The Raid on the Norias Division of the King Ranch was an attack August 8, 1915 by a large band of disaffected Mexicans and Tejanos in southern Texas. It was one of the many small battles of the Mexican Revolution that spilled over into United States soil and resulted in an increased effort by the United States Army to defend the international border. Five to fifteen attackers were killed in the raid and more among the wounded may have died shortly afterwards.
When Mexico ceded its claim on Texas to the United States, the treaty protected the rights of Tejanos who became U. S. citizens. There was never any official policy to force them off their land, but banking practices at the time made it difficult for people of color to obtain credit from banks.[1] With each drought and economic depression during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tejanos would lose land which Anglos would then buy up, increasing the size of their holdings. Hispanics on both sides of the border between Texas and Mexico came to hate the ranches as they saw businesses like the King Ranch increase their land in the hard times when Tejanos were losing theirs. The rapid expansion of railroads into south Texas in the late nineteenth century also brought a flood of Anglo Americans wanting land when these large ranches then subdivided. This drove up property prices as well as taxes, increasing Hispanic animosity against the United States and Anglos in general. Into this tense situation the infighting and turmoil of the Mexican Revolution sent waves of refugees north across the border, rapidly increasing demand for goods, services and competition for land and jobs.[2] In January 1915 the Plan of San Diego was drafted by Mexican political prisoners in Monterrey, Mexico which called for Hispanics, Blacks and Japanese in the U. S. border states to rebel against the government and kill all white male inhabitants more than sixteen years old as a first step in creating their own republic.[3] The Plan came to light when one its signatories entered the U. S. to gather support for Venustiano Carranza, leader of one of the factions in the revolution, but was arrested by officials in Texas who supported Pancho Villa.[4] It was found in his belongings and he was taken to Brownsville where he was questioned by Immigration Service inspectors there. Scholars believe the Plan was supported by Carranza as a means of gathering favor for his faction in the revolution.[5] During the years of this strife, though, it was believed that Germany had a hand in the border friction, hoping to distract the United States from involvement in the First World War by destabilizing relations between the U.S. and its southern neighbor. But relations between Carranza himself and Germany at the time made this impossible.[6] In any case, the overall plan was so unrealistic that it changed many times and resulted in only a few small raids into Texas from the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The raid on Norias Division was one of these.
Norias, a southern division of the 825,000-acre King Ranch, is located about seventy miles north of Brownsville and about sixty miles south of Kingsville in what was at the time the newly-formed Kenedy County.[7][8] A watering stop for the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway, the site itself resembled a hamlet.[9] Fifty feet west of the tracks was the two-story wooden building that served as headquarters with a kitchen out the back.[10] A netting fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the house and a bit of yard. A hundred feet north of the headquarters were two bunkhouses. Three hundred feet south of the headquarters was the section house where a few Hispanic railway workers and their families lived. Across the tracks from the section house was a tool shed and a pile of railway ties.
On August 8, ranch manager Caesar Kleberg was in Kingsville when he learned that a large group of armed Mexican men on horseback were stealing horses at El Sauz, the division of the King Ranch on Norias' southern border.[11] Kleberg immediately telephoned the U. S. Army commander at Fort Brown near Brownsville who informed the head of the Texas Rangers, Adjutant GeneralHenry Hutchings. Hutchings assembled thirteen rangers led by Captains Henry Ransom, George J. Head and James Monroe Fox, and seven privates from Troop C of the 12th Cavalry Regiment led by Corporal Allen Mercer. He also commandeered a special train to leave at two pm, ninety minutes earlier than usual, go to the Norias Division to investigate. Immigration inspector D. P. Gay, whose department had investigated the Plan of San Diego, was at the Brownsville station and saw the train leave early.[10] He learned from the station master about the bandits so he got his rifle and ammunition and caught the normal northbound train to Norias at about 3:30. Customs inspector Joe Taylor was on the platform at the San Benito station when Gay's train got there and on hearing what was afoot, Taylor joined him. When the two of them got to Harlingen they were joined by another Customs Inspector, Marcus Hinds, and Cameron county deputy sheriff Gordon Hill.
