by Bruce Olds
Travis Diary, Nov. 10, 1834:
What is this word duende that I overhear certain of the Mexicans using on occasion? I’ve often asked, but can grasp no answer that makes sense to me. They speak of alma cómo la fuerza, soul as force. What does that mean? They refer to un grito de dolores de salvaje maravilla, a cry of pain of wild wonder. I fail to make heads or tails. But it intrigues me. Clearly, it must be some kind of quality, human quality, or perhaps a condition of some sort, existential condition. I do not know. I believe the Mexicans have a different way of speaking of such things, a way of endowing death with life, even vitality. They seem to feel life is more complete, más todo, in partnership with death, as if death is its missing companion piece. I have heard them say that death looks forward to life. Curious. Dar a los muertos un poco de vida, they say—give the dead a little life. Certainly they seem at home with it, at their ease, almost friendly, certainly familiar. They pray to skulls here, those of their loved ones. They dance with skeletons, osamentas. They prepare ofrendas, offerings of food and drink for what they believe are the dead’s living souls. They designate a day, el día los muertos, jornada del muerto, to celebrate them. All of this can only strike one as macabre, and yet they seem quite content, even joyous about benefiting by this relationship. I once asked one of our Mexicans here, one of our “old ones,” an elder, whether he wasn’t afraid of death. No, he replied evenly, no hay miedo, porque la vida nos has curado de miedo—there is no fear because life has cured us of fear. There is only duende, he said. Duende, solamente. That mysterious word again. Not that every last thing is or must be possessed of a literal meaning. Some few things, perhaps many things are possessed of no meaning at all, at least none that is discernible, none that parses, and, for that, perhaps, are in their being, their presence, more profound. That which is too clear, too precise, too concrete, after all, is, as a rule, difficult to understand. Don Esteban dismisses it as, “so much Mexican metaphysics,” but I believe there may be more to it than that. I do not know, but I believe that I would like to.
SANTA ANNA
When Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebron—also known as he much preferred to be known, demanded to be known, as, “The Napoleon of the West” or, alternatively, The Imposer of Unforeseen Destinies—when S.A. ascended to the presidency of Mexico as a member of his country’s Liberal Party, we reckoned that matters were about to inflect in our favor at last: that the Anti-immigration Law that Don Esteban had lobbied against so long and so diligently would be summarily repealed; that the many military garrisons throughout the territory would be dismantled; that the astronomical tariffs on imported goods from the States would be lowered if not eliminated; and that laws against the formation of local militias and ownership of chattel would be relaxed.
Perhaps, we dared pray, Texas even would be granted some form of independence.
It was this last matter on behalf of which Stephen Austin intended to lobby when he undertook to travel the 1,000 miles south, our own newly-drafted Texas state constitution in hand, to meet with the new president, our putative champion, in Mexico City late that fall. Instead, in the wake of their discussions, as we in time received reports from that place, he found himself by S.A.’s explicit order, under arrest, clamped in irons and dungeoned in solitary confinement as a political prisoner. With no specific criminal charge brought—there was talk of a trumped up “sedition” case, but no formal papers ever were filed—he remained unindicted throughout the course of his 14-month calabozo-ing. We were incredulous.
Locking up Stephen Austin was, of course, an outrage. It outraged everyone, nor was that outrage confined merely to the colony. In our official capacities as colonial administrators, Willie and myself immediately wrote and published in the local press a series of outraged broadsides which we sent on to Santa Anna, in outrage, demanding Don Esteban’s release. Meanwhile, there was outraged talk of escape plans and jailbreaks and night raids, all of which remained precisely that—talk. Outraged talk.
What was not talk, outraged or otherways, was what Santa Anna presumed to do next. Namely, in a power grab so nakedly audacious that it would have stunned Machiavelli, he dissolved the Mexican National Congress, dissolved each of the local state legislatures and their state militias, abolished the Federal Constitution, declared himself Supreme Dictator—Military Despot was nearer the truth—garrisoned thousands of Mexican soldiers throughout Texas, and in the presence of the U.S. Consul threatened to, “march on the Capital and lay Washington City in ashes,” should the United States dare intervene.
