point of rendezvous, Cox, after waiting several days at San Antonio, determined to proceed on the expedition with his own company. His party left San Antonio and encamped on Tahuacano Creek,[80]  where a party of Mexican traders, consisting of men, women, and five or six children from the Río Grande on their way to Béxar came up on August 2 and encamped nearby. The Mexicans indicated they wished to be on friendly terms. Mutual professions of friendship passed between the two parties, until the freebooters suddenly seized on several of the Mexicans, deprived them of their arms, shot a boy, who expired in the arms of his mother, and wounded a man. Cox's men then robbed the Mexicans of all their property (mules, horses, saddles, money, blankets, flour, sugar, leather, and every other thing of value, which the traders were carrying to Béxar to exchange for goods), leaving them neither clothing, food, nor animals, except two or three worn-out horses which they left for a woman and five or six children belonging to the Mexican party.[81]  On the 3rd Erasmo Seguin, then justice of the peace of Béxar County, ordered the sheriff to arrest all suspicious characters who might have been involved in this crime and to seize the property allegedly stolen from the traders. Accordingly, William Gamble, Jacob Zengerle, and Louis Marble were arrested and a number of horses were recovered. An examining trial was held before Judge Seguin on August 4, and the Court ordered the three Americans to be held under arrest, but owing to the lack of an adequate jail and public funds, they were placed on bail.[82] 

By the end of 1838 there were no less than four marauding parties of Texans west of the Nueces, engaged in plundering the Mexicans in that section. The citizens of Goliad were said to be "exceedingly exasperated on this account," believing that while this system of border pillage continued, they would be subjected to the "incursions of similar parties from the settlements on the Río Grande," who would en-