Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

 You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.

The English visitor, a lawyer and pamphleteer named Nicholas Doran Maillard landed up in Texas early in 1840, when the Republic of Texas had just achieved four years of perilous existence . . . and inadvertently provided the means for an exception to Humbert Wolfe’s stinging epigram. In that year, Texas was perennially cash-broke but land rich, somewhat quarrelsome, and continually scourged by Comanche depredations from the north and west, and the threat of re-occupation by Mexico from the south, Texans had first seen immediate annexation by the United States as their sure and certain refuge. But alas, that slavery was permitted and practiced within Texas – so and annexation was blocked by abolitionists.

This left the Republic seeking recognition and even strong allies elsewhere, namely with France and Britain – neither of whom particularly approved of the ‘peculiar institution’ but were more than willing to play the great game of international politics, especially if a foothold on the North American continent might come out of it. Both England and France eventually recognized the independent Republic; Sam Houston cannily referred to it all as a flirtation, in order to reinforce the relationship with the United States.

Into the middle of it came Nicholas Doran Maillard, who settled into the small town of Richmond, founded by settlers from Stephen Austin’s colony in 1822, in a deep bend of the Brazos River, near present-day Houston. By the time Nicholas Doran Maillard came along, Richmond had existed as a town for about twenty years, incorporating many elements and refinements such as a newspaper, the Richmond Telescope. The charming and cultured Mr. Maillard was heartily welcomed by the residents of Richmond – he was very popular for his ability in mixing drinks, for one, and he also served a stint as editor of the Telescope. He said that he was writing a book, and so he talked to everyone, making copious notes. Richmond at the time, was the home to a number of prominent figures in early Texas, to include Jane Long, the wife of an early adventurer, Sam Houston’s chief scout, Erastus ‘Deaf’ Smith, and Mirabeau Lamar – who would feud bitterly with Sam Houston. Mr. Maillard gave every evidence of enjoying his time in Richmond, and appeared to leave with reluctance after six months, pleading the death of a relative, back in England.

Two years later, his book was published – and everyone who had thought Mr. Maillard a fine fellow was howling for his blood, once they read it: The History Of The Republic Of Texas, From The Discovery Of The Country to the Present Time; And The Cause Of Her Separation From the Republic of Mexico. It was not a history, save in the sense that an account of events was presented – it was more of a vicious and extended calumny against the Anglo settlers of Texas, presenting the very worst construction upon the events of the rebellion against Mexico, and casting aspersions against everything from the weather, to the ladies’ propensity to dip snuff, and the popularity of the Bowie knife. Of Stephen F. Austin’s attempt to smooth over matters between the Mexican government and damp down the ‘war party’ in the last years before open revolt, Maillard wrote: Colonel Austin, who was himself the most crafty of the “political fanatics, political adventurers, would-be great men, and vain talkers,  wrote in this bland style solely to escape from the clutches of the Mexican government, and not with a view to restore tranquility to Texas . . . In order to prepare my readers for these and many other assertions of a similar character put forth by the unprincipled Texans, I have in the preceding chapter shown what their conduct was while the federal system was in force in Mexico, and never did the history of a people brand them with greater treachery or grosser ingratitude and inconsistency.” Of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – much hated in Texas and by those Mexican citizens who were of the liberal, or Federalist political persuasion, Maillard describe him as “ . . . the able and energetic measures of that extraordinary man, Santa Anna, who was at once the military leader and universal and patriotic pacificator of his country . . .” And if that were not sufficiently insulting, his account of the fall of the Alamo contained this sentence, describing the disposition of the bodies of its defenders, “I need scarcely apologize to the reader for this digression, as the record of the fate of all such monsters is due to the lovers of humanity.”

The rest of the account of the War for Independence is similarly slanted: names of various participants are misspelled, and the account of the culminating battle of San Jacinto is entirely from the Mexican side. As a history – an account of events written within a few years after the event, when many participants were still alive and their memories vivid – it was a lost chance. But it was not intended as a history, in spite of it’s title. The book was a bit of political theater, and perhaps a vendetta as well – for it was intended to discourage the British government from recognizing Texas.

