The Grim San Saba Hills

The Destruction of Mission San Saba in the Province of Texas and the Martyrdom of the Fathers Alonso de Terreros,                                                                                                     Joseph Santiesteban, 1765

The bewitching siren’s song of the San Saba Silver Mines has seduced many an adventurer over the past two and a half centuries. Spaniard, Mexican, Texian, and American have all succumbed and all have failed to reap the reward Texas has teased their imaginations with. Texas fights tooth and nail to keep her secrets.

It all essentially began with the explorations of one Bernardo de Miranda y Flores when he found a vein of silver near the Llano river in the 1750’s. This was close to the swimming hole us local Llano county rednecks call "The Slab." Flores sent back some ore samples to Mexico City and breathlessly awaited the results. When the authorities felt their interest suitably piqued, they magnanimously gave him leave to round himself up another expedition into the red hills of central Texas. Mine shafts quickly wormed into the earth. The mine became known as Los Almagres - Ochre. Yet it quickly became more than apparent that Flores and company were producing only about ten ounces of silver per 100 pounds of ore. Not much of a cache. The government didn’t think the expense worth it and I’m sure the prospectors also grew weary of flirting with being scalped daily. Flores' dreams of wealth and splendor proved as ephemeral as most prospectors'. They abandoned the place. The exact location of this wannabe El Dorado has never been nailed down though there are at least three current contenders. The most probable one is a group of tunnels around Sandy Creek and Honey Creek off Highway 71 between Round Mountain and Llano. 

Then in the 1820’s Stephen F. Austin confused the tale of Spanish silver mines and the Spanish San Saba Presidio (which lay 85 miles further west of Los Almagres), writing “silver mines” near the location of the old presidio upon one of his maps. Thus the Father of Texas also sired one of Texas’ most enduring legends. Some of the silver mined from Los Almagres likely did make it over to the presidio but that’s about the only connection between "San Saba" and the real mines. Yet forever after the idea of lost silver near the ruined Spanish presidio has enchanted many a campfire audience and sent many a treasure hunter on fruitless excursions into the West. 

If the fortune hunters found anything at all, it was only the crumbled remains of Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas - more popularly known as San Saba Presidio - a haunted pile of rubble and the skeletal dead end of Spain’s explorations into Texas. At one time Spain, lusting for silver, gold, and the converted souls of natives, built up a mission system in Texas much like they did in California and other places. Well, tried to anyway. They really didn’t have much success in Texas. Other than a few missions in communities like San Antonio, Nacogdoches and El Paso, most of the other Spanish mission settlements in the interior failed. The country was far too hostile. Weather, long distances, and most especially, Comanche, made life quite miserable. The Comanche tribe almost single handedly stopped all western expansion into most everywhere in Texas (and the entire American Southwest) for over 100 hundred years. Spain had been struggling with their frontier outposts in Texas for some time anyway. The old story - never enough men, money or guns.

 Presidio San Saba was originally built to protect the Mission Santa Cruz de San Saba which sat a few miles further down the San Saba river in what is today the little town of Menard. One apocalyptic day in March, 1758, Mission San Saba was wiped off the face of the earth by a combined force of two THOUSAND Comanche, Kiowa, Tejas and other native tribes. This single event stopped Spain’s northwestern advancement in Texas and her attempts to create a trade route of missions finally linking up with Santa Fe. The brutal sacking became an major ingredient in what would become the San Saba Silver mine legend. The soldados in the Presido had to watch on helplessly while the overwhelming number of native warriors destroyed the mission the soldados were sworn to protect. The presidio didn’t have much other use out in the great vast spaces of unsettled Texas after the mission fell. There certainly wasn't much in the way of treasure to be hauled from the earth. Presidio San Saba was abandoned and left for the critters to take up residency or dismantle it altogether. 

Flash forward sixty years or so…

"By Hercules! The man was greater than Caesar or Cromwell - nay, nearly equal to Odin or Thor! The Texans ought to build him an altar!" - Scottish historian, Thomas Carlyle.