The soldiers would have arrived at Norias before four pm. General Hutchings ordered Mercer and the cavalrymen to stay behind with the ranch personnel. Ranch foreman Tom Tate provided the rangers with horses and, taking along a few ranch hands, rode back south with them toward the El Sauz Division. While they were gone the second train arrived at about 5:30 pm, dropping off the heavily armed Gay, Taylor, Hinds and Hill. Gay found the cavalrymen guarding cowboys Frank Martin, Luke Snow, and Lauro Cavazos Sr., ranch carpenter George Forbes with his wife, ranch cook Albert Edmunds with his wife, a track foreman with his wife and toddler, Manuela Flores with her husband and son, and other Hispanic rail workers and their families.
Raid
Gay and his party were invited to supper. Shortly eating, they were on the porches and in the yard when Inspector Hinds noticed a group of men on horseback approaching from the south. The track foreman also had seen them. He grabbed his wife and toddler and ducked with them into a boxcar on a siding. Initially Hinds thought the riders were the rangers returning from their patrol. But when they were about a quarter of a mile away, Taylor noticed their sombreros and the white flag they carried, a Sediciosos banner, and warned of a Mexican attack. Gay later swore that he and Joe Taylor, Marcus Hinds, Gordon Hill, Frank Martin, Lauro Cavazos Sr., King Ranch employees and eight soldiers were the only defense the ranch had in the ensuing fight. Coming against them was a mix of nearly eighty Carranza soldiers and Tejano supporters of the Plan of San Diego, armed with Mauser rifles and led by Carranza officers.[11] They expected easy pickings, assuming that only four cowboys were at the ranch. Their plan was to derail and rob the night train, rob the ranch storehouse, then burn the buildings.
The Sediciosos, when they were about 250 yards away to the south, waved a red flag and opened fire.[10] Manuela Flores and the rest of the railway employees fled to the section house with their families. Some of the defenders dove for the scant cover of the rail tracks at the fence. Others told the two wives to lay on the floor and covered them with mattresses. Seeing bullets fly through the walls of the house, they then ran outside to draw fire away from it and took cover, preparing to shoot from behind a water trough and rolls of fencing wire.[12] Two of the soldiers and Frank Martin were shot before they found cover. The shot that hit Frank broke his arm in two places, but he would survive this day to become a deputy sheriff. As the defenders engaged in that firefight they discovered that another party of invaders had sneaked up to the east, about 90 yards away, catching them in a crossfire. Fifteen or so of the bandits to the east moved to the south and took cover in the tool shed and behind the pile of railway ties. Some also broke into the railway section house where the workers were sheltering. Manuela's son later told Gay that this group's leader commanded her to tell him how many gringos there were but she swore at him and told him to find out for himself so he shot her in the head, killing her instantly. When the defenders ran low on ammunition, twenty-one year-old Lauro Cavazos dashed to the house through the whizzing gunfire, grabbed some and dashed back with it, distributing it to them.[13] The losses in the first attack left the defenders with thirteen able-bodied gunmen to fight off about seventy-eight bandits who were firing at them from the east, the south, the tool shed, the piled railway ties and the section house.[10] But Cavazos shot the horse of one of the leaders out from under him, stalling a charge and allowing the wounded to be carried into the house. George Forbes was shot in the lung while helping move the wounded. A few of the marauders advancing from the east tried to climb the fence between the tracks and the house but got hung up in the barbed wire atop it and were shot there. Seeing the fence stopping these bandits, and realizing these bandits provided a bit of cover, the defenders stayed at the house and fired from its doors and windows. They fired at the raiders to the east and south and the ones at the tool shed, but they were reluctant to return fire at the section house because of the rail workers in the building.
