 |
BIG STORIES FROM THE BIG STATE
As Texas Writers Month continues, I want to bring attention to three fine new books written by Texans and pertaining to interrelated corners of Texas history. Dare-Devils All: Texas Mier Expedition 1842-1844, by J. M. Nance (Eakin Press, $59.95, hardcover). Dare-Devils All is a unique study of one of the weirdest and most haunting episodes that occurred in the short history of the Republic of Texas. Despite the fact that Texas had won its independence from Mexico in 1836, trouble still brewed, and twice in 1842, Mexican troops captured and occupied the town of San Antonio. Texas volunteers under General Alexander Somervell's command mounted a raid on Mexican border towns, capturing Laredo and Guerrero without much trouble. But then about 300 of Somervell’s volunteers got restless and disobeyed orders to retreat. Instead -- motivated by patriotic fervor or merely hunger for revenge -- they continued deeper into Mexico and captured the town of Mier. Two days later the disobedient troops were captured by Mexican forces and imprisoned in Salado, where Santa Anna ordered that one out of every ten men be executed. A drawing was held; each man who drew a black bean was blindfolded and shot. Some of the lucky ones who drew white beans -- eventually freed and allowed to return to Texas -- would later become some of our best-known frontier heroes: Ben McCulloch, Bigfoot Wallace, Samuel Walker, and many others. The late historian, J.M. Nance, worked on Dare-Devils All for over fifty years, compiling an exhaustive array of resources and producing a manuscript over 3,000 pages long. Archie P. McDonald took over the project just before Nance’s death in 1997, whittling the manuscript down to 546 action-packed and insightful pages -- a vital addition to any serious Texas history bookshelf. Fifty Miles and a Fight: Major Samuel Peter Heintzelman's Journal of Texas & the Cortina War, edited by Jerry Thompson (Texas State Historical Association, $39.95 hardcover). In nineteenth century Mexico, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina was seen as a hero, a defender of the rights of Mexicans and Tejanos. Texans -- especially the most vociferous ones -- saw Cortina as a bandit and cattle thief who was fomenting a revolution by making forays north across the border to avenge various injustices against his people. Fifty Miles and a Fight excerpts the diaries of U.S. Army Major Samuel Peter Heintzelman, who spent five months on the border leading U.S. troops against Cortina, after the Mexicans had taken over the town of Brownsville with a force of only 75 men. Heintzelman’s diary is fascinating not only for its attention to minute daily details during the campaign, but for his obvious disdain for the Texas Rangers, whom he regarded as undisciplined, untrustworthy, and as editor Thompson puts it, "a serious distraction to peace." Thompson’s introduction gives a solid overview of the Cortina War, as well as details on Heintzelman’s life before and after. The colorized photo of Heintzelman on the book jacket, however, is worth more than a thousand words: Seated in an ornate wooden chair in a freshly pressed uniform, saber angled across his lap, the major sports a salt and pepper beard and a very distracted, worried look on his face. Between the irascible Cortina, the rough and ready Rangers, and the upcoming Civil War, Heintzelman had plenty to worry about. El Llano Estacado: Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536-1860, John Miller Morris (Texas State Historical Association, $39.95 hardcover). How many different ways can you say "This land is flat and barren?" In his thought-provoking, beautifully written book, John Miller Morris not only catalogs many of the more eloquent ways in which the legendarily flat, arid and harsh mesa land of the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico was described in the first three centuries after European contact, but also waxes mighty poetic about the region himself. One of the oft-repeated images of El Llano Estacado’s 30,000 square miles of unbroken tableland seems to have been first expressed by the sixteenth century Spanish explorer Coronado: "I traveled ... until I reached some plains, with no more landmarks than as if we had been swallowed by the sea...."Indeed, as Morris surveys three centuries of exploration by Spanish, French, Mexican, and Anglo-American adventurers, it seems that this untamable locale had a profound effect on those who tried to make their mark on it. Miller enlivens his study with some intriguing mysteries, such as the search for the Lost Coronado Trail. But his biggest contribution to environmental history is his relentless probing of the effect the Staked Plains have had on the human psyche. In his study of toponymns given to the area he points out the obvious advantages of the names applied to area landmarks by the Spanish. For example, a creek called Los Alamocitos, named for the young cottonwood trees along the stream’s banks, is much easier to locate than the same creek, renamed Maxwell Creek after a local landowner by Anglo settlers. Morris' exploration offers insight into the disparate relationships Texas' first settlers had with the land. (5/14/98) |
|
Cortina links:
Proclamations issued by Cortina after the Brownsville takeover 
Other books on the Mier Expedition Read more about the Mier Expedition
Read More on El Llano Estacado past & present
|
