Empire of the Summer Moon

by S. C. Gwynne

  But trade relationships did not mean that the fighting stopped. In the 1720s, Spain’s Comanche wars were just beginning. The pattern was always the same: constant raiding would lead the Spanish to launch punitive expeditions. These soldiers often got lost, especially when they wandered too far to the East, too far into Comancheria itself, and thus into the trackless, treeless high plains. Some never returned. On a number of occasions the Comanches simply ran off their horses, leaving the men to die of thirst or starvation. More often the soldiers would ride out of the presidio, kill the first Indians they found, and return home. Many could not tell one Indian tribe from another, and often did not care to. They recorded many such attacks, including a 1720 raid in which Comanches stole fifteen hundred horses. In 1746 there was a major attack on the Taos pueblo, and another against Abiquiu in 1747; at the relatively large Pecos pueblo in 1748 they killed 150 people.17 Large counterraids were mounted in 1716,18 1717, 1719, 1723, 1726, and 1742.19

  Not all were failures. In 1751, after three hundred mounted Comanches attacked the New Mexican pueblo of Galisteo, provincial governor Vélez Cachupin dispatched soldiers that pursued the Indians down the Arkansas River, possibly into modern-day Kansas. They caught up with them in a wood, set the wood on fire, killed one hundred one of them, and took the rest prisoners. The Spanish province of Texas, which was subjected to Comanche raids beginning in the 1750s, followed a similar pattern, though with even rarer success. Indian raids continued. Expeditions were launched. Comanches became ever more powerful. One measure of their growing power was the route Spanish expeditions took from Santa Fe to San Antonio in the eighteenth century. It crossed the Texas border and dived deep into Mexico before turning northward again. The point: The Spanish did not dare cross Comancheria, even with soldiers. To travel was to circumnavigate Comanche lands, as though they were sovereign. This never changed. By the time Spain finally ceded its New World possessions to Mexico in 1821, the Comanches were firmly in possession of the field. Their empire had grown, their Indian foes had been driven deep into Spanish territories. Most Texas missions and many in New Mexico had been shuttered; the once-vaunted Spanish soldiery rattled its sabers and stayed close to home.20

  The Spanish made many mistakes in their northern provinces. They made them with metronomic consistency and they made them over a colonial period that spanned two centuries. Though they were not always cruel and incompetent, they were cruel and incompetent enough of the time to cause great problems for themselves, and they were inevitably hamstrung by European-style military and civilian bureaucracies attempting to operate in a savage land of barren mesas and infinite horizons. The entire premise of their northern expansion—essentially a headlong and blindly optimistic dive into lands dominated by culturally primitive, mounted, and irremediably hostile Indians—was fatally flawed. But in an era of grave misjudgments the greatest miscalculation of all took place in the year 1758. It happened on a lovely bend of a limestone river, amid fields of wildflowers in the hill country of Texas, about one hundred twenty miles northwest of San Antonio, and resulted in a grisly, era-defining event that became known as the San Saba Massacre. The massacre, in turn, would draw Spain into its greatest military defeat in the New World. Both came at the hands of the Comanches. There were many reasons for what took place, and many Spanish officials played a part. But the man to whom history assigns responsibility was an officer named Don Diego Ortiz de Parrilla. That he was ill-fated, unlucky, and undeserving of much of the blame for what happened did not make it any easier for him. Parrilla’s story offers one of history’s clearest windows into what it was like in embattled, Comanche-tormented New Spain in the middle of the eighteenth century.

  The story begins in 1749. That year several Apache bands, including the numerous Lipans, rode into San Antonio to sign a peace treaty. They also proclaimed, to the somewhat flabbergasted padres, their earnest desire to enter into mission life and become humble and duty-bound subjects of the king of Spain.21 This was marvelous, astonishing news. These men were the same remorseless killers who had been raiding the Texas settlements with a fury ever since San Antonio’s founding in 1718, finding ever more imaginative ways to torture, maim, and eviscerate Spanish subjects. They appeared to be sincere. Over the next few years they would continue to approach the “brown robes” with the same deeply compelling idea: They wanted peace; they wanted their own mission and presidio; and they wanted them to be built in their homeland, which they said was in the vicinity of the San Saba River, near the present-day town of Menard, Texas.