Ranch cook Albert Edmonds braved the bullets flying through the house's walls to reach the telephone on the outer wall, crank it to life and call Caesar Kleberg, asking for his help.[13] Kleberg told Edmonds that a train in Kingsville was ready to leave, loaded with armed men, supplies, and medical people, but no one was willing to operate it to Norias. Afterward Edmunds carried water to each defender, firing the defender's weapon while he drank.[11] As the hours passed, dusk came with no help arriving for the defenders and their ammunition running very low. The Sediciosos then made a charge on foot that Joe Taylor stopped by killing the leader from forty yards' distance. This threw the marauders into confusion and they retreated southward into the darkening night, strapping their wounded to their horses. They had expected to rob and terrorize a few civilians, not face heavily armed soldiers and government agents. They lost five more as wounded bandits strapped to the horses died on the retreat and were found buried in the sand later.
Thinking that there were still bandits in the section house and tool shed, the defenders held their ground in the headquarters, watching and waiting.[10] After an hour or so they heard riders approach. Repeated phone calls to Sarita, Kingsville and Brownsville had been made and one must have been underway at this moment because newspapers reported that the bandits returned.[14] However, it was the rangers.[15] Cavazos prevented further bloodshed by recognizing Tom Tate's voice. The rangers were utterly ignorant of gun the battle they had missed and the party of Sediciosos they had passed three times, once on the train and twice on horseback.[11] The defenders yelled out that the house was surrounded by Mexicans. Captain Fox ran up the railway line to the section house where he found Manuela Flores dead and the rest of the terrified rail workers and their families huddled together. The track foreman and his family emerged unhurt from the boxcar.[13] Thinking it empty, the Sediciosos ignored it and it was only hit by stray bullets.
Captain Ransom began to find fault with the way the defenders had conducted themselves.[10] Joe Taylor retorted that the rangers had not been there, the defenders had been. They had been there when the Sediciosos arrived and when they left, and they had not lost a single man. Sheriff Hill also lost his temper and invited the rangers to track the bandits in the dark brush themselves if they were as brave as they thought the defenders should have been.[11]
Left to right: Monroe Fox, Henry Ransom and Tom Tate on horseback with dead Mexican bandits, Norias Division, August 9, 1915
The rangers chose to reconnoiter the vicinity of the ranch compound and found the dead bandits and one badly injured one, as well as the white flag of the rebels. The injured man claimed he had been forced to join the bandits and said they planned to win back the Rio Grande region for Mexico. He died some time that night or the next day. Some hinted the rangers killed him, though contemporary newspaper accounts say he died of his wounds.
At about midnight a special train from Brownsville arrived carrying two troops of cavalry as well as the sheriffs of Cameron and Hidalgo counties.[10] A few hours later, at 2:00 am, a group of fifty-two rebels led by Antonio Roche and Dario Morada arrived at the Cerritos subdivision of the Norias Division and forced Pedro Longorio, Luis Solis and Macario Longorio to feed and water their horses. A few hours after that, sometime in the morning on the Norias headquarters, the promised train from Kingsville arrived. Photographer Robert Runyon was onboard and by the time the rangers were finished being photographed with the rebels they hadn't stopped, the last of the Sediciosos crossed into Mexico. Near the Rio Grande they had run into United States Army troops and another company of Texas Rangers and lost another dozen or so men. Back at Norias, Lauro Cavazos was directed to bury the bodies, but he never made it into the photographs.[15] When a photographer on the train snapped a photo out the window of Tom Tate and two rangers dragging the corpses out for burial Cavazos was on the ground below the train window, out of view. The postcards made from that, and other photographs, sold all through the American South and Mexico and caused a lot of outrage in northern states.
Aftermath
The Americans reported that they had killed five of the Mexicans but only four appear in pictures taken of the dead on the following morning of August 9 when Hutchings and the Texas Rangers returned. However, Cavazos claimed that he was tasked with burying the bodies of ten rebels at the ranch that day and that five wounded Mexicans who were strapped to horses later died and were buried by their comrades somewhere on the ranch. Considering this and the casualties the Sediciosos suffered approaching the Rio Grande, the group which actually made it back into Mexico had suffered significant losses.
