The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992 Page: 208
598 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Hzstorzcal Quarterly
Mexico as a whole, bore the brunt of hostilities aimed initially at other
targets. By October 1840, the latter included the Anglo-American
settlements in Texas.
On the dry autumn morning of October 5, the farmers of Busta-
mante and Valenzuela were at work in the fields and pastures north of
the twin settlements. At about 1o:oo, a billowing cloud of dust was
sighted off to the north of Valenzuela in the direction of two ranchos,
Huizache and Lagunillas, on the road to Lampazos. Soon, messengers
rode in to corroborate what those who witnessed the cloud must al-
ready have perceived, for they had seen its like all too often: the dust
concealed a party of raiders, who had over-run the ranchos, only a mile
or so away, and were bearing down on Valenzuela and Bustamante.
Panicked townspeople immediately notified Valenzuela's local magis-
trate and his colleague in Bustamante, just to the south. The informant
estimated that the attackers numbered between three hundred and
four hundred braves, all mounted. As the Indians approached, a por-
tion of them peeled off from the main body and made for the open
fields north of Valenzuela."
Both judges, meanwhile, responded promptly; the one at Busta-
mante ordered church bells to be rung, while Valenzuela's magistrate
sent a small contingent of armed riders to alert those at work in the
countryside and to provide covering fire as they streamed toward their
homes. Along the near bank of the Rio de Tlaxcala, which ran along-
side the northern edge of Valenzuela, he deployed a line of eight
armed men, backed up by a much larger group of unarmed citizens.
The effect of this bluff, he hoped, would be to buy some time, to deter
the attackers from an immediate assault upon the town. These strata-
gems worked: the raiders drew off from the fields and rode around to
the eastern flank of the two communities, where they launched an at-
tack along the boundary ditch while another force of warriors at-
tempted to storm Bustamante from the south. In both instances, hastily
assembled groups of townspeople, all of them armed by now, stopped
Tlaxcalan contribution to the defense of colonial Coahuila and Nuevo Le6n. For New Mexico,
sec Oakah L Jones, Jr , Pueblo Wantons and Spanish Conquest (Norman. University of Oklahoma
Press, 1966), and Jack D Forbes, Apache, Navalo, and Spaniard (Norman University of Okla-
homa Press, 196o). General works, such as Jones's excellent survey of civilian settlements all
across the borderlands, Los Paisanos Spanish Settle) on the Northern Frontier of New Spain (Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, iq79), have not dealt in detail with the role of Indian aux-
iliaries in local or regional defense. The terms "Indlos birbaros" are employed here as they
were in the documentation of the colonial and post-independence eras, and as Isidro Vizcaya
Canales does im the title of his work on the raids of 1840-1841 (see note 3 above), to designate
any or all of northern Mexico's unconquered and/or hostile indigenous peoples
6Reports by the juez 6mco de pay of Valenzucla and the juez primero de paz of Bustamante
to the subprefecto of the partldo of Salinas Victoria, Oct. 14 and 15, 1840, in Vizcaya Canales
(ed.), La znvascln de los andios bdrbaros, 90, 94208
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992, periodical, 1992; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117153/m1/254/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.