  The idea took root. Even though soldiers and settlers in the area were suspicious of Apache motives, the priests, who were beside themselves with happiness at their good fortune, moved resolutely forward. Everyone agreed that peace with the Apaches was highly desirable. Their conversion to Catholicism, on the other hand, was a sort of mystical dream. No mission had ever been planted among the Apaches. A successful mission would represent a sort of imperial twin killing: a rare spiritual coup accompanied by hard, secular evidence of the soundness of Spanish colonial policy in the north. Though it was the subject of considerable debate, the idea moved slowly forward through the political and religious minefields of eighteenth-century New Spain. Expeditions were sent to scout locations in 1753 and 1755.22 Politics were played; skepticism was expressed concerning sullen and uncooperative Apaches who showed up only occasionally but always demanded gifts. The doubting civil authorities were slowly won over, in part because they had heard stories from prospectors of fabulous gold and silver lodes in the hill country.23 These had gone unexploited because of the presence of hostile Indians. The priests also hammered hard at the idea that without the missions the cunning and insidious French would attempt to advance their own interests in Texas. The French ploy always worked. By 1756 the idea had even found a champion—a prodigiously rich philanthropist from Mexico named Don Pedro Romero de Terreros, who offered to pay for all costs of two missions for the Apaches for a period of three years. His conditions: The missions must be built in Apache country, and they had to be run by his cousin, the ingratiating and boundlessly optimistic Father Alonso Giraldo de Terreros.24 With Terreros’s contracts in hand, and visions of gold mines and docile Apaches dancing in their heads, the viceregal office approved the project.

  The man appointed to oversee it was Colonel Parrilla. As far as anyone could tell, he was perfect for the job: a soldier with far more experience and frontier savvy than most of the neophytes and perfumed noblemen sent over the years from Spain to track Indians. Parrilla was a man of considerable ability. He had been governor of the provinces of Sonora and Coahuila, and had led successful campaigns against Apache bands in the Gila country of western New Mexico. He understood frontier conditions and was under no illusions about the Indian style of warfare. It was a measure of the importance of these missions that a man like Parrilla was put in charge of them. An even greater sign was that Parrilla reported not to the governors of Texas or New Mexico but directly to the viceroy in Mexico City.25 He proved himself immediately competent, supervising construction of a mission and presidio, arranging for the transport of fourteen hundred head of cattle and seven hundred head of sheep, planting of crops, and also the transport of a number of Tlascaltecan Indians from northern Mexico to help with the hoped-for Apache converts.

  In spite of this, Parrilla was deeply skeptical of the entire enterprise. As time went by, his suspicions had only gotten worse. Even before he left for San Saba, he had written the viceroy that he believed the Apaches were as treacherous as ever, and that they had shown few signs of making good on their promises. He was not reassured when, every so often, a few Lipans would appear at San Antonio to reassert their desire to become loyal subjects of the king, always requiring generous gifts that included cattle, horses, beans, salt, sugar, tobacco, hats, blankets, knives, bridles, kettles, ribbons, and beads.26 For the most part the Indians stayed away. On the eve of the move to the mission, when they should have been swooning in anticipation of simul
taneously receiving Jesus and pledging allegiance to the Spanish king, none could be found. Parrilla had delayed the move as long as he could, finally bowing to pressure from the ebullient Father Terreros. He had then balked at actually building the mission, but again succumbed to political pressure. On April 18, 1757, four priests reported for duty at the mission on the south bank of the San Saba River. Across the river, several miles away, one hundred soldiers were garrisoned in a stockade-fence presidio.