Cavazos later noticed unfamiliar tracks on the ranch and followed them to find a trespasser.[16] The man turned out to be a bounty hunter and in his pocket Cavazos found a piece of paper with his own name on it, as well as the names of the others who defended Norias, and that of King Ranch owner Bob Kleburg and Caesar Kleberg. Written next to their names was the amount of money offered for the death of each victim.
Lauro Faustino Cavazos avoided future threats and went on to work the rest of his life for the King family as a highly valued employee, becoming division manager for the Santa Gertrudis Division and raising his children in Kingsville, dying in 1958.[17][18]
Thomas Rankin Tate also worked the rest of his life for the King family, staying on the Norias Division as division manager. He married Mabel Waters and raised his children there, dying in 1947.[19]
Frank Martin survived his wound and became a deputy sheriff. He was shot to death November 26, 1917 trying to bring order to a Mexican dance where things had gotten out of hand.[20][21]
David Portus Gay went on to become a patrol inspector of the Immigration Border Patrol in Brownsville when that was founded in 1924. He became Chief Patrol Inspector in Brownsville when the Border Patrol became a separate unit in 1926. He died in 1936.[22]
Ranger Captain Henry Ransom continued in his service in the Rangers until he was accidentally shot to death in a hotel hallway April 2, 1918 in Sweetwater, Texas.[23]
Ranger Captain James Monroe Fox continued his service in the Rangers until the Porvenir Massacre. Though he did not participate, he was the commanding officer of the participants and invented a fiction to cover their deeds. He joined again as a captain in 1925 but resigned again when anti-ranger Texas governor Miriam Ferguson was elected. He was commissioned a Special Ranger in 1934 and discharged in 1935.[24] He died quietly in 1937.[25]
George John Head had been a captain in the Texas National Guard, forming up an honor guard to greet William Jennings Bryan on his visit to Brownsville in 1908.[26] A few months before the raid he resigned, then was arrested and indicted for embezzling from the Guard.[27][28][29] On January 20 following the raid, his trial for embezzlement was set to begin in federal court.[30] By the middle of that March he was in Tampico where he applied to the consulate for a passport, listing his occupation as "broker" and stating that he had left the United States for his own safety.[31] He listed his occupation as "wood seller" on his draft card in 1917, and again as brokerage business on his 1919 passport.[32] He collapsed suddenly, dying instantly in 1929.[33]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Rozeff, Norman (2015-02-05). "Border Bandits, Part II". Somos Primos. At "On August 7, 1915, about two o'clock" in the page's source code. Archived from the original on February 5, 2015. Retrieved 2024-06-14.
↑ "Town Talk". Corpus Christi Caller. Jun 21, 1929. p.10. Retrieved June 15, 2024.
Related Research Articles
Kleberg County is a county in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 31,040. The county seat is Kingsville. The county was organized in 1913 and is named for Robert J. Kleberg, an early settler.
Kingsville is a city in the southern region of the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Kleberg County. Located on the U.S. Route 77 corridor between Corpus Christi and Harlingen, Kingsville is the principal city of the Kingsville Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of the larger Corpus Christi-Kingsville Combined Statistical Area. The population was 25,402 at the 2020 census, and in 2022 the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the population at 24,833.
Francisco "Pancho" Villa was a Mexican revolutionary and prominent figure in the Mexican Revolution. He was a key figure in the revolutionary movement that forced out President Porfirio Díaz and brought Francisco I. Madero to power in 1911. When Madero was ousted by a coup led by General Victoriano Huerta in February 1913, Villa joined the anti-Huerta forces in the Constitutionalist Army led by Venustiano Carranza. After the defeat and exile of Huerta in July 1914, Villa broke with Carranza. Villa dominated the meeting of revolutionary generals that excluded Carranza and helped create a coalition government. Emiliano Zapata and Villa became formal allies in this period. Like Zapata, Villa was strongly in favor of land reform, but did not implement it when he had power. At the height of his power and popularity in late 1914 and early 1915, the U.S. considered recognizing Villa as Mexico's legitimate authority.