Maillard might also have been a passionate abolitionist . . . but there was one other motivation – a monetary one. The government of Mexico was deeply in debt to various English banking houses and bond-holders, for loans made before 1836; loans that had been secured . . . by Texas lands. Those bankers were under the threat of Mexico defaulting on ten million pounds worth of loans . . . and since Mexico had no longer control of those Texas acres, the English banks would have to eat the loss. But if Texas failed to find allies, and Mexico regained control of it’s former property, all’s well that ends well, wouldn’t you say, old chap?

It didn’t work out as Maillard and his backers obviously hoped. Great Britain did recognize Texas, and five years after publication of his libelous little history, the United States annexed it as a state . . . which kicked off another war with Mexico. Nicholas Doran Maillard – if internet searches are any indication – labored in relative obscurity thereafter. His book is a curiosity, and given the historical inaccuracies contained therein, I would only trust it when describing the various mileages between the towns and cities in Texas.

Most people accept as conventional wisdom about the Texas frontier, that Anglo settlers were always the consummate horsemen, cowboys and cavalrymen that they were at the height of the cattle boom years. But that was not so: there was a learning curve involved. The wealthier Texas settlers who came from the Southern states of course valued fine horseflesh. Horse-races were always a popular amusement, and the more down-to-earth farmers and tradesmen who came to Texas used horses as draft animals. But the Anglo element was not accustomed to working cattle – the long-horned and wilderness adapted descendents of Spanish cattle – from horseback. Their eastern cattle were slow, tame and lumbering. Nor were many of them as accustomed to making war from the saddle as the Comanche were. Most of Sam Houston’s army who won victory at San Jacinto, were foot-soldiers: his scouts and cavalry was a comparatively small component of his force. It was a deliberate part of Sam Houston’s strategy to fall back into East Texas, where the lay of the land worked in the favor of his army. The Anglos’ preferred weapon in those early days in Texas the long Kentucky rifle, a muzzle-loading weapon, impossible to use effectively in the saddle, more suited to their preferred cover of woods – not the rolling grasslands interspersed with occasional clumps of trees which afforded Mexican lancers such grand maneuvering room. 

When did this begin to change for the Anglo-Texans? Always hard to say about such things, but I suspect that the Anglo-Texas began morphing into becoming what they fought almost as soon as Texas declared independence in 1836. The war with the Comanche was unrelenting for fifty years, and conflict with Mexico was open for all of the decade that the Republic of Texas existed, as well as simmering away in fits and starts for even longer. And one of the agents taking an active part in that metamorphosis from settler to centaur was John Coffee “Jack” Hays, during a handful of years that he led a company of Rangers stationed in San Antonio. The Rangers were not lawmen, then – they were local companies organized to protect their own communities from depredations by raiding Indians, and as close to cavalry as the perennially broke Republic of Texas possessed. Jack Hays, who with fifteen of his Rangers had narrowly escaped being caught in San Antonio when Woll’s troops took the town – was one of the most innovative and aggressive Ranger company captains. He had already begun schooling his contingent in horsemanship and hard riding, and in use of five-shot repeating pistols developed by Samuel Colt. It was Hay’s contingent who spread the alarm, and militia volunteers began to assemble from across the westernmost inhabited part of Anglo-Texas. Colonel Matthew “Old Paint”Caldwell, from Gonzales began gathering a scratch force at Seguin, east and south of San Antonio. He collected up about a hundred and forty, and set out for a camp on Cibolo Creek, twenty miles from San Antonio, before settling on another camp, on the Salado, seven miles north of San Antonio. He gathered another seventy or eighty volunteers – and more were on the way. But “Old Paint” was in any case, outnumbered several times over, and being a sensible man knew there was absolutely no chance of re-taking San Antonio in a head-on assault. But what if a sufficient number of Woll’s force could be lured out of the town – which may not have been a fortified town in the European sense of things, but certainly was set up to enable a stout defense against lightly-armed infantry. Caldwell arranged his few men efficiently, among the trees, deep thickets and rocky banks of the creek, with the water at their backs, and the rolling prairie, dotted with trees all the way to San Antonio spread out before them. Could any part of Woll’s invaders be lured into a kill-zone?  The Texians grimly proposed to find out.

