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Can you tell more about what happened in nacogdoches associated with this conflict?
Certainly. Nacogdoches actually has a starring role. Of course, it's important to realize it's a far different Nacogdoches than what later occurred.
Nacogdoches from the 1790s-1810 was surprisingly diverse. The census only lists heads of households, but that alone puts the foreigners in town at over 10 percent of the population, and with families, probably in the 25 percent range. While the majority of the population was Hispanic, there were lots of Frenchmen, Anglo-Americans, even some Italians and Germans. Almost all of these people had spilled over into Texas from Louisiana after Spain took control of it after the 7 Years War.
Most people are completely unaware that there were Anglo-Americans living in Texas when the "father of Texas" Stephen F. Austin was 7 years old and the "Mother of Texas" Jane Long wasn't even born. But this is true. They show up in the census under Hispanicized names like "Guillermo Suel" (William Sewell). Now, it's really important not to try to interpret these as Americans trying to subvert Spain and move Texas towards Annexation, or any of those 1830s dogmas. We're talking about Anglo-Americans settling in Texas even before the US Constitution was signed in a couple of cases. Their ethnicity is Anglo-American, but their identity is far more vague. Many are possibly former British loyalists. We know this is common in West Florida (Alabama and Mississippi coastal regions), and these filtered into Louisiana, and after mixing there, may have been among those who moved to Texas. So while this is an ethnic Anglo-American population, it's a huge stretch to presume loyalty to the United States.
The Frenchmen are a little different, and the Spanish archival documents show this. While they treat the Anglo-Americans as generally good Spanish subjects, and not even a threat when they are not fully Catholic, the Spanish are implicitly fearful of the French, who they believe still retain French loyalty. The difference is the Anglos in their midst mostly voluntarily expatriated to Spanish soil, while the French were forced to become Spaniards after 1760.
Now, what unites all people in Nacogdoches, (Spanish, American, French, etc.) is the desire for trade. Even when Spain owned both Louisiana and Texas, trade between the two was forbidden. So the people of Nacogdoches cannot trade with Natchitoches, LA, which is only 70-80 miles away. Instead, they have to route all their trade through Veracruz, which is 1,100 miles away. Goods are prohibitively expensive. When they have a good year of crops, they can't sell the excess, and when they have a bad year, they starve.
The Spanish settlers of Nacogdoches are mostly the descendants of the old settlers of Los Adayes, Texas (now in Louisiana), and they specifically wanted to stay on the frontier to trade with Louisiana. Spanish laws preventing this are anathema to them and the people of Nacogdoches are inherently rebellious. Think of all the thing people say bad about the war on drugs and how it supposedly can't be stopped because the smuggling will get through to the willing customers, etc. Except now take out drugs and this is a ban on EVERYTHING. No clothes, no pots and pans, no food, nothing. Oh, did I mention that there's an exception to the licensed trading firm that brings in Indian goods for trade. So while the people of Nacogdoches are walking around wearing rags because they can't buy cloth, the government monopoly trading firm brings in cloth and hands it to the Indians FOR FREE to buy them off so they won't attack Spain. If I was a Spaniard, I'd be pretty riled up about that.
And while it's ALWAYS bad, and always a sore spot, the Louisiana Purchase is like putting kerosene on the flames. That's because Louisiana suddenly starts booming at the same time that Texas is declining, from 1803-1808.
Then 1808 happens. Napoleon basically takes over Spain and puts the entire empire in a tailspin. Spain's colonies are now in an upside-down world in which "loyalty" to the crown means submitting to a foreign power (Napoleon's brother Joseph is placed on the throne), whereas to be a true and honorable Spaniard, you have to assert semi-autonomous stature and place yourself (ostensibly) in the camp of the imprisoned Ferdinand VII and the Cadiz Junta. Thus, revolutions in many Spanish provinces are initially pro-monarchy, but ultimately, as the occupation of Spain continues, this evolves more and more into independence.
Mexico is for the king, but vary wary of any independence moves. Under the strict rule of Commandant General of the Internal Provinces (everything from California to Texas) Nemesio Salcedo and his cowed nephew Manuel Salcedo, the governor of Texas, the impulse is to tighten the reigns to keep out foreign influence. So Nacogodches, which has an addiction to smuggling (from necessity) becomes a battleground.