King Ranch is the largest ranch in the United States. At some 825,000 acres it is larger than both the land area of Rhode Island and the area of the European country Luxembourg. It is mainly a cattle ranch, but also produced the racehorse Assault, who won the Triple Crown in 1946.
South Texas is a geographic and cultural region of the U.S. state of Texas that lies roughly south of—and includes—San Antonio. The southern and western boundary is the Rio Grande, and to the east it is the Gulf of Mexico. The population of this region is more than 5 million according to the 2024 census estimates. The southern portion of this region is often referred to as the Rio Grande Valley. The eastern portion along the Gulf of Mexico is also referred to as the Coastal Bend.
Lauro Fred Cavazos Jr. was an American educator and politician. He served as the United States Secretary of Education, and was the first Hispanic to serve in the United States Cabinet.
Juan Nepomuceno Cortina Goseacochea, also known by his nicknames Cheno Cortina, the Red Robber of the Rio Grande and the Rio Grande Robin Hood, was a Mexican rancher, politician, military leader, outlaw and folk hero. He was an important caudillo, military general and regional leader, who effectively controlled the Mexican state of Tamaulipas as governor. In borderlands history he is known for leading a paramilitary mounted Mexican Militia in the failed Cortina Wars. The "Wars" were raids targeting Anglo-American civilians whose settlement Cortina opposed near the several leagues of land granted to his wealthy family on both sides of the Rio Grande. Anglo families began immigrating to the Lower Rio Grande Valley after the Mexican Army was defeated by the Anglo-Mexican rebels of the Mexican State of Tejas, in the Texas Revolution.
The Cortina Troubles is the generic name for the First Cortina War, from 1859 to 1860, and the Second Cortina War, in 1861, in which paramilitary forces led by the Mexican rancher and local leader Juan Cortina, confronted elements of the United States Army, the Confederate States Army, the Texas Rangers, and the local militias of Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Tamaulipas.
Richard Edward Cavazos was a United States Army 4-star general. He was a Korean War recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross as a first lieutenant and advanced in rank to become the United States Army's first Hispanic four-star general. During the Vietnam War, as a lieutenant colonel, Cavazos was awarded a second Distinguished Service Cross. In 1976, Cavazos became the first Mexican-American to reach the rank of brigadier general in the United States Army. Cavazos served for 33 years, with his final command as head of the United States Army Forces Command. On May 25, 2022, The Naming Commission recommended that Fort Hood be renamed to Fort Cavazos, in recognition of Gen. Cavazos' military service. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the renaming on October 6, 2022. The re-designation as Fort Cavazos occurred on May 9, 2023.
Henrietta M. King Early College High School is a public high school located in Kingsville, Texas, US. It is part of the Kingsville Independent School District located in west central Kleberg County.
Claude Pollard was Attorney General of Texas from 1927–1929. During his service in public office he defended laws aimed at the disenfranchisement of black voters.
The Plan of San Diego was a plan drafted in San Diego, Texas, in 1915 by a group of unidentified Mexican and Tejano rebels who hoped to seize Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Texas from the United States. The plan was never attempted. It called for a general uprising in February, 1915, and the mass killings of every non-Hispanic Caucasian male over 16 years of age. The arena included all of South Texas. German Americans were excluded from the killings. The San Diego Plan collapsed immediately on discovery.
The Ojo de Agua Raid was the last notable military engagement between Mexican Sediciosos and the United States Army. It took place at Ojo de Agua, Texas. As part of the Plan of San Diego, the rebels launched a raid across the Rio Grande into Texas on October 21, 1915 aimed at harassing the American outposts along the Mexican border and disrupting the local economy. After moving across the border, the Sediciosos began an assault against the United States Army Signal Corps station at Ojo de Agua. The small group of American defenders was cornered into a single building and suffered heavy casualties before reinforcements arrived driving the Seditionist force back into Mexico. The raid proved to be the tipping point in the American conflict with the Sediciosos, as its severity convinced American officials to send large numbers of American troops to the area in order to deter any further serious border raids by the Mexican force.
