The Marqués de Aguayo waiting for his raft to cross the Río Grande (see p. 109) (DRAWING BY JACK JACKSON)
CHICKEN WAR REDEEMER
The most eastern of the Spanish missions set up by the Domingo Ramón-St. Denis expedition of 1716–1717 was actually in present-day Louisiana. Known as San Miguel de los Adaes, this outpost was founded by Father Antonio Margil. Two years later, in mid-June 1719, Los Adaes was unguarded and unoccupied except for a half-naked soldier and a religious helper. The mission did not have a single Indian living there.
Los Adaes was only twenty miles from St. Denis’s fort at Natchitoches. This placed it in a dangerous position. Spain and France were often rivals in Europe. If war broke out between the two nations, the mission would likely be the first target of French attacks on Spanish Texas.
Today we live in age where things happening all around the world are known about immediately and seen on evening television news programs. But in the 1700s it was common for several months to pass before anyone in America knew of events happening in Europe. A ship bearing news had to cross the Atlantic Ocean. If it was a French ship, then French colonists were the first to be informed. The exact opposite was true if it was a Spanish vessel.
A war between France and Spain broke out in January 1719. The French at St. Denis’s fort were the first to get the news, but not until June of that year. Philippe Blondel, a military officer, gathered up half a dozen soldiers and marched on Los Adaes. There Blondel captured the unarmed Spanish soldier and arrested the religious person.
The French soldiers took the few things worth having at the mission. Next, Blondel turned his attention to the mission henhouse that contained a number of chickens. Without doubt, thoughts of a tasty dinner back at Natchitoches crossed the mind of the French captain. His men caught the hens, tied their legs together, and put them across the back of Blondel’s horse.
When excited, chickens often flap their wings and make squawking sounds. This is exactly what happened, and it frightened Blondel’s horse. It suddenly shied (jumped sideways) and dumped its rider in the dirt. In the confusion, the Spanish religious person escaped and ran into the woods, and the French soldiers could not catch him. Blondel and his half-dozen soldiers then brought the captured soldier and fowl back to Natchitoches. It is likely that the chickens were claimed as “prisoners of war” and did not last long before they wound up in a French cooking pot.
Because the French soldiers had been more interested in raiding the mission henhouse at Los Adaes than in guarding the two prisoners, the Spanish later made fun of them. They said that this incident started the “Chicken War.” So in Texas history, the war between France and Spain that began in 1719 on the American frontier has this unusual name. To frightened Spaniards in East Texas, who were several hundred miles from San Antonio, this war was not funny at the time.
The religious person who had escaped from the French quickly made his way to another of Antonio Margil’s missions. In telling of the events at Los Adaes, the escaped prisoner probably made the story very dramatic and scary. Father Antonio also soon picked up a rumor spread by Indians that one hundred French soldiers were marching on Texas from Louisiana. Unsure if this were true or not, the Spaniards panicked and decided to abandon their mission.
Margil quickly buried valuable tools to keep the enemy from getting them. He also packed religious objects and took them when he and a few companions fled. They made their way to the only Spanish garrison in East Texas, called Presidio de los Tejas.
The Spanish commander at the presidio was Domingo Ramón, who had helped set up the missions in the first place. Don Domingo faced a serious problem. If one hundred French soldiers were indeed on their way to Texas, then he was in big trouble. Many of his soldiers were only boys with almost no clothes, muskets, or horses. Eight of the older soldiers were married, and their wives were already unhappy with life on the frontier. These women joined the men in demanding that everyone flee to the safety of San Antonio. Panic followed, and it soon turned into a Spanish version of the old story about Chicken Little, who thought the sky was falling.
The Chicken War of 1719 actually had serious results. It led to the total withdrawal of all Spaniards from their six missions and one presidio in East Texas and western Louisiana. When he attacked Los Adaes with only six soldiers, Blondel surely did not imagine that he would accomplish so much with so few men!
The Spaniards who fled to San Antonio camped along the way and did not arrive until the fall of 1719. Once there, the priests found only slightly better conditions than at their crude campsites. They had to live in straw huts with dirt floors.