In my research, I came across an obscure event that is actually hugely important, the breakup of a smuggling ring in 1808 that was run entirely by foreign residents of Spanish East Texas. These men are smuggling Mustangs out of Texas and using them to purchase goods in Louisiana for smuggling back into Texas. Basically, the disruption of this ring is the first in a string of dominoes that begins to fall that leads to the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition of 1812. There are other intermediary dominoes, not the smallest of which is the decision by the elder Salcedo in 1810 to expell all foreigners. This has a huge influence, because even the native Tejanos benefit from smuggling and the small wealth it provides, but the smugglers are almost all former residents of Louisiana who have contacts in that neighboring province. It also creates a cadre of Texas exiles in Louisiana with economic and personal vendettas against the Spanish royal leadership.
I wrote an entire article on the smuggling ring and it's role. It was published in the East Texas Historical Journal last year and can be found here:
https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ethj/vol60/iss1/1/Anyway, the smugglers' friends establish a group of banditti in the neutral ground who prey on Spanish caravans in retaliation for their imprisonment, and these banditti are attractive to American filibusters and Mexican rebels alike.
After the Casas Revolt in San Antonio in 1811, which was a short, abortive attempt to bring Texas into the Mexican Revolutionary struggle, there is a conspiracy of sorts that evolves in Nacogdoches to align with American filibuster elements. It's hard to tell what's true, but we do know that a scheming American filibuster organizer contacts the Nacogdoches Parish Priest to discuss plans for an American invasion of Texas in support of Mexican rebels. Either the priest is in league with the American in a deliberate attempt to facilitate the invasion (as some people testify to Spanish officials) or he is being solicited against his will (he seems to make this assertion after he gets caught). Either way, we have a proto-filibuster, the genesis of the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition, a year before either Gutierrez or Magee get involved.
The point I make in the book is that all this stuff is far more organic than has ever been understood. There is a push/pull relationship with American Burrites pushing and Mexican rebels pulling, which creates this symbiotic moment for American aid for the rebellion. And because it's 1812 (contemporaneous with the war) and not 1820, this is not Southern expansionism, not even American Manifest Destiny. This is an event occurring amid a population not yet cemented in its American loyalty. It's a far more complex story in which the players are certainly considering a number of different motivations, of which joining Mexico as Mexicans or starting a new Burrite republic are as likely - I would say even more likely - than asserting American claims over Texas. Americans are expanding, but the American government is not. And most of these Americans don't want government for any purpose other than fighting off Indians.
Long story short, there is a really complex connection between Nacogdoches and the launching of this first revolution. After it starts, the action moves South and Nacogdoches grows more quiet, as a kind of hub for the rebel supply lines. Now, after the Battle of Medina, when the rebels are defeated, Nacogdoches is nearly entirely emptied out. Only a half dozen loyal Spanish families remain. Even the Spanish (now basically Mexican) rebels have fled to Louisiana. Some come back after an amnesty is proclaimed, but some never come back. And some settle in other parts of Texas because Nacogdoches is essentially unlivable now.
What all this means is that when Stephen F. Austin comes to Texas in 1821 or 22, he calls East Texas a "howling wilderness." He's under the impression that it's essentially vacant land. But it wasn't always that way. That's a legacy of the war, but he doesn't know it. Neither, of course, do most of the later Anglo settlers, who stake out claims to this "empty" land and then start running into conflict with the Tejanos who have older claims to the land (but poor proof of them, since the Spanish kept few such records). It's kind of like an Israel/Palestinian conflict, with the Texians as the Palestinians, saying "Hey, we came here and there was nothing, so it's ours" while the Tejanos are saying, "yeah, well that was my granddad's farm before he was executed for being a traitor to Spain."
A big theme of my book is how all of these threads of early Texas history tie this first conflict to the second one and the republic. I like to say that my war is the World War I of Texas History and the 1836 Revolution is the World War II. You cannot really fully understand the second war without knowing about the first.
A long way of saying that everybody in Nacogdoches who cares about history should read my book.
