WRITINGS OF SAM HousToN, 1859
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indicted for the crime, he evaded and defied arrest, and from this time on associated himself with a band of robbers who engaged in the stealing of horses and cattle. He soon became ·chief of the band that for years ravaged the lower part of Texas, removing their spoil to the Mexican side of the 1·iver, thus evading all attempts that were made to arrest and punish them. These raids and the attempts to put an end to them which continued throughout the fifties, are known in Texas history as the Cortinas Wars. Both the State of Texas with its militia and its rangers, and the United States with its regular troops, engaged in these attempts to put an end to Cortina and his marauders; but they all failed to trap the bandit and his men, until December, 1859. At that time Major Heintzelman of the First Regiment of the United States Infantry (122 officers and men) together with Captain Plunkett's battery of the First Artillery (48 men), and Cap- tain Tobin with his 150 Texas rangers attacked the camp of the outlaw, near Rio Grande City. About sixty of the six hundred robbers were killed, and the entire band was completely routed. Cortina himself sought refuge in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. But he had inflicted serious damage on the entire lower part of Texas. Major Heintzelman in making his report (see this in Texas State Library) said: "The whole country from Brownsville to Rio Grande City, 120 miles, and back to the Arroyo Colorado, has been laid waste. There is not an American, nor any property that could be destroyed, in this large tract of country. Business as far as Laredo, 240 miles, has been interrupted or suspended, for five months, while the amount of claims for damages is $336,826. We have lost fifteen Americans and eighty friendly Mexicans, while Cortina's loss is 151 killed; of his wounded we have no record." From the mountains of Burgos, Cortina made another sally against Texas in 1861, and burned the town of Roma; but he was again defeated by a detachment of John S. Ford's battalion, under the command of Captain Santos Benevades. But all through the Civil War period, Cortina remained a prominent figure on the Rio Grande, first siding with the Imperialists, then, deserting to the Juaristas. He 1·evolutionized the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, made himself its governor in 1864, passed troops into Texas to make common cause with the Union army, hoping by this service to be made a brigadier general in the United States Army; but all nis plans came to naught, because of the defeat of the combined Mexican and Federal forces by the Confederates under Colonel George H. Giddings, of General Magruder's staff. Expelled from Matamoros by the Imperialists, Cortina carried on a partisan warfare until the downfall of Maximilian; then, he reappeared and again made himself governor of Tamaulipas. In 1871 we find him a general under Lerdo de Tajeda, and in 1875, he was mayor of Matamoros and a general in the Mexican army. The Texas side of the Rio Grande was not well guuded during the days of the Reconstruction, so Cortina took advantage of this fact in 1873, and again in 1876, to make forays into the country of the lower Rio Granae. In 1876, he was arrested by order of President Diaz, and imprisoned in the City of Mexico. After a confinement of n few years, he was released, but was required to live in or near the Mexican capital under observation of the Mexican government, because Diaz considered him too dangerous a character to be permitted to return to his ranch properties on the Rio
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