THE SEARCH FOR THE CHEROKEE SEQUOYAH

Untold hundreds of searchers for generations have scoured the border on the Mexican side of the Rio Bravo for evidence of the presence of the early Cherokee settlers in that country. Most have misread the sketchy descriptions of the location of the Cherokee village and sought San Fernando in the state of Tamaulipas with little or no satisfaction.

But, Dr. Charles L. Rogers of Brownsville, paraphrasing Omer Morgan’s parting shot in August of 1953, “The Search Continues” came to the area armed with modern technology and a passion for merely locating the site for posterity and that of the reorganized Texas Cherokee Nation in East Texas. Unlike Californian Omer Morgan in the early 1950s, Dr. Rogers wagged a long line of Cherokee blood into this one, plus a passion for the preservation of the Cherokee heritage both in Texas and on the Northern Coahuila borderlands. A “pot hunter” he was definitely not: “Much has changed in the intervening half century,” he underlined, “and we’re not in it to dig anybody up, for the Mexican Government frowns severely on unauthorized digs of any sort on Mexican soil.” Dr. Rogers brought a whole boatload of modern day technology into this leg of “the Search” including satellite marking identification with expensive ground seeking sonar waiting to be rolled in. He has, moreover, the blessings of the Head Chief or Ugu of the Texas Cherokee Utsidihi Hicks, who told the News Guide by telephone that “the people of the Texas Cherokee are an indigenous people of the land who have come forth, and now are determined to announce and express their American Indian heritage rights.” And, unlike the soaring spirits of the 1950s, his thrust was not to return the remains of Sequoyah to Oklahoma. For that famous Cherokee Indian is and has been the object of “The Search” for countless decades.

THE SEARCH HAS WORN MANY HATS

Like most famous personages and historical happenings, the legends concerning the famous Cherokee scholar statesman and inventor of “the talking leaves” or Cherokee Syllabary, Sequoyah or Soqwili is no exception. The real story concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for example, persists in fabled explanations. The story of the last months of the originator of the Cherokee syllabary and his role in Native American history, perhaps inevitably, has any number of spins:

Traveller Bird (“Tell Them They Lie: the Sequoyah Myth”) not only denies Sequoyah’s role in the development of the Syllabary, but that he ever went to Mexico in search of the “lost tribe” of Cherokees, and was shot and killed by soldiers in Texas on June 9, 1839 on the Brazos River and buried “beyond the Cherokee Village in Texas.”

Gertrude Ruskin (“Sequoyah, Cherokee Indian Cadmus”) says he was buried “near San Fernando, Mexico in the State of Tamaulipas”, which has sent untold dozens to that frontier State’s “San Fernando” to search.

Even farther out in left field is Father Patrick O’Donnell’s 1965 article in the Catholic publication “Glenmary’s Challenge” presenting yet another spin on the already gutted Sequoyah legends: that a Protestant missionary asserted in Mexico that the famous Cherokee converted to the Catholic faith in Mexico before his death in either Tamaulipas or Coahuila, and that his remains are buried either in a Mexico City church or that the burial record and a manuscript about Sequoyah are said to have been found “in a small Catholic chapel” (San Fernando?) and on and on and on: like the buried treasures of the Franciscans at Guerrero, or of the Jesuits at Melchor Muzquiz, or the tunnels of Mission Dulce Nombre de Jesus de Peyotes near present day Villa Union, stories limited only by overactive imaginations, or suspiciously traceable to the use of that home grown hallucinogenic drug.

The Tulsa World in 1939 financed an unsuccessful expedition to find Sequoyah’s last resting place, according to a 1953 Dorothy Ostrom Worrell Eagle Pass News Guide article. In early August of 1951, Californian Omer L. Morgan capped what he claimed to be 30 years of research in a fact finding trip to Eagle Pass and Zaragoza, Coahuila and went to Tulsa Oklahoma to report his findings in a journey reported in an earlier August 16, 1951 Dorothy Worrell article.

The following year in January of 1952, Morgan again returned to Zaragoza to discover the “house built by the Cherokees and a huge boulder used as the cornerstone for the Cherokee rancheria both marked with Cherokee writing.”

Morgan and his wife returned in April of 1953 more convinced than ever that the Cherokee village and perhaps Sequoyah’s final resting place is in this immediate area of northeastern Coahuila. He may have been on to something.

Unlike Dr. Charles Rogers’ modern day searchers, Morgan’s April 1953, expedition came with Chief W.W. Keeler of the Cherokee Nation and Oklahoma Governor Johnson Murray’s blessing, and incredibly for us today armed with a permit from the Mexican government to remove the bones of Sequoyah for re burial in Oklahoma. They were convinced that the house was the one in which Sequoyah died, and that the aging Cherokee leader had indeed found the “lost Cherokee” rancheria he had sought, but again, “the Search” came up empty.

Interestingly, Dolores L. Latorre (“The Mexican Kickapoo Indians”) wrote Gertrude Ruskin June 18, 1968 from Melchor Muzquiz: “You will be interested to know that the Kickapoo employ the syllabary invented by Sequoyah.”

Our home grown historical entrepreneur John Woodhull, longtime side kick of respected Eagle Pass historians Ben Pingenot and Charlie Downing has shed some light at least on the Cherokee village in question, according to a paper by Michael Ritchie and David Carrillo. Woodhull also wrote Gertrude Ruskin that he had an FAA map of Zaragoza and vicinity, along with “a hand drawn map enlarging an area southwest of (the town of) Zaragoza on the Rio Escondido showing the 1843 Cherokee Indian village and cemetery in the Mogote de Espada.” For one reason or another, Ritchie casually notes “that lead was never followed” -- until now.

The Ritchie - Carrillo essay (“Sequoyah, Myth of Zaragoza”) is rife with legends and stories and other interesting but untraceable - and undocumentable assertions. David Carrillo, Michael Ritchie and son Michael James junior wore “The Search” hat in the 1980s and visited Zaragoza on several occasions. Their conversations at Hacienda Patino with Jose Maria Salinas or “Chema” make interesting reading, perhaps, as “Chema” recalled the Morgans mid fifties expeditions to the area. But “Chema” in his younger days was apparently an avid listener and could have told the Ritchie Carrillo foray what he thought they wanted to hear. For their part, the essay writers proffered what they thought their readers wanted to read: Sequoyah’s grave containing maps of some fabled mines of gold or silver located on or near the Mexican rancheria; or caves (El Chapote) in which mysterious indications left by the Cherokee might indicate the ever elusive gold mines or Sequoyah’s grave itself, or the inevitable ghostly apparitions from time to time of “El Indio Sequoyah,” who appears to the residents of Zaragoza in the full regalia of a Cherokee Chief.

Realistically, as even “The Sequoyah Myth” itself avers, this particular area in the vicinity of Zaragoza has been crossed and cris crossed by so many different and divergent groups including the Native American tribes themselves that markers or clues on the ground which may or may not have been there in the first place, by the end of the twentieth century are long gone, moved, or even stolen away by “pot hunters.”

MORE ABOUT ZARAGOZA

The intrepid Robert S. Weddle shares with us the following tidbits regarding San Fernando de Austria and San Ildefonso de la Paz nearby. San Fernando de Austria was 18 leagues West of San Juan Bautista Mission at Guerrero and two leagues from San Ildefonso de la Paz.

Pioneer Coahuila Franciscan Fray Juan Larios did indeed establish a Mission San Ildefonso de la Paz “14 leagues North of the Sabinas River,” but the exact location of that short lived mission site remains rather unclear. Nevertheless the San Fernando/ Zaragoza historians (Jose Alberto Galindo) claim this was the site of the later San Ildefonso.

