what did they use to carry salt from the salt flats of san elizario

Texas | Feature | Texas Books Common salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande by Paul Cool Chapter 10: �Our county is in open insurrection.�

D espite the drought, 1877 was a profitable twelvemonth for some local merchants. Charles Ellis expanded his operations in September, buying John Campbell�s big flouring mill and reportedly �doing a smashing business milling and merchandizing.� John Atkinson was likewise �doing a adept business organization,� and and then was El Paso merchant Don Ysmael Ochoa. By no means was the region booming. Ernst Kohlberg was tearing in his advice to younger brother Moritz to wait elsewhere in America for his fortune, for �conditions here are not promising at present.� El Paso before the railroads was no place for a callow newcomer to elbow out the established merchants.

That year Begetter Bourgade�s parishioners broke ground on a new church, the 4th in San Elizario�s history. Flooding had seriously damaged the third structure, so the citizens first elevated the basis beneath the new structure�south foundation with dirt hauled to the site in their reliable carretas. In 1882, the graceful new chapel was consecrated. It stands today, a testament to the mound building.

Louis Cardis had big plans. In mid-September he stopped in Mesilla to complete arrangements for a coach line between that town and Paso del Norte, United mexican states. The stretch represented a gap in straight stagecoach service between San Diego and San Antonio that Cardis intended to fill. He besides fabricated arrangements for his customers to exist able to purchase tickets as far as St. Louis �at remarkably low rates.� According to the Independent, �Mr. Cardis has met and overcome many obstacles in bringing almost this happy result, obstacles that would have dismayed and discouraged a man of less energy; and he is not merely entitled to great credit, but also deserves a liberal support from the traveling public.� Both his Texas & California Stage Co. and his El Paso Phase Line boasted 4-horse Concord coaches and �good meals� at fifty cents each. In other expert news, a telegraph construction coiffure guarded past the Army had brought the wires downward from Mesilla to within twenty-seven miles of El Paso.

Saturday, September 29
O thers might take Cardis�southward stagecoach, but not Charles Howard. He stepped aboard his carriage for the two hundred-mile journeying from Franklin to Fort Davis, where court business organisation demanded his presence. He had two stops to make. Jos� Mar�a Ju�rez and Macedonia Gandara had threatened to gather Guadalupe salt without paying, and Howard was finished with threats. In Ysleta he picked upwardly Deputy U.Southward. Marshal Ward Blanchard and Sheriff Kerber. They continued on to San Elizario, where they found Canton Judge Gregorio N. Garcia (not the captain). Howard swore out an affidavit against Ju�rez and Gandara, charging them with intending �to go to the table salt lakes . . . and take salt without the proper permission.� Howard sought a restraining gild with teeth. He asked that the defendants �be put under bail, that they would not interfere with the Lakes.� Judge Garcia, rumored to be in Howard�s pocket, issued an arrest warrant for Gandara, Ju�rez, Mauro Lujan, and four others. Howard waited for the sheriff�s action.

Afterward that solar day, Kerber hauled Gandara and Juarez before the judge. Faced with fine or incarceration, Gandara testified �that he had no intention of going to the salt lakes, nor of breaking the police in any style.� At Howard�southward request, the charge against him was dismissed. When no convincing evidence was introduced against Juarez, Howard laughingly said, �I reckon we volition take to dismiss the case against him too.� Not understanding English, Ju�rez �jumped up and said, in a very threatening and insulting fashion to the court,� that he would become to the salt lakes. He added, �in a vociferous manner that he did not care about the police force; that if others went to the table salt lakes, he would become also.� Now really worked upward, Ju�rez proclaimed that he would go to the lakes whether or not anyone else went. Garcia ordered the sheriff to arrest Ju�rez, pending payment of a two hundred dollar bail. Kerber returned to Ysleta, presumably with his prisoner in tow.

At about x p.m., Judge Garcia was rousted from bed past armed men enervating a warrant for Howard�s abort. He told them to file a complaint first. Grumbling, they left. A few minutes later on, Garcia went out to investigate the clamor in the town plaza. He was stopped by Desidario Apodaca, who pointed a burglarize in his management. Forty-five years former, Apodaca was similar many in his customs: a farmer who answered the call when danger threatened. He had washed so equally one of Captain Garcia�south Texas Rangers. At present, taking aim at Gauge Garcia, Apodaca marched him down to the home of Leon Granillo, where �a keen many men fully armed� gathered. Somewhere else in town, Judge Garcia�s older brother, Justice of the Peace Porfirio Garcia was being held prisoner. He likewise had refused to sign a warrant for Howard�s arrest.