It was at this time that Father Antonio Margil got the idea of setting up a second mission at San Antonio. As you will remember from the previous chapter, this required him to get permission from the new governor of Texas, the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo. Governor Aguayo liked the idea, and he was pleased that the mission would be partly named after him.
Thanks to his wife, who was one of the largest landowners in all of Mexico, the Marqués de Aguayo was truly wealthy. It is interesting that women could own as much or more than a man in the early history of Mexico, for this was not the case in the English colonies that became the United States. Spanish women could inherit land, and it was theirs to keep. Since almost no one had any money or hard cash in those times, wealth was measured in how much land or livestock a person owned.
The Marquesa de San Miguel de Aguayo, whose given name was Ignacia, had inherited lands and titles from both her mother and father, the first Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo. After her parents died, doña Ignacia moved to Spain, hoping to find a suitable husband among Spanish royal families. Her first husband died young, as did the second. On her third attempt, the marquesa married a Spanish nobleman with an impressive name—José Ramón de Azlor y Virto de Vera. She and her husband sailed to Mexico, where they could better look after doña Ignacia’s vast lands. Once there, don José took the title of second Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo, which actually came from his wife.
The marqués and marquesa settled in Coahuila at a hacienda (great house) called San Francisco de los Patos. Aguayo used his wife’s money to put together a private army that did not cost the Spanish crown a single peso. He used these armed men to put down Native American revolts in the province of Coahuila.
When the marqués learned that the war of 1719 had caused the Spanish to leave their missions and presidio in East Texas, he offered to fight the French with his private army. He would do this as a favor for his monarch, the king of Spain. Thus, Aguayo can be called the Chicken War Redeemer, because he offered to recover, or redeem, something that had been taken from Spain.
The viceroy of Mexico accepted Aguayo’s offer and gave him permission to raise an even bigger private army, as long as the marqués and his wife paid for it. Aguayo lost little time in making preparations and recruiting soldiers. By June 1720, he was ready to leave for East Texas, but bad luck delayed him for several months. First, the marqués stayed in Coahuila to put down another Native American revolt. Then, in the summer of 1720, a severe drought killed grass and dried up creeks, as well as other sources of water. Aguayo had bought four thousand horses, but without enough grass or water thirty-five hundred had died. The dead animals had to be replaced, which took time. Then the drought was broken by heavy rains. Repeated downpours brought things to a near standstill, as men and animals struggled through a sea of mud. The marqués had run into such bad luck that it seem as if “all hell” was working against him.
By late 1720, Aguayo had again gathered thousands of livestock, several tons of supplies, and five hundred men. If his preparations seem overdone, we need to remember that Spain and France were at war. It was a long march from Coahuila to East Texas, and Aguayo could not count on much help from Mexico once he got there.
Just as he was finally ready to leave Coahuila, news from the viceroy changed the very nature of the Aguayo expedition. Spain and France were discussing a way to end the war in Europe. If peace came, then the marqués could not carry out attacks on the French in East Texas or Louisiana. He could only redeem what Spain had already claimed and defend himself if attacked by Frenchmen. Delays caused by Indian revolts and bad weather had likely robbed him of the opportunity to become a military hero in Texas.
The march to the Río Grande crossing at San Juan Bautista began in mid-November. It was slowed by having to drive thousands of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats. The main body of Aguayo’s army did not arrive at the river until December 20. It found the stream swollen with flood waters and more than a musket shot in width. Indians more familiar than Spaniards with the Great River told Aguayo that it would take a long time for it to return to a normal flow.
Because he was anxious to get on with the march, the marqués tried different means of getting his livestock and supplies across the Río Grande. He attempted to swim some of the animals across the current, but that did not work with the smaller ones. Sheep with their heavy winter wool are not good swimmers, and they sank like stones in a pond.
Aguayo finally settled on a large wooden raft made of ten vigas (beams). Empty barrels were tied beneath the vigas so that the float could carry more weight. To pull the craft across the current, fifty Nadador Indians with ropes tied to the raft took turns in the cold water. Although these Native Americans were given extra rations of hot chocolate and liquor to help keep them warm, all but four of the fifty became sick.