In October of 1703, the San Francisco Solano Mission just north of San Juan Bautista was moved for the first time “16 leagues to the West,” near present Zaragoza with Xarames Indians, and named San Ildefonso, where “wood, land and water were abundant ....” Here it remained until 1708 when it was again relocated to a site “three leagues North” of the other (San Juan Bautista/San Bernardo) missions and was re named Mission San Jose where it remained until 1718 when it was again relocated to the banks of the San Antonio River and again re-titled “San Antonio de Valero,” the Alamo.

Our now famous Valle de las Animas and San Ildefonso sites were well known to the residents of Presidio San Juan Bautista, when they petitioned the Viceroy for lands of their own, granted in 1749 and accomplished on February 1, 1753, nestled in a crook of the arm of the beneficent Rio Escondido.

La Hacienda San Fernando was a 5,000 hectares (12,355 acre) tract established by Don Genaro Davila of Saltillo, in its day considered “one of the largest and most important in the country,” according to Jose Alberto Galindo “San Fernando de Austria, Valle de Las Animas.” The first Dona at Hacienda San Fernando was quite a religious woman and had the rather large Roman Catholic chapel constructed adjacent to the main house for the inhabitants of the Hacienda “to hear the Holy Word and receive Holy Communion” there. The parish priest from Zaragoza rode on horseback the eight kilometers to the Hacienda to say Mass and hear, confessions for the 70 families living at the Hacienda.

WHY THE CHEROKEES CAME TO MEXICO

On November 13, 1835 seven delegates of “Consultation of all Texas” in convention at San Felipe de Austin “on the part of the peoples of Texas” solemnly declared that “the Cherokee Indians and their associate bands, twelve tribes in number ....are entitled to our consideration and protection as the just owners of the soil as an unfortunate race of people that we wish to hold as friends and treat with justice ....”

They were to get the lands “lying north of the San Antonio Road and the Neches and west of the Angeline and Sabine Rivers.” near Nacogdoches. Among the 53 signatures are Indian Commissioner Sam Houston, Lorenzo de Zavala and provisional Governor Henry Smith.

The ensuing February 23, 1836 treaty between “Texas and the Texas Cherokees and associate bands,” containing 13 articles at “Col. Bowles Village” shows Sam Houston’s signature along with Col. Bowles, big Mush, Corn Tastle, the Egg, John Bowles and Tunnette’s marks.

The treaty guaranteed the Cherokees’ peaceable possession of their land in return for their neutrality during the revolution, says Ralph W. Steen in “History of Texas.” The Indians did remain quiet, but no Texas Government ever ratified this treaty made by Sam Houston.

When Sam Houston was replaced as Governor, Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar, former private secretary to the Cherokee hating Governor George Troup of Georgia became president of the Republic of Texas in 1839. It was Lamar whose policy was to remove all Indians from the State, either by death or forced withdrawal, in full swing in the summer of 1839. “On the morning of July 16,” Chief Hicks told this reporter, “the Texas Army attacked the dug in Cherokees on their own land. On the third Wave of the attack, the Cherokees were forced to withdraw. Some went north to Indian Territory, some went east and another group headed for Mexican territory beyond the Rio Grande.”

Our own Maverick County pioneer resident Manuel Green Van first went to Santa Rosa (Muzquiz) in 1842, he tells us in his 1873 Deposition before the U.S. Congressional Investigators, and we know from a Census, of foreigners living at Santa Rosa dated December 13, 1843 that one Santiago Van had been living in Mexico at Santa Rosa (today Melchor Muzquiz) since 1840. According to a December 13 1843 Census of foreigners living at Santa Rosa (Muzquiz) 38 year old Santiago Van and his wife Salome Hernandez were there with their four children “who had fled to Mexico seeking asylum following the Caraqui conflict with the Texas colonists”

Another document from the Beinecke Library’s Western Americana Collection lists the victims of the Colera Morbus epidemic who died at Santa Rosa in the summer of 1849. Interestingly, the Archivos Parrociales of Santa Rosa de Lima at Muzquiz shows 20 year old Maria Matilde Van, adult, unmarried, daughter of Santiago Van and Salome Hernandez, buried May 6, 1849.

These were troubled times, and Santa Ana’s 4,000 troops were already enroute up the gut of Coahuila to cross at Paso de Francia near Guerrero in order to put down the Texian rebellion at San Antonio de Bejar on March 6, 1836. Over at the John Beales Grant at Dolores, just west of present day Brackettville, the advent of Santa Ana nailed the lid on the coffin of that ill-fated, ill advised adventure.

Indeed, one of the 52 Texans captured by General Adrian Woell’s Mexican forces at San Antonio September 11, 1842 was Samuel Augustus Maverick from whom Maverick County was named. He kept a diary of the trip to Perote Prison:

September 23, 1842 To Presidio Rio Grande (Guerrero) four miles. Water plenty but (gordo) salt and unfit for drinking. Sheep and cattle around. Old mission (San Bernardo) east of town. Town old. Good labores (cultivated fields) Northwest of it and on, almost all the way to San Fernando. Quartel in old house on side of the square built by one (de) la Garza, 1776. Population say 1,000

“To San Fernando de Agua Verde. Population 5 6000. Twelve miles. This is headquarters of General Reyes. Here we are all (51) kept strictly watched in one uncomfortable room. Weather and room hot. Fine sugar cane. Madame Mirina Rodriguez y Taylor very kind to me. Hutchinson, Robinson, Neal and the other two of our mess sending victuals three times a day. Her coffee pot broken in our service. Mrs. Taylor fed and packed us down with bread, bisquits and quince leather and gave Robinson a horse. Kind, good woman.”
(Memoirs of Mary Adams Maverick as quoted by Dorothy Ostrom Worrell in the April 21, 1949 edition of the Eagle Pass News Guide and also in the October 12, 1949 edition).

THE SEARCH CONTINUES PART II

ON THE GROUND WITH OMER MORGAN

To his credit, Omer Morgan’s April 1953 expedition in search of the Cherokee presence near Zaragoza and perhaps even locate the gave of Sequoyah was well armed. Morgan brought along his wife, Mary, youngest son Dan Morgan Sapuipa Oklahoma teacher, and younger brother Fred Morgan and wife. With them too, was Tahlequah Oklahoma Professor emeritus of Northwestern State College, T.L. Ballenger, Associate to Chief W.W. Keeler at Bartlesville Oklahoma Frank Muskrat, Tulsa Tribune reporter Bob Foresman, Tulsa Pilot reporter Gleason Romans, Bartlesville mortician Joe Neekamp, and Eagle Pass high school senior Enrique Salinas, who served as interpreter for the entourage which crossed the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass and went directly to Zaragoza.

Tribal politics had persuaded the aging Sequoyah to attempt to convince the Cherokee contingent in Mexico to return to the Cherokee Nation. Chief John Ross of the Eastern Cherokees thus in 1842 sent Sequoyah, his son, Tessee and a friend known as “The Worm” to serve as guide and interpreter to locate the Mexican Cherokees. Their mission, according to “The Worm’s” report to Ross was successful, but the ailing 84year old Sequoyah was unable to make the return trip and died in Mexico in August of 1843, according to “Standing Rock’s” affidavit. After the burial, the group returned to the United States territory via the 1772 Spanish Colonial fort Monclova el Viejo near Moral, Coahuila. “The Worm” spoke only Cherokee, and made the report to Ross in that language. Ross then translated it into English, but was forced to spell the small places with the Spanish names as they sounded. Thus Guadalupe came out “Wauhuaka,” San Fernando a key location “San Cranto,” and Monclova, “Mt. Clover.”

