[III'-6] The trip from the Rio Grande to the San Antonio r. made about 151 m. by Pike's estimates, serving to show the course of the old Spanish trail as the most direct route then practicable. Pike's Mariano is now called Medina r.; on this is Castroville, seat of Medina Co., and the river mostly separates this county from Bexar Co. Pike sets San Antonio on the N. bank of an affluent of a fork large enough to look as if it were Rio Cibolo; but this last comes in much further down the San Antonio, and no doubt he intended simply to delineate the small forked San Pedro, on one of whose branches the city was situated. The San Antonio itself is represented as joining the Guadalupe high up; but these two great rivers only come together as they approach the coast, to fall into Espiritu Santo bay opposite Matagorda isl., between Indianola and Arkansas City. On some old maps, as that in Winterbotham's History, 1795, San Antonio is set on a stream called Rio Hondo, which is run separately into the Gulf of Mexico between the Nueces and the Guadalupe. The early importance of the Mariano or Medina r. as a political boundary ceased of course with the retirement of Coahuila beyond the Rio Grande, and thus the extension of Texan territory, through what had been Coahuilan territory, to New Mexico. The city was formerly more fully called San Antonio de Bexar, Bejar, Behar, Bexer, etc., to distinguish it from uncounted other places dedicated to the patron saint of highways by highwaymen and other persons, and is still the seat of Bexar Co.; pop. lately 37,673 (scarcely less than that of Dallas). The mission of "St. Joseph," commonly called San José, is figured on p. 69 of Major Emory's reports, probably looking much as it did when Pike was received there by the priest; and the steel engraving which forms the frontispiece of the same volume shows the plaza of the city. San Antonio is a very old place, having been occupied for military and ecclesiastical purposes before 1720, was long the most important one in Texas, was styled Thermopylæ of Texas after the massacre of Texans by Mexicans at Fort Alamo, Mar. 6th, 1836, and is now the second in size, though the capital of the present State is Austin, on the Rio Colorado of Texas.
[III'-7] Sabine r. still forms a portion of the boundary between Texas and Louisiana—that is, from the Gulf to 32° N., the remainder being along a meridian to 33°. In consequence of its delimiting office, it was formerly called Rio Mexicano and Mexican r. Thus "Mexicano R." appears on the map accompanying Winterbotham's History, N. Y., J. Reid, 1795.
[III'-8] Striking the Guadalupe at about the nearest point, in the vicinity of present town of New Braunfels; to reach it, Rio Cibolo was crossed, and there was the place called El Beson. There is no such disparity of size between the Guadalupe and San Antonio rivers as Pike's map indicates. The former has two main forks, the western one retaining the name Guadalupe, for which Pike letters "Buenacus." The other is called Rio San Marco, or San Marcos; it falls in at or near Gonzales, about 40 m. (direct) below New Braunfels.
[III'-9] Camp in vicinity of the present town of Lockhart (?).
[III'-10] Camp short of Bastrop, a comparatively old place on the Rio Colorado, located at the point where the Spanish trail crossed the river, about 35 m. below Austin, and present seat of the county of the same name. Bastrop is a mere village, pop. about 1,650, but the name was famous in the early annals of Texas, when the Baron Bastrop had his immense estate on the Washita. Dunbar and Hunter, in their well-known Observations, etc., which formed one of the tracts accompanying Jefferson's Message to Congress of Feb. 19th, 1806, inform us that the Baron's great grant of land from the Spanish government began near the Bayou Bartholomew, about 12 leagues above the post on the Washita, and consisted of a square 12 leagues on each side, or over a million French acres (London ed. 1807, p. 83). Bastrop seems to have been a prototype of the modern "cattle barons," or "cattle kings," as they are styled, who generally manage to cover more ground than Queen Dido did when she stretched a bull's-hide around her famous city.
[III'-11] This Red r. or Rio Colorado requires attention to discriminate it from several others of the same name; they are all great streams, not to be confounded, in spite of their homonymity: 1. Red r. of the North, flowing into British America between North Dakota and Minnesota: see Part I., passim. 2. Red r., the uppermost and smallest one of three branches of the Arkansaw which have been so called. This was oftenest called Negracka r., but is now usually known as the Salt fork of the Arkansaw: see [note10, p. 552]. 3. Red r., the middle one of three branches of the Arkansaw which have been so called, now known as the Cimarron r.: see [note10, p. 553]. 4. Red r., the lowest and largest of the three branches of the Arkansaw which have been so called; it is the main fork of the Arkansaw, often known as the Red r. of Arkansas, oftenest now as the Canadian r.: see [note17, p. 558]. 5. The Red r. of Louisiana, the Red r. of Natchitoches, the Red r. of the Mississippi—the Red r. of Pike's Expedition, which he never found. This is the first (lowest) great branch of the Mississippi from the W., and the one now most commonly known as the Red r., without any qualifying phrase, probably never called Colorado r. One of its Indian names is Kecheahquehono, to be found on some maps. 6. The Red r. of Texas, the one Pike crosses this 16th of June near Bastrop, and which flows into the Gulf of Mexico at Matagorda, between the Guadalupe and the Brazos rivers. This is also the Rio Roxo or Rojo, and the Rio Colorado, of the Spanish, sometimes qualified as Rio Colorado del Este, or Colorado r. of the East (though it is the southernmost of the lot), to distinguish it from: 7. Red r. of the West; Rio Colorado del Occidente; Colorado r. of the West, flowing into the Gulf of California. This has seldom been called Red r., and is always now known as the Colorado, without qualifying terms, as we very early adopted the Spanish name. We hear of cowboys who "paint the town red" in carrying their jags, but that is nothing to the way these rivers have rubricated maps. Easy alliteration of the words "red" and "river" has doubtless tended to spread the phrase, in the lack of nomenclatural resources, and in ignorance of the connections of several of these rivers.
