A New History of Old Texas

Episode 8 of Brandon Seale's podcast on Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. How Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were reunited with some of their fellow Narváez expeditionaries, including Alonso Castillo, Andrés Dorantes, and Estevan. How they tried to integrate themselves into the daily rhythms of the Cavoque community. And what happened that first winter when Native American and European immune sy...

Episode 7 of Brandon Seale's podcast on Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. How the expeditionaries debated what to do in the face of 100 armed "Cavoques," as the natives of Galveston called themselves. How the Cavoques offered to take the expeditionaries back to their village. And how the welcoming party they threw for the castaways scared the bejeezus out of them. Pages: f22r-f23r in Zamo...

Episode 6 of Brandon Seale's podcast on Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. How the conquistadors became castaways on Galveston Island. How the natives of Galveston Island found them. And what the natives decided to do with them. Pages: f20v-f22r in Zamora (1542) Edition as published by Adorno and Pautz (1999). Cover art: "Barges Capsize" by Ettore “Ted” DeGrazia, Courtesy of DeGrazia Galle...

Episode 5 of Brandon Seale's podcast on Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. How the Narváez expeditionaries returned to the Gulf of Mexico. How the Gulf "turned" on them. And how all the tools of conquest began to fail them. Pages: f16r-f20v in Zamora (1542) Edition as published by Adorno and Pautz (1999). Cover art: "Hernando Colon Map," courtesy of Jim MacDougald (1527). Note th...

Episode 4 of Brandon Seale's podcast on Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. How the Narváez expeditionaries "conquered" Apalache. And then had to flee for their lives. How they made it back to the Florida coast. And how they confronted the frightening reality that they had lost contact with their ships. Pages: f11r-f16r in Zamora (1542) Edition as published by Adorno and Pautz (1999). Cover...

Episode 1 of Brandon Seale's podcast on Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. How Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and 600 others came to the New World under the command of Pánfilo de Narváez. What the men and women in the Narváez Expedition were hoping to find. And what they actually found instead. Pages: f1r-f2v in Zamora (1542) Edition as published by Adorno and Pautz (1999). Cover art: "Portrait of...

Episode 2 of Brandon Seale's podcast on Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. How the Narváez expeditionaries missed their target by a mere 1,000 miles. How they mistook the western coast of Florida for the eastern coast of Mexico. And how they doubled down on their error after finding the first hints of gold. Pages: f3r-f7r in Zamora (1542) Edition as published by Adorno and Pautz (1999). Cover art: &...

Episode 3 of Brandon Seale's podcast on Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. How the Narváez expeditionaries marched on their Floridian Tenochtitlán. And how the whole story goes a little Gabriel García Márquez upon the colorful entrance of a Floridian native chief. Pages: f7r-f11r in Zamora (1542) Edition as published by Adorno and Pautz (1999). Cover art: "Panfilo de Narvaez and his Companions...

Back in the first episode of the first season of this podcast series, I begged someone to make a movie about the wanderings of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions. Well, as several of you pointed out, someone actually has made this movie. In 1991 Mexican filmmaker Nicolás Echevarría created a really striking and kinda trippy art-house film that actually does a pretty good job captu...

Episode 12 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. The trauma of 1813 stuck with Tejanos…and it emboldened them. What lessons did they draw from the Battle of Medina? What lessons should we draw today? And at long last, we point our finger to the map and ask, “Is this the Battlefield of Medina?” Selected Bibliography 1813 Texas Declaration of Independence. Anonymous. “Memor...

Episode 11 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. (WARNING: This episode contains graphic language and descriptions of Spanish Royalists' sack of San Antonio following the Battle of Medina.) After defeating the Republican Army of the North at the Battle of Medina, Spanish Royalist General Joaquín de Arredondo entered San Antonio intent on teaching its citizens a lesso...

Supplement to Episode 11 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. Sometime in the 1820's or 30's, an anonymous survivor of the Spanish Royalist occupation of San Antonio in 1813 wrote down his (or her?) memories of those tragic events. As far as I know, it is the only contemporary Spanish-language account of these events from the Republican perspective, and our fri...

