Texas Brave and Strong Podcast

The Runaway Scrape was a chaotic episode (in late 1835 and early 1836) during the Texas Revolution. When Santa Anna suspended the Mexican Constitution and declared martial law, Texians rebelled and Santa Anna invaded Texas. The resulting flight of settlers eastward, to escape Santa Anna's relentless pursuit, was one of desperation and life-threatening conditions.

Stories--both funny and serious--from when camels were part of the US Army in early Texas and after camels joined the Confederacy during the Civil War. Plus, a bit about how camels became Texans.

In the first year of the Civil War War, the Confederacy had no navy. This caused President Jefferson Davis to take an unusual strategic step. He licensed private ships (called privateers) to sail the Confederate coastline and capture Union merchant ships and their cargos, distracting the Union's warships from their blockading efforts and disrupting the North's merchant fleet. It was a swas...

Topsy, a 100-year-old camel, and the "Red Ghost are true Texas legends.

Roy Bean was a fugitive from the law. Then he became Judge Roy Bean, "The Law West of the Pecos," and practiced his own unique form of justice with saloon patrons as jurors.

An invention that tamed the West, and it all started with a wandering cow.

From ghost stories and Indians to Civil War fugitives, Texas' Big Thicket's history is about more than lumber and oil.

Belle Starr was almost as famous as Billy The Kid. Listen to find out why!

Big Foot Wallace is Captured by Indians and learns an Indian legend.

Forget Scarlet O'Hara--Meet Lucy Pickens!

How the classic six-shooter came to be.

Fifty-six settlers travel 5000 miles to settle in "New Spain," creating Texas' first municipal government.

Historic! A mystical granite monolith and a Texas-sized lump of salt

Santa Anna fled the battlefield and dressed like a peasant. All to no avail.

While many "witch" or drowse for water, one amazing boy could see it underground.

The Battle of San Jacinto Through the Eyes of a Mexican Combatant

Coffee fueled the Union soldiers. The South's coffee supply was cut off by the blockade. Did caffeine make a difference in battle?

Cotton was the Confederacy's lifeblood. Its sale funded arms, critical supplies and paid for the government, but the union blockade kept it from foreign markets. Matamoros, Mexico became the South's "backdoor." Cotton caravans had to cross the dangerous Texas plains--fraught with bandits, Comanche, lack of water, and other deadly challenges--then, sell the cotton in a market team...

Post Civil War, "cowboying" was a tough, demanding job, one which attracted scores of newly freed blacks. Some were especially notable.

Juneteenth is probably an example of "What you know for sure, that ain't so! "

Long before Texas was Texas, a series of Spanish explorers visited the mysterious land of the High Plains. These expeditions were motivated by the search for wealth promised by tales of rich kingdoms that always seemed to be "just a bit farther," but were never reached.

Held prisoner by the Mexican government, the Texian volunteers of the Mier Expedition were forced to participate in a lottery--ten percent of them to be executed by a firing squad. Who lived and who died was settled by the drawing of a white or black bean. This is a first-hand report from Big Foot Wallace, one of the soldiers who drew a white bean and lived to tell the dramatic story of the black...

PART I: The Mier Expedition and the Black Bean Lottery of Death When the Republic of Texas is plagued by Mexican military raids, a planned reprisal results in the ill-fated Mier Expedition of 1842. After some success, the volunteer soldiers are told to abort, but many continue and end up as prisoners of Mexico. Things do not go well for them. As told by participant Big Foot Wallace.

Was a Texan the first to fly an "airship" nearly forty years before the Wright Brothers?

Stampeding Buffalo over a cliff--to fall to their death--was an effective, but dangerous technique used by early native people to hunt buffalo. The cliff site was called a "buffalo jump."