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Cattle Raids and Frontier Marauders

deavor to retaliate for the injuries received from their marauding countrymen.[83] 

From Live Oak Point, Refugio County, late in 1838, the citizens and residents addressed the "General Government on the subject of the dangers & embarrassments" to which they were exposed from incursions by marauding parties of Mexicans. They reported a Mexican general encamped on the Nueces, about fifteen miles from Refugio. Without giving details, they declared that he had sent "a detachment from his forces, Two Hundred Strong, well mounted and armed. . . . into our Territory nearly as far, within a few miles of Labardee [La Bahía], murdering, plundering, and making captives all in their course." The inhabitants of Live Oak Point called upon the government for protection of the frontier not only from the Mexican marauders, but also from the Karankawa Indians. They pointed out the importance of Live Oak Point as a port of entry for merchant vessels entering Aransas Bay. "We can but feel our impotency under present circumstances," they said, "and can but feel that this region of the country, abounding with fertile grounds, and this Point offering facilities to trade and commerce unsurpassed . . . are objects worthy of defence and protection." But such was not the opinion of the President, who endorsed and filed the petition with the following comment: "The object of the persons herein named was to protect the illicit trade which they were willing should be done at the expense of the Republic." The President had no means to aid the petitioners, and if he had possessed abundance the policy at the time would not have justified him.[84]  Some of these "would be" traders on the frontier were soon to cast their lot with the Mexican Federalists, but the significant point here is that they did not have the confidence of the Texas government. Consequently, their petition was ignored.



83. Telegraph and Texas Register, Jan. 5, 1839.

84. Richard Pearse, R[ichard] Roman, Edward Drier, and Martin Powers, for Committee, to George W. Hockley, Secretary of War, Aransas (Live Oak Point), Refugio Co., Texas [Feb., 1839], with endorsement by Sam Houston dated Feb. 23, 1839, in Sam Houston, Unpublished Houston Correspondence, 1837-1841, Vol. II, ms.

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AFTER SAN JACINTO: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1836-1841
Joseph Milton Nance, 1963