 There were only thirty-eight horses counted fit enough for what would be an easy ride to San Antonio, but undoubtedly a hard ride back. Jack Hays and his Rangers, and another dozen men were dispatched very early on the morning of September 17th. At a certain point, still short of San Antonio, Hays ordered twenty-nine of the men with him to dismount and set up an ambush. He and the remaining eight then rode on – to within half a mile of the Alamo, where the main part of Woll’s force had camped. They would have been clearly seen from the walls of the old presidio; it would have been about sunrise. What else did they do besides show themselves? Perhaps they fired a few shots into the air, shouted taunts, made obscene gestures clearly visible to anyone with a spyglass. It was their assignment to provoke at least fifty of Woll’s cavalrymen into chasing after them, hell for leather  . . .  instead, two hundred Mexican cavalrymen boiled out of the Alamo, along with forty Cherokee Indians (who at that time had allied themselves with Mexico) and another three hundred and more, led personally by General Woll. Hay’s provocation had worked a little too well – it was a running fight, all the seven miles back to the camp and the carefully arranged line of Texians with the Salado and the green forest of the trees and thickets at their back. Caldwell and the others were just eating breakfast when Hays and his party arrived breathlessly and at a full gallop. Over two hundred shots had been fired at them, none with any effect – not particularly surprising, given that it would have been extremely difficult to hit a moving target from a position on a galloping horse, and that reloading would have been near to impossible.

 Having succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in drawing the Mexican force to follow them, Jack Hays and the others took up their position in “Old Paint” Caldwell’s line – carefully screened and sheltered among the trees. Caldwell sent out messages saying that he was surrounded, but in a good spot for defense, if any at all could come to his aid – and so it turned out to be. The canny old Indian-fighter had a good eye for the ground, and for an enemy. The pursuing Mexican cavalry drew up short, upon seeing his positions, or whatever evidence they could see from their position on the open prairie, looking into the trees along the Salado – but they did not withdraw entirely. Instead, Woll, and most of his command lined up and prepared to sling a great deal of musket-fire and a barrage of artillery shot in the direction of Caldwell’s force, none of which had any noticeable effect at all – on the Texians. Instead, Anglo-Texian skirmishers went forward with their chosen and familiar weapon and from their favorite cover sniped at leisure all through the next five hours, inflicting considerable casualties, before scampering back to safety on the creek-bank. Some sources claim at least sixty dead and twice that number wounded, against one Texian killed, nine or ten injured and another half-dozen having had hairbreadth escapes. At one point, General Woll ordered a direct attack – a few of his soldiers got within twenty feet of the dug-in Texians. Being a fairly rational man, and a professional soldier, the General knew when it was time to cut his losses. Leaving his campfires burning, he and his forces silently fell back to San Antonio under the cover of night, and then withdrew even farther – all the way back towards the Rio Grande.

This would have been a complete and total victory for Caldwell   . . .  except for one unfortunate circumstance: a company of fifty or so volunteers from Bastrop, on their way to join him, had the misfortune to almost make it – to even hear the sounds of the fight, from two miles distant. The company of Captain Nicholas Mosby Dawson, from Bastrop and the upper Colorado was caught by Woll’s rear-guard, as they retreated. Only fifteen of Dawson’s men would survive that battle and surrender to superior military force. Caldwell’s men would find the bodies of the dead on the following day, as the pursued Woll towards the somewhat amorphous border. The fifteen Dawson men would join those Anglo-Texians taken prisoner in San Antonio in chains in Perote prison – some of those would be held in durance vile until early 1844.

(These events take place off-stage, in my next book – Deep in the Heart. The younger brother of my heroine, Margaret Becker Vining, is one of Jack Hays’ Rangers, and participates in the Salado Creek battle. Deep in the Heart will be out in December of this year.)