Following a letter to the Eagle Pass Chamber of commerce, the Maverick County Historical Society was enlisted to help unsnarl the confusion here, and the group, aided by Guide Editor Dorothy Ostrom Worrell, in a spirited correspondence which resulted in Omer Morgan’s first trip to Eagle Pass in the late summer of 1951.

“But in his estimate of distances,” Omer Morgan insisted, “and time spent in traveling, he was unerring. He (“The Worm”) mentioned that the (Cherokee) Village was ten miles from “San Cranto,” and that there was a settlement of runaway slaves seven’ miles from the Mexican town and along the trail to the (Cherokee) Indian Village.”

Not surprisingly, by the middle of the 20th century, no trace of a Negro camp remained. If we are to take Kenneth W. Porter’s estimate, there were from 3000 5000 runaway slaves seeking refuge in Northern Mexico in the mid nineteenth century, we might more readily understand why so many were here.

“The Worm” spoke of “the grove of trees three miles long and half a mile wide” in the area, already by 1953 having felt the sting of modernization. At the upper end of the grove, Morgan’s group found the entrance to “the ancient irrigation ditch” where it empties into the natural drain. Following this ditch half a mile, he continued, “we come to a creek bed, and another mile or two up this creek we find the large spring (ojo de agua) which “the Worm” mentions.” Morgan found this a truly remarkable spring, since there were no mountains or hills of much import nearby. “But the water comes straight up from the earth, in a stream which was about 18 inches in diameter at one time when it was seen.” The body of surrounding clear water measured about 100 feet in diameter and six feet in depth. Curiously, the 2001 expedition found the “Paraje del Pozo” with the water gushing forth as described by Morgan. Luis Alberto Guajardo tells in some detail of the “Asalto a la Indiada Grande en el Pozo,” the battle of Mexican armed forces from El Moral, Guerrero and Santa Rosa With the depredating Comanches at “El Paraje del Pozo” in November of 1840 in the vicinity to the east of Remolino. “We know exactly where the Pozo is,” triumphed Commander Rogers,“and thanks to Luis Alberto Guajardo this nails it,” “The Worm” mentioned a stone house about a mile from the original camp which Morgan found “still standing with Cherokee letters plainly carved on the chimney and a date indicating the summer of 1843.”

Morgan’s assessment of the ranch house ruin, described in rather great detail even to the “grass roof” so familiar to this part of the world, and the Indian “Standing Rock’s” affidavit which says : “George Guess (Sequoyah) departed this life in the month of August, 1843,” along with the “large stone marker some 30 inches in dimensions” which he says marked the corner of the Cherokee rancheria, “with several letters carved on it and definitely of Cherokee origin.” The translation then indicated that the ranch was (either?) five miles or five kilometers square.

Note: Firstly, we find it impossible to imagine such a land transaction taking place in Mexico without some sort of paper trail. If such a lease or grant of land and water rights did indeed exist, there are or were records of it tucked away somewhere in a Mexican archive. Secondly, land measurements, even in primitive Maverick County were made in varas and leguas and not in miles or kilometers.

But, unlike seasoned Mexican trooper Dr. Charles L. Rogers, Californian Omer Morgan could find no beauty or allure to “The Worm’s” part of Coahuila or why the Caraqui settled here. “The entire country which “The Worm” called a prairie is in fact only a continuation of the Great Southwestern Desert,” Morgan observed. He did find two graves in “the grove of trees near the original Cherokee camp,” which his Mexican guides assured him were those of the Cherokee. But after unearthing the bones a process unthinkable by Dr. Charles Rogers’ 2001 expedition Morgan was unconvinced that neither were those of Sequoyah, since there was no silver Presidential medallion about the neck, saddle bags or papers of any kind (gold mine maps, perhaps?) among the remains.

“My father made one more unsuccessful venture back to Zaragoza,” wrote son Daniel H. Morgan, “but Sequoyah still lies in an unmarked grave far from his cabin home in Sequoyah County Oklahoma.”

THE EAGLE PASS CONNECTION

The Maverick County Historical Commission is dedicated to the preservation of more than simply Maverick County Eagle Pass history, as stated in the 1971 by laws. Over and above the magnitude of the search for Sequoyah’s final resting place and its far-reaching impact, Maverick County has a rather close connection with the advent of the Cherokee to our part of the world in the mid nineteenth century. Every schoolboy or girl knows - or should know “that the high profile Manuel Green Van came to Eagle Pass and Maverick County in 1855. The Cherokees all must have been good with their hands working with wood, for most references to their occupation as listed in the U.S. Census for Maverick County was “carpenter.””

Eagle Pass school teacher Frances Ethel Wipff wrote in the Eagle Pass Daily Guide of February 25, 1935 on “The Cherokee House:” “When a Cherokee Indian learned the civilizing ways of the whites,” The Cherokee House item began, “he built himself a rock house on a picturesque hill and lived there, we hope, contentedly.” “Built before the Civil War, this rock structure still (1935) stands on the Joseph Wipff Ranch north of Eagle Pass. In winter when the trees are bare, it can be seen from the Del Rio Highway at a point just south of the Lehmann Ranch and to the east. In the sun, it shines white, and from a distance it might be a castle one dreams about,” the imaginative Eagle Pass high teacher wrote.

Another Eagle Pass Maverick pioneer citizen Trinidad San Miguel, who was born in 1859 and baptized at Fort Duncan the same year that Green Vann’s first child was, in a March 31, 1932 “Canal Edition” of the Eagle Pass Daily Guide, recalled “the thrilling days of Green Vann who received commission from the Governor of Texas to organize a ranger company to protect this part of the frontier. There were 20 men in the Company,” San Miguel recalled, “besides Green who made Captain.” Trinidad says “Capt. Green Vann was a good Indian fighter, and carried an arrow wound in his shoulder to his grave. He was accidentally killed on Washington’s Birthday February 22, 1876,” (on the Chupadero Ranch working cattle).

One of Eagle Pass’ first builders was the man who constructed what was still called “Cherokee House” in the mid 1930s on the hill in northern Maverick County. We know from the U.S. Census of 1860 and 1870 that Green Vann was born in Arkansas. Dorothy Ostrom Worrell says he came to Eagle Pass on June 25, 1855 “when the town was barely six years old.” But he came to Eagle Pass by way of Santa Rosa, Coahuila, for he told the U.S Commissioners in his 1873 deposition that had he had lived at Santa Rosa in Coahuila, Mexico from 1842 to 1854, resides now in Maverick County Texas.

Significantly enough for our search for the Cherokee, our part Cherokee pioneer Maverick County resident was not the only Van living at what is now Muzquiz, Coahuila following the ouster of the East Texas Cherokees from their lands on June 16, 1839 by Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar’s order. We find in crusty old General Luis Alberto Guajardo’s papers that a December 13 1843 listing of foreigners living at Muzquiz included one Santiago Van, 38 a Catholic, married to a foreigner with four children, a carpenter who has lived in this valley three years. He has no passport or other documents allowing him to remain in the Republic. A “Cuarteron,” his place of origin New Orleans, who because of the outbreak of war between the Caraqu sought asylum in and monetary support from the United States for the 1911 uprising against Mexico’s Porfirio Diaz, in a footnote subsequently accused Santiago Van of being “one of King Fisher’s spies”, and again erroneously a part of the assassination of the La Resurreccion (today Jimenez, Coahuila Mcalde in 1872. The General’s severe case of U.S. bashing hire. causes a least two chronological errors. If Santiago was 38 in 1843, he would have been 67 in 1872, and in another five or six years 72 or so when King Fisher was shooting up the town.
(See Al Kinsall, “The McWeber Affair,” For Duncan Sesquicentennial Anthology)

A footnote to what we have learned of Santiago Van from the Archivos Parroquiales, Iglesia de Santa Rosa de Lima, Santa Rosa, Coahuila, is that his 20 year old unmarried daughter Maria Matilde Van was buried in the panteon at Muzquiz on May 6, 1849. A victim of the Cholera Morbus epidemic there.