[III'-12] The "Tancards" of whom Pike speaks on the 16th and 17th, also called Tankahuas, Tonkawans, Tankaways, etc., were a remarkable people—a sort of Ishmaelites who roamed about, and seemed to belong nowhere in particular. Powell styles them a "colluvies gentium" or fusion of tribes; and what little we know of their local habitation is derived mainly from Dr. Sibley's notes, supplemented by the above passages in Pike's narrative. Dr. Sibley's historical letter to General Dearborn, dated Natchitoches, Apr. 5th, 1805, and first published with other tracts in Jefferson's Message to Congress of Feb. 19th, 1806, is one of the bases of the literature on this subject. "The Tankaways (or Tanks, as the French call them)," says Sibley, p. 45 of the London ed., 1807, "have no land, nor claim the exclusive right to any, nor have any particular place of abode, but are always moving, alternately occupying the country watered by the Trinity, Braces [Brazos], and Colerado, towards St. a Fé. Resemble, in their dress, the Cances [Kanzas] and Hietans [Comanches], but [are] all in one horde or tribe. Their number of men is estimated at about 200; are good hunters; kill buffaloe and deer with the bow; have the best breed of horses; are alternately friends and enemies of the Spaniards. An old trader lately informed me that he has received 5000 deer skins from them in one year, exclusive of tallow, rugs and tongues. They plant nothing, but live upon fruits and flesh: are strong, athletic people, and excellent horsemen." The history of the tribe dates back of Sibley and Pike nearly a century, if the first mention of these Bedouins of the Texan sands in 1719 be taken as its starting-point. In 1876 Gatschet had collected a vocabulary of about 300 words, upon which linguistic material he classed the people as a separate stock called Tonkawa, from the Caddoan or Wakoan word tonkaweya, implying that these Indians kept by themselves, aloof from other tribes. The Tonkawan family is recognized by Powell as one of the 58 distinct linguistic stocks he adopts in his classification; his map locates the tribe agreeably with the above indications, and his text adds: "About 1847 they were engaged as scouts in the United States Army, and from 1860-62 (?) were in the Indian Territory; after the secession war till 1884 they lived in temporary camps near Fort Griffin, Shackleford County, Texas, and in October, 1884, they removed to the Indian Territory (now on Oakland Reserve). In 1884 there were 78 individuals living; associated with them were 19 Lipan Apache" (Seventh Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn., 1885-86, published 1891, p. 126). Two other Tonkawan tribes, the Mayes and Yakwal, are extinct or merged in the former; and several minor bands have been known by name.
[III'-13] The full style of this river was el Rio de los Brazos de Dios, River of the Arms of God, which seemed neither blasphemous nor sacrilegious to the admirable fanatics who so solemnly theographized geography in their excursions for the salvation of souls, ad majorem Dei gloriam. It is difficult for us to realize what a queer lot they were, with their "Monastery Road" to the "Opening of the Virgin," their Corpus Christi in one place and Sangre de Cristo elsewhere, Holy Ghost bay, Todos Santos collectively when they ran out of individual saints, and Rio Trinidad for the whole Trinity after the members of the divine family had been separately complimented. It is fortunate that we cannot commit the intellectual anachronism of putting ourselves in the place of these very sincere servants of a very moderate polytheism, though the result be that the Brazos is also called Brasses and Braces r., bringing up a ludicrous association of ideas with the buttons and suspenders which uphold our trousers, ad majorem pudorem virorum. Other names of this stream are Rivière Ste. Thérèse (or Rio Santa Teresa), and R. Maligne; thus the phrase "St. Théreseor or Maline R." appears on the map in Winterbotham's History, 1795. The river is the largest one of the series Pike is crossing; it drains a great area in Texas from the Llanos Estacados or Staked Plains to the Gulf, which it reaches between Galveston and Matagorda. The point at which the old Spanish trail struck it is indicated by Pike's mention of the Little Brazos, a sort of bayou or side-sluice which runs close to the E. side of the main stream for a great distance. The crossing was near the mouth of this bayou.
[III'-14] The streams passed to-day are tributaries of the Brazos, the larger one mentioned being that afterward known as Navasota r., which falls in a good way below, at or near a place which was once named Washington. The high land on the other side, on which was camp, represents some of the elevation which forms the water-shed between Brazos and Trinity rivers, and which is passed over next day. The clause of the text reading "impassable four miles. Overflows swamps, ponds, etc.," I suppose may be read "impassable for (some) miles (along its course, where it) overflows (in) swamps, ponds, etc."
[III'-15] The original Rio Trinidad has become better known under its equivalent English name of the Trinity, and there is a place lower down on it which is or was called Trinidad or Trinity (now Swartwout?). It empties into Galveston bay, and so into the Gulf. The Spanish trail from the crossing led on to a place called Crockett, in Houston Co., at or near which camp of the 21st was pitched. A little above the crossing, on the E. bank of the river, we are informed by Dr. Sibley, was the residence of the Keyes or Keychias, a Caddoan tribe which in 1805 mustered 60 men. These are now called Kichais, and now or lately consisted of about 60 persons.