Still, the crossing worked. Six hundred mule-loads of supplies, more than four thousand horses, six hundred cattle, nine hundred sheep, and eight hundred mules safely reached the north bank of the Great River.
While waiting for his supplies and livestock to cross the Río Grande, Aguayo sent forty soldiers under Domingo Ramón to occupy Matagorda Bay. Ramón easily accomplished this because no Frenchmen were found at the location of La Salle’s old fort.
Meanwhile, Aguayo marched toward San Antonio. With him went thousands of horses, cattle, and sheep. Most of us have heard or read about the great cattle drives in Texas history, which came after the United States Civil War in the 1860s. But the Marqués de Aguayo was the first to trail livestock in large numbers across the future Lone Star State.
When the marqués reached San Antonio, he was welcomed with open arms by the East Texans. These people had come to San Antonio during the Chicken War because they wanted to, but they had found life difficult there. So they were eager to join Aguayo and help him redeem their homeland.
In mid-May, the march to East Texas continued. Like many Textans today, the travelers admired the beauty of spring wildflowers such as bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush. The Franciscan priests, happy over returning to their missions among the Tejas Indians, left crosses of wood at each campsite to mark their progress.
This was a slow-moving band of Spaniards, because they had to drive large herds of livestock. It was delayed even more as stray animals had to be brought back to the main herd, and soldiers often got lost trying to recover them.
After crossing the Guadalupe River, the Aguayo entrada (expedition) saw its first buffalo. Because many in the party had never seen this animal before, they considered it strange and described it as follows: “Its back is humped like a camel’s. Its flanks are lean. Its tail, with the exception of the tip, is short and hairless like the pig’s. It has a beard like a goat.” But when the Spaniards ate buffalo steaks, they thought them “as savory [tasty] as the best beef.”
Other wild animals such as deer, turkeys, and prairie chickens provided plenty of food for the travelers. Much less welcome were annoying insects and poisonous snakes, which were found at almost every campsite. Spaniards in the Aguayo entrada liked to walk through great fields of beautiful wildflowers but had to be careful not to stumble onto rattlesnakes. At night the campers were made miserable by mosquitoes, ticks, and chiggers.
In May the travelers ran into heavy rains that lasted for several days. The size of the expedition made crossing open meadows and the smallest of streams extremely difficult. Spaniards remarked that the land was so wet that even Indians “who carried little” had trouble walking.
During one bad thunderstorm, lightning frightened the animals and made them hard to control. One bolt came so close to two soldiers that it knocked them unconscious. Both recovered, but one of the men’s hats had so many holes that it looked “riddled as if by a drill.”
Because of heavy rains, Aguayo had to travel north of the Camino Real (King’s Highway) in order to cross streams closer to their headwaters. He returned to the old road east of modern Bryan/College Station, where Texas A&M University is located. Even so, when the marqués reached the Navasota River, it was so swollen with floodwaters that he had to stop and build a bridge more than sixty feet in length and eight feet in width.
Crossing the Trinity River took two weeks. The large animals were strong enough to swim across, but women and small children had to be transported in a canoe. While making the crossing, the Aguayo expedition was visited by friendly Tejas Indians. The Native Americans seemed pleased that Spaniards were returning to live among them.
The Marqués de Aguayo waiting for his raft to cross the Río Grande (see p. 109) (DRAWING BY JACK JACKSON)
At about this time, Aguayo visited other Indians who had been driven from their homeland along the Brazos River by Apaches. These Native Americans had a blue and white silk flag of France, which was a sure sign that Frenchmen had passed among them. The marqués let the Indians keep the flag, but he told them that they must now pay more respect to the flag of Spain. He also promised the natives that he would set up a mission for them that was closer to their old homeland. Later, as we will note, Aguayo tried to keep that pledge at San Antonio.