Yet another document in esteemed General Guajardo’s collection lists those who suffered losses in the storm which swept Santa Rosa March 15, 1843 “Grin Van un almud de maiz y tres plantas y jacal.”

Of Green Van, then, we have him living in Muzquiz 1842 1854, and Dorothy Worrell says he married Martina Guerra There in 1858, (a slight chronological error) but not before his “proper” baptism took place in the Santa Rosa de Lima Church, for “Green” was not a proper Christian name. Their first child, Jose Agapito Van, also a carpenter, was born September 20, 1859, and baptized in Eagle Pass by Piedras Negras visiting pries Eulalio M. Trujillo y Mata, according to the Cuaderno Provisional of the Our Lady of Refuge baptismal records.

The Van descendants still live in Eagle Pass, married into the Paniagu, family who were raising crops and goats on the vega land here before either Eagle freshmen baseball team.

“During the Civil War,” Dorothy Worrell reminds, “Green Van was known as a Union sympathizer which marked him, along with Aleck Oswald and Charles Groos for ‘termination with extreme prejudice’ by the Confederates. Only Oswald, however, was killed by the Confederate Captain according to Uncle Jesse Sumpter’s Recollections.”

“Green Van became known as a good Indian fighter,” says Dorothy Worrell “so well known, in fact, that he was authorized by the Governor of the State of Texas to organize a company of Rangers in Eagle Pass for protection against the Indians. He enlisted 20 men and was commissioned a Captain in the Texas Rangers.” Van’s sword, Ranger uniform and belt buckle were still in grandson George Van’s possession in 1949.

Carpenter Green Van’s greatest monument was the old San Miguel ranch house on El Sauz near Paloma in Maverick County, built for Rita Alderete San Miguel in 1873. He may have known her in Santa Rosa, for her family was from Santa Rosa. Green Van’s life ended astride his favorite horse “Black” on the Chupadero Ranch at roundup time February 22, 1976 in a freak accident near the corrals.

His son Jose Agapito Van was 17 when his father went to join the Carpenter of Nazareth. But J.A. Van would leave many more monuments to the building trade in Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, and even a hotel and railway station at Monclova. There was also Col. Fructuoso Garcia’s show place town house in Piedras Negras, Louis de Bona’s Dry Goods Store and along tree lined Ceylon Street, the S.P. Simpson home, the Kelso house and the William Hollis house, all the work of Jose Agapito Van. Even the stately Bonnet house at the end of Ceylon had interior work done by J.A. Van.

Two pioneer Eagle Pass families had merged in an Our Lady of Refuge epilogue.

With Cherokee blood pulsing wildly in his veins, Dr, Charles L. Rogers, his 86 year old mother, wife and 14 year old son Charles Junior descended with this reporter on Zaragoza February 10 for a closer look. Over 18 months of preparation had consumed much of the Matamoros physician’s free time. Armed with a copy of the 1953 findings of Omer Morgan and “The Worm’s” description of the Cherokee settlement near San Cranto San Fernando, the February 10 expedition concentrated on the Hacienda San Fernando area and the pecan orchard lands where the primitive cemetery for “los pobres” was located. In the Doc’s methodical mind this was a process of elimination. Check out the sites one by one, mark the locations by satellite and go on to the next. Armando, representing the landowners was our genial guide through the Hacienda San Fernando area and the ruins which he is slowly restoring to their late nineteenth century splendor, showed an avid interest in learning more of the Cherokee presence.

THE SEARCH CONTINUES PART III

Dr. Charles L. Rogers thinks he is on to something, right across the creek from Eagle Pass Piedras Negras in the Santa Rosa area. For almost three Oklahoma’s most revered citizens. The Doctor Is confident that he has solved the puzzle of the whereabouts of Sequoyah’s final resting place which baffled historians for almost 160 years. Although Sequoyah never received an education and went through life with a permanent disability, Rogers stresses, he went on to become one of the most important figures, in Cherokee Indian history.

The continued indications of the Cherokee presence in “El Valle de Las Animas” present day Zaragoza, Coahuila, Mexico, brought his focus of attention to this area. The intriguing references to Green Vann and Santiago Vann, prominent names among the Cherokee nation, both, in Maverick County and at present day Muzquiz, Coahuila brought “The Search”, into sharper focus. Dr. Rogers now believes that Sequoyah could be buried 1n a rock covered grave in a cave near the “lost village” in the Zaragoza area, By most accounts, Sequoyah died in Mexico in August of 1843. An “Ojo de Aqua, a creek and a cave” described to him by a 96 year old woman was also another of the focusing hints, he said, but there are many such relevant indicators especially in the Remolino area, where the first leg of Dr. Rogers’ search visited.

On March 3, 2001 the Rogers family, including his 86 year old mother, Mary Berzilious Layton Rogers, his wife Sheron, and 14 year old son Charles Junior, accompanied by the landowners Gloria and Epigmenio Rodriguez and Angelo Garcia were directed to the cave site. Rodriguez traces his ancestry to none other than Vicente Rodriguez, Comandante of the Presidio San Juan Bautista del Rio Grande, among those who established San Fernando de Rosas present day Zaragoza in the crook of an arm of the Rio Escondido early in February 1753.

Note: We asked Epigmenio why it was called “Rio Escondido” which we have always seen referred to in English speaking histories as “Little River”. “The origin of the Rio Escondido is an Ojo de Agua to the west of here (Zaragoza),” he informed, “but it disappears underground for several miles before again re surfacing to become the stream you see from here to South of Piedras Negras where it empties into the Rio Grande.” Thus it has been dubbed “Hidden River”.

The Rodriguez family tradition had shown a marked reluctance to showing the cave to anyone, Epigmenio told us. The fact that the Rogers expedition had come as a family unit including Dr. Rogers’ mother, wife and 14 year old son had impressed the man who traces his family history back to Vicente Rodriguez, Capitan of Presidio de Rio Grande in the 18th century.

We heard it rain steadily all of Friday night and the morning light Saturday offered no hope of a respite in the unaccustomed wet stuff. Plodding carefully down Mexico 57 toward the Morelos cut off, the heavy truck traffic both ways on this wet and foreboding Saturday morning was clear evidence of the healthy commercial traffic all the way to the cutoff just short of Allende. The Hotel Maria Isabel restaurant on Morelos’ south side offered an excellent meeting place for the Rogers Rodriguez group.

Enroute to Zaragoza, Epigmenio outlined his family history dating back to Vicente Rodriguez, who came from our famous old Presidio de Rio Grande to establish Zaragoza in “El Valle de las Animas” with just his sons, for he had many sons. “In fact, in our family Rodriguez, there are predominantly male children. For example, in my family, my dad Jesus Rodriguez Gomez had five sons and no daughters. Gloria and I have three sons and no daughter. In this family then, there are predominantly male children.”