So, after Saturday’s signing event for Daughter of Texas, I am coming to a decision – not to do any more single-store/single author events this year that are not already on my schedule. We packed it up after an hour and a half of sitting behind a table in an almost-deserted bookstore. Not the bookstore’s fault – there was another afternoon event which drew a large chunk of the normally expected Saturday crowd. I did manage to get through one-third of a book about the Irish on the 19th century frontier; which I might have bought, if the author had written more about the Irish in Texas.  Honestly, only two people even came up and talked to me during the whole hour and a half . . . and there were a great many other things that I could have been doing in that hour and a half;  working on chapter 12 of the sequel, Deep in the Heart, posting and commenting to various websites, working the social media angle. The excellent thing is that Daughter of Texas has sold big, during April, especially in the Kindle format. Working through Watercress and by extension, Lightning Source has let me price it at a competitive level and at an acceptable discount for distribution to the chain stores – and it is selling, a nice little trickle of sales, through thick and thin. In the last month there was also a massive up-tick in interest for the Trilogy and for Truckee, through the halo effect. All of my books have very high level of presence in search engines on various relevant terms . . . so, honestly, I believe now I would better be served by working more on internet marketing, on continuing to do book-talks, library talks, and book-club meetings – and the internet stuff. Doing a single author-table at a store does not pay off without massive local media interest. I have managed to score a little of that, but not enough to make an appearance at a local bookstore a standing-room-only event. I have one more such on the schedule, at the Borders in Huebner Oaks in June, but after that I will probably pull the plug on any more single-author book-store appearances.  I only have so much time and energy to allot to them. Joint appearances with other local authors; yes, indeedy, I’ll be there. Book-talks, book-club meetings, special events, special events like Christmas on the Square in Goliad, and Evening with the Authors in Lockhart, the West Texas Book and Music Festival in Abilene – and any other events that I am invited to . . . I’ll be there with bells on, and with my full table display and boxes of books. But the individual store events – at the moment, they’re just not paying off for me, relative to the time and effort spent on them.

Like a great many locations of note to the tumultuous years of the Republic of Texas, the site of the battle of Salado Creek does today look much like it did in 1842  . . .  however, it is not so much changed that it is hard to picture in the minds’ eye what it would have looked like then. The creek is dryer and seasonal, more dependant now upon rainfall than the massive amount of water drawn into the aquifer by the limestone sponge of the Hill Country, to the north. Then – before the aquifer was tapped and drilled and drained in a thousand places – the water came up in spectacular natural fountains in many places below the Balcones Escarpment. The Salado was a substantial landmark in the countryside north of San Antonio, a deep and regular torrent, running between steep banks liked with oak and pecan trees, thickly quilted with deep brush and the banks scored by shallow ravines that ran down to water-level. Otherwise, the countryside around was gently rolling grasslands, dotted with more stands of oak trees. There was a low hill a little east of the creek, with a house built on the heights. Perhaps it might have had a view of San Antonio de Bexar, seven miles away, to the south and west.

 In that year,San Antonio was pretty much what it had been for two centuries: a huddle of jacales, huts made from plastered logs set upright in the ground and crowned with a roof of thatch, or thick-walled houses of unbaked clay adobe bricks, roofed with rusty-red tile, all gathered around the stumpy tower of the Church of San Fernando. A few narrow streets converged on the plaza where San Fernando stood – streets with names like the Alameda, Soledad and Flores, and the whole was threaded together by another river, lined with rushes and more trees. The river rambled like a drunken snake – but it generously watered the town and the orchards and farms nearby – and was the main reason for the town having been established in the first place. That street called Alameda, or sometimes the Powderhouse Hill Road, led out to the east, across a bend of the river, and past another ramble of stone and adobe buildings clustered around a roofless church – the Alamo, once a mission, then a presidio garrison, and finally a legend. But in 1842 – the siege of it’s Texian garrison only six years in the past – it was still a barracks and military establishment. In the fall of 1842, the Mexican Army returned to take temporary possession.