These stillborn attempts to secure a warrant illustrate a practical notion of Anglo law. Seeking action, Apodaca and the others had been presented with demands for paperwork, the first and last refuge of lawyers. As parties, witnesses, and jurors, Pase�os had watched pettifogging Anglo attorneys grind abroad at one another with little event. Charges filed, charges quashed; motions made, cases continued; justice delayed, justice denied. They accepted the desirability of cloaking their deportment in the law, merely what they really desired was justice granted.

Holding two reluctant jurists earnest assuaged no ane�s anger. It was at present that the junta discussions and decisions of the past summer bore fruit. The �fully armed� men collecting in boondocks knew what had to be washed. �Soon after Howard passed San Elizario, the Mexicans began to boast that the party gone alee to play jimjam on Howard and would presently have him so.� Meanwhile, his business completed, Howard had climbed aboard his carriage that evening and with employee Wesley Owens headed down the road to Fort Davis. They stopped for the night half dozen miles down the road at Quadrilla, ignorant that behind them, Howard�s world was collapsing.

Dominicus, September 30
J ohn McBride, the salt amanuensis�southward own agent, had escaped the insurgents� attention and, �getting air current of the plot, went full chase to overtake Howard before he was ambushed.� He reached Howard effectually midnight. The latter fumed, �if Cardis don�t let me lonely, I�m going to kill him. I�thousand going to kill him anyway, for he has been bothering me long enough.� Howard led his party back up the Rio Grande along the Mexican side before crossing back to the United States at Ysleta. Early in the morning, they reached Kerber�s home. From him Howard learned that the two Garcias had been �roughly treated� and that bands were scouring the county in search of him. The sheriff and common salt amanuensis, along with Owens and McBride, took to the safety of Kerber�s roof. Meanwhile, discussion that Howard was at present in Ysleta reached San Elizario. A contingent of several dozen armed Pase�os marched that evening for the county seat, vowing to bring him back.

The names of the determined men seeking Charles Howard are mostly unknown. Their leaders were solid citizens, not young firebrands. Lino (Leon) Granillo was sixty-two years former. His sons Luis (age twenty-5 in 1877) and Pedro (age xx-iii) may have trod abreast or backside their father. Perhaps no Pase�o was more resolute that night than Granillo�south co-leader, fifty-year-quondam Francisco �Chico� Barela. We take met Barela before, equally a corporal in Lieutenant Montes�southward company of Texas Rangers. His thirty-three acres of Ysleta farmland may have been modest, but he was well off enough in 1870 to have two domestic servants. With a wife, several still minor children, and a belongings stake in the community, Barela had much to consider beyond anger at Howard. Overturning established legal authority was non something he could take lightly. The thoughts of all these men as they marched through the night are not recorded, but they must accept felt both the gravity of their actions and the lifting of a heavy burden that often accompanies the resolution to put aside talk and practice something. Information technology is likely that the men echoed the jumbled thoughts of their leaders with grim remarks, encouraging shouts, and grisly jokes rising above the steady rhythm of their leather soled and bare-footed search for Howard.

Monday, October 1
W hat happened next is uncertain. Co-ordinate to Howard, Kerber thought it best to get his wife Julia away from their endangered home. The sheriff and Mrs. Kerber took off down the route for the safety of a neighbor�s business firm. On the mode dorsum, Kerber �was surrounded by a ring of armed Mexicans� and held captive. Kerber recalled a more heroic scene. Sometime after midnight, the contingent from San Elizario united with Ysleta�s �militia� and marched in the darkness, some fifty potent, on the sheriff�s house. According to Kerber, he was in that location to run into them. If so, he had not changed in the fifteen years since Glorieta Laissez passer. Acting with the same bull-headed fearlessness Captain Kerber had displayed in boxing, the sheriff attempted to seize the initiative from the angry throng. Leaving the roof, he stepped outside and ordered his unwelcome visitors to disperse. The tactic failed. Kerber was seized, disarmed, and taken a mile out of town to the insurgents� local headquarters. As they passed the home of Canton Clerk G. Westward. Wahl, the sheriff called for him to join the parade, which Wahl did.