Episode 10 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. After a year of research and interviews, we sum up everything we’ve learned over the last year to recreate what happened on August 18, 1813, when 1,830 Spanish Royalists under the command of General Joaquín de Arredondo finally met up with the unbeaten 1,400 man Republican Army of the North twenty miles or so south of San A...

Episode 9 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. On August 4, 1813, after months of plotting, José Álvarez de Toledo personally arrived in San Antonio and overthrew Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara as commander-in-chief of the Republican Army of the North. Just as the Republicans found themselves more divided than ever, their most fearsome opponent to-date – Joaquín de Arredondo...

Episode 8 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. After the Republican victory at the Battle of Rosillo and Texans’ bold declaration of Independence in April of 1813, a Royalist commander from Veracruz decided to take charge of the situation. While he began assembling an army to reconquer Texas, he sent forth a force of 700 men to pin down the Republicans and reconnoiter th...

Supplement to Episode 7 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. For the first time that I know of, we present here the original Texas Declaration of Independence in English – as performed by a direct descendant of the men who brought about that independence back in 1813! 1813 Texas Declaration of Independence. www. BrandonSeale.com

Episode 7 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. On April 6, 1813, Texas declared its independence, having momentarily rid the province of all traces of Spanish control. Eleven days later, the new Texas government promulgated a constitution, drawing from both Spanish civil and Anglo-American natural law traditions. Unfortunately, a horrific series of executions of captured...

Episode 6 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. In February of 1813, Spanish Royalist forces under Texas Governor Manuel Salcedo stormed the Republicans besieged in Goliad – and were resoundingly repulsed. The Republicans broke out of Goliad and pursued the Royalists all the way back to San Antonio, where Salcedo and Gutiérrez de Lara met in one final battle. We finally l...

Episode 5 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. In 7th grade Texas history textbooks, Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara figures only peripherally in the events covered in this series. In reality, he may have been the great unifying figure for the Tejano, Native American, and Americans volunteers marching across Texas in the fall of 1812. Texas Governor Manuel Salcedo certainly t...

Episode 4 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. Before Father Miguel Hidalgo was captured by Royalist forces in March of 1811, he commissioned a modest but vocal supporter from the Rio Grande Valley as his emissary to the United States. With a dozen or so loyal followers, that emissary - José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara - escaped Royalist capture and crossed over the Sabin...

Episode 3 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. After capturing Father Miguel Hidalgo, Texas Royalist Governor Manuel Salcedo returned to San Antonio in a less-than-magnanimous frame of mind. San Antonio, after all, was the town that had deposed him and the town to which Father Hidalgo had been fleeing. Governor Salcedo took it upon himself to impress upon San Antonians t...

Episode 2 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. On September 16, 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla unleashed a cry of protest against centuries of Spanish exploitation of New Spain. San Antonians under a retired militia captain named Juan Bautista de las Casas took up the cry and attached themselves to his cause. We start our search for the battlefield of Medina by e...

Episode 1 of Brandon Seale's podcast series on the Battle of Medina. Texas in 1800 was defined by its isolation, which Tejanos felt all the more acutely because of Spain’s restrictive trade laws and general neglect towards its most distant colonies. Tejanos began to see themselves as a people apart and to crave more autonomy and control over their own affairs. Three different battle markers c...

The first season of this podcast described the Battle of Medina as having taken place “somewhere in the area between modern-day Lytle, Somerset, and Von Ormy.” That was way off. But this podcast wasn’t the first to express confusion over the location of the battlefield. Today, three different markers dot the Bexar-Atascosa County line claiming to mark the spot where the largest, bloodiest battle i...

The past lives in San Antonio. Selected Bibliography Alessio Robles, Vito.  Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial  (1978). De La Teja, Jesús F., ed.  A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguín  (2002). De la Teja, Jesús F.  San Antonio de Béxar: A Community on New Spain's Northern Frontier  (1996). De Zavala, Lorenzo.  Journey to the United States of No...