General and President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had never ceased to resent how one-half of the province of Coahuila-y-Tejas had been wrenched from the grasp of Mexico by the efforts of a scratch army of volunteer and barely trained rebel upstarts who had the nerve to think they could govern themselves, thank you. For the decade-long life of the Republic, war on the border with Mexico continued at a slow simmer, now and again flaring up into open conflict: a punitive expedition here, a retaliatory strike there, fears of subversion, and of encouraging raids by bandits and Indians, finally resulting in an all-out war between the United States and Mexico when Texas chose to be annexed by the United States. So when General Adrian Woll, a French soldier of fortune who was one of Lopez de Santa Anna’s most trusted commanders brought an expeditionary force all the from the Rio Grande and swooped down on the relatively unprotected town  . . .  this was an action not entirely unexpected. However, the speed, the secrecy of his maneuvers, and the overwhelming force that Woll brought with him and the depth that he penetrated intoTexas– all that did manage to catch the town by surprise. Woll and his well-equipped, well-armored and well supplied cavalry occupied the town after token resistance by those Anglo citizens who were in town for a meeting of the district court. So, score one for General Woll as an able soldier and leader.

 Texas did not have much of a regular professional army, as most western nations understood the concept, then and later. Texas did have sort of an army, and sort of a navy, too – but mere tokens – the window-dressing required of a legitimate, established nation, which is what Texas was trying it’s best to become, given restricted resources. But what Texas did have was nearly limitless numbers of rough and ready volunteers, who were accustomed to respond to a threat, gathering in a local militia body and volunteering for a specific aim or mission, bringing their own weapons, supplies and horses, and usually electing their own officers. They also had the men of various ranging companies, which can be thought of as a mounted and heavily-armed and aggressive Neighborhood Watch. Most small towns on the Texas frontier fielded their own Ranger Companies. By the time of Woll’s raid onSan Antonio, those volunteers and Rangers were veterans of every fight going since beforeTexas had declared independence, a large portion of them being of that tough Scotch-Irish ilk of whom it was said that they were born fighting. That part of the frontier which ran throughTexas gave them practice at small-scale war and irregular tactics on a regular and continuing basis.

 One bit of good fortune for the Anglos of San Antonio and the various militias and of Texas generally, was that the captain of the local Ranger Company was not one of those caught by Woll’s lighting-raid. Captain John Coffee Hays and fifteen of his rangers had actually been out patrolling the various roads and trails, in response to rumors of a Mexican force in the vicinity. It was they who – upon their return in the wee hours of a September morning – found every road intoSan Antonio blocked by Mexican soldiers.

Naturally, they did not let this event pass without comment or response . . .

(to be continued)

The movies and popular culture seems to have it that after Houston’s smashing victory over General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San Jacinto in April, 1936, everyone signed a peace treaty, made nice and went home. Oh, there was a little dust-up of a war ten years later, upon the occasion of Texas formally joining the United States. Common knowledge of this is confined to the memories of trivia buffs who remember that US Grant and Robert E. Lee served in it together as junior officers, and Marine Corps veterans who are taught the historical origin of references in the Marine Corps Hymn to the halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli. Alas, peace on the borderlands between Mexico and the Republic of Texas did not fall like a gentle rain from heaven upon the signing of the Peace of Velasco. In fact, quite the reverse; Mexican national pride had been severely affronted by the loss of Texas – and Lopez de Santa Anna felt the sting most particularly. If he could not get Texas back, he would make things difficult.

 All ten years of the existence of Republic of Texas were fraught with a constant low-level, simmering conflict with Mexico. Twice, Mexican armies boldly struck deep into Texas, as far as San Antonio. The second – Woll’s raid and the subsequent imprisonment of every male Anglo-Texan who had come there for the District Court session – set off a series of repercussions, the most immediate being the launching of a punitive expedition. For various reasons – chief among them being that the commander of it, Alexander Somervell, was not supplied and equipped sufficiently to take his force much farther than into the disputed “Nueces Strip” between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, and Sam Houston was not particularly keen on metaphorically poking a tiger in the nose with a sharp stick by sending Somervell’s army into Mexico – Somervell went no farther than Laredo and Guerrero along the Rio Grande before declaring that honor had been satisfied and that his army of volunteers and Texas Rangers could therefore decamp for home. Not coincidently, they were short on supplies.