Gloria then revealed that her grandmother Octavia Salinas, who lived in the rancho adjacent to the ancient Hacienda Patinos. “My father Cresericia Salinas was born on the Hacienda. I was living there with Octavia who often spoke of the history of the Cherokee Indian Sequoyah. When I was about eight years old, a group of several Cherokees came from Oklahoma with various maps and information, asking what grandma Octavia knew of Sequoyah, and where he was buried. I suppose she was tired of all this and told them from the porch of Hacienda Patino. Octavia was reluctant to tell them anything, for they had no child along with them and she did not trust their mannerisms. “No, no no. Yo no se. La tierra ya ha cambiado. Ya cambio mucho la tierra.” (No. I don’t know anything about it. The land has changed much over the years.) Grandfather Simon Rodriguez lived near the Ismael Salinas’ home.” They would later show us the ruins of both Hacienda Patinos and the Salinas home.

Epigmenio, who studied at Monterrey Tech, and Gloria, who studied in the United States told us of the long line of Rodriguez family, founders of the city of Zaragoza and San Fernando de Rosas, “which was first known as ’Vane de Las Animas’ That was Zaragoza’s first name,” he said.

The ancient Cherokee prophecy, handed down from generation to generation impelled the family never to show the cave, that in time a child would come and show the location of the grave.

“We have been married 24 years,” Gloria told this reporter, “and have discussed these (Cherokee) things (off and on) for the past five years. Now with you, we go to finish the story,” the highly sensitive woman said.

“It’s a good and honorable family” Dr. Charles Rogers had said of the Rodriguez family, “they have protected the grave site for generations. They are part Cherokee.” Rogers also told the Tulsa World this month that a 96 year old woman directed him to the suspected grave site by describing a water spring, a creek and the cave. He admitted of learning the existence of a stone :which had been in the cave which might actually bear the written name of Sequoyah which was removed from the cave by a family two generations ago in fear that the grave would be vandalized. The characters depicted on the stone, according to those who have seen it say it resembled the name of Sequoyah written in the alphabet that Sequoyah invented.

We arrived at the cave site with the weather clearing noticeably. The mouth of the small entrance abounded, allowing entry only on hands and knees. Dr. Rogers took his Cherokee bow rattling and poking around the entrance to rouse any slumbering serpents or wild animals which might inhabit it.

There was no response, and he entered it, followed by two of the party, then his wife, Sheron and finally this writer. In only the brilliant sunshine reflected into the first portion of the cave, we sat, pondering the feasibility of this being the final resting place of the famed Sequoyah for almost an hour, without a lantern, not daring to go further into it. There was no visible evidence to indicate that, no animal droppings of any kind, only the mound of shards of rock leading back out the entrance. “The family was told never to show the cave to anyone,” Epigmenio revealed, “that in time a child would come to show the location of the grave.”

When the stories of the Rodriguez family were finished being told, and nothing appeared to remain to ponder, 14 year old Charles Rogers asked “What’s this” and pointed to a configuration on the cave halfway up the wall, scored in the large rock section of the wall. It was evidently man made, and the lad’s startling discovery, which none of us had noticed up to that point, appeared to bring to life the ancient Cherokee prophecy. “in time a child would come and show the location of the grave,” Epigmenio revealed.

A reverent hush fell over us as we each tried to divine the significance of what the inscription could mean. Was it an indication of where Sequoyah was buried? Did it show yet another location, or did it mean that he was buried here? One story said the old man, ill and dying actually came here to bury himself, and that the other Cherokee left him to return later to claim the remains and take him back to Indian Territory. The time was August 1843, dust prior to the United States action against Mexico that lasted from 1846-1848. Even though a little more than idle speculation, the story could nevertheless bear some significance.

Anyone pondering the feasibility of digging inside the cave, he would be well advised to leave his shovel in the garage at home for there is very little soil inside the cave. None in Epigmenio Rodriguez’ exploration party even voiced the possibility for a number of reasons, not the least of which would be the virtual impossibility of obtaining the permission of the Mexican Government (Instituto Nacional de Antropologia a Historia) to excavate the site. “This Is a Mexican thing,” Dr. Rogers keeps reminding, “permission to dig would be a long way off if ever,” he says. Epigmenio told us that to his knowledge we were the first to visit the cave in many generations, due to the family’s extreme reluctance to reveal its location for fear of disturbing the site.

Following lunch at the ranchito Rodriguez, we returned to the cave with a lantern and explored what is presently the innermost portion of the cave and took more pictures. It appeared to this reporter that the cave had at one time gone several meters further in, but had caved in at that point. But, except for the young Charles Rogers’ observation, there appeared nothing more to discover here. We then went to view the ruins of Hacienda Patinos and those of the Salinas ranch house where the eight year old Gloria had seen the Oklahoma Cherokee visitors and heard grandma Octavia turn them away.

In an interview with former Zaragoza resident Julieta Villareal, we found that even in the mid 1950s there were “Indians coming into Zaragoza to do their grocery shopping on horseback. They bought nisperos from my grandfather Victoriano Salazar’s tall tree near the grocery store,” she told us. “These were tall Indians, as I recall.”

Until further documentation can be unearthed from Mexican Archives, such as what actually took place in the Partido de Rio Grande in the early 1840s county pioneer Manuel Green Vann both listed as carpenters - who testified that he lived at Santa Rosa from 1842 to 1854, the Cherokee story remains unclear. The stone with the name of Sequoyah on it loses a great deal of archeological value since it has been removed from the site, but to the family and to the Cherokee, an authentication of its message will be a significant step in making the story more than a myth.

THE SEARCH CONTINUES PART IV

COUNCIL OF THE CHEROKEES

The Saturday, March 17 trip to Zaragoza and Hacienda Patinos had been billed as “a family affair,” and in typical Dr. Charles Rogers fashion, that meant not only his personal tribe along with that of Epigmenio Rodriguez his wife and three strapping sons, but his Cherokee tribes people from several different points on the compass. On this frosty and drizzly St Patrick’s Day they came from all over Texas and even Oklahoma. It was a turbans and feathers convention that gathered at the foot of what remained of the Hacienda Patinos steps leading up to the adobe walled ruins of the house to hear Gloria Salinas de Rodriguez recount what her family tradition; had known and guarded for generations concerning the presence of the Cherokees in the Zaragoza area. She is not accustomed to public speaking and felt great apprehension in seeing so many visitors to her childhood home, and one had to strain to hear her soft but firm voice recount he childhood memories of the long ago event for the Oklahoma and Texas Cherokee delegation, some 50 strong. This group was yet another in a long procession of Cherokee visitors from the north, a trail which dates back at least to the 1930s. But the family had doggedly guarded the story each time. “Sequoyah has always been in our hearts,” she told the Cherokee delegation. “My husband Epigmenio Rodriguez and I have shared this history of the Cherokees who lived many years ago in the land of our ancestors here at Hacienda Patinos.” The family tradition identifies Epigmenio Rodriguez’ grandfather Simon Rodriguez whose brother Albino “took off with the Cherokee tribes when the U.S. Army came for them. Albino was in love with a Cherokee maiden and had to go with them wherever they went and become a Cherokee and go as one of them.” The intervention of the U.S. Army in this story is a new wrinkle in the history of the Cherokee in Coahuila.

We know that in June of 1839 Mirabeau B. Lamar’s ethnic cleansing of Texas of all Indian tribes included the massacre of 200 Cherokee on their East Texas lands, and that some of these fled to the safety of Mexico. Among them we know from scattered Mexican documents that Green Van and Santiago Van went to Santa Rosa today Melchor Muzquiz around 1840 and 1842. By Green’s own account, 1842, by the Padron de Extranjeros of Santa Rosa, Santiago Van in 1840.