A bit farther on, the Aguayo entrada passed through stands of pines, hickories, and oaks on the way to San Pedro Creek, where the first mission had been set up back in 1690 by Father Damián Massanet and General Alonso de León. Near the end of their march, friendly Tejas welcomed the Spaniards with gifts of flowers, watermelons, and beans. As a sign of their friendship, the Native Americans passed around a peace pipe containing a mixture of Spanish and Indian tobaccos. The Spaniards responded by giving gifts that included glass beads, knives, hoes, rings, mirrors, scissors, and blankets.
While Aguayo was camped at San Pedro Creek, Louis St. Denis came to visit from his fort at Natchitoches, on July 31, 1721. The marqués treated him with courtesy and respect, since France and Spain were no longer at war. Tired by his long ride from Louisiana, St. Denis spent the night among his old friends, the Franciscan priests he had known since 1716.
On the following day, Aguayo and the Frenchman began talks. Both of them mentioned the peace that had been signed in Europe by France and Spain. St. Denis was especially concerned about the size of Aguayo’s private army, which numbered almost five hundred men. The marqués said that he would not use his soldiers against the Frenchman if he agreed to give back all the land that Spain had lost during the Chicken War. This included Los Adaes, which was only twenty miles from Natchitoches.
St. Denis said that he did not know why the Spaniards would want Los Adaes, because the land around it was no good for farming. But the Spaniards were not fooled by this argument. They had set up a mission there in 1717 and knew about the land from firsthand experience. Given the size of Aguayo’s army, the Frenchman could do little but promise to pull all his people back to Natchitoches.
Aguayo then set about refounding the six missions in East Texas and western Louisiana. At each mission, his ten companies of men fired muskets and set off blasts from their cannons. This was a show of military strength to convince the Indians that Spain had come back to their lands and intended to stay there.
The last of the missions was set up at Los Adaes. To make sure that Frenchmen could not again take this religious outpost, as they had done during the Chicken War, Aguayo built a new presidio nearby. It was a solid building containing one hundred fully armed soldiers. To make doubly sure that Spain remained permanently in East Texas, the marqués refounded Presidio de los Tejas. This military outpost guarded the western part of the mission field.
In mid-November 1721, Aguayo began a difficult winter march back to San Antonio. The journey was especially hard on his horses and mules. So many died that it was necessary to send to Coahuila for replacements. While waiting for the animals to arrive, the marqués chose a new site for the Béxar presidio. He then decided to build the new structure with adobe bricks to make it stronger. Aguayo founded a third mission at San Antonio, which he had promised to Indians he met during the trek to East Texas. This new religious outpost was named San Francisco Xavier de Nájera, but its buildings were never finished. So actually San Antonio still had only two missions—San Antonio de Valero, the future Alamo, and San José, founded by Father Antonio Margil.
Aguayo then decided to set up a brand new presidio on Garcitas Creek. Perhaps you will remember that he had sent Domingo Ramón there with forty men while he was getting his animals and supplies across the Río Grande at San Juan Bautista. Another fifty men were soon on their way, and Aguayo himself went there in March 1722 with an additional forty men. The marqués directed the founding of still another well-built presidio at the exact site of La Salle’s fort. His idea was to defend Matagorda Bay against the possibility of France setting up a colony there. Directly across Garcitas Creek, Aguayo helped set up a new mission for Indians in the region. The two outposts came to be called La Bahía (The Bay). When he began the return march to San Antonio, the governor left behind ninety soldiers at the presidio.
By the end of April 1722, the Marqués de Aguayo was back in San Antonio. There he inspected the new adobe brick presidio and assigned fifty-four soldiers to it. By then a fresh supply of horses and mules had arrived from Coahuila. And on May 5, the marqués headed back to his wife at Monclova, Coahuila.
During his stay in Texas, Governor Aguayo had been a busy man. He had refounded six missions in East Texas, ordered a new one at San Antonio, and built another near Matagorda Bay. He had also given permission for Father Margil to set up Mission San José, the most successful of the San Antonio missions. In all, the marqués had constructed two new presidios, one at Los Adaes and a second at Matagorda Bay, and a new building for the San Antonio military garrison. The Spanish troop strength in Texas had increased from 60 or 70 men to 268. In doing all of this, Aguayo had spent 130,000 pesos in the service of his king.