 However, there were volunteers among his army who had decided firmly the opposite – and that a retaliatory strike into Mexico was not only called for, but obligatory. The 19th century sense of honor demanded that an insult given be paid for in blood – and the sheer ornery and cantankerous sense of independence which then and now still defines Texas – demanded that such members of Somervell’s expedition who felt such, act upon their conviction. Just before Christmas of 1842, nearly three hundred of Somervell’s volunteers, including Rangers Samuel Walker and William “Bigfoot” Wallace, voted to constitute their own military and punitive force under the command of Colonel William Fisher – to proceed without dispatch, over the border and to punch the Mexican tiger most definitely in the nose and secure the town and whatever supplies and riches lay within the border settlement of Mier. Or to go even farther into Mexico and harass the Mexican Army; Somervell and the main force returned to disband at Gonzales, and thence to return home.

 Among the 300 volunteers who had formed their own corps and resolved to take Mier, was one Asa Hill, a farmer from Fayetteville, a small town located on the old road between Stephen Austin’s settlement at San Felipe and Mina – now called Bastrop. Asa was accompanied by two of his sons, Jeffrey, aged 28 and John Christopher Columbus – aged 13. Asa Hill had served in Sam Houston’s Army with his two oldest sons, and now he was off to a war again. That one of his sons was barely into puberty and serving as an active soldier was perhaps not terribly outside 19th century professional military norms, when British navy officer cadets commonly went to sea at eleven and boys not much older would serve as drummers in various armies. Life on the Texas frontier was hard enough, and children were expected to assume responsibilities early – even that of home defense, and there were boys in the Mier Expedition who were just a year or so older. Still, John was young enough, and noticeably small that notice was taken.

 The company had managed to take Mier on Christmas Day, and barricade themselves into secure positions among the close-packed houses, but they were surrounded by a force of more than two thousand Mexican soldiers, commanded by one General Pedro de Ampudia – a force well-supplied with everything the Texans had not, including artillery. During the fight, John and five or six other boys had served as sharp-shooters, successfully picking off individual enemy soldiers trying to work a particular battery.  But the odds were against; after twenty-three hours of fighting, both sides were exhausted and the Texans were nearly out of ammunition. They had seven dead and two-dozen wounded, including their commander and John’s brother Jeffrey. Colonel Fisher wrote out a letter of formal surrender, and ordered his fighters to stand down and surrender their weapons. Some of them, including John Hill, chose to break their weapons rather than do so. The last to give up his arms was “Bigfoot” Wallace, who supposedly stood 6 foot two inches tall and weighted 250 pounds, every inch of it wild-cat tough. The Texians were ordered to form a single line – probably every one of them remembering what had happened to the Texan volunteers at the Goliad, six years before.

So much younger and smaller than the other Texian fighters, John Hill was noticed by the Mexican soldiers at once. He had turned fourteen during the time he had been with his father and brother in the punitive expedition into the boarderlands, but he had just survived twenty-three hours of house-to-house combat, and very desperately feared what might happen to himself, his family and his comrades. Life expectancies for Texian fighting men taken prisoner by Mexican soldiers over the last six years were almost always short, and usually measured in hours. Nothing in his small experience of life on the Texas frontier would have led him to expect anything other than the worst  . . .  especially when he was prodded out of the line and taken away to meet General Ampudia, face to face.

 But it turned out that the General was curious – curious and possibly a little surprised. He asked of John if the Texians were so short of men that they would send children into battle. Where was his father, and what had he come to Mexico for? John – most likely relived that he was not about to be shot, insisted that he was not a child, he was fourteen, and a good soldier – and that he had come to Mexico to take care of his father and his brother, who were among the prisoners outside in the plaza. He related how he and the other boys had been ordered to pick off those Mexican soldiers of the cannon crew – and had done so until driven from their sniper’s nest by heavy fire which demolished their position. The General, a professional soldier of long and honorable service was impressed. He gave orders that John and those boys who had been with him be given fresh clothes, food, and quarters in the mansion where he was staying. John asked to be permitted to visit his father and brother, who were now confined in the jail. He was allowed to do so – and was also allowed to bring food to them. His brother had already been judged to badly injured to travel with the other prisoners, as they were being sent to Matamoros very shortly. John wanted to stay in the jail, to do what he could for them, but Asa Hill told him he could better help his family by remaining with the General. Whatever happened to the other prisoners, his youngest son would be safe and out of harms’ way. As it turned out, Asa Hill was right on both counts.

