V
Arms Avenging and Saving
The following account from Kennedy’s History of Texas[8] has been contributed by Mr. E. G. Little John. As I have suggested, it may, after all, be the original of the better known version quoted from Mrs. Davis. The endless confusion among the earlier Spanish regarding the nomenclature of rivers is fully set forth in the extract from Miss Buckley’s article on the Aguayo Expedition already quoted. Thrall makes the matter a little too simple perhaps when he says: “The Spaniards gave the name of Brazos de Dios to the Colorado, and Rio Colorado to the Brazos, but blundering geographers afterwards interchanged their [[217]]names.”[9] A French map dated 1733, in the University of Texas archives, has the Brazos River marked the “Therese” and the San Marcos the “San Markos or Colorado.” Mr. Littlejohn’s “Indian legend” of a flood, which follows this legend, seems largely based on the early Spanish confusion of the Brazos and the Colorado.
“About thirty miles from the mouth of the San Saba, there was once a Spanish mission and fort, the destruction of which is thus recorded in Mexican tradition:
“Prosperity reigned at the post, which carried on an extensive trade with the Comanche Indians, and a large revenue was derived from certain silver mines in the vicinity. The mines occupied about one hundred laborers; the post was protected by an equal number of soldiers, and there were some women, who manufactured articles for the Indian trade. At a time when all the soldiers, save about a dozen, were absent on an expedition, the Comanches appeared, under pretense of traffic, and were admitted to the fort in great numbers. At a signal from the chief, the Indians drew weapons concealed under their buffalo robes, and massacred the small guard and the women. The laborers in the mines fled, and were butchered in detail. The priest alone escaped, and by a miracle. The holy man having fled to the Colorado River, the waters divided, permitted him to pass through, and closed upon the pursuing Indians, consigning them to a common grave. After great suffering, the priest reached the Spanish mission of San Juan, at that period the only settlement on the San Antonio River. The absent soldiers, returning in a few days to the fort, where lay the mingled bodies of their companions, found the banks of the Colorado covered with dead Indians, and as they could discern no marks of violence upon them, they pronounced it a retributive miracle, and named the river Brazos de Dios, or ‘the Arm [sic] of God.’ In the ignorance of after times, it received the name of Colorado, which previously distinguished the red and muddy stream now known as the Brazos. The preceding tradition is devoutly believed by the old Mexicans about San Antonio.” [[218]]
[1] In a note to “The Aguayo Expedition into Texas and Louisiana, 1719–1722,” Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. XV, p. 39. [↑]
[2] Thrall, H. S., A History of Texas, New York, 1876, p. 37. [↑]
[3] Captain Rafael Martínez Pacheco, 1763, escaped unseen and unscorched from the presidio in which he was besieged. According to Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, Archivist in History at the University of Texas, the legend is to be pieced out from the Bexar archives. For some facts of the case, see Bolton, Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, pp. 111–112. [↑]
[4] For a copy of the song, I am indebted to Mrs. V. M. Taylor of Angleton. [↑]
[5] “The Arms of God” by Claude M. Girardeau of Galveston, in The Texas Magazine, Houston, May, 1897, II, 431–434. About this time Mrs. Davis’ books seem to have been popular with readers of The Texas Magazine, two reviews of her work having appeared in it during the preceding twelve months. [↑]
[6] Davis (Mrs.), M. E. M., Under the Man-Fig, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1895, pp. 1–3. Reprinted by permission. [↑]
[7] Aimard, Gustave, The Freebooters, A Story of the Texan War, Chapter XXIII, Philadelphia [date not given]. The novel came out in France around 1858 or 1860. [↑]
[8] Kennedy, William, Esq., Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects of the Republic of Texas, R. Hastings, London, 1841, Vol. I, pp. 167–168. [↑]
[9] Thrall, H. S., A History of Texas, p. 37. Thrall goes on to say that “in old maps the San Antonio is marked as the Medina and the Guadalupe as the San Marcos.” For additional evidence as to the confusion of the Brazos and the Colorado in nomenclature, Mr. Littlejohn cites Bolton’s Spanish Explorations in the Southwest, pp. 376, 413. [↑]