painted, screaming braves. Privates Fermin Leal
and Jose de Ynoxosa were wounded immediately in the incessant rain of arrows
and firing of the battle. The Spaniards tried to make a run for cover but
the savages were between them and their fort.
On the day following the report of the lone survivor, Don Marcelo Valdez was
ordered to take twenty-six troops, twenty residents and four Indians from
the missions to go and rout the enemy. The mission was not successful for
the attackers has gone beyond the Guadalupe River. Seven days later
Sergeant Urrutia mentioned that he considered the six soldiers were dead
because Indians had been seen wearing the dead soldiers's cloaks.
The sergeant was correct.
Days later, four residents were drawn to a large dark flock of noisy
vultures feeding in the mesquite thicket. Their meal was the remains of the
six men, "seated on the ground, leaning against the trees on the hill where
they had sought shelter." Each of the soldiers had been scalped and cut
into pieces. The Indians had cut fingers and noses off the bodies, and
"sticks were stuck into their eyes to keep them open." Even the dog which
belonged to the soldiers had been killed and was between one of the men's
legs "as though he had been holding him." At the sight there were found
fifty broken powder charges, buffalo pelts shot though and covered with
blood, a broken spear, a quiver, arrows, an ornate shoe, shields cut to
pieces and the soldiers teeth and lips were blackened with black powder from
the battle.
Problems with the Comanches continued from 1780 to late in 1781.
El Fuerte del Cíbolo was ordered abandoned, evacuated and destroyed in
January of 1782. In late March 1782 the order to destroy and burn the fort
were carried out and the soldiers were returned to the precidio at Bexar.
The huge black ''Spirit Birds'' still navigate the winds high above the sea
of grass and mesquite thickets where ''El Fuerte del Cíbolo'' once stood.
Today, not much happens in that place of peanut farms and ranches.
Could I get a refill on the coffee, Della?
Parts of this tale were based on a report by Domingo Cabello, February 28, 1781, Bexar Archives Translations, Baker Center, University of Texas at Austin, 2C44, 107:30-32.
I first learned about this little Spanish fort and some of the history of the ranch country where I make my home from a little book called: "El Fuerte del Cíbolo, Sentinel of the Béxar-LaBahía Ranches", written by Robert H. Thonhoff. ISDN 0-8915-848-7 Eakin Press, Austin, Texas 1992