 On New Years’ Day, those prisoners able to move marched out under heavy guard. The injured were left behind to recuperate – but John himself was given a horse and liberty, riding with the General and his staff. Within days, he would be sent with an escort to Mexico City, on the orders of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – now and again the President of Mexico. This was one of the times where he was the President – and the orders were that John be delivered to him. Unfortunately when John arrived in Mexico City, His Excellency the President was indisposed, and John was delivered into the care of the Archbishop of Mexico City – a kindly man who incorporated John into his princely household for weeks. After some time, he received a letter from his mother back in Texas – forwarded by General Ampudia.

 Meanwhile, the main body of Texian prisoners, to include Asa Hill, Samuel Walker and Bigfoot Wallace were being marched by slow stages – east to Monterray and Saltillo, and then south, deeper into the interior. Just short of Saltillo, two hundred of them overpowered their guards and fled north into the desert. They had no food and little water with them; they lasted for about a week before being recaptured in groups. By early March, all of the 176 escapees had surrendered or been rounded up, clapped in leg-irons and taken to Saltillo. His Excellency Santa Anna was outraged by the attempted escape, and issued orders that all of them be executed – an order which the regional commander, General Francisco Mejia categorically refused, as did the local provincial governor, and international outrage from the American and British foreign ministers forced Santa Anna to dial back and settle for simple decimation instead: only one in ten would be executed.

 A Colonel Huerta was put in charge of deciding which of the Texians would die; seventeen black beans and 159 white were placed in a pottery jar and covered with a light cloth. The 179 prisoners were made to reach into the jar and draw a bean, and then hand it to Colonel Huerta: the officers first, followed by the others in alphabetical order. Colonel Huerta had the names of those who drew a black bean recorded. One of those who drew a black bean was James Cocke, who said stoically, “They only rob me of forty years.” He gave away his clothes to a fellow prisoner whose outer garments were in rags. The seventeen chosen were separated from the others, given a last meal, last rites from a priest if they wished it, blindfolded and executed in two groups.

 Asa Hill drew a white bean, as did Bigfoot Wallace. So did one of the officers, Ewan Cameron, but he was ordered to be executed anyway, being particularly hated by the guards. Cameron refused a blindfold and last rites; he tore open his coat and shouted “Fuerza!” (Fire) at his executioners.

 The survivors continued their journey to Mexico City, still under somewhat of a cloud; were they prisoners or prisoners of war? Young John Hill certainly was not: he had finally had an audience with Santa Anna, where he boldly asked for his own release. He must have seemed like a frank and likeably boy – and Santa Anna had already heard about him from General Ampudia. Incredibly, he offered to adopt John as his own son, and school him as a soldier. John blurted out a reply: he already had a good father, and he couldn’t become a soldier of Mexico because he was a Texan – couldn’t he just be freed to go home? This frankness seemed to amuse and charm Santa Anna, and he repeated the offer of adoption and schooling – at the College of Mining in Mexico City. John asked to confer with his father. Asa Hill consented to Santa Anna’s proposal for John, apparently feeling that his youngest son’s prospects would be very much brighter – and since most of the Mier prisoners were in chains and working at hard labor – he really can’t be faulted for wanting freedom and security for his son.

 John, in a second interview with Santa Anna, consented to the adoption, asking that his father and brother be freed and allowed to return to Texas. He also asked that he not be required to renounce his own citizenship. Asa and Jeffery Hill were released – eventually all the survivors of Mier and of the Dawson Massacre, and those taken prisoner by Woll in San Antonio would be released. John would go to live with the family of the superintendent of the College of Mining. He would eventually graduate from the school with a doctorate in engineering and a degree in mining, design many of Mexico’s mines and railways and serve as Collis P. Huntingdon’s chief engineer. He corresponded regularly with his family, and made a journey to Texas in 1855 to ask their permission to marry. During the troubles in Mexico during the 1860s, John’s old friend and mentor General Ampudia wound up on the wrong side of matters – and John interceded on his behalf. John Hill died in 1904, at the age of 75