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The Córdova-Flores Incident

body they took a number of papers, including several land certificates that had been taken from the surveyors killed near San Antonio[77]  and a letter written at Matamoros by General Canalizo to Córdova and the chiefs of the Caddoes and Seminoles and to Big Mush and Bowles of the Cherokees.[78]  Among the papers was a letter from Córdova, reported Burleson, informing Flores of Córdova's inability to accompany him on his way to the East on account of a wound he had received, presumably from his late encounter with the Texans.[79]  This letter, dated April 20 at Matamoros, Burleson reported he had mislaid and could not include with the others that he was transmitting with his report of May 22 to the Secretary of War.

Everything having been collected, Rice's party[80]  struck out for home, arriving at the spring on the South San Gabriel just in time to camp for the night at the same spot where the Mexicans had camped the previous night. While en route to the South San Gabriel, Rice's men



how he had buried his gold at a point where three creeks met, sixty feet from an oak tree, in which he had driven a large brass spike. Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers, p. 48; Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas, pp. 166-167; J. Frank Dobie, Coronado's Children: Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Southwest, pp. 121-124; Williamson County Sun (Georgetown), Sept. 28, 1950.

77. Colorado Gazette and Advertiser (Matagorda), June 6, 1839; Edward Burleson to A. Sidney Johnston, City of Austin, May 12, 1839, 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," United States Congress, Senate Executive Documents, 32nd Cong., 2d sess., vol. III, no. 14, pp. 29-30.

78. Edward Burleson to A. Sidney Johnston, Secretary of War, City of Austin, May 22, 1839, Army Papers (Texas) ms. This is Burleson's report of the engagement with the Mexicans and Indians under Flores in May 1839, on the San Gabriel fork of Little River. Yoakum, History of Texas, II, 260; Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, p. 65; Terrell, "The City of Austin from 1839 to 1865," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, XIV (1910-1911), 113-128; Alcée La Branche to John Forsyth, Legation of the U. S., Houston, June 7, 1839 (vol. I, no. 22), "Correspondence and Reports of American Agents and Others in Texas, 1836-1845," Justin H. Smith, "Transcripts," V; Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas, II, 198; United States Congress, Senate Executive Documents, 32nd Cong., 2d sess., vol. III, no. 14.

79. Edward Burleson to A. Sidney Johnston, Secretary of War, City of Austin, May 22, 1839, in Smither (ed.), Journals of the Fourth Congress of the Republic of Texas, III, 113-114.

80. Rice's party included: A. J. Adkisson, Jonathan Davis, S. G. Harness, and William P. Hardeman. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas, p. 166; Frank Brown, "Annals of Travis County and the City of Austin," Chap. VI, ms., p. 50.

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