An aging Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee Syllabary decided to come to Mexico to teach his brothers there. “To him” the family tradition went, “these brothers were the lost tribe. When he arrived in the Valle de las Animas San Fernando de Rosas and now Zaragoza Coahuila Sequoyah found the lost tribe and also sensed that there was freedom for them here in Mexico.” This coincides with 38 year old Santiago Van’s presence in Seta Rosa in 1843 “seeking asylum” with his wife and four children. (“vitro la Republica buscando amparo”). Indeed, the Mexicans had befriended the Cherokees, who looked upon the fertile lands flowing with abundant springs of water and an ample supply of wild game as a most inviting haven.

After being in Mexico, the family tradition continued, Sequoyah had vision, arid wanted to gather his brothers and form term to return for the land that the USA (East Texans) had taken away from him. The good warriors had the best horses, for the Cherokee were excellent horsemen. (Interestingly enough, Epigmenio Rodriguez’ passion is also horses) .“During the time of preparation for the journey back to fight against the white, Sequoyah and his brothers would rob people who came along this way, He also worked mines of silver, but his main idea was of fighting the while men who had hurt him so very much.”

Note This notion of a militant Sequoyah is also new to the story of last ,days of the brilliant Cherokee leader, but upon reflection, should not surprise us. Still fresh in the memory of the Cherokee in Mexico was the June 1 1839 massacre and the confiscation of the lands given to them in the 1835 Treaty with then President Sam Houston which Lamar refused to honor. It certainly did not surprise Chief Utsidihi Hicks, a scrappy old warrior of our time, himself a veteran of the United States Army in both Korea and Viet Nam-Laos. Speaking of the stories and family oral history he had heard this day, Chief Hicks told this reporter: “They can say whatever they want elsewhere,” Hicks underlined, “but this is the best story I have ever heard concerning the Cherokee in Mexico.” Hicks, the author of the book “Tsalagi Beginnings, Religion and Customs” was also adamantly opposed to any type of excavation whatsoever at the cave thought to be Sequoyah’s last resting place: “Do not disturb his grave,” the old warrior said with flashing eye if indeed Sequoyah’s remains rest near Zaragoza, “he stays here.”

“The United States has always had spies everywhere,” Gloria continued the family tradition. “They soon found what Sequoyah was up to and knew how intelligent and capable (and greatly influential a figure) he was among the Cherokee.”

Somewhere in the archivos of the Partido de Rio Grande should be found this United States intervention at San Fernando de Rosas.

“The U.S.A. soldiers, commanded by Lt Jackson who went to Mexico for him. The Cherokee were gathered at Hacienda Patinos. Some Cherokee women begged Simon Rodriguez at Hacienda Patinos to hide them because they did not want to go back. One of the Cherokee women, Coyota by name, was especially well remembered in the family story, since she had assisted the Mexican women in childbirth.” But the soldiers had orders to take them all to the Oklahoma Reservation, including, of course, the 73 year old Sequoyah.

Somewhere enroute to the Rio Bravo, (near present day Del Rio) however, the family tradition continues, Sequoyah eluded his captors. His son, Standing Worm and another were ordered to return for him. “Sequoyah vas old and tired and he was sick. He did not want to go back with his son to the Reservation,” our narrator and hostess told us, “his desire was to remain in this land which had treated him so very well. In these open grasslands, where buffalo and deer roamed, with it’s abundance of water, springs, creeks and the Rio Escondido. Sequoyah went down into the cave, he buried himself with rock and mud. Everyone in this land (Mexico) respected his decision and said nothing to the Cherokee as they came back to look for his grave.”

“It makes a whole lot of sense,” Dr. Charles Layton Rogers observed enroute back to Piedras Negras Saturday evening, mulling over the family tradition story we had heard that morning. “When the soldiers discovered the main man was not with them when they crossed the Bravo, they sent Tessee (Sequoyah’s son) and his companion Standing Worm back for him, knowing that their main prize in this operation was Sequoyah. They never found him, for to protect his son from recriminations by the military, Sequoyah did not let him in on the escape,” the Matamoros physician opined.

DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

In December of 1843, the National Council of the Cherokee met to determine the recipient of the monies due Sequoyah:

“Being uncertain of the death of Sequoyah’” the document reads, “the Council on December 29, 1843 passed the following act:”
“Be it enacted by the national Council, that in lieu of the sum allowed George Guess (Sequoyah) in consideration of his invention of the Cherokee Alphabet, passed December 10th, 1841 and which is hereby repealed, the sum of three hundred dollars be paid to the said George Guess out of the national Treasury annually during his natural life.”
Sec. 2. “Be it further enacted, that in case of the death of George Guess, that the same shall be paid to his wife, Mrs. Sally Guess, annually during her natural life.”

(Laws of the Cherokee Nation, 1852)

The following year, the Council had not heard of the death of Sequoyah in an official way so the following appropriation was made:

“Be it enacted by the nation Council, that the sum of three hundred dollars be, and same is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated, for the benefit of George Guess, or his wife Sarah, for the year 1844.”

One of the most prized documents we have unearthed thus far concerning Sequoyah is the affidavit concerning the death of Sequoyah:

Warren’s Trading House,
Red River
April 21, 1845

We, the undersigned Cherokees, direct from the Spanish Dominions, do hereby certify that George Guess of the Cherokee nation, Arkansas, departed this life in the town of San Fernando in the month of August, 1843, and his son Chussleta is at this time on the Brasos River, Texas,* about thirty miles above the falls, and he intends returning home this Fall.
     Given under our hands the day and date written.

Standing Rock (his mark)
Standing Bowles (his mark)
Watch Justice (his mark)
Witnesses: Daniel G. Watson
Jesse Chisholm

(Starr, “Early History of the Cherokees” - see also RG75 National Archives)

(*)We have earlier observed that this point is now referred to as Possun Kingdom Lake, an English translation of Sequoyah, “Sequo” possum, “yah” domain of.

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

To put our events at San Fernando and the Hacienda Patinos into a proper historical perspective, we remind you that the passage of the U.S. Army it October 1846 came right through San Fernando de Rosas enroute to Sang Rosa (Muzquiz) and then on to Monclova on the way to Saltillo.

On October 8, 1846, the advance party was at the Rio Grande and Col Harney’s dragoons the following day waded the swift yellowish gray river which was about three and a half feet deep and a sixth of a mile wide (880 feet or 293 yards). The crossing was near present day Eagle Pass Texas. During the following day Capt. Robert E. Lee of the Engineers fashioned a “flying bridge” or pontoon barge, out of four specially built boats brought from San Antonio for the purpose. the force crossed 200 at a time during the (Oct.) twelfth.

(Wool to Jones, September 18, 1846, AGLR-46 W-583)

Following a short march October 16, the army arrived at the beautiful and friendly town of San Fernando de Rosas which perched on the banks of the crystal clear Rio Escondido. South of there the road wound its way into the awesome and towering peaks of the Pierra Nevadas. As it climbed, the countryside grew wilder with “bold, treeless peaks cut sharp against the clouds beyond.” The road followed a canyon which broke through the mountains to the Llano de San Jose that stretched 30 miles to the Sierra de Santa Rosa. By October 24 the Americans had “entered the neat, tastefully laid out town of Santa Rosa (Melchor Muzquiz), 105 miles from the Rio Grande. The 2,500 strongly pro Federalist inhabitants welcomed the Americans warmly.”

(K. Jack Bauer, “The Mexican War 1846 1848,” University of Nebraska Press)

ARCHIVAL REFERENCES

Permit some necessary clarifications here: Bauer errs in his Spanish Colonial historical references when he says of the land south of the Rio Grande: “ ....The land on the immediate south bank of the Rio Grande (well, almost) had once been heavily farmed by (Mission) Indians who had developed good irrigation system under Jesuit guidance (sic). the project, however had collapsed after the expulsion of the order from Mexico (1767)” “ ....as far south as San Juan de Nava, about 22 miles, nearly three quarters of the farms had been abandoned.”

