INDIAN FORTRESS

When you see the town of Spanish Fort on a Texas map, it jumps out at you. It’s tucked into a long bend of the Red River, just north of Nocona.

You know—or at least think you know—that the Spanish didn’t have any forts that far north in Texas. You wonder if the structure is still intact. You wonder why you’ve never heard of it before. Your initial interest is rewarded by intriguing revelations.

First, the fort, which included wooden stockades, entrenchments and a moat (yes, a moat—in Texas), is long gone. A historical marker stands on the original location.

Second, “Spanish” fort is wholly inaccurate. The fortification was actually a French structure built at the location of a preexisting Taovayas Indian village around 1719. The Taovayas had just moved into the region when the French were beginning to venture farther west along the Red River. The two peoples quickly became successful trading partners.

Third, when the only major defense of the fort was mounted in 1759, the attacking forces were actually Spanish and the fort defenders were Taovayas, Wichita and Comanche Indians at least rudimentarily trained by a previous French contingent. When an early Anglo settler visited the ruins one hundred years later, he simply assumed they were Spanish. Hence the town name, “Spanish Fort.”

A Spanish Fort historical marker relief—depicting a Taovayas warrior—is mounted on an eight-foot-tall shaft of red granite in the town square. Photo by author.

And fourth, the Native American rout of the Spanish at the French Taovayas fortress marked Spain’s earliest defeat in Texas and probably kept them from expanding farther north.

In the mid-1750s, there were rumors of a lucrative silver-mining prospect near present-day Menard, and local Lipan Apache groups were reportedly interested in converting to Christianity. The Spanish established Mission San Saba and Presidio San Saba a few miles apart along the San Saba River to look into the silver claims and proselytize the Apache. Not long after the two complexes were completed, the Apaches were boasting about their mighty new partners.

When word of a new force in the region reached the Comanches, they marshaled some of their Wichita, Taovayas and Yojuane allies and headed south. On the morning of March 16, 1759, the Comanche and a two-thousand-warrior confederacy attacked the mission, massacred most of its inhabitants and put most of the mission buildings under the torch.

Reduced by various maneuvers in the area, the scantily numbered Spanish troops garrisoned at Presidio San Saba helplessly witnessed the upstream smoke and gunfire.

The enraged Spanish commissioned Presidio San Saba commandant Colonel Diego Ortiz Parilla to visit the same death and destruction wrought at Mission San Saba upon the Comanche and their allies. In late September, Parilla marshaled a force composed of approximately six hundred Spaniards, militiamen and Lipan Apaches northward, traveling west of the lower Cross Timbers.

On October 2, Parilla’s forces caught a Tonkawa village on the north bank of the Brazos River by surprise and quickly subdued it, taking 149 prisoners. When the Tonkawa captives realized Parilla was looking for the Taovayas, they told him where their camp was located.

Utilizing the Tonkawa as guides, Parilla proceeded to the Red River and turned east. On October 7, they discovered an old fortification flying the French colors on the Red River. It was protected by a tributary stream moat and—to the Spaniards’ stupefaction and bewilderment—manned by Taovayas, Wichita and Comanche Indians armed with French muskets.

The garrison Indians attacked the Spanish and then drew back. Parilla’s troops attempted to advance on the Taovayas forces repeatedly but each time were repulsed by coordinated gunfire from behind the fortification walls. And when the Spanish advances turned away, their garrison foes invariably counterattacked, retreating only to exchange empty muskets with reloaded ones from Indians on foot.

Initially dumbfounded by the Taovayas fortress, the Spanish were also astonished by their leader. Clothed in white buckskin and a helmet adorned with handsome feathers, he was fierce and animated behind the fortress walls and uncannily proficient outside them. He led several Taovayas assaults on the Spanish and was eventually struck down, but he inspired his comrades and left an indelible impression on his foes.

Parilla’s cavalry charges were ineffective, so he proceeded to bombard the Indian fortifications with cannon. The barrage had little effect. In fact, the Taovayas confederacy began to greet each cannon fire with howls of laughter. And during that period, the Spanish were constantly harassed by musket volleys from the palisaded fortress stockades and attacked on all sides by opportunistic waves of Indian infantry and cavalry. By nightfall, the Spanish verged on being overrun, so they retreated hastily, leaving their supply train and cannon behind.

It took Parilla’s disgraced soldiers eighteen days to return to Presidio San Saba, and the Comanche harassed them all the way. The Spanish never sought further military redress and soon abandoned the San Saba mission and presidio. Within a decade, there was no European influence left in the Spanish Fort area, but in 1771, the lieutenant governor of Spanish Louisiana normalized relations with the Taovayas settlement there via treaty and named it San Teodoro. The Taovayas were decimated by smallpox in the early 1800s and abandoned San Teodoro shortly thereafter.

The Comanche remained a force on the Texas plains until the late nineteenth century. The ranks of the Taovayas shrank and eventually folded in with the Wichita.

Today, all that remains of their fortified defense against and subsequent defeat of the Spanish is a historical marker mounted on an eight-foot-tall shaft of red granite in the town square and the Taovayas Indian Bridge across the Red River, connecting Texas FM 677 to OK 89.