Grapefruit cluster (Ken Snyder Photo)
Palms make roads a majestic panorama
The Lusty Past of Lady Padre
The ghostly etchings of past eras, traced in the mysterious sands of Padre, are a lusty view for the hardiest. Here thrived humanity at its most intense pitch. Adventure, somehow, often seeks islands in which to ferment. Here were wars, savages dueling with royalty, romances of Indian princesses, pirates’ revenge, blood-soaked buried treasures, conquerors’ defeats, resting places of high-spirited explorers, refuges for thieves, scoundrels, and for idealists. Their secrets nap beneath the rhythmic shifting sands.
Padre intruded into history in the 1500’s, when one of the earliest explorers, and certainly one of the earliest winter tourists, Alonso Olvarez de Piñeda, set foot on its coast to open the door to the New World. Next in the parade of travellers was Cabeza de Vaca, who stepped ashore at the southern tip of the island. La Salle and De Soto also briefly touched Padre, and even Cortez (and Drake, in later history) explored the island on the way to conquest.
Fierce Indians were first masters of the island. Relics of their primitive way of life have been retrieved and sent to museums throughout the country. Chief among the Indians were the terrible Karankawas, a cannibal tribe who ravaged the island at the turn of the nineteenth century. Jarring against the soft setting of aquamarine seas, white sands, and pink skies, they shot giant redfish with wildly decorated bows and arrows. They sliced their brown bodies deep into the seas, seeking food and, with glittering knives, often battling sharks. They shouted blood-tingling chants to the accompaniment of shell drums, flutes, and stone-filled gourds. To this pagan music, the painted and feathered “Kronks” danced into the whirl of three day orgies.
The woeful tale of the “Flight of the Three Hundred,” to be dealt with in detail in the following chapter, reveals the plight of satin-clad cavaliers and ladies on Padre, who failed to conquer the challenge of savages and sun. Among them was Doña Juana Ponce de León, whose beauty caused men to search for the Fountain of Youth. Under the relentless sun, these castaways fled from the cannibalistic Kronks into the sand dunes of Padre, buying their lives by leaving their richly brocaded garments behind them to delay and bribe their savage pursuers. One by one they dropped, withered, into the white sands, brought down by fever, hunger, thirst and arrows.
Pirate Jean Lafitte, hero of the War of 1812, and scoundrel of the seas, held court over his renegade colony of outlaws on Padre, and added more legend to the notorious past of Lady Padre. During his reign, he amassed a fortune by preying on Spanish treasure ships. Many a sea adventurer met his death on the shores of Padre because of the treachery and cunning of these devious shipwreckers. These scoundrels would set up lights on the island to confuse the seamen’s course and lure the ships into shallow waters nearby. The vessels would run aground or become wrecked, and the pirates would steal their cargo. Lafitte and his one thousand followers finally settled on Galveston Island. One day he sailed away with a handpicked crew and was never heard of again. It is said that many of the most solid, respectable family trees, just a stone’s throw from Padre Island, sprouted from the buccaneers left behind.