On March 2, 1836, a blue norther swept down on Texas’ representatives, who had convened at Washington to sign the Declaration of Independence. Winds bit through the buckskins of General Houston’s troops. The Brazos, known as ‘Arms of God,’ raged. Swirling cottonwoods uprooted and shot downstream in the turbulence like battering rams, threatening Yellow Stone’s hull and her 22-man crew.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Word came from San Antonio de Bexar that the Alamo had fallen on March 6, the 13th day of the siege. Every white man behind the walls of that old Franciscan mission had been slaughtered. A woman, her child and a slave were freed to spread the word that Santa Anna would kill, loot and burn as he hit every Texan home between San Antonio and the Gulf Coast. The families of Texas’ army volunteers had been left alone, or with slaves, to prepare for planting and to defend their property. The horror of the massacre at the Alamo was told and retold in frightened huddles as the Runaway Scrape began. The women, many just learning they were widows, abandoned their homes and fled with their children toward the Sabine River, whose east bank, the U.S. border, offered safety. They carried what they could. When the ox carts and wagons sank in the flooded bogs of the coastal plains, they dumped their possessions and plowed on. Wet and cold, these 5,000 or so desperate people straggled through the swamps. Many children, brought down by exposure and pneumonia, were hastily buried–their mothers pledging to return and give them proper burials.

General Houston began a zigzag retreat to collect more men before taking the offensive. He urged the Runaway Scrape families to stay, to have confidence in a Texas victory over Santa Anna. He pointed to the eastern shore Brazos planters, who were going ahead and seeding their lands. He ordered Colonel Fannin, the Mobile Grays’ commander, to come from Goliad and join him, to swell their ranks. But Fannin, in charge of the La Baha fortress, hesitated, and his delay proved costly. By the time the colonel left La Baha on March 19 with nearly half of Texas’ remaining troops, he and his 350 men were surrounded. Near Coleto Creek on the open prairie between the Guadalupe and San Antonio rivers, Goliad’s defenders fought some 1,900 Mexican soldiers. The Battle of Coleto began at 2 p.m. and continued until dark. Fannin surrendered on the 20th, assured that he and his men would be treated as prisoners of war and transported to New Orleans in eight days. The Texas prisoners were returned to Goliad. On March 27, three weeks after the fall of the Alamo, the Mexicans executed all of them.

Meanwhile, Yellow Stone was moving upstream again, picking up freight and tying up at landings. Many trees had to be cut to feed the fires in the sidewheeler’s massive boilers. Yellow Stone required a high steam buildup to buck the swift, upstream current.On this late March trip, Captain Ross sidled up to Groce’s Landing, a regular stop on the Middle Brazos route. Jared Groce, another of Austin’s Old Three Hundred colonists, had brought the first cotton seeds to Texas when he came in 1821. In 1825 he had built the first cotton gin, followed the next year by Austin’s at Peach Creek Plantation, near San Felipe.

Groce’s Landing was a short way downstream from Washington. Yellow Stone was there to take on 600-pound bales of cotton. Houston’s army was weaving back and forth from the Colorado River on the west to the Brazos River on the east. Rains clogged the prairies. The Brazos poured over its banks, sweeping past the first steep bluff at Washington and lapping at the second one, which served as a ground floor for the town.Santa Anna’s army had crossed the Colorado and was in pursuit, forcing Houston’s small army to back up to the Brazos. At Washington on March 30, Houston learned of the massacre at Goliad. Messengers also informed him that Santa Anna’s troops were split. Houston had issued orders to burn all the ferries and rafts on the Brazos so that Santa Anna could not sweep around him. Farther south, at San Felipe, the townspeople had burned their town and ferried themselves across the river ahead of Santa Anna.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to