This might be a tad bit of an exaggerated oversimplification of the man, but James Bowie was indeed a man’s man that many an American of his time saw as the epitome of masculinity. He was certainly the most interesting character associated with the San Saba mines. Handsome, charismatic, brave, a natural born leader, he had that type of personality that sows legends wherever he went. He was not necessarily the most moral of fellows but… the most interesting people in history often aren’t terribly finicky about morals. His obsession, like most Americans past and present, was easy and quick riches - The Good Ol’ American Dream. As a result we find him and his brother Rezin smuggling slaves for Jean Lafitte then later forging and selling fake land deeds in the Arkansas territory before his permanent move to Texas. He was already quite the celebrity in America for his infamous knife fight at Natchez, Mississippi where he cut a man's heartstrings with his great butcher knife - AFTER taking a few bullets himself along with a sword cane through the chest. The fame of this duel spread like wildfire and the "Bowie" knife has been legend ever since. Once in Texas, big Jim began searching for ways to make easy money now that the authorities were onto his schemes back in America. Soon enough he heard whispers of the San Saba silver and he became obsessed with the lost Spanish treasure. I’ll let one of my favorite authors, Robert E. Howard, give his version of the traditional Bowie legend interwoven with the San Saba silver.

“The lost San Saba Mine. They showed it to Jim Bowie. That was the doings of Tres Manos, the Lipan chief. His sight was stunned and dazzled by the immensity of the treasure – Bowie, I mean. He reeled, and his wits went from him like light flicked from a candle by a rifle bullet. His mind was numbed by what he had seen. Not the main vein; only the store room; gold bars stacked in a cavern from floor to roof, catching the sunlight glinting through the leaves and reflecting it like a sheet of pulsing flame. He rode all night; his horse staggered under him, and he staggered on afoot. Tres Manos missed him from the tribe and was on his trail, but Bowie won that race. He was Lipan by adoption. He had seen the red men trading silver and gold armlets to the merchants near the Presidio. For months he lived and fought with Tres Manos’ braves. At last they showed him the cavern stacked with golden bars that caught the beams of the sun in a net of flame. Tres Manos was brave. He followed Bowie into San Antonio, met him, and called him a traitor. Only his quickness saved him when Bowie’s knife flashed from its sheath. They went back into the hill country the Indians were waiting them. They never reached the mine. They fought all day and all night. Three or four Texans fell, fifty Indians. The white man retreated. They were far outnumbered. They fell back to San Antonio. Bowie fought his last fight at the Alamo. No man since has seen the lost mine. But it’s there, with untold millions waiting for the man who’s meant to find it.” - Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, April 23, 1933

Howard did a nice job of concentrating the basic Bowie legend down into an action packed paragraph. I don’t know why he changed the silver to gold though. Historically, the San Saba mines were always silver. But his version is still more or less the same version related by famed U.T. professor J. Frank Dobie in Coronado’s Children, an acknowledged favorite of Howard’s and still very much in print. Dobie gives basically the same account with less prose poetry than Howard but then points out that all the stuff about adoption by the Lipans is just legend.

Dobie goes on to briefly describe a battle between the Bowie party and a far superior number of Apaches with about the same body count as Howard relates. But there’s no Tres Manos, no trading at the San Saba presidio, and Bowie never lived with the Apaches. Basically Jim goes exploring with his brother and fellow treasure hunters then is ambushed by hostiles. However, one of his friends and fellow treasure hunters, Cephas K. Ham, later claimed to have been living with the Comanche about the same time and had almost been given the secret whereabouts of the mine by a rather tubby tribe member. Of course, the chubby fellow never got around to actually showing him the location of the mines or even of a treasure chamber. Perhaps this account of Ham’s was the kernel of “fact” that birthed the Tres Manos legend – but switching a mummified hand for a Comanche pot belly. Not too long after Ham left the Comanche, he joined Bowie on his own expedition back into the San Saba hills.

According to William C. Davis in Three Roads to the Alamo, Bowie had been to the San Saba Presidio once already, back in 1829. “Accompanied by a few companions, he rode out across the trackless hill country, probably following the Colorado River to the mouth of the San Saba, then up its course until he reached the ruins of the old Presidio de San Saba and the nearby abandoned mission. There they spent untold days scouring the countryside looking for a closed shaft, or the tell-tale pile of crushed rock from which the ore had been extracted, but without success. He could not know the whole story was a myth, and that in any event he was looking in the wrong place.

Los Almagres lay seventy miles away and had never been an operating mine, its ore assaying too thin to merit the effort required to extract it from the earth. In the end he left with nothing to show, but at least he could leave a sign of his passing. On the wall of the main entrance to the ruined presidio earlier visitors had carved their names. One was a “Padilla” in 1810. Another had passed through that very year, etching the name “Cos” nearby. Beside them, before leaving, the latest visitor engraved “Bowie con sua tropa 1829.” His Spanish grammar was not yet what it should be, but the words conveyed well enough the message that “Bowie with his troop” had passed that way." – Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, pg. 241.