  All was finally in place, except for one problem: there were still no Apaches. One of the padres was sent out into the wilderness to recruit them, but once more there were none to be found. Then in June it seemed to the hopeful fathers that the miraculous moment had finally arrived. That month they discovered some three thousand Indians camped near the mission. This was more than they could have dreamed possible. But as the missionaries prepared to welcome their new charges, they learned the real reason for the gathering: the annual buffalo hunt. There was some talk of going north to fight other Indians, too, but no talk at all of coming into the mission. The Indians soon vanished.

  Parrilla, now certain that he had been duped, wrote the viceroy: “Your Excellency will understand what a difficult undertaking is the formation of missions for the heathen Apache nation, and will see that the favorable reports that were sent in to that Captaincy General concerning the matter were direct results of the unreliability that has always characterized the missionaries and inhabitants of the province of Texas in every occurrence that has concerned them.”27 Meanwhile, three of the four priests had also lost confidence in the venture, leaving Father Terreros as its sole supporter. “We find no reason,” wrote the dissenting padres, “why we should remain with this enterprise, which we consider ill-conceived and without foundation from the beginning. . . . Having fully learned the wishes of the Indians, we find no other motive [for friendship] than the hope of receiving gifts.”28 Parrilla tried to abandon the mission project altogether, proposing that the presidio alone be moved north to protect the mines, with no success. Though he was bitterly frustrated, and not a little nervous about manning an outpost so far beyond the frontier, he had his viceregal orders.

  In any event, it was already too late. That fall a few passing Apache bands told the padres that a great invading army of norteños was on the way to do battle with them, a force so great that the Apaches could not even trust the Spanish to protect them. (“Northerners” was what the Apaches called the Comanches, because they invariably came at them from the north.) While this must have seemed to Parrilla as far-fetched as everything else the Apaches had said and promised, this time they were telling the truth. It was a truth that would soon reveal the real reason for the Apaches’ odd behavior.

  The San Saba Mission proposal was indeed, as Parrilla had suspected, a sham. The Lipans and other bands never had any intention of converting to Christianity. But what neither Parrilla nor any Spanish official had understood was the reason for the deception, and thus they had no idea of the extent of the treachery that had been perpetrated upon them. What had in fact happened, while the padres were busy shining up their sacramental vessels, was that the Comanche empire—an area far, far larger than any Spaniard suspected in those years—had arrived precisely on their doorstep.29 The Spanish had been cleverly lured well beyond the actual boundaries of the Apache lands. The San Saba country was not their homeland at all: It was Comancheria proper, and a Spanish fort there amounted to a declaration of war on the Comanches. This was exactly what the Apaches wanted: They wanted their dire enemy destroyed. Or at least stopped in its relentless southward sweep.

  It was, in most ways, an excellent plan. But it did not work. Spring of 1758 brought cool rains and abundant wildflowers to the San Saba country. As the Apaches expected, it also brought Comanches, riding hard under a full moon. (So many raids were made by moonlight that in Texas a full, bright spring or summer moon is still known as a Comanche Moon.) On the morning of March 2, the priests in the mission noticed that the Apaches had disappeared. Then came yells from beyond the mission walls. A group of Indians on horseback had stolen all sixty-two of their horses. Suspecting that he was dealing only with horse thieves, Parrilla dispatched fifteen soldiers to pursue them. The soldiers quickly realized that the trouble was much bigger than they had thought, and returned fearfully to the fort. They reported that the hills were alive with enemies.

  Parrilla now rode to the mission, where three priests and a handful of Indians and servants were protected by five soldiers, to beg Father Terreros to leave for the far greater security of the fort. Terreros refused, insisting that the Indians would never harm him. He was wrong. On the morning of March 16, 1758, mass was interrupted by the noise of whooping Indians. When the padres ran to the parapets, they saw a jaw-dropping sight: On all sides of the mission were gathered some two thousand warriors, many painted black and crimson, Plains Indians in the full regalia of war. They were mostly Comanches. As with many Comanche raids, there were also outriders, in this case Wichitas, with whom the Comanches had recently made peace. (In later years, the outriders tended to be Kiowas; in both cases they usually rode under Comanche leadership.) They were armed with bows, lances, and muskets. For a short time, they pretended to be friendly, insisting they had come to offer their allegiance to the Spaniards; the tall, stolid Comanche chief even accepted gifts, though he did so disdainfully, as though the givers were not worth his consideration. Then the looting and killing started.

