Tejano Roots - Dan Arellano

Tejano Roots: A Family Legend.

By Dan Arellano. Austin: the author (POB 43012, zip 78704), 2005. Paperback with colored cover, 1 map, photos, bibliography and index, 8 ½ x 11, 194 pages ISBN 0-615-12994-3 $22.95
http://www.tejanoroots.org/ darellano@austin.rr.com

Arellano, a native of San Antonio, used Tejano legends as fuel to study history and to open another part of the American adventure for you - stories often unknown to modern Texans. It is presented in two parts.
Part I covers the “First Texas Revolution” that was sparked by Father Hidalgo’s 1810 Mexican Revolution. The 1811 San Antonio Las Casas overthrow of the Spanish monarchy spread to many sections of the land and held sway for a brief time. The Gutierrez – Magee Expedition followed, being described by Arellano’s accounts of the Battle of Alazan, the establishment of a Republic, and its folding after the August 13, 1813 Battle of Medina, near San Antonio and still without a major historical marker at the site.

Part II begins with covering the “The Pecking Order or The Caste System” of the time – the Conquistador Spaniard, the peninsulares, the criollos, the mestizos, the indios, and the negroes. The subsequent chapters cover life for the Coahuiltecan Indians and the Tlaxcallan Indians (who often are simply counted of Spanish descendent) and the famous 15 Canary Islander (Los Islenos) immigrant families usually considered San Antonio’s 1730s founders, despite folks (mostly mestizos and soldiers) already having been there.

The next chapters recount the author’s efforts to re-capture his legacy. Subsequent tables population figures and lists of Canary Islanders, the Compania Precidial de Bejar, the muster list of the Alamo de Parras Company, and the Arellano family tree.

Lost Spanish Towns by Jean Epperson

Lost Spanish Towns:

Atascosito and Trinidad de Salcedo, 2nd ed.

By Jean L. Epperson. Woodville: Dogwood Press, 1997 and back in print. 118 pages, soft cover, drawings, maps, portraits, illustrations, index, footnotes, bibliography. 1-887745-07-6 Price: $10.00 http://www.dogwoodpressonline.com/

Jean Epperson has long acquainted the archives of Southeast Texas. Here she resurrects the grassroots history of the earliest Spanish settlements of the territory along the lower Trinity River, 1750s to the 1800s. The stories are primarily in response to earlier French incursions from Louisiana who would continue to color the history as they do today. The Atascosito Road ran from Goliad to the Trinity.
These lost towns’ histories are textured by Epperson’s detail of daily life and broad Spanish policy via marriage records, letters, and official reports. Big Thicket history is often overlooked in favor of more easily researchable and penetrable topics of the period, but Epperson draws out characterizations from early records. You can discover fort El Orcoquisac, religious Nuestra Senora de la Luz mission, the local Native Americans, and even the tragic-comic French Champ d’Asile, and the early twisted revolution of Gutierrez and Magee of 1812-13.
Among the more interesting parts of the book are the 1807 census of Atascosito, the cattle brands of Trinidad de Salcedo, and the details of Charles Salier, first settler and namesake of Lake Charles and eventual Texan.