A couple of years passed. Bowie was still trying to get out of hot water in regards to some shady land dealings in Arkansas and squeezing what little fortune he could from them before making Texas his permanent home. He did a heap of traveling back and forth. When Rezin met him in San Antonio in the fall of 1831, Bowie needed his pot of silver at the end of the rainbow pretty badly. Plantations and steam machinery in Louisiana that the Bowie brothers invested in were also foundering and the debt mounted higher and higher. His land deals in Arkansas were even going to go to trial before the U.S. Supreme Court in the January 1833 term! His younger brother John was the only one implicated on paper in that trial but it still meant the end of any possibilities of money from that direction. He had convinced his new father-in-law, Vice-Governor Juan Martin de Veramendi, to finance the expedition west, and, like Dobie said, on November 2, 1831, the Bowie brothers headed for the “grim San Saba hills.”

After passing the Llano they ran into a pair of Comanche with a Mexican captive. Bowie’s buddy Ham, the one who had lived with the Comanche, knew one of them, by the name of Ysayune, and was assured that the Comanche meant them no harm. The two parties parted ways amicably enough. But the next day the Mexican captive rode up to them at breakneck speed. The two Comanche sent him back to warn them that a group of about 124 Tawakoni, Waco, and Caddos were sniffing up their hind legs. Bowie only had about 8 men in his group. The Comanche passed on some advice through the Mexican – make for a brush covered hill, where they could make a stand when the Indians rushed down upon them. Bowie ignored the advice. Like most other Texians and pioneers of the time, he had bigger heuvos than brains in most circumstances. He figured the San Saba presidio would make a better fortress than some trees on a hill. True enough but the presidio was still 25 miles away. They rode hard over painfully rocky terrain to find it. Anyone who has been around the Menard area knows the ground is almost nothing but rocks. But once they got to the San Saba river they couldn’t find the fort, having missed their mark by a dozen miles or so. There was no good cover around the river either. So they rode on a few more miles till they found a grove of forty or so mature live oaks. That would have to do. It was about 40 yards from a stream and there was another smaller bunch of live oaks grouped together about 50 yards away. Half of them went to that group of trees, the other half camped at the first oak shelter. Each could come to the aid of the other in case of attack. They settled down for the night…waiting. But no attack came.

8 AM – November 21st.

The men all rose from a rather nerve wracking night. Tired, cold and stiff, they loaded up and as they rose up into their saddles they saw a Tawakoni scout watching them. And behind that lone scout, 150 others came rolling over the hill. The treasure hunters leaped from their horses, tied them to the trees, and prepared their rifles for the onslaught. When the Indians knew they were spotted, battle cries rose high and the warriors stripped themselves down readying to come to grips with the vastly outnumbered Texians. James Bowie took a deep breath and glared down the whooping Caddos rushing to meet him, brandishing scalps upon their war lances.