Kerber and Wahl were taken by sixty men, �some of them from the other side of the river,� back to the sheriff�s house. In that location the growing insurgent strength called for Howard to give up, promising not to kill him. After twenty minutes of fruitless dialogue, Barela and Granillo arrived to accept command. Howard asked why they wanted him prisoner. �The people wish it,� was the simple respond. Howard refused to submit, challenge the sheriff�s protection. As Kerber described the scene, �Judge Howard spoke to them mildly, explaining to them the law about mobs, &c., but they did not care.� Howard put it more bluntly: �They said . . . they knew no constabulary excepting their guns.�

Barela was finished with negotiation. As Howard later described his ordeal, �I was seized by two of the men and dragged through the streets of Ysleta, surrounded past forty armed men, hooting and jeering at me. Near the plaza they were joined past 20-five or thirty more and I was forced on horseback and taken to San Elizario. The whole mob followed, and yelled, hooted and jeered the whole way. . . . On reaching San Elizario, I was taken to the house of Dona Apolonia Lujan. There I found from 200 to 250 more Mexicans under arms�a more sullen, ferocious looking body of men, I never saw�I was taken to a room in the house, and immediately placed under a heavy baby-sit.�

Wahl was immediately set free, but McBride, also herded back to San Elizario, was tossed into Lujan�south abode with Howard and the unhappy Garcia brothers. For some reason, the Pase�os let the sheriff become, though his mental attitude toward all �Mexicans� cannot have been a secret to them. In his report to the treasury secretarial assistant, Slade explained, �In the morning time, Sheriff told [his captors] he wished to go get his breakfast, subsequently which he would return to them; merely he came to El Paso instead.� In his own report to Adjutant Full general Steele, Kerber does not mention the breakfast ruse. He simply explained, �Non having more than four white men in my town, and the Mexicans all in favor of killing us gringos, I started to El Paso.�

Tuesday, October 2
N ot until Tuesday did Cardis learn of the arrests from J. R. Mariani, who �asked me to get to San Elizario and employ my influence to pacify the excited people, which I did.� Cardis received a more confrontational visit from Kerber, who suspected Cardis to be �the instigator of all these troubles.� Kerber �told him plain what I would practise if Howard was injured.� Cardis got the message. Promising the Anglo customs to secure the release of all prisoners, he set out for San Elizario.

There the scene was ugly. When not milling about, many of the hundreds there paraded through the streets proclaiming �Death to the Gringos!� and �Long Live Mexico!� Meanwhile, the Pase�o leaders were discovering an age-one-time truth. Starting a revolution was far easier than realizing its purpose. Howard remained defiant. �[B]ecoming alarmed at what they had done� and at what might ensue, several of the leaders, including Sisto Salcido, the elected �commander� of the September uprising, Republic of macedonia Gandara, Ambrosio Orgino, and Desidario Apodaca called on their parish priest. According to Male parent Bourgade, �the leaders came to me and wished me to aid become them out of trouble.� Admitted to the makeshift jail cell, Bourgade spoke with Howard, �who said that the mob were ignorant men, and that he would non prosecute them for what they had done to him, just that some of them might be prosecuted for what they had done to the judges.� Howard�s refusal to cooperate unnerved some Pase�os and fortified others in their resolve. Every bit Bourgade testified, the leaders �wanted Louis Cardis to come down and get them out of trouble, as he was more or less the cause of their getting in.� The crowd outside, however, �intended to kill Howard.�

Kerber, meanwhile, began telegraphing for help, including Estimate Blacker at Fort Davis and General Steele and George Zimpelman in Austin. Kerber and Deputy U.S. Marshal Blanchard then went to Ysleta to exist closer to the action. They remained only 2 hours. Finding the place as well dangerous, they �charged through their lines of sentinels and got safe to El Paso on Wednesday.�

Back in Franklin (modern El Paso, Texas), Rucker had telegraphed the news of civil disorder to Santa Fe. The state of affairs was serious. The sheriff, said Rucker, wanted the army �to disperse the mob and preserve the peace; . . . at that place are non plenty Americans living in the county to form a force sufficient for the purpose. The Mexicans who are not with the rioters sympathize with them and cannot be relied upon nor obey his summons to human activity equally a posse.� Kerber added that �the mob numbers over three hundred and have sent to El Paso, Mexico for assist.�

When Cardis finally arrived in San Elizario, he �found the people very much excited against Howard only.� He and Bourgade held discussions with 1 of the leaders in the priest�s dwelling. The man was bent on Howard�s death. According to Cardis, �I begged for his life with all my might.� Personal business organisation rescued Cardis from his awkward position effectually midnight. His coach station at Eagle Laissez passer had only been attacked by Indians, the hay cutter killed, and the mules run off. His drivers were now refusing to carry the mail without an escort. Cardis remained in talks until �satisfied that the people had taken my advice to allow Howard and all the rest gratis.� The legislator left San Elizario at 3 a.m., removing himself from events he could non control. Bourgade remained to learn what Cardis missed, or perhaps already knew. The Pase�os had not agreed upon whatever deal, merely continued to fence amidst themselves. That dark, one of the leaders had �to push some of the mob away to keep them from killing Howard.� One leader admitted �information technology looked very bad.�

