Saw two episodes so far. Learning quite a lot. I had never heard of the Goliad Massacre. It’s even worse than the Alamo because 350 men surrendered and Santa Anna had them executed. At least most of the men at the Alamo died fighting.
I had no idea the situation was that desperate. It’s quite amazing the Texiansweren’t all wiped out. Looking forward to tonight’s episode. It’s about time Sam Houston kicks some ass.
The errors in geography are pretty egregious. Goliad and Victoria are near the Texas coast and, for the most part, are flat as a board yet they keep showing these sweeping mountain vistas and deep scenic gorges.
The acting is so bad that it’s kinda like watching a train wreck. I can’t pull my eyes away from it. Jeremy Davis’ character is pretty funny though. Too bad it’s the exact same character he plays in Justified.
Santa Anna mispronouncing Spanish place names is pretty jarring at times.
The addition of a sexy spy is something I failed to read in my textbooks as a kid. Too bad, I probably would paid more attention at the time.
It is amusing to see the writing at the bottom of the screen during scene changes that tells you where the scene is supposed to take place – and then see the landscape so different from what that part of Texas looks like.
All the scenery in the show looks like some part of Texas – just not always the area the scene is supposed to depict.
Above enverything, I hope the show conveys that the purpose of the Alamo was not to win the battle and defeat Santa Ana – it was to delay the Mexican army so that Houston would have time to raise his own army. Santa Ana couldn’t afford to leave the Alamo behind or bypass it, due to his long supply lines, so the Alamo had to be neutralized. The brave men there bought thirteen precious days for Houston,
They lost the battle, but did what they needed to do. Sure, they hoped to be reinforced and maybe hold out or manage an escape, but there wasn’t the man power for that.
Man, that Indian attack on the settler’s cabin was just brutal. Killed the entire family and even the dog. Burned the cabin. Pretty graphic reminder of what early settlers had to deal with. The Indians knew the Texians and Mexicans were busy at war. No one was around to protect the settlers. Leaving them very vulnerable.
They’re doing a good job developing interesting characters to move the story along. A lot of it is made up because there isn’t that much known about these people.
These events took place so quickly. They probably spent more time filming this mini-series.
Not sure how many episodes are left. There’s still one more next week for sure.
The “early settlers” had to deal with … just to be clear who were the early settlers of the land in question, the conquistadors who arrived around 1519, or the native indians who’s been there for thousands of years before?
Actually they were under orders frrom Houston to destroy the complex and retreat with the guns. They stayed because they couldn’t transport the artillery but really they could have spiked the guns and lived to fight another day.
It would be interesting to see how they depict the Brazos River crossing Houston used as he moved ahead of Santa Anna toward San Jacinto. This (about 100 yards downstream) is the actual crossing point, a natural limestone outcrop that provides the only high and hard footing for many tens of miles. It’s on a friend’s ranch outside Waller and was a known crossing to Indians well before whites ever came into the area. It’s where Custer and his men camped (we’ve metal detected buttons, etc) and also close to the lost plantation, Bernado, that’s now an active dig site. Bernardo has been called by some the most important archaeological site in Texas after the Alamo.
Indeed. If the Native Americans were becoming ruthless by the time of the war for Texas independence, it was largely because they had learned such habits from the Texas settlers, who were merciless in their dealings with the Indians.
In 1828, the Mexican government sent one of their most trusted officers, General Manuel De Mier Y Terán, on an investigatory mission to Coahuila y Tejas, in order to see what the situation was like there. There’s a book that compiles Terán’s observations, using his diary as well as letters that he sent back to the Mexican government. I have some notes and some quotations from the book for my teaching on this subject.
In another part of his diary, Terán notes the prosperous nature of Austin’s colony, and the efficiency with which the settlers deal with Indian raids. He argues that “North Americans understand war with the savages better than do our Mexicans,” noting that they “dealt [the Indians] swift punishment, striking back ten times for every blow they received.”
Like a couple of others in this thread, i’d be interested to see how the TV show deals with the issue of slavery. It’s a constant presence in Terán’s letters and diary entries, and he’s very clear that the American settlers in Texas were adamant about retaining their slaves, in defiance of the nation that had invited them to settle within its borders.
Had he been in the United States instead of Mexico at this time, Jared Groce’s (Terán gives his name a Spanish spelling) 150 slaves would have made him among the most prosperous planters in the whole nation.
It’s worth noting that some of the American slaveholders in Texas were also deadbeats. Slaves, like other expensive property, were often financed through loans, and if a borrower fell behind on his payments, the property could be taken by the lender. It was not uncommon for Americans who had borrowed money to purchase slaves, and who could not keep up the payments on the loans, to flee to Texas in order to prevent the repossession of their human property. This practice continued into the period of Texas independence.
mhendo, have you read Gwynne’s take on the Comanches and other tribes? He paints them a little less flatteringly wrt atrocities and the like and goes into great detail about how the development of weapons and the wars of Texas and the US affected the ever shifting frontier. A good read even if it is perhaps a little less scholarly than say Hamalainen and others.
