Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861

PROLOGUE: Life in a Norteño Town

Prologue Life in a Norteño Town M ost nineteenth-century travelers approached Béxar from the south along the main road, the Camino Real, with a sense of relief and wonder. The relief came from arriving at a town safely after days of traversing the brush country, exposed to the possibility of attack from one of a variety of indigenous groups controlling the area, such as the Comanche or Lipan Apache. Indeed, immediately upon arrival, most Mexican travelers attended mass at San Fernando Cathedral.Writing in the eighteenth century, Juan Agustín de Morfi noted, “We went to the parish church to genuflect, to give thanks to Our Holy Father for the joy of our arrival .”1 The sense of wonder came from noting Béxar’s relatively lush oasis in comparison to the harsh desert of northern New Spain. Later, a Mexican official writing about his view of the landscape surrounding the town commented , “The hills and valleys are gradually sloped, of low elevation, and covered in low-lying vegetation appearing like an amphitheater, dropping out occasionally in the form of uncovered banks of limestone.”2 He then added, “I imagined myself transported to those long ago times which are lost in the darkness of history.”3 Texas, 1820–1836 Matagorda Bay Gulf of Mexico Corpus Christi Bay galveston island lipanes mescaleros taovayas apachería comanchería wichitas cushatte caddo karankawas R í o G r a n d e R í o G rande Nueces River G u a d a l u p e R i v e r C o l orado River B r a z o s R i v e r Neches R i v e r R e d R i v e r M i s s i s s i p p i River New Orleans Los Adaes Natchitoches Nacogdoches San Felipe Washington Victoria La Bahía Refugio Gonzales Laredo Santa Fe El Paso Saltillo Matamoros Río Grande Monclova San Antonio de Béxaršššššššššššš Camino Real Camino de las Opelusas San Antonio Riverš Tenoxtitlan T r i n i t y R iver Sabin e R i v e r Alamoš Concepciónšššššššš Prologue Such was the reaction of arriving in the remote town of San Antonio de Béxar, a frontier town situated in the borderlands between two colonizing empires. Béxar’s landscape possessed qualities typical of other frontiers, such as remoteness, indigenous threats, scarcity of natural resources, and a harsh climate.4 Its location on the borderlands meant that visitors approached Béxar from both the north and south. Yet the presence of the town and the persistence of its inhabitants amazed all visitors equally. On May 5, 1718, newly appointed governor of Texas Martín de Alarcón and his expedition chose a spot on the banks of the San Antonio River and San Pedro Creek to establish a mission, San Antonio de Valero, and a town, San Antonio River with Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo in the distance, ca. 1869. (Courtesy of the San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation, Raba Collection) 17 Prologue 18 Villa de Béxar.5 Thirty Spanish soldiers and their families from Alarcon’s expedition served as the first settlers of the town.The founding of Béxar initiated the establishment of several missions along the San Antonio River. Béxar served as the civilian and military corollary to the missionary colonization effort. The town received an early population boost when fourteen families migrated at royal expense from Spain’s Canary Islands in 1731, ensuring the permanence of the settlement.6 The settlers named their colony San Fernando de Béxar. By 1778, when Morfi accompanied Teodoro de Croix on his inspection of the northern regions, it was estimated that Texas contained about 3,000 citizens in and around its three towns—Béxar, La Bahía, and Nacogdoches —and at least half of these resided in Béxar.7 The population for Béxar and most of the province stagnated at that level around 1790, after several years of fluctuation. By 1800, the entire Provincias Internas, which included present-day Texas, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas, contained a population of approximately 82,000, of which 3,500 to 4,000 lived in Texas.8 A census taken in December 1795 listed the population of Béxar at 1,487, including its surrounding missions and barrios...