Those possessed of the temerity to oppose him, he and his army summarily crushed, as he directly did the recalcitrant state of Zacatecas during a two day spree of rape and ransack that resulted not only in the massacre of that state’s militia, but the mass murder of 2,000 of its citizens. Message sent, message received. The brute and brutal days had come again.
Government-sanctioned massacre as a calculated extension of his political will, was, as we were to learn soon enough, something that Santa Anna excelled at. It was as if, in order to survive, to feel more alive, as alive as possible in himself, he needed to inspire fear in others. This despot and tyrant who, because he feared the worst in everyone else, felt the need to engage in behaviors designed to make others fear the worst in him. Needed, that is, to embrace cruelty and spread terror and exact revenge as a way of preventing himself from being consumed by his own inadequacies. To release and discharge the rage with which he daily lived, by visiting it upon others, regardless of their guilt or innocence.
Nor, by the way, is all of this theorem.
Not that any of us felt anything but sheer loathing for the man, but in my estimation, Señor Santana was one pitifully sad case. Not that that sadness was unmerited, for he damn well had earned it, and a damnsight more, owing to his unremitting intrigues and duplicitous subterfuges, intrigues and subterfuges that would see him, whether through rigged elections, backroom machinations, mob rule or military coup, ascend to and lose the Mexican presidency—and along the way a left leg, to grapeshot—eleven times over 27 years. Until, at last, he had succeeded in so alienating his people, a people so wearied of his public posturing, narcissistic ambition and amoral opportunism, ill-advised and incompetent military adventuring and meddlesome treachery—not to mention his profligate gambling, indiscriminate whoring (he sired well over a half-dozen bastard children) and predatory plundering of the public purse—that, the government having seized his assets and confiscated his properties (he owned, by then, a dozen haciendas and 10,000s of square miles of land) he was left little choice but “perpetual exile.”
And so the two decades of nomadic banishment began: first to Cuba, then Jamaica, then Colombia, then St. Thomas, then the Dominican, finally to the Bahamas, until, 80 years old, crippled, blind and destitute, he was permitted to return to the country he so often had both spectacularly failed and unconscionably abused that he might die alone and despised, though not forgotten utterly.
But all that was still ahead, far, far in the future. For the present, as if his maltreatment of Austin was not enough, as it so clearly was not, then did this blennorhagic so-called Napoleon order his War Department, specifically his fanatically anti-American Minister of War, José María Tornel, to issue “Circular Number Five,” Octavilla Numero Cinco, more infamously known as The Tornel Decree, upon the publication of which he, S.A., remarked:
With this decree we hereby put the American pirates, cabalists, and conspirators on notice that no longer shall we abide their ingratitude towards and perfidious abuse of the Mexican people whose natural disposition is to be humane and compassionate in all things. Forgetting what they owe the supreme government of this nation which admitted them to its nurturing bosom, gave them fertile lands to cultivate and allowed them all the means to live in comfort and abundance, they nonetheless have risen against that same government for the criminal purpose of dismembering the territory of this Republic. In consequence their
day is now done. They ought not have been permitted to settle here in the first instance. If they are wise they will heed the words of this decree and leave of their own accord before they are compelled to leave by other less peaceful means.
The Decree
MEXICO CITY
War and Navy Department
Circular No. 5:
The government has received information that in the United States of North America meetings are being called for the avowed purpose of getting up and fitting out expeditions against the Republic of Mexico in order to send assistance to the rebels, foster the civil war, and inflict upon our country all the calamities by which it is followed.
In the United States of North America, our ancient ally, these expeditions have been furnished with every kind of ammunition, by means of which the revolted colonies of Tejas are enabled to resist and fight the nation from which they received but immense benefits. The government is also positively informed that these acts, condemned by the wisdom of the laws of the United States, are also reported by the general government with which the best intelligence and greatest harmony still prevail.