  The first to die was Father Terreros, shot with a musket. He was followed by a soldier who was guarding him. Others were shot or hacked to death. The Indians set fire to the buildings of the mission. The dead priests were stripped, their bodies mutilated. One of them, Padre Santiesteban, was decapitated. Meanwhile, the attackers busied themselves plundering the rich storerooms, killing cattle, and creating mayhem. When Parrilla heard of the attack, two miles away in the fort, he sent out a squad of nine soldiers to reinforce the mission. With more than three hundred people at the presidio, mostly women and children (families of the soldiers), he dared not send more. But his soldiers never reached the mission. They were almost immediately attacked, and all were shot or lanced. Two were killed outright, and the rest dragged themselves, wounded and terrified, back to the fort. That was the last rescue attempt Parrilla would make. The padres, who had chosen to stay in the mission against his orders, were on their own. Of the mission’s inhabitants, only a handful survived, taking shelter inside one of the buildings that was not burned. The Indians, meanwhile, carried on a three-day orgy fueled by the provisions of the mission, while Parrilla and his soldiers remained timidly and powerlessly inside the presidio’s high timber walls, which the Indians never attacked. On the fourth day, Parrilla finally judged it safe to investigate the damage. It was a scene of total desolation. Almost the entire mission was destroyed. Ten people, including three priests, had been killed.

  What happened next amounted to a sort of wholesale panic on the northern frontier of New Spain, set off by the previously unthinkable notion that Spanish presidios and missions were now vulnerable to Comanche attack. This was especially true of the people in San Antonio, who believed that Indians were now headed to the provincial capital and who quickly barricaded themselves even though they had only a week’s provisions. So terrified were they that they abandoned all of the cattle the residents owned—some two thousand head in all—because they could find no one brave enough to guard them. It was the same or worse in other settlements. After the massacre, Parrilla requested immediate relief from other forts. None came. He protested to the viceroy, who sent orders to Spanish forts in Mexico to send help. Still, nothing happened. Fully three sets of viceregal orders had little or no effect. The most Parrilla ever got was a few soldiers. By that time the invaders were far away.

  News of the attack on San Saba Mission and the killing and mutilation of the priests spread rapidly through the Spanish settlements. If the first reaction was largely blind fear, it was quickly replaced with cold fu
ry, and a desire for bloody revenge. This was especially true in the viceroy’s office in Mexico City. The garrisons in Texas that had refused to send troops to relieve San Saba were now summarily ordered to supply men and arms to a punitive expedition that would be headed by Parrilla himself. A force of 600 men was soon raised, consisting of Spanish regulars plus a host of Indian auxiliaries, including Coahuiltecans and 134 Apaches. It was, quite deliberately, the greatest expedition that Spanish money and might could buy. Never had such a large number of men been dispatched to punish Indians. It marched north in August 1759 in search of Comanches. Like most Spanish officers before him, especially those who knew what they were doing, Parrilla refused to venture out into the heart of the Comanche lands on the Great Plains, though his Indian scouts assured him that this is where the Comanches were. Instead he hung to the east, in the timbered country on the fringes of the plains. He marched for many days, and finally found an Indian encampment.

  They were Tonkawas. Even though Parrilla almost certainly knew this—from his Indian scouts—he did what so many of his predecessors had done. He attacked anyway. Vengeance was vengeance, and Indians, to some extent, were Indians. So he surrounded the Tonkawa village and attacked with his six hundred soldiers and killed seventy-five of them and took one hundred fifty women and children prisoners, to be taken back to San Antonio for “reduction”—conversion to Christianity and forced assimilation. He may or may not have understood that the Tonkawas were bitter enemies of the Comanches. (In the nineteenth century they would be used with lethal effect by white soldiers against Comanches, especially as trackers.) The army continued north.