A New History of Old Texas

Post-script to Brandon Seale's podcast "A New History of Old San Antonio." This is the audio from my October 2024 SA PechaKucha talk, the video of which you can find on YouTube as well. As a summary of my thoughts after thinking deeply about San Antonio and early Texas history for the last decade, I'm pretty happy with it. But I'll admit that it's a little incomplete....

We found another site. But so did someone else. And there's a rumored fourth site out there as well now? What in the name of Miguel Menchaca's ghost is going on? Image: Martin Gonzalez, Atascosa County Historical Commission. Photo by Jessica Phelps, , SA Express-News, April 29, 2024. www. BrandonSeale.com

Episode 2 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. Proto-Apaches, Jumanos, and Puebloans vie for control of the Texas Plains in the face of Spanish entradas, epidemics, and slaving expeditions. Selected Bibliography Alonso, Gorka. Apachería. Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Indian Southwest, 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (1999). Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Conquest of Texas (2019...

Episode 3 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. Thanks to the horse, Plains Apaches expand their influence over an increasingly broad swath of the Great Plains and Northern Mexico. In the course of one remarkable generation, they drive the Spanish out of New Mexico and absorb their old Jumano rivals, despite an epic last-ditch effort by Jumano Captain Juan Sabeata to frustrate them...

Episode 4 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. A new Spanish outpost on the San Antonio River represents an opportunity and a threat to the Apaches' Texas plains trade. The great empires test each other with equal turns generosity and violence. And a new rival appears on the Texas Plains. Selected Bibliography Alonso, Gorka. Apachería. Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Indian South...

Episode 5 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. Following the great peace of 1749, San Antonio becomes the great outlet for native North American trade and for the mediation of Native Texas culture into Spanish society. In turn, Texas Apaches commit to a symbiotic existence with the settler communities around them, and come to take on a distinct identity as “Lipan” Apaches – the &q...

Episode 6 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. In the course of a single generation, Spanish policy toward Lipan Apaches shifts from alliance to extermination. But a  generation of alliance-making by Lipan Captain Bigotes makes the Lipan alliance more powerful than ever. They beat back the Comanches to the Red River and the Spanish to a line of presidios that still cuts across the...

Episode 7 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. Spanish army officers prove reluctant to change their mindset, however, even as the Lipan alliance under the great Captain Picax-Andé brings to a definitive halt the advance of Spanish conquest. Selected Bibliography Alonso, Gorka. Apachería. Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Indian Southwest, 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (1999)....

Episode 8 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. Pressed on all sides by European and native rivals, the Lipanes never should have survived into the nineteenth century. Yet not only had they survived, they had done so with their numbers and their range undiminished. They were wealthier than ever, and more powerful too, and would play a vital role in driving the Spanish out of Texas...

Episode 9 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. In the turmoil of the War for Mexican independence, Lipan Captain Cuelgas de Castro emerges as a beacon of stability in Texas. Perhaps no one saw the Texas geopolitical checkerboard better at this moment. Captain Cuelgas de Castro wins for his people recognition by the new Emperor of Mexico. But it won't be enough to secure true...

Episode 10 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. No Native Texan captured Anglo-Texians’ hearts like Lipan Captain Flacco the Younger. His exploits as a Texas Ranger and his people’s defense of Texas’ borders against Mexico make him the darling of Texas newspapers. Texas newspapers fail to distinguish, however, between hostile native Texans and Lipanes living in their midst. And Li...

Episode 11 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. The Lipan Apaches become proxies for a Texian guerilla war against northern Mexico, until Texian policies cut them off from their lands and their livelihoods. Ever adaptable, the Lipanes flip the script, relocating to their old haunts in Mexico and raiding Texas property. The Texas-Mexico border itself – and the freedom it offers – b...

Episode 12 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. All pretense of accommodation with Native Americans disappears in the 1870’s. Lipanes are pursued equally and openly by American and Mexican forces on both sides of the border. One-by-one, they see their old native rivals picked off and carted off to reservations. But the Lipan Apaches refuse to play the doomed savage. After a brutal...

Episode 13 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. The United States dispenses with the pretense of Native American sovereignty and adopts a policy of forced assimilation. Mexico waxes poetic about the “cosmic race” while sending airplanes to track down "Apaches broncos” living free in the mountains. The Lipan Apaches avoid the reservation by dispersing and using the reservation...

Episode 14 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. Contrary to popular usage, an “Apocalypse” isn't an ending. In Greek it means an “unveiling," an "uncovering," a “revelation.” But what have we really revealed about the most powerful, most unconquerable, most exceptional people in Texas history? Selected Bibliography Alonso, Gorka. Apachería. Anderson, Gary Clayt...

Episode 1 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. Killer-of-Enemies teaches the proto-Apaches, the “Nde,” how to treat with the peoples they meet as they descend into the Texas panhandle: the Puebloans to the west, the Jumanos to the South, and the Caddoan-speakers to the east. Yet the arrival of yet another newcomer – this one from across the ocean – challenges the diplomatic skills...

Intro to Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches. Despite centuries of conflict with Spanish, Mexican, Texan, United States, and native rivals, the Lipan Apaches managed to do what perhaps no other native community in the United States has been able to: carve for themselves a place in their ancestral homeland without surrendering it. Join us this season on “Lipan Apocalypse” as we pull b...

Episode 6 of Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz. José Francisco Ruíz's reputation and personal relationships went a long way toward preserving Tejanos' status in the newly independent Republic of Texas. They weren't enough, however, to ensure true equality. That was a fight that his nephew, his great...

Episode 5 of Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz. For the fourth time in his life, José Francisco Ruíz had to decide where his loyalties lie: to his flag or to his ideology. In 1835, however, there would be no hesitation. Too old now to carry a rifle, Ruíz became a sort of "first quartermaster" of the 1835...

Episode 4 of Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz. 1820's East Texas was a melting pot of native Texans, old time Tejanos, Indian immigrants pushed out of the United States, and newcomer Anglos. For all their distaste of José Francisco Ruíz's revolutionary past, the old Mexican officer corps had no choice b...

Episode 3 of Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz. If there was anything more improbable in Texas history than the Lipan-Comanche alliance orchestrated by José Francisco Ruíz in 1816, it was the peace brokered WITH the Lipanes and Comanches on behalf of the newly-independent Mexican empire in 1822. It would culminate...

Episode 2 of Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz. José Francisco Ruíz would remain a focus of Spanish royalist vengeance after the Battle of Medina. For good reason. From his exile in Louisiana, Ruíz orchestrated a proxy war by his Lipan and especially Comanche allies against Spanish royalists' fragile hold on...

Episode 1 of Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz. The Battle of Medina left José Francisco Ruíz the highest-ranking Tejano revolutionary in the state...and its most wanted man. What drove him to abandon a promising future in the Spanish army and turn on his old comrades-in-arms?  And what price would he have to pay...

Intro to Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz. José Francisco Ruíz lived through the most turbulent years of Texas history. What was it about Ruíz that always seemed to place him at the center of the action? What made him the man to whom Tejanos, Anglos, and Native Americans all turned in uncertain times? Join us to...

Episode 11 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History. Winter Storm Uri. Texas's unique legal system. And Juneteenth. All together in one episode. Sources: McKnight, Joseph W. “The Spanish Legacy to Texas Law.” The American Journal of Legal History , Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jul 1959): 222-241. McKnight, Joseph W. “The Spanish Legacy to Texas Law.” The American Journal of Legal His...