While our band of heroes prepared for the inevitable onslaught, Rezin and a fellow named Buchanan dashed over to the second cluster of trees a good distance forward from where the others stayed hunkered down. Rezin waved at the painted warriors, trying to call out to them in Spanish or any broken phrases of the Caddo tongue in hopes they would understand his request for a parlay. But the Caddos simply laughed, derisively throwing back “How de do?” and “How are you?” before unloading their rifles on the two men. A dozen or so shots hissed around the fleeing Texians, ricocheting off the trees around them. Buchanan went down screaming – his leg shattered –Rezin spun around and answered with his own pistol and shotgun. The attackers rode off about a hundred yards, then began whipped themselves into another frenzy to make a full scale attack against the main body of men. Jim took advantage of the lull and scurried over to Rezin and Buchanan. The brothers each took a shoulder and helped the wounded man back across the open area towards the main cluster of trees. The Indians opened fire on the three men as they stumbled between cover – Buchanan roared as he took two more bullets in him and Rezin’s hunting shirt was clipped by the hail of lead. Seeing the trio continued in their mad dash, about 8 Tawakonis charged down from their hiding spots brandishing their wicked looking tomahawks howling like fiends as they charged straight for the handicapped trio. The other treasure hunters hiding in the trees poured all their fire power into howling Tawakonis and took out four in one fell swoop. The others fled back to cover and the Bowie brothers made it back into the trees with their friends. Jim barely had time to notice that he and his clothing came through completely unscathed. They didn’t have much time for a breather. They barely had enough time to reload their weapons before the full assault force of 150 battle crazed Indians rushed down upon them. Each man read doom in the oncoming faces and knew their bones would soon be bleaching in this lone wilderness. But Jim Bowie, who smiled at Death and cut its heart out in the Sandbar fight, wasn’t about to be harvested by native tomahawks. As the warriors rushed them, Jim focused on the Buffalo horn crowned Indian leader riding at a walk alongside the running braves, lighting fire in their bellies with his native oratory as he sent them off to glory. Jim clutched at an empty musket. “Who is loaded?!” he yelled out. “I am!” Caiaphas Ham shouted back. “Then bring down that big buffalo!” Caiaphas fired off a shot that snapped the chief’s leg and brought his horse crashing down. The crippled brave hopped around madly while swinging up his rawhide shield for protection, the other treasure hunters fired off another volley at him. The hopping turned to spinning as bullets peppered him and sent him reeling in death beside his shocked warriors. A few of them ran over to carry the corpse from the field but a withering hail of lead took them out too. Another group tried to carry the chief off. They died too. The battle waged back and forth for 15 minutes before the Indians pulled back to relative safety up the rise, carrying what dead and wounded they could. The Bowie brothers so far managed to keep the upper hand. But now arrows rained into them along with the occasional pop of musket fire. Another group of 15 or so made it around to yet another group of trees that grew to the side of where Bowie and his men held up. The attackers were gradually surrounding the prospectors. Sniper fire hissed into their midst and men hit the ground screaming and cursing. A second buffalo-horned leader lead a new cluster of braves down on the cornered prospectors. Bowie again held an empty weapon and needed another pronto. “Who is loaded?!” No reply. “Someone give me a damned musket!” His servant Charles scurried up with the Buchanan’s rifle. Bowie snatched it and shot down the new chief. The warriors again tried to remove a dead man from the field and again were shot down for their pains. A fellow called McCaslan, a mechanic on one of Jim’s building projects back in Saltillo, scrambled over to his wounded buddy, Doyle. Doyle hovered near death, bleeding out his life from a gaping chest wound. “Where is the Indian who shot Doyle?” McCaslan roared out to no one in particular with mad desperation in his eyes. Even as he finished shouting, he saw a Caddo rising from the ground. The enraged friend jumped up to fire down upon him and caught a bullet in his own chest instead. He died instantly. “Damn the Indian who shot McCaslan, where is he?” Now it was McCaslan’s turn to be avenged and now his friend Armstrong rushed madly out from behind the tree that shielded him. Ask and ye shall receive: An Tawakonie popped up out of nowhere and fired. But Armstrong’s luck held better than his friend’s – the bullet sank into his rifle stock and Armstrong wisely ran back behind the trees. By this time the rest of the Indians had moved into positions that now completely surrounded the Texians. Even counting the Indians already sent to meet the Great Spirit, that would still leave probably over 100 enraged natives for a mere ten men to deal with. Just about as desperate straits as Jim would face in Bexar 5 years later at the Alamo. Time to move to a friendlier setting. Grabbing their gear, their dead and their wounded, the bloodied troop made a dash to the nearby thicket under heavy fire where they could hide better and use a clearing they had carved out the night before as a means to spy out any approaching Indians. Now they could fire better without quite as much fear of being hit. Yet they quickly realized that the enemy could still see the puff of their belching muskets – a dead giveaway of the shooter’s location. Bowie yelled out to jump a few paces away from where they stood as soon as they fired off a round. The Indian rifle balls now only hissed harmlessly past the hopping men into