However, as these adventurers and speculators have succeeded in escaping the penalties inflicted by the laws of their own country, it becomes necessary to adopt measures for their punishment, and so the President, anxious to repress these aggressions which constitute not only an offense to the sovereignty of the Mexican nation, but also to evident violation of international laws as they are generally adopted, has ordered the following decrees to be enforced.
1. Foreigners landing on the coast of the republic or invading its territory by land, armed with the intention of attacking our country, will be deemed pirates and dealt with as such.
2. All foreigners who will import either by sea or land, in the places occupied by the rebels, either arms or ammunition of any kind for the use of them, will be deemed pirates and punished as such.
3. The rebels themselves, and their leaders, one Travis high among them, being not only traitors, but citizens of no nation presently at war with the republic, and fighting under no recognized flag, are hereby deemed de facto pirates who have forfeited all legal standing and entitlement to judicial consideration, and will be dealt with summarily as such, the government of the republic arrogating to itself the right to execute them by hanging or firing squad.
—Jose Maria Tornel, Secretaria de Guerra y Marina
And then there was this addendum, signed by Santa Anna himself: “Immediately and without excuse, we must proceed to the apprehension of the ungrateful and bad citizen Barret Travis, fugitive head of the Revolutionary Party, and cause him to be placed at the disposal of the principal Commandant of the State in order that he may be tried and punished as he is an injury to the inhabitants of Tejas and it is a shame that they should in cold blood be tolerating his excuses when he should have been punished long since.”
Up Country
Word of the order for my apprehension and arrest issued out of Matamoros reached San Felipe, 350 miles north, with just time enough for Willie and myself to saddle up and light out. Get the hell hellbent gone and away. Until further notice we were hunted men. Manhunted men. Should our pursuers, those Federales, have caught up to us, succeeded in hunting us down, we knew we were dead men.
Losing ourselves “Up Colony,” we spent the month of August on the run, incommunicado, lying low, ghosts gone to ground. Wild country up there, bush country, no man’s land, all-but-Indian country, that of the Comanche, Caddo, Witchita, Waco. We pushed north. Pillar to post, hand to mouth, catch as catch can, but always north. Further north, seldom lingering more than a day or two in any one place.
Camp, break camp, decamp. Pick up, pack up, vamoose, become vapor. Pushpushpush. Skirted Comancheria itself, its southeast edge. All of which was terra incognita to me, though Willie claimed to know it, “better’n I know my own handyanked pecker.”
Later I listed, or mapped actually, mapped as much as I could piece together the where and with whom we had put up:
Gay Hill, 50 miles up the Brazos, a few uneventful days with Horatio Chriesman, Don Esteban’s Chief of Surveyors, his place on La Bahia Trace. (Willie, it quickly became apparent, knew everyone. Or, where he did not, knew someone who did.)
Fanthrop, 40 miles west, with a Cornish couple as brave as they were graciously gregarious, Postmaster Henry and Rachel Fanthorp, corncrib out back of their newly-built dogtrot cabin.
Tenoxtitlan, backtracking east, another 50 miles north, stowed-away courtesy of Princeton Theological Seminary-educated Reverend Peter Fullinwider and his bride, Balinda, faithful Presbyterians both. (They raised orchards. Invited us to load up on unripened apples, peaches, pears, persimmons, pawpaws, plums. We frighted off bears for mul and huckle berries.)
Sarahville, technically Sarahville de Viesca, another 75 miles north, stashed loftside above the stables of Arabian horsebreeder Clack Robertson, his place at the Falls of the Brazos.
Parker, another 30 miles north and east, Elder John and Duty “Granny” Parker’s “Indian-proof fort” at the disconsolate, desolate headwaters of the Navasota.
As such potentially sidewise experiences go, ours, in the end, thank god, largely was bereft of high drama save for that which unfolded night after night across the most vivid, what I can only describe as graphically paganistic dream sequence of my life.