Wednesday, Oct three
T he commencement reports reaching Austin were ominous just confusing. Full general Steele wired Kerber, �Send statement of mob action. Was it composed of citizens of your county or of Texas and where and by whom organized[?] Was Howard your prisoner and under your charge?�

As the sun rose on the third twenty-four hour period of his captivity, Howard�s captors continued to demand that he sign over all rights to the common salt lakes and leave the county immediately, never to return. Though he remained jump hand and foot, cut off from the globe, and �at all times surrounded by 3 or iv hundred armed pelados, raving and raging like hungry coyotes,� Howard �refused to subscribe to the weather condition required or in any way care for with the mob.� Cardis, probably the simply optimist around, returned to Franklin at nine a.thou. claiming that �all was settled.� Two hours later, the sighs of relief abruptly stopped when Sheriff Kerber received give-and-take that Howard would be shot at iii p.m. Kerber immediately �tried to summon a posse of white men,� but could not find sufficient arms for the fifteen men in boondocks. Merchant Joseph Schutz gave a more compelling reason: �Everybody ended that this force was not enough, and did not go.�

At this point, Lieutenant Rucker decided to personally investigate the avalanche of rumors of �riot at San Elizario.� With Joseph Magoffin at his side to translate, Rucker reached Ysleta, where some citizens advised him to halt �as the rioters were greatly excited and had threatened to kill the Americans; that our arrival there would cause the expiry of Judge Howard.� Veiled threats had little effect on this veteran of countless occasions of immediate danger and imminent death. Anxious that his reports �might exist authentic,� Rucker proceeded under the Ysleta priest�s protection.

Meanwhile, Howard�due south resistance was angering the increasingly restive assembly in San Elizario. Many Pase�bone had expected quick results. At present, the more than impatient men just wanted to kill their prisoners, get home, and exist done with it. In Howard�s mind, �The mob was growing ferocious every moment.� The prisoners, overhearing the feverish talk, were aware of fractures in the insurgents� ranks.

Sometime around 6 p.m. an exasperated Kerber dispatched a plea to 2d Lieutenant Simon Vedder, commanding the xx-man detachment guarding the telegraph structure party near Mesilla. Kerber was in plow complaining, genteel, avuncular, desperate and patriotic: � . . . be so kind every bit to send us those men, practice not depend too much on your regulation when the lives of all the white men of this canton are endangered. Nosotros are about 25 white men just we cannot fight 300, excuse my remarks but for the honor of the Onetime Army help me and assistance your countrymen.� Kerber signed the alphabetic character and added, �An Old Soldier.� Vedder forwarded the message to Hatch at Fort Craig.

By Wednesday evening, the Garcia brothers had resigned their judicial offices. Howard solitary remained defiant. Earlier that 24-hour interval, Father Bourgade was admitted to the prisoner�s �prison cell� in order to administer the last rites, should Howard wish information technology. The priest then joined a coming together of the pop leaders, who �told me they were going to settle it.� Bourgade worked with the insurgent captains to hammer out a bargain that might end the crunch without bloodshed. The main provisions addressed their chief goals. First, Howard would pledge not to prosecute anyone for imprisoning him. Second, he would declare that he had no right to the table salt lakes. Third, he would leave the county within twenty-four hours, never to return. 4th, he would give sizeable bonds to ensure his compliance. The fifth clause had Howard confessing �that the prosecution that has been commenced against any of the people is unjust, improper and without crusade and that are the people of the county aforesaid have had merely cause to raise against him.� These details and arrangement of a twelve thousand dollar bail took upwards most of the day. 4 local men volunteered equally bondsmen: John Atkinson, Jesus Cobos, Charles Ellis, and Tomas Garcia. Some Pase�os wanted a provision that the bondsmen�due south lives �should exist forfeited� if Howard returned. The clause was not added, but the four understood the danger in the bargain they agreed to seal.