the surrounding brush. Two hours stretched into 11 am. The oak grove had been a theater of death for three hours total now. The sweaty, powder grimed men with singed fingers lay worn to a frazzle with the constant surge of adrenaline running through their veins. Now they smelled smoke on the wind. Bowie looked to the west. Black smoke choked the horizon and flames licked brush the Indians set alight. Growing impatient, the enemy decided to either smoke their quarry out or barbecue them where they stood. Jim could hear their screaming war cries and insults from behind the sheets of flame. “They are trying to scare us into the open with all their yelping.” With a wildfire now barreling towards them, Jim and Rezin dropped to their knees and started desperately scraping away the brush and dry leaves around their pack animals and the wounded men. Bullets sailed over their heads as all the men tried to get rid of the bed of dry fuel they found themselves nestled in. But Jim Bowie’s luck kicked back in and his guardian angel – or devil - blew the flames north and south of his oak grove, sending the flames and smoke way from the digging men. Charles and another servant named Gonzales meanwhile set about building up a crude version of breastworks with any available rock, tree branch, saddle and pack they could lay their hands on. As the fire continued to burn they kept pulling up any dry grass around them then piled up piles of rocks around the wounded men to shield them from the sniper fire of the befuddled braves now retiring back to the hill. The fire eventually sputtered out. (Apparently 1831 was not a drought year.) Hours stretched out into an agonizingly long afternoon. Bullets continued to thwack into the trees and rocks around them, but at a more infrequent rate, and the treasure hunters sent back their replies. The Indians felt the wind shift around 4 pm and decided to give the Texian Barbecue plan another go. One brave soul snuck down to the creek bed to get things started. Armstrong picked him off but not before he managed to light up another conflagration. The second fire burned high and fearsome. Rezin figured the wall of flame sweeping towards them rose at least ten feet into the air. No escape this time. So he and Jim made plans for the last stand - huddle close around the wounded, back to back, fire as one into the onslaught, and go to work with their knives, hacking into the enemy tide as long as life still flowed, and go down in a tempest of blood and brains. Of course, the infamous Bowie knife hung impatiently at his hip for just such an occasion. It did butcher’s work at the Battle of the Sandbar; it hoped to do so again. But if the Caddoes and Tawakonies didn’t attack – then it was every man for himself until the flames licked at the breastworks. Then they would unite again to do battle with the flames as best they could. Both plans were pretty grim. Much to the Knife’s disappointment, the Indians stayed back and decided to let the fire do their work for them, using the smoke and flame as a cover to recover their casualties from the field of slaughter. All Bowie could do is wait for the ten foot sheet of flame to slam right into the breastworks. Their pack animals refused to wait though, tore loose from their tethers and high tailed it out of the smoky nightmare. The marooned men began to beat at the licking tongues of heat with blankets, bearskins, buffalo robes, and great handfuls of dirt. After a searing battle they managed to beat the blaze into submission but not without singing pretty much all they had – their hair and eyebrows to boot. Now all the brush that been part of their cover was burned up. All they had left were the stones in their broken down little fort. They needed more. Jim dropped down to his knees and his great knife sang as it drew free from the scabbard. Flashing blood red in the setting sun, the Arkansas toothpick sunk deep into earth instead of the human flesh it craved. Jim stabbed mightily to pry up heavy stones and dirt to stack the breastworks higher. His auburn hair gleamed in the sunset as if the last remnant of the wildfire now sat there glowing in a bed of coals. His eyes flared red with the sting of exhaustion and smoke and his throat cried out for water. The battle was now in its tenth hour. If the Caddos and Tawakonies attacked now, the fortune hunters’ fortune couldn’t hold. But Jim’s guardian angel/devil loved some him some Deus Ex Machina and dropped back down on the dueling grounds like some genie and pulled Bowie’s butt from out of the frying pan a third time. The Indians didn’t attack. Instead they drew further back to make preparations for a night encampment. Jim and Rezin couldn’t believe the enemy would just give up like that. Surely another assault would come in the morning after a good night’s rest. Taking advantage of the lull, the men continued to strengthen the defense while a couple of them made a mad dash for water at the nearby creek. A rifle crack pierced the gathering gloom but that would be the only shot at the prospectors the rest of the night. Night fell and the Bowie brothers settled down to rest as much as they could while still keeping watch for a possible night attack. As the night dragged on, the stars flickered to the mournful wails of the braves as they sang over their dead companions. Goosebumps rippled over the exhausted Anglos, for the wild, sad chants went on and on through the cold December night. About midnight the singing shattered as a single rifle shot barked out. Rezin whispered to Jim, “someone ending a poor devil’s misery.” Since the marrow-chilling death songs prevented them from sinking to an exhausted slumber, the Bowie brothers huddled together and tried to plan for the morrow. At first Jim thought to test his fate once more and make a bold night attack upon the camp. The darkness could make up for the huge difference in numbers. But as he looked around at his surviving band of