Not that looking over one’s shoulder 24 hours a day, day after Moruga-hot day, hardset on outdodging death, or sleeping most of a week raw-sore in the saddle, or hip-slung highmost in trees, or basted in mud to one’s knees beneath reeds and branches and weeds brined to the bone burnt black to a scab clawed bloody by sawbriar and devil’s hair, or being sucked on by leeches and eaten half-alive by bat-sized skeeters, or driven mostways mad by gadflies, or waking to a nest of scorpions in one’s boot or chiggers at one’s crotch or up one’s arse, is half-fun, but we sidestepped death by water moc or rattler or timber wolf, the Comanch did not lift our skullcaps, we saw neither hide nor hearsay of the Mex, and Willie’s friends, our fellow Texians, never refused us a gnaw or a brace or a bivouac or the send-off of a good Protestant prayer as the occasion may have engendered it or we solicited of them much the same.
With news up from home that “the coast’s all clear,” we were back in San Felipe by the end of the month to huzzahs, hugs and fandangos all around where, cheered on to it by the our local citizenry, I publicly avowed, that, “If they want me now, they know where to find me. I’m not going anywhere. No more running. No more hiding. If they want me now, here I am. If they want me now, come and get me. If they want me now, let them try.”
Travis Diary, Oct. 4, 1835:
War at last! Word arrives of an affray gone off yesterday at Zeke Williams’s Gonzales farm and our intent, once our numbers are sufficient, to advance upon Bejar and oust the Mexican garrison there under the command of Santana’s brother-in-law, Cos. This is it. It has come. S.A.’s campaign to disarm us, castrate, cut off our cojones, geld us bloody, to leave us defenseless without the means or wherewithal to resist. Details trickle in from Gonzales of 100 Mex dragoons sent to fetch off one of our home-made cannon and our refusal at gunpoint to permit it. Come and Take It! A skirmish leaving two Mex dead, not a one of ours. They are routed, in retreat. Hurrah boys! Huzzahs Clint Neill! Kudos Jimmy Fannin! “We flogged them like hell!” Our Lex & Concord Moment, and me, here, flat on my back with this fucking fucking flu! “Pioneering is not feeling well,” wrote Anne Bradstreet. And frontiering, dear poetess, is delirium. Still, damn! How I hate missing history.
Travis Diary, Nov. 28, 1835:
Once more I find myself upon my return to San Felipe the abashed beneficiary of a most flattering welcome by the good citizens here for doing no more than duty required in leading the late raid that won for our side without loss of a single man some 300 of the enemy’s mounts in the vicinity of the San Miguel Creek 60 miles southward of Bejar. Gratified as I am by the published commendation affirming my “personal wo
rth, distinguished service and quiet valor” in this affair, my concern at present is for those hundreds of my countrymen who have chosen to remain behind to sustain what is now well in excess of our month-long investment of that Bejar place. Pray God that they may succeed in securing their object with but a minimum of blood shed or life lost.
Travis Diary, Dec. 12, 1835:
Cos has surrendered! We have taken Bejar at last, and, if reports are to be believed, with but four dead and two dozen wounded! Surely this is the best of Christmas miracles. This night, jubilation and jamboree. This night, for Rebecca.
Travis Diary, Dec. 16, 1835:
As the new year approaches, no further word about duende. No más palabras. Frustrating, este rompecabézas. I continue to inquire, probe, make of myself a damn nuisance. But no. Nada. For now, no better understanding, firmer grasp. And yet, I am persuaded more now than ever that unless and until I can excavate this word, penetrate fully, wholly, its many levels, step through its bottom to lift it topside, evacuate this word as if it were a part of my own body, unless and until that moment of….disinterment, my inexplicable love for this place, this Tejas, must, at least in part, una parte más importante, remain stillborn. There is a dark secret here, I am convinced of it. But am I close to unlocking it? Any closer than I have ever been? To intuiting the music of its many meanings? No. I suspect not. I suspect that I am not close. I am not close at all.
Chaz
I wanted my son. It had been long enough. More than four years. I was intent now upon insisting that I should have my son. Be granted sole custody of my son. If Rosanna wanted her freedom, as she had some months past written to me, if she wished to be free to marry this Sam Cloud person back in Alabama, then I wanted my son. She could keep her daughter, who for all I knew was not my daughter. I wanted and would have my son.