It is well to ask at this point how long Texas benefited from the work and expenses of the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo. As it turned out, not long. It was the governor’s bad luck that events in far-off Europe caused the government in Mexico City to change its mind about the importance of having so many presidios and soldiers in the future Lone Star State.
Aguayo was hardly back in Coahuila when relations changed between France and Spain. These longtime enemies in Europe began to move closer and closer together as allies. Both countries had colonies in America, but so did Great Britain. It seemed wise for them to end their differences and join together to defend their lands against the British.
By the mid-1720s, Spain decided that it was spending too much money on its northern frontier. So the king ordered an inspection of all Spanish presidios from the Gulf of California to Texas. The inspector was a hard-to-please general named Pedro de Rivera, who was sent to the north from Mexico in late 1724.
Rivera carried with him at all times a mountain of paper that totaled 7,000 pages! These papers included letters to and from the king, a list of each soldier at every presidio, reasons why a presidio had been set up in the first place, and the salary and rank of all military men.
As a general, Inspector Rivera carried a higher rank than anyone on the northern frontier, and not even governors could refuse to follow his orders. His instructions called on him to give a report on each presidio. Don Pedro was to set down the exact location of each garrison, the nature of the land around it, and a description of Indians in the area. He was also to explain the importance of each presidio to nearby missions or other military garrisons.
Rivera was in the field for more than three and half years and traveled about 7,500 miles—all on horseback! He began his inspection in the west and moved slowly toward Texas, where he did not arrive until the late summer of 1727. At each presidio he was to record three things: the condition of the garrison and its men, what it was like after he ordered changes made there, and what he saw as its future.
Traveling with the inspector was a sharp-eyed engineer and mapmaker named Francisco Alvarez Barreiro. Much of what we know about Texas and how it looked in 1727 comes from the pen of don Francisco. He thought the future Lone Star State to be a hot place in August, which is hardly surprising to us. Since he had to camp out at night, Barreiro complained bitterly about the mosquitoes that made his sleep miserable. In East Texas, don Francisco noted that the cry of a bird at night—probably a hoot owl—was so sad that it made those who heard it sad too. But overall he thought Texas had lands that were very good for raising crops.
For the most part, Rivera and Barreiro did not like what they saw at Texas’s presidios. At Los Adaes, Rivera thought that garrison to be mostly of no use. In his opinion, it had too many soldiers, and he ordered the number cut from one hundred to sixty.
When the inspector arrived at Presidio de los Tejas, located at the western edge of the mission field, he was completely discouraged by its appearance. Rivera described it as “a collection of huts poorly constructed of sticks and straw [that] did not deserve the honorable name of Presidio de los Tejas.” The nearby missions did not contain a single Indian. In recommending the closing of this garrison, don Pedro could not have been more blunt: “There is, to my mind, no reason to spend 10,000 pesos—500 for the captain and 400 pesos for each of the 24 soldiers—on such a useless place as the presidio of Texas.”
Rivera actually liked the presidio that had been set up at the location of La Salle’s colony. But he decided that it, like Los Adaes, had more soldiers than were needed. It was the inspector’s recommendation that the total number stationed there be reduced from ninety to forty. As he left La Bahía, however, don Pedro decided that even forty men were unnecessary. He wrote: “Although I have said that forty men should be assigned to the presidio, none is really needed.”
At San Antonio, the inspector found another presidio he liked. He remarked that the Béxar garrison enjoyed “the best location of any that I have seen.” Once again, Rivera believed the presidio had more men than were actually needed. He recommended the number be reduced from fifty-four to forty-four.
As he left Texas for the last time, Pedro de Rivera remarked on the province as a good place for farming. He said, “Corn, vegetables, and other crops can be grown everywhere. Even without the benefit of irrigation the land demonstrates its fertility and utility to the pagan [non-Christian] Indians who cultivate it.” Referring to East Texas, he commented on the large number of bears found there. He seemed especially interested in “mice resembling baby rabbits, which serve as food for the pagans.”
When Rivera returned to Mexico City, he made recommendations for saving the king’s money by cutting back on the number of soldiers stationed in Texas. If accepted, the inspector’s suggestions would largely undo the work of the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo. Spain would be much weaker militarily in the future Lone Star State and the few hundred Spaniards living there would be in danger of Indian attacks.