The Bandit War, or Bandit Wars, was a series of raids in Texas that started in 1915 and finally culminated in 1919. They were carried out by Mexican rebels from the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua. Prior to 1914, the Carrancistas had been responsible for most attacks along the border, but in January 1915, rebels known as Seditionistas drafted the Plan of San Diego and began launching their own raids. The plan called for a race war to rid the American border states of their Anglo-American population and for the annexation of the border states to Mexico. However, the Seditionistas could never launch a full-scale invasion of the United States and so the faction resorted to conducting small raids into Texas. Much of the fighting involved the Texas Ranger Division, but the US Army also engaged in small unit actions with bands of Seditionist raiders.
Indigenous peoples lived in the area now known as Texas long before Spanish explorers arrived in the area. However, once Spaniards arrived and claimed the area for Spain, a process known as mestizaje occurred, in which Spaniards and Native Americans had mestizo children who had both Spanish and indigenous blood. Texas was ruled by Spain as part of its New Spain territory from 1520, when Spaniards first arrived in Mexico in 1520, until Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836, which led to the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848). In 1830, the Mexican population fell to 20 percent and in 1840 down to 10 percent. When Spanish rule in Texas ended, Mexicans in Texas numbered 5,000. In 1850 over 14,000 Texas residents had Mexican origin.
Robert Runyon was an American photographer, botanist, and politician who served as the mayor of Brownsville, Texas from 1941 to 1943.
The Battle of La Ebonal was fought in December 1859 near Brownsville, Texas during the First Cortina War. Following the Brownsville Raid, on September 28, and a few skirmishes with the Texas Rangers, rebel leader Juan Cortina led his small army into the hills outside of town and dug in near a series of cattle ranches. The United States Army responded by sending an expedition into the area, under the command of Major Samuel P. Heintzelman, with orders to pacify all resistance. A minor battle began on December 13, at a ranch called La Ebonal, and continued for a few hours as the Americans routed and then pursued the retreating Cortinistas.
The Porvenir massacre was an incident on January 28, 1918, outside the village of Porvenir, in Presidio County, Texas, in which Texas Rangers and local ranchers, with the support of US Cavalry, killed 15 unarmed Mexican American boys and men. The Texas Rangers Company B had been sent to the area to stop banditry after the Brite Ranch raid. Despite having no evidence that the Porvenir villagers had been involved in recent thefts or the killings of ranchers, the Rangers separated 15 men and boys from the rest of the village and shot them on a nearby hill.
José Tomás Canales was an American businessman, lawyer, and politician based in Texas. He served five terms in the State House, where he was the only Mexican-American representative at the time. He is best known for his work on behalf of Mexican-Americans and Tejanos in Texas, defending the civil rights of Hispanic Americans.
Adrián J. Vidal was a Mexican soldier who fought in both the American Civil War and the Mexican War against France in the 1860s. He served the Confederate States of America Army from October 1862 to 1863, when he and his troops defected. He was branded a traitor, having killed one Confederate soldier, wounded another, and killed as many as ten or more individuals. He was said to have planned an attack on Brownsville after defecting from the Confederate Army. In the end, General Hamilton P. Bee ordered that Fort Brown and Brownsville be set on fire, destroying large quantities of cotton and military goods under the watchful eyes of 400 Union troops as well as Juan Cortina and his soldiers on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande. The next month, he enlisted in the Union Army, serving just six months. During that time he captured an Army tugboat and its crew. He then fought under General Juan Cortina during the Second French intervention in Mexico. Vidal was captured by the French who executed him by a firing squad in June 1865.
References
Weber, John W. (2008). The shadow of the revolution: South Texas, the Mexican Revolution, and the evolution of modern American labor relations. ISBN978-0-549-96152-9.
Cavazos, Lauro F. (2008). A Kineno Remembers: From the King Ranch to the White House. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN978-1-60344-044-8.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
United States 
