This Week in Texas History
by BARTEE HAILE
The very future of the Lone Star Republic was at stake on Oct. 16, 1838, when a volunteer militia fought Mexican conspirators and their Indian allies on a battlefield in East Texas.
Vicente Cordova was a respected citizen of Nacogdoches in the early 1830s, held in high esteem by Mexicans and Anglos alike. Although elected to several important public posts over the years, the popular figure hid his hatred of American immigrants and his burning desire to hasten the day of reckoning with the gringos.
After the first shot of the Texas Revolution was fired in the fall of 1835, Cordova went to work. Exploiting his prestige in the Nacogdoches area, he organized an underground Mexican militia to attack the Texans marching on Bexar. But before he could act, the government general at San Antonio surrendered.
Cordova was not deterred by the sudden capitulation and looked for other ways to help the cause. He sent word to Mexican officials in March 1836 that he had solicited sufficient support from the Cherokees to surprise the retreating rebel army from the rear. Once again events moved faster than Cordova, and Santa Anna was defeated at San Jacinto before he could stage his ambush.
Over the next two years, the victorious Texans failed to detect the true sentiments and continuing conspiracy of the clever spy. In the spring of 1838, Gen. Vicente Filisola commissioned Cordova to recruit East Texas Indians as “auxiliaries to the Mexican army” and put him in contact with Manuel Flores, a special agent with the same assignment. Together the two snakes in the grass planned the overthrow of the Republic and the restoration of Mexican rule in the liberated province.
The alliance with the Cherokees was renewed that summer, and Cordova set up his headquarters on an island in the Angelina River. After assembling an impressive force of Mexicans and Indians, he decided the time had come to strike.
Cordova dispatched a strange letter to President Sam Houston that August. He formally unveiled his revolt and informed Houston that the Texans’ wives and children would be spared if his own men’s families were likewise left alone.
What in the world was Cordova thinking? His premature announcement robbed the rebels of the element of surprise and ensured their disastrous downfall.
Houston quickly called out the militia, and volunteers by the hundreds hurried to the defense of the imperiled Republic. The Texans led by Thomas Rusk, a future U.S. Senator, fought a pitched battle on the afternoon of Oct. 16 with Cordova’s 900 Mexicans and Indians, the majority of them Kickapoos. After an hour of furious combat and severe losses, Cordova and his key supporters slipped through the Texans’ lines and made a mad dash for the Rio Grande.
Cordova returned to Texas the next winter with a small band of 75 followers and prowled the prairies along the upper reaches of the Trinity River. He resolved in March 1839 to sneak past the frontier patrols of Texas Rangers and seek out his compatriots holing up in Matamoros.
The Rangers spotted Cordova on the outskirts of Austin and chased him for two days to the present site of Seguin. The Mexican turned and fought, losing 25 men before heading south. A company of Rangers from Gonzales under the command of Capt. Matthew Caldwell doggedly pursued Cordova to the border, but the most wanted man in Texas once again evaded capture.
Though forever condemned as a two-faced turncoat north of the river, Vicente Cordova was considered a courageous patriot in Mexico. He likely would have lived out his life in safety south of the border had he not decided to accompany a Mexican invasion that briefly occupied San Antonio in September 1842. This time Cordova did not make it back to Mexico but finally got what was coming to him at the Battle of Salado Creek.
Fellow conspirator Manuel Flores already had come to the same end. While Cordova was outrunning the Rangers on his final flight in 1839, Flores was scouring the Lone Star countryside in a futile hunt for his accomplice. He lingered long enough to be cornered and killed by Rangers on May 18, 1839.
Found on Flores’ body were dozens of letters, which not only contained the details of the complicated scheme to incite insurrection but also implicated the Cherokees in the sinister plot. In exchange for their participation in a war against the Texans, the Indians were promised permanent possession of their tribal territory in the eastern part of the Republic. What the Mexicans evidently had in mind was a red buffer zone against future encroachment from the United States.
The Flores letters sealed the Cherokees’ fate. Despite the impassioned defense of the Civilized Tribe by their lifelong friend Sam Houston, the Cherokees were violently evicted from the Texas Republic two months after Manuel Flores’ death.
Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at [email protected] or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549. Come on by www.twith.com for a visit and follow Bartee on Facebook!