Mauro Lujan prepared the document and handed it to Bourgade. The priest had his doubts Howard would sign. Salcido warned that the people�s impatience to disband was not good news for their captive. �Tell Howard to sign annihilation, whether it is binding or non,� Salcido brash, �for the mob [Bourgade�s give-and-take] may have trouble amid themselves.� To the priest�due south surprise, Howard �was willing to sign annihilation, considering on the night before, from what he had heard, they intended to kill him.� Howard as well realized there would be no rescue. And and then he signed, as did his bondsmen. With that, he and McBride were released. They stepped exterior to face an edgy oversupply. A number of rifles were raised and aimed at Howard. Proving himself �a hero in canonicals, [Bourgade] threw his arms around Howard and marched through the mob, telling them they would accept to shoot him too.� Kerber agreed that �only the presence of the priest saved [Howard�s] life.�

As Howard, Bourgade, and twenty armed insurgents reached the outskirts of San Elizario, they were met by Rucker and Magoffin. The officer was still bent on observing conditions in San Elizario, but Howard and the pastor strongly advised against information technology. Together the party rode to Ysleta and then on to Franklin.

And and then the insurgents achieved their goals�on newspaper. Howard had agreed to leave forever, taking with him his father-in-law�s claims to their salt. Howard�s adjuration to surrender the fight was guaranteed by 4 friends whose fortunes and lives he was not likely to run a risk. Howard�s puppet judges had abandoned their seats on the bench. Though Sheriff Kerber remained in office, he was powerless to arrest anyone, let solitary see them safely to trial. No one was likely to suffer for their office in the insurgence. All had been achieved without any bloodshed. As Howard�s party rode away from San Elizario, they left behind a people who had much to celebrate.

Th, Oct iv
K erber escorted Howard and his wife out of the county. Armed men followed his carriage, but the party reached Mesilla in safety. The sheriff returned to his habitation in Ysleta. There was, for the moment, peace in the valley.

Lieutenant Rucker reported to Hatch that �every American in the county would have been killed had not their terms in Howard�s case been complied with.� Though he just saw xl armed Pase�os, he had been informed some 350 were under arms, joined by almost a hundred Mexican citizens. �They appear to be well organized, and had been preparing this consequence for some time; yet their meetings were so secretly conducted that the civil authorities did not know anything well-nigh their movements.� Rucker reported �that the presence of troops is necessary here, to protect life and belongings, and believe that in case this mob is non put down by force, the Mexicans will either kill or drive every American out of the country.�

So far, only i man had been driven from the canton. Charles Howard had escaped expiry, but he had suffered the shame of his treatment at the hands of a �mob.� Bertram Wyatt-Dark-brown, an authority on the role of accolade in Southern culture during Howard�s time, explains, �The chief aim of the notion of honour was to protect the individual, family, group, or race from the greatest dread that its adherents could imagine. That fear was not decease, for dying with honor would bring glory. Neither was it the prospect of damnation in the hereafter. Judgments of that kind were in the hands of God. Rather, the fear was of public humiliation.�

Over the course of three unforgettable days, armed men had jump and dragged Charles Howard from Ysleta through Socorro to San Elizario, yelling, hooting, and jeering at him all the way, thrown him tied hand and foot into a guarded room, weakened his resolve past talking over his murder within his earshot, and forced him to sign abroad his male parent-in-law�s property rights and to acknowledge that his own deportment had given the people �simply cause� to treat him and then foully. When finally released in front of an angry crowd demanding his head, Howard had been saved, not past his own backbone, only by that of the priest who shielded him.

As Wyatt Brown and other scholars on the subject of honor amidst Southerners and politicians (and Howard was both), have pointed out, �award is reputation.� He had certainly lost face up among Pase�os. However �ignorant and fell� he considered them, they were notwithstanding the bulk voting block, a necessary tool of political power and influence until a white immigrant tide could ride in on the railroads. Worse, his friends and rivals in El Paso knew he had folded. More dissentious still, he knew discussion would spread. Earlier long everyone would know, from his family in East Texas and the comrades he had ridden with in the 8th Texas Cavalry, to the moneymen and power brokers who held the keys to his futurity. Amid these was Zimpelman, who had entrusted his venture capital in West Texas to his son-in-constabulary. From loftier to low, they would all know he had been arrested and �jailed� like a criminal, bound like a slave, and humiliated and intimidated into what would have been regarded as the cowardly human action of signing his proper noun to salvage his skin.

Stripped of honor, Howard concentrated on its restoration. If his intentions were non immediately clear, they soon would be, for, as Wyatt Brown explains, �Dread of existence ashamed is a powerful incentive for revenge and violence.� Equally his future statements and actions would make clear, Charles Howard had been given all the incentive he needed.

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