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CHAPTER EIGHT |  |
The Córdova-Flores IncidentTHE IDEA OF AN Indo-Mexican alliance for a war on Texas was not new. As early as 1836 such a plan had been instituted.[1] Between 1836 and 1838 it was known in Texas that certain Cherokees on several occasions after San Jacinto had visited the Mexicans at Matamoros, where they obtained large quantities of ammunition from the authorities and discussed the possibility of a conquest of Texas. In December 1836, five Texans held prisoners at Matamoros escaped, and were pursued as far as the Nueces, where they were overtaken by a party of Cherokee Indians who brought back three of them to the Mexican authorities at Matamoros. The Cherokees, reported the U. S. Consul at Matamoros, "are no doubt in the actual service of the Mexican nation."[2] From Matamoros General Vicente Filisola,[3] commander in 1. See extract of a letter from General Felix Huston to the Secretary of War, Headquarters, Camp Johnson, Dec. 13, 1836; extract of a letter to the Secretary of War, Camp Independence, Dec. 31, 1836, Matagorda Bulletin, Mar. 28, 1838, and A[nthony] Butler to Felix Huston, City of Houston, Dec. 21, 1838; Jones Douglas to William H. Wharton, Houston, Dec. 23, 1838; all in "Report of the Secretary of State . . . relative to the Encroachments of the Indians of the United States upon the Territories of Mexico," Washington, Jan. 11, 1853, in United States Congress, Senate Executive Documents, 32 Cong., 2d sess., vol. III, no. 14, pp. 37-41; see also, report made by Col. [Moses L.] Patton in Telegraph and Texas Register (Houston), Dec. 1, 1838. 2. D. W. Smith to John Forsyth, Consulate of the U. S. A., Matamoros, Jan. 6, 1837, no. 115, in Consular Dispatches (Texas), 1837-1839 (Matamoros), ms., microfilm. 3. Vicente Filisola, an Italian by birth, served with the Spanish royalist forces during the Gachupín revolt of 1813, and as a brigadier general of the Mexican forces in Central America under the Empire. In October 1831, he obtained a contract from Mexico to settle 600 families in Texas, but had done nothing toward fulfilling his agreement before the outbreak of the Texas Revolution. He was named, in January 1833, commandant general of the eastern division of the Provincias Internas, and was second in command of the Mexican expedition under General Santa Anna to quell the rebellion in Texas in 1836. Filisola commanded | ||