Raised in Texas, studied Texas History several times in school–and I’ve read enough since then to get the big picture. Texas Rising sounded pretty bad–but it’s even worse. For me, the emblematic scene came early–when the Alamo survivors were attacked by Karankawas (!) on horseback as they traversed the arid, mountainous terrain between San Antonio & Gonzales. The party including Emily West–but not Joe, Travis’s slave.
The show wants us to see the illustrious rise of the Texas Rangers–from their important role in the Revolution through their gallant fight against the savages. (The Indigenes mostly lay low during the the Revolution.) In The The Handbook of Texas(far better than Wikipedia), we learn they were founded in November 1835:
Some of the show’s characters became Rangers after the Revolution.
Then there’s the matter of Emily West. Her “role” in the Revolution is 99% balderdash, but the show has embroidered it immensely. The Handbook of Texas is very hard on the folklorists–who should have known better–who linked her “legend” to the minstrel tune (not a “folk song”) back in the mid 20th century.
The show was shot in Durango, Mexico. Parts of Texas look like that but not the parts where the Revolution happened. Rolling prairie, East Texas woods & Coastal prairie–all these areas are far flatter than Dramatic Durango.
Then there’s the costuming. The Texians looked more like this than Hollywood versions of 1880’s cowboys. (Gary Zaboly illustrated Texian Illiad–a straighforward military history of the Revolution.) Sam Houston wore no uniform–because there were no uniforms yet. Some militia from other states wore surplus US Army uniforms–but not the Civil War getups the show gives us.
I really ought to watch the whole thing to critique it fully. But it’s just not very good. The writing is all over the place & the veteran actors can’t make much of their parts…
The Karankawas were a tribe who predominantly lived on the coast between Galveston Bay and Corpus Christi and at their extreme migratory range, possibly 100 miles inland (barely as far as Gonzales). They weren’t on horseback either.
The terrain between San Antonio and Gonzales is neither mountainous nor terribly arid.
I don’t know the Texas terrain that well and the filming locations don’t bother me. My family is from central Louisiana and parts of East Texas near that border are similar. A Lot of rice is grown. Much different than the arid parts of Texas. We took a car trip through Big Bend and saw Judge Roy Bean’s saloon when I was 12. Mostly I recall endless miles of flat and never changing land. Some of the biggest fire ant mounds are in Texas. Just huge mounds.
I am a bit surprised the mini-series hasn’t taken a more critical eye at events. But Santa Anna had arrived with the army and was executing a lot of people. I’m not sure at that point any negotiated settlement was possible. It was a fight or die point in history. Santa Anna wanted the Anglos gone.
Speaking of slavery. Did you know Sam Houstonwas removed from office as governor of Texas because he refused to recognize the confederacy succession? He was the only governor that refused to support succession.
I haven’t read Gwynne’s book, although i’ve read some favorable reviews of it.
I’m certainly not interested in ignoring or glossing over the sometimes-brutal actions of the Comanches in the Southwest, or in painting them merely as helpless victims of evil Americans or Spanish or Mexicans. They were incredibly successful for a long time, at least in part, because they were willing to give about as good as they got, and because they recognized how to take advantage of the fluid nature of political and military and cultural relations in the borderlands areas.
It seems from this discussion, though, that the TV show in question is not especially interested in offering anything like a nuanced or complex portrayal of the issues involved in the region. It also appears that some viewers might be swallowing the show’s version of history whole, without considering that it’s not the complete story.
Santa Anna was an asshole. He was a self-aggrandizing despot, and in many ways he was opposed to the modern, Enlightenment liberal ideals that helped to write the Mexican constitution and construct the new Mexican nation.
But you make it sound like he was invading a foreign country. You understand, i assume, that until the war was over Texas was actually Mexican territory? The Americans there were there precisely because they had been invited to settle by the government of Mexico, which had also placed some particular conditions on their presence.
You complain in your OP that Santa Anna executed a bunch of people at Goliad. Try this hypothetical. Say the United States offered residency to a few thousand people from another country. And say that one of the conditions of that residency was that those immigrants would agree to be bound by the laws of the United States. And say those immigrants, over an extended period of time, openly and brazenly refused to obey those laws, and actually began making noises about seizing the land where they were living and breaking away from the United States. And say, when the American government tried to deal with this, the immigrants doubled down and took up arms against the United States, killing American soldiers and civilians.
Do you think, under those circumstances, that execution might be a reasonable punishment for those who were caught?