brothers, and realized that only 6 were well enough to fight in the brutal hand to hand combat that would be involved in such a brazen attack, he wisely decided to stay put. Besides, he couldn’t leave all the wounded lying about with no one to defend them. So they waited for the sun to dawn on what could very well be their last day on earth, listening to a savage lullaby chanted from over the hill. Later that night, after the death songs faded away, Caiaphas Ham heard a noise in the dark as he stood watch. One of the escaped pack animals was back and seeking them out in the darkness. He immediately grabbed and tethered it. Then, closer to 5 am, Ham heard the sound of movement from the Indian camp. He leaped over to where Jim and Rezin had drifted off into slumber and shook them roughly awake. All the men grabbed their weapons, hearts in their mouths, ready for what surely would be an early morning attack. It wouldn’t be the last early morning battle that Bowie would lay in wait for. Yet still nothing came. About 8 AM two men crept slowly out to where the Indians built their camp. They were gone - along with the bodies of their dead and wounded. No one could believe it. As they moved about the abandoned camp the men claimed to count about 40 dead and about another 30 injured from just looking at the blood spots left on the grass. Of course, that’s not the most scientific way to count casualties and the number arrived at is probably exaggerated. The fortune hunters tallied up their own butcher’s bill: 2 men and 5 animals dead, 2 other men severely wounded. The rest of them also bore the marks of musket balls or arrowheads but not enough to totally incapacitate them. Still, even though the Indians apparently left, Jim was took no chances and decided to wait there for a while and recuperate some before trying to march all the way back to Bexar. Jim, in a later report to Ramon Musquiz, “political chief of Bexar”, wrote, “in order to intimidate them and impress them with the idea that we were still ready for a fight, we hoisted a flag on a long pole, as a sign of war; and for eight days we kept a fire constantly burning, hoping thereby to attract the attention of any friendly Comanche that might be in the neighborhood, and procure some animals for the transportation of our wounded and our camp property.” Six men essentially giving the finger to 100 or more angry Indian warriors. Typical Jim Bowie! That makeshift fort became Jim’s home for the next eight days. Nobody ever showed up in reply to their occasional musket fire. They sat alone in that wilderness, surrounded by nothing but rocks, oak trees and silence. Jim, ever the leader, personally attended to each of the wounded men. November 29th came and went with still no hostiles or friends poking their heads over the horizon. Jim and Rezin decided it was time to go home. No silver this trip, they would be lucky to return home with their lives. And so they rode out, stopping here and there along the way for a few days so that the wounded could rest. Buchanan’s leg turned infected and putrid. There was no help for it other than a witches brew of tree bark mixed with charcoal and ground meal, stuffed in a buffalo hide and wrapped around his leg as a poultice. Miraculously it did the trick, the leg showed miraculous signs of improvement six days further down the trail. On the night of December 6th, Bowie at last saw the warm gleam of lights from Bexar flickering on the horizon. The long ordeal was over. The men rode into quite a homecoming. Apparently the Comanche they met on the trail before the attack rode on to Bexar and told everyone that a superior force of savages wiped the Bowie party out. So the whole town believed the entire party were nothing but coyote droppings on the San Saba. James rushed back into the arms of an overjoyed 18 year old Ursula Veramendi. The beauty traded a bridal gown for widow’s weeds after only 7 months of marriage and now found her husband risen from the dead. I’m sure the reunion was rather boisterous…and tender. Three days later Bowie sat down in the Veramendi “palace” and wrote out his report of the battle. It’s a fairly barebones account of the expedition. Rezin wrote his own version two years later for the Saturday Evening Post. Caiaphas Ham wrote his bombastic version too with all the purple ink he could dip his pen in. But before the signature “God and Liberty” dried on the page of that first report, the name of James Bowie had already catapulted to mythic stature in his new homeland.  “James Bowie had been bold, as usual, and awfully fortunate, as usual. Certainly he had nothing to show for the ordeal. He did not find the mine (which of course was not there to be found in any case) and he lost McCaslan, the foreman of his mechanics. That was bound to set back the cotton mill establishment, and the sustained hardship cannot have helped with his old Sandbar wounds, which Ham saw continued to trouble him from time to time. Yet the party had done something that inevitably won the admiration of a frontier people. They had met an aboriginal foe that grossly outnumbered them, yet had killed several dozen – in true frontier fashion the number steadily rose in the telling – and wounded many more…it was the kind of episode that turned people into living legends, and thus he made some profit by the expedition after all. Until now he had been Veramendi’s son-in-law, a big-talking norteamericano who lived high and had the land hunger and promised much, and about whom there clung some vague stories of dark dealings and a vicious fight east of the Sabine. The San Saba battle transformed him in the eyes of tejanos and Texians alike into a leader of men, someone to look to and count on in a moment of peril. So far as his future in Texas was concerned, and as pointless in its origins as it may have been preordained in its conclusion, the San Saba scrape made James Bowie.” – Davis, pgs.306-7

copyright Ben Friberg 2017