The viceroy accepted Rivera’s recommendations and had them enforced. Los Adaes went from 100 to 60 men, La Bahía from 90 to 40, and San Antonio from 54 to 44. Because Rivera thought Presidio de los Tejas “ought to be extinguished [eliminated],” it was. This meant that the missionaries working in the three most western missions of East Texas would not have any military protection. Because they were about 300 miles from San Antonio and more than 150 miles from Los Adaes, the Franciscans did not believe they could keep their missions in operation. They pointed out that Indians armed with guns supplied by the French in Louisiana made their work too risky. The priests asked the viceroy to change his orders and let Presidio de los Tejas remain where it was. But it was not to be.
These three missions in East Texas wound up being moved to San Antonio by the early months of 1731. Thus, San Antonio came to have the five missions that it has to this day. San Antonio de Valero would become known as the Alamo, and of course it is famous for events there during the Texas Revolution in 1836. The Alamo now serves as a historic shrine, where visitors are reminded of Texas’s struggle for independence from Mexico. The other four missions are active Catholic churches where religious services are held each week.
Overall, the proposals of Pedro de Rivera and their enforcement by the viceroy certainly weakened Spain in Texas by the 1730s. At that same time, Apache Indians stepped up their attacks on settlers at San Antonio. And of course the presidios, with fewer soldiers, could not offer as much by way of military protection. What is certain is that Spanish settlers found Texas a much more dangerous place to live. In the interest of saving money, Spanish officials undid much of the work of the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo.
Indian problems for Spanish settlers in Texas would get worse instead of better over the years. Much of this was caused by Comanches who began to enter West Texas in the early 1700s. These Native Americans hated the Apaches, defeated them in battles, and drove them toward San Antonio. We will look at this serious problem in our later chapters.
For now, let us look at the last years of the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo. After returning to his wife at Monclova in 1722, the marqués lived at San Francisco de los Patos. At the great hacienda, he saw his work in Texas come undone. As Spain and France patched up their differences in Europe, it was no longer necessary to worry about another war between French Louisiana and Spanish Texas.
The new presidios at Los Adaes and La Bahía seemed not so important any more. Aguayo watched as Spanish officials weakened Spain’s presence in Texas in the late 1720s and early 1730s. His wife died in 1733, and he on March 9, 1734. The Chicken War Redeemer had spent 130,000 pesos and weakened his health while serving the king of Spain. He and the marquesa died knowing that their work and the cost of reclaiming East Texas from the French invasion of 1719 was largely unappreciated. The best intentions and actions of some people do not always earn them the recognition that they deserve.
Materials used in preparing this chapter are described below. You can find more information about these sources in the Bibliography at the end of the book.
Robert S. Weddle’s San Juan Bautista: Gateway to Spanish Texas is useful for background of the Chicken War. Donald E. Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph’s Notable Men and Women of Spanish Texas has a more detailed sketch of the Chicken War Redeemer.
Good sources on Aguayo are Eleanor C. Buckley’s “The Aguayo Expedition into Texas and Louisiana, 1719–1722,” Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 15 (July 1911): 1–65, and Charles W. Hackett’s “The Marquis of San Miguel de Aguayo and His Recovery of Texas from the French, 1719–1723,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 49 (October 1945): 193–214.
Quotes in this chapter are from the following sources: Richard G. Santos, translator, Aguayo Expedition into Texas, 1721; Testimony of the Rivera Project (June 2, 1730), Archivo General de Indias (Seville), Guadalajara 44; Thomas H. Naylor and Charles W. Polzer, compilers and editors, Pedro de Rivera and the Military Regulations for Northern New Spain, 1724–1729: A Documentary History of His Frontier Inspection and the “Reglamento de 1729”) Jack Jackson, editor, and William C. Foster, annotator, Imaginary Kingdom: Texas as Seen by the Rivera and Rubí Military Expeditions, 1727 and 1767, and Donald E. Chipman, Spanish Texas, 1519–1821.