(Bauer, ob citado p148)

1 - The Franciscan missions to the natives of Coahuila were first permanently established at Dulce Nombre de Jesus de Peyotes (near present day Villa Union, Coahuila) December 13, 1698. by fathers from the Jalisco Province. Subsequent Franciscan missions came into being from the College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro in 1699 1702 (ie: San Juan Bautista, Sat Francisco Solano and San Bernardo Missions) the cluster of missions secularized in 1798, but those at Guerrero were the last to be secularized in 1825.

2 - Nearest Jesuit mission, on the other hand, was at Parras in present day Coahuila in 1598, some 300 miles to the Southwest. There is as yet uncorroborated evidence of a Jesuit Visita at present day Muzquiz. (Rancho la Mission) and the Jesuit school for boys at Parras had students from what is now the Monclova area early in the 17th century, but Coahuila for the most part was Franciscan domain.

3 - The far flung mission labores (farmlands) at San Juan Bautista and San Bernardo were watered by two principal acequias (irrigation ditches) “that of San Juan,” notes Father Juan Agustin Morfi, OFM, in 1778 “measuring 18 leagues (46.8 miles) and that of San Bernardo at least 20 leagues (52 miles)....”

(Morfi, “Descripccion Historico ....” see al kinsall “The Rio Grande ’Missions,” Velasco Burckhardt, Piedras Negras)

“These expensive acequias,” enjoins Jorge Cervera Sanchez, “came all the way from Santa Rita (de Morelos) close to Allende, Coahuila, as well as the place called Los Nogales, somewhat closer than Santa Rita. An acequia for the missions,” adds the twentieth century Coahuila historian, “also came from San Ildefonso, a place which today lies within the confines of the Municipio of Zaragoza, Coahuila.”

(al kinsall “The Rio Grande Missions,” Velasco Burckhardt, Piedras Negras)

“ ....At Casillas, three leagues from the San Diego spring and about nine leagues from Mission de Peyotes they found a lode of sulphur, and a short distance away a spring of sulphur water.”

“Azufrosa,” identifies our Coahuila historian Cervera Sanchez, “where some thermal baths are located within the (present) Municipio of Villa Union.”

4- Green Vann’s name appears in the May 17, 1873 Report of the Mexican Commission Investigating the frontier problems, we find the Mexican version of the famous Mackenzie strike against Remolino 30 years later in 1873: “Various witnesses who had known Van and Stephens had previously spoken with them. They knew the event had gone wrong, because the attack had been directed at the Lipans. This was confirmed by the observations of the men in the field who examined the tracks which the force made. They came to the conclusion from what Green and his companion had said, and noted that they had become lost after they crossed an arroyo.”

(“Informe de la Comision Pesquisidora de la Frontera del Norte al Ejecutive de la Union, Monterrey, Mayo 15 de 1873”)

CHIEF HICKS SHARES CHEROKEE TRADITION

Revered Cherokee Chief Utsidihi Hicks, crusty U.S. Army veteran of more campaigns than he can recall, who could write a book on his service both in Korea (1951 52) and in the Vietnam War, rode back to Eagle Pass with us to regale us with his countless stories. Of the ancient Cherokee burial practices, the only elected Cherokee chief along March 17, told us:

“When a great warrior or leader died, he was stripped of his clothes and bathed with water. He was then dressed in clothes that had been purified by passing them through the flames of the Sacred Fire. His face was painted red, the color of success and victory. He was placed in a grave in a sitting position, a robe draped across his shoulders and a buffalo robe as his seat of honor. His war club, knife and bow and arrows were passed through the fire and placed in the grave with him. All of his other personal possessions were placed with him. It was not known by the living what a man may need in the After World, so he took his belongings with him.”

THE SEARCH CONTINUES PART V

A WELL GUARDED FAMILY TRADITION

The Epigmenio Rodriguez family tradition regarding the Cherokee presence near San Fernando de Rosas Zaragoza had many interesting repercussions for the Cherokee dignitaries gathered at the Hacienda Patinos ruins March 17, 2001. Spoken simply, sincerely and without rehearsal, this forthright and highly sensitive woman and mother of three strapping sons the bride of Epigmenio Rodriguez, Gloria Salinas de Rodriguez retraced what she recalled.

“The Rodriguez Family at Hacienda Patino was always well protected by the Cherokee because there were other (Comanche) Indians in the area known as the bad Indians. Back in those days when the Cherokee lived this village in the area of hacienda Patinos, they would advise our people to go inside their homes because there were bad (“indios barbaros”) Indians in the area.”

The Rodriguez family would trade horses with the Cherokee for “agua loca” (liquor). “Soon the Rodriguez family had the best horses in the area. Albino Rodriguez learned the Cherokee dialect before the U.S. Army took them across the Rio Bravo, the family tradition insists Once they got to the Del Rio area, they took them by wagon train to the reservation in Oklahoma,” the family tradition asserted.

“Some years later,” Gloria related, “the Cherokees would write and send pictures to our ancestors. Some appeared dressed in U.S. military uniforms. There was a great relationship which united our ancestors with the Cherokee,” Gloria Rodriguez asserted, “but this relation faded as our great grandparents passed away.”

Over a period of five generations, the Cherokee would come to Hacienda Patinos to inquire of our grandparents and uncles the whereabouts of Sequoyah’s grave. But the Rodriguezes always kept the site a secret, telling them, as her grandmother had told them that “the country had changed and they would no longer find the area the same.” Some relatives did indeed know the place but were very much afraid of losing their land, thinking the Cherokee would take this territory away from them by legal means.

“Epigmenio knew more about the history of Sequoyah than I did,” Gloria conceded. “He brought to me the Prophecy concerning the child who would come to point out the exact place of his tomb. When I learned this, I became very troubled at the idea, and felt that maybe Sequoyah, too, was sad because here spiritually he could rest in peace . We were not prepared for this encounter here today,” she said.

A business trip to Joplin, Missouri by automobile in August of 1995 found the Rodriguezes off the proper highway in Oklahoma, one leading to Tahlequah. “I fell asleep and therein heard the sound of drums and a celebration of Indians with the common sounds they make who seemed to be dancing about. I awakened and asked Epigmenio to turn back to the road to the Cherokee named town. I told him the dream and the sounds, and he began to unfold for me the history of the Oklahoma reservation. The road led us to this reservation, where we came to the Cherokee nation where we had a quick interview with Charles Gourd who seemed to be a descendant of Sequoyah.” The Cherokee Nation was planning a 150 anniversary of the death of Sequoyah. The following year, she said, “we received a letter concerning a trip to Mexico by members of the Cherokee Nation. It was not the right time, the situation was not appropriate, and the letter we received is the only thing we had from our friend Charles Gourd,” she concluded.

THE HACIENDA PATINOS

In our tracing the Patino connection in the Zaragoza Morelos area, we discovered in the Saltillo Archivo de Gobierno mention of one Joseph Patino in late 1756:

“November 6 1756 (Inspection tour by Miguel de Sesma y Ecudero (o San Francisco de Coahuila, Nueva Extremadura) of San Fernando de Austria: Among the 32 reviewed (“resena” muster) Joseph Patino was among those eleven mounted, fully armed, while the other 21 some had muskets, others, swords, some with no armament whatsoever.”

