Marauders Prey on
Frontier Trade and Life

OTHER MEXICAN RAIDS occurred in 1841. Near the middle of July, three wagons loaded with tobacco and dry goods on the road from the coast to San Antonio were robbed near Victoria by a party of some twenty Mexicans. A "spy company" left Victoria on the 20th to ascertain the number and location of the enemy.[1]  Public meetings were held at Victoria, Goliad, and San Patricio to devise measures to prevent further marauding attacks. The repeated acts of treachery on the part of the Mexicans had destroyed entirely the little confidence the Texans had placed in them. A committee of safety was created at Victoria to correspond with the Secretary of War, who, in the meantime, authorized the raising of volunteers to disperse the Mexican bands on this side of the Río Grande. The volunteers were scheduled to rendezvous at Goliad on August 1. "Another campaign," declared the editor of the Morning Star, "Would afford the most sincere delight to the hundreds of idle men who have gathered on the western frontier."[2]

In August 1841, about six weeks after the capture of Dimitt, a party of approximately fifty Texans consisting of the Minute Men of San Patricio and a few volunteers from Gonzales, reported L. S. Hagler,[3]  made an excursion to the southern extremity of Padre Island, and in the afternoon of August 17 surprised and captured a Mexican captain by the name of Corsco and nine soldiers stationed at a rancho. The soldiers offered no resistance, and were taken with their horses to San Patricio and turned over to the chief justice of the county to be exchanged for the same number of Texan prisoners in Matamoros. The Mexican captain, it was reported, wrote to General Ampudia at Matamoros suggesting the exchange and requesting that Dimitt be included