Dawson Massacre | |||||||
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Part of the Woll Expedition | |||||||
A plaque at Monument Hill Park marking the graves of those killed in the Dawson Massacre and the Black Bean Incident. | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Republic of Texas | Mexico | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Nicholas Mosby Dawson † | Adrián Woll | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
54 militia | 500 cavalry 2 artillery pieces | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
36 killed 15 captured | 30 killed 60-70 wounded [1] | ||||||
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The Dawson massacre, also called the Dawson expedition, was an incident in which 36 Texian militiamen were killed by Mexican soldiers on September 17, 1842 [2] near San Antonio de Bexar (now the U.S. city of San Antonio, Texas). The event occurred during the Battle of Salado Creek, which ended with a Texian victory. [3] This was among numerous armed conflicts over the area between the Rio Grande and Nueces rivers, which the Republic of Texas tried to control after achieving independence in 1836.
On April 21, 1836, the independence of the Republic of Texas was secured by a decisive victory over the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto. Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its southern border but had sufficient military power to control only land north of the Nueces River. Although Antonio López de Santa Anna, the ruler of Mexico, signed the Treaties of Velasco ceding Texas territory from Mexican control, the treaty was never ratified by the Mexican Government. Santa Anna repudiated the treaty once he was released from Texan custody.
Mexican forces and allied Cherokee guerrillas under Vicente Cordova and Chicken Trotter continued to resist Texan attempts to occupy the area between the Rio Grande and Nueces rivers. For the Cherokees, it was a war of vengeance following the massacre of Cherokee and Delaware Indians by Texas Army regulars in the summer of 1839. For the Mexicans, it was to prove they could return to Texas at will.
On September 11, 1842, a Mexican force of 1,600 entered San Antonio and took control there, with minimal resistance from the Texans. When the news of the fall of San Antonio reached Gonzales, Mathew Caldwell formed a militia of 210 men and marched toward San Antonio. Caldwell's troops made camp about thirteen miles east of the town, near Salado Creek, and planned their attack on the Mexicans. [4] [5]
On September 17, Caldwell sent a small band of rangers to draw the Mexicans toward the battlefield he had chosen. At least 1,000 Mexican soldiers moved out of San Antonio to attack the Texans. A separate company of 54 Texans, mostly from Fayette County, under the command of Nicholas Mosby Dawson, arrived at the battlefield and began advancing on the rear of the Mexican Army. The Mexican commander, General Adrián Woll, afraid of being surrounded, sent 500 of his cavalry soldiers and two cannons to attack the group. [3] The Texans were able to hold their own against the Mexican rifles, but once the cannons got within range, their fatalities mounted quickly. Dawson realized the situation was hopeless and raised a white flag of surrender.
In the fog of war, both sides continued to fire and Dawson was killed. The battle was over after a little more than one hour. It ended with 36 Texans dead, fifteen captured and two escaped. At the front, Caldwell's men had repelled the Mexican attacks and inflicted heavy casualties. Woll was forced to retreat to San Antonio and then towards the Rio Grande.
The next morning Caldwell's troops located the Dawson battleground and buried the dead Texans in shallow graves. The dead Mexicans were not buried. Caldwell then unsuccessfully pursued Woll's forces south as they retreated from San Antonio. Caldwell returned to San Antonio, after the Mexicans successfully recrossed the Rio Grande. [4] [5]
In late summer of 1848 (after Texas had become a U.S. state), a group of La Grange citizens retrieved the remains of the men killed in the Dawson Massacre from their burial site near Salado Creek. These remains, and the remains of the men killed in the failed Mier Expedition, were reinterred in a common tomb in a concrete vault on a bluff one mile south of La Grange. The grave site is now part of the Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites. [6]
The Republic of Texas, or simply Texas, was a breakaway state in North America that existed from March 2, 1836, to February 19, 1846. It shared borders with Mexico, the Republic of the Rio Grande, and the United States of America.
The Texas Revolution was a rebellion of colonists from the United States and Tejanos against the centralist government of Mexico in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. Although the uprising was part of a larger one, the Mexican Federalist War, that included other provinces opposed to the regime of President Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican government believed the United States had instigated the Texas insurrection with the goal of annexation. The Mexican Congress passed the Tornel Decree, declaring that any foreigners fighting against Mexican troops "will be deemed pirates and dealt with as such, being citizens of no nation presently at war with the Republic and fighting under no recognized flag". Only the province of Texas succeeded in breaking with Mexico, establishing the Republic of Texas. It was eventually annexed by the United States.
The Nueces River is a river in the U.S. state of Texas, about 315 miles (507 km) long. It drains a region in central and southern Texas southeastward into the Gulf of Mexico. It is the southernmost major river in Texas northeast of the Rio Grande. Nueces is Spanish for nuts, specifically pecans; early settlers named the river after the numerous pecan trees along its banks.
The Grass Fight was a small battle during the Texas Revolution, fought between the Mexican Army and the Texian Army. The battle took place on November 26, 1835, just south of San Antonio de Béxar in the Mexican region of Texas. The Texas Revolution had officially begun on October 2 and by the end of the month the Texians had initiated a siege of Béxar, home of the largest Mexican garrison in the province. Bored with the inactivity, many of the Texian soldiers returned home; a smaller number of adventurers from the United States arrived to replace them. After the Texian Army rejected commander-in-chief Stephen F. Austin's call to launch an assault on Béxar on November 22, Austin resigned from the army. The men elected Edward Burleson their new commander-in-chief.
Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites are two state historic sites managed by the Texas Historical Commission. They are located at 29.888° -96.876°, just off U.S. Route 77, south of La Grange, Texas. The sites sit on a sandstone bluff 200 feet above the Colorado River. Monument Hill is a memorial to the men who died in the Dawson Massacre and in the Black Bean Episode of the ill-fated Mier Expedition.
This is a timeline of the Republic of Texas, spanning the time from the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836, up to the transfer of power to the State of Texas on February 19, 1846.
The Mier expedition was an unsuccessful military operation launched in November 1842 by a Texian militia against Mexican border settlements; it was related to the Somervell expedition. It included a major battle at Ciudad Mier on December 26 and 27, 1842, which the Mexicans won. The Texian attack was launched partly in hopes of financial gain and partly in retaliation for the Dawson Massacre earlier that year, in which thirty-six Texas militia were killed by the Mexican Army. Both conflicts were part of continuing efforts by each side to control the land between the Rio Grande and Nueces River. The Republic of Texas believed that the territory had been ceded to it in the Treaties of Velasco by which it gained independence, but Mexico did not agree. The expedition is best known for the Black Bean Episode, in which the Mexican Army decimated escaped prisoners, selecting for execution one in ten prisoners by drawing beans from a pot.
Mier, also known as El Paso del Cántaro, is a city in Mier Municipality in Tamaulipas, located in northern Mexico near the Rio Grande, just south of Falcon Dam. It is 90 miles (140 km) northeast of Monterrey on Mexican Federal Highway 2.
The Council House Fight, often referred to as the Council House Massacre, was a fight between soldiers and officials of the Republic of Texas and a delegation of Comanche chiefs during a peace conference in San Antonio on March 19, 1840. About 35 Comanche men and women under chief, Mukwooru represented just fraction of the Penateka band of the southern portion of the Comanche tribe. He knew he had no authority to speak for the Southern tribes as a whole and thus, any discussions of peace would be simply a farce. However, if Mukwooru could re-establish a lucrative trade with the San Antonian's perhaps a peace, by proxy, could be established. Just as the Comanche had done had been done for centuries in San Antonio, Santa Fe and along the Rio Grande. They would rob one settlement and sell to the other.
Salado Creek is a waterway in San Antonio that runs from northern Bexar County for about 38 miles (61 km) to the San Antonio River near Buena Vista.
The Texas–Indian wars were a series of conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians during the 19th-century. Conflict between the Plains Indians and the Spanish began before other European and Anglo-American settlers were encouraged—first by Spain and then by the newly Independent Mexican government—to colonize Texas in order to provide a protective-settlement buffer in Texas between the Plains Indians and the rest of Mexico. As a consequence, conflict between Anglo-American settlers and Plains Indians occurred during the Texas colonial period as part of Mexico. The conflicts continued after Texas secured its independence from Mexico in 1836 and did not end until 30 years after Texas became a state of the United States, when in 1875 the last free band of Plains Indians, the Comanches led by Quahadi warrior Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.
La Grange is a city in Fayette County, Texas, United States, near the Colorado River. La Grange is in the center of the Texas-German belt. The population was 4,391 at the 2020 census, and in 2018 the estimated population was 4,632. La Grange is the county seat of Fayette County.
The Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía, known more commonly as Presidio La Bahía, or simply La Bahía, is a fort constructed by the Spanish Army. It became the center of a community that developed as the modern-day city of Goliad, Texas, United States. The current location dates to 1747.
The Battle of Lipantitlán, also known as the Battle of Nueces Crossing, was fought along the Nueces River on November 4, 1835 between the Mexican Army and Texian insurgents, as part of the Texas Revolution. After the Texian victory at the Battle of Goliad, only two Mexican garrisons remained in Texas, Fort Lipantitlán near San Patricio and the Alamo Mission at San Antonio de Béxar. Fearing that Lipantitlán could be used as a base for the Mexican army to retake Goliad and angry that two of his men were imprisoned there, Texian commander Philip Dimmitt ordered his adjutant, Captain Ira Westover, to capture the fort.
The Yowani were a historical group of Choctaw people who lived in Texas. Yowani was also the name of a preremoval Choctaw village.
John Christopher Columbus Hill was a Texan citizen who, at age 13, accompanied his brother and father on the Mier Expedition. He was captured, adopted by the Mexican president Santa Anna, and eventually became a successful engineer in the United States and Mexico.
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The Córdova Rebellion, in 1838, was an uprising instigated in and around Nacogdoches, Texas. Alcalde Vicente Córdova and other leaders supported the Texas Revolution as long as it espoused a return to the Constitution of 1824.
The Battle of Salado Creek was a decisive engagement in 1842 which repulsed the final Mexican invasion of the Republic of Texas. Colonel Mathew Caldwell of the Texas Rangers led just over 200 militia against an army of 1,600 Mexican Army soldiers and Cherokee warriors, and defeated them outside of San Antonio de Bexar along Salado Creek. As a result of this action, French-Mexican commander General Adrián Woll retreated south and back into Mexico.
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