Five years later, May 15, 1761 we read in the same archives ( Legajo 4 Expediente 223) of the subsequent resena conducted by Jacinto de Barrio; V Jauregui. Of the 78 armed men reviewed, our “Joseph Patino carried musket, leather shield, powder, balls, three horses, and had a wife and seven children.”

On September 30, 1777 Manuel de Cerecedo y Velasco’s account of his visit, in the “notas” of the ojos de agua in the Jurisdiction of Presidio San Juan Bautista:

1 “Paso Hondo serves this Presidio, originates 1 1 / 2 leagues to the northwest”
2 - “San Pedro arises eight leagues to the west of this Presidio and flows east”
3 - “two ojos de agua one and two leagues from San Pedro de Gigedo”
4 - “One for Dulce Nombre Mission arises 3/4 league west and is shared with (Mission) Vizarron”
5 - “Two ojos de agua for (Mission San Francisco de) Vizarron, one and a half league south, another permanent one above ground three leagues east.”
6 - “A spring for Los Nogales eighteen leagues from Mission San Juan Bautista”
7 - “A spring for Santa Rita (de Morelos) 26 leagues for Mission San Bernardo.”

“…There is a sulphur spring for bathing which serves for various illnesses with salutary results two leagues from Mission Dulce Nombre de Jesus, and another, with equally salutary results at the Mission de Vizarron horse farm some four leagues distant.”

By the mid nineteenth century, we find our Miguel Patino in the papers of Luis Alberto Guajardo: “... in October of 1855, Col. Miguel Patino advised that he had received an urgent message concerning 300 filibusters who were poised across from Piedras Negras with the intent to demolish the settlement, and sought immediate assistance.”

For the official Mexican version, we look to the “Despatches of the U.S. Consuls Monterrey in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. which contains a copy of the :Boletin Oficial No. 35 of October 1855:”

We read in the official report of October 7, 1855, the Commander in Chief of the Coahuila Section Manuel Menchaca wrote from Piedras Negras of the famous clash with the filibusteros americanos following their crossing into Mexico October 1 at the juncture of the Rio Escondido and the Rio Grande south of Eagle Pass Piedras Negras, where he says he gave orders to Capitan D. Miguel Patino to await him at Morelos in order to join forces with him. The famous short lived battle (2:00 p.m. to dark) at Maroma, Menchaca’s report said, took place October 3. He found that the aventureros had fled the scene and at eight on the morning of October 6 he followed them to Piedras Negras where they were “bien fortificados en el muelle de Piedras Negras.”

Interestingly, Menchaca had high praise for his second in command, the Captain of the Morelos Company Miguel Patino, “who in the presence of all killed with his own hands one of the adventurers in the charge that he made. In addition, when the enemy took the arroyo he got close enough to the guerilla chief that he shot the horse out from under him but he unfortunately escaped. Evaristo Madero, Captain of the Guerrero Company displayed much energy and valor in the action, as well as lieutenant Pablo Espinosa of the Company of Morelos. They displayed such extraordinary valor in the action, that I cannot but single them out and recommend them to Your Excellency”

For the following year, we look again to the Luis Alberto Guajarda papers for an item dated March 20,1856: “ ....Commander Miguel Patino arrived a this place late yesterday afternoon,” said Lt. Pablo Espinoza, “with the forces of this District which were engaged in operations against the Lipans together with those which Colonel Juan Zuazua brought. According to what Mr. Patino shared with me, there were more than 100 pieces captured of the 22 of this month at the Paso del Coche, among them 30 warriors and the head chiefs of greater name who were executed.”

A March 22, 1856 item is also found in the Guajardo papers: “...,On the 19th of this month about eight in the morning the apprehension of a party of Lipan Indians took place who were living at the Cabecera del Chupadero in the jurisdiction of the Villa de Gigedo. They were taken to the State Capital in the custody of a sufficient force of 175 men under the command of Captain Miguel Patino who, together with Cornel Juan Zuazua who should go out against the remainder of that tribe today, situated at the juncture of the Rio Salado and the Rio Sabinas.”

An item dated April 25, 1856 appears in the Luis Alberto Guajardo papers:

“ … a strong party of indians who killed three wayfarers at the Piloncillos place in the jurisdiction of Muzquiz passed by. Captain Patino went in pursuit of these savages and annihilated them at the Sabinas River, killing four savages, taking one woman prisoner along with a considerable number of horses which were remanded to the State Government”.

We also find Miguel Patino in the Report of the Investigative Commission of the Northern Frontier to the Central Government, May 15, 1873. Speaking of the action against the barbarous Indians of the frontier in March, 1856, it says: “ …. Puestas en movimiento en virtud de mis ordenes las tropas auxiliares de Rio Grande (Guerrero) y Lampazos, las del primer punto sorprendieron el 19 del presente (Marzo 1856) una partida de 63 indios cerca de la Villa de Gigedo, y reducida a prision, se dirigieron con ellos hacia el Rio de Sabinas, para obrar en combinacion con el Col. (Juan) Zuazua....el Capitan D. Miguel Patino que intento en vano impedir a los unos la fuga y a los otros aquella horrorosa matanza para cumplir con su deber apelo el ultimo recurso y dio muerte a 41 personas de ambos sexos. cuando tenia lugar el suceso que acabo de referir, el Col. Zuazua por otro rumbo se ocupaba con otra fuerza respetable de la ejecucion de las mismas ordenes, y estando ya cerca del enemigo que presenta, por el quebranto cuento de los tratados de paz, lo que habia de sucederle, sin aguardar el auxilio del Capitan Patino, se arrojo solo a desarmarlo, logrando la aprenhension de 74 personas de todas edades y sexos.”

“Various witnesses who knew Green Van and Stephens,” says the Mexican Commission Report of the famous Mackenzie strike against Remolino in May of 1873, “spoke with them and supposed that the attack had gone astray since it was directed at the Lipans. This revelation confirms the observations of the men in the field who examined the tracks which the force made, and agreed with the words of Green and his companion, since it was noted that they had become lost after passing an arroyo.”

Note - It was not the main force led by veteran Maverick County ranchman and head of the Maverick County Minute Men Green Van, Fort Clark guide Ike Cox and McLain which got lost, however. According to Robert G. Carter, it was the late arriving Troop “M” from Fort Duncan which made Mackenzie’s main body wait at Las Moras.

In the Luis Alberto Guajardo papers is yet another reference to Patino dated June 16 1857: “ …Captain Miguel Patino, having heard the gunfire, arrived at the height of the action, at which time the Indians fled and he informed him (a third party) that a fight with another party of Indians had just finished. Involved were 20 vagrants who took three mounts from the slain that at Morelos were the men Garinzuay was seeking, wounded and being cared for at the Presidencia Municipal (at Morelos).”

EPILOGUE

For a more complete background history on the Cherokee Nation in Texas one can find Grant Foreman’s two definitive and widely publicized works. Foreman is the admitted authority on Native Americans of the Southwest, as attested to by his “The Five Civilized Tribes,” chapter V of which, the longest, deals with the Cherokee Nation. His other work, “Sequoyah” is much shorter, but does quote the principals in the last days of Sequoyah and his death at San Fernando. The Worm’s description of the Texas hill country north of San Antonio and their visits to San Fernando by way of “the Mexican garrison town five miles from the river” and the 30 miles distance from that town to San Fernando fit the Cinco Manantiales area like a glove Frederick Webb Hodge errs however, in his “Bureau of American Ethnology/ Handbook of American Indians,” Part II, 1910, when he assert; that Sequoyah “died near San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico in August of1843,” which gave rise to the countless wild goose chases by Cherokees for the past 150 years.