TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
8
The following are the names of the victims:
RPANIARDS.
Manuel de Salcedo, Governor. Simon. de Herrera, do. Geronimo Herrera, Lieut. Colonel. Juan <le Escheverria, Captain. ,Jose Mateos, do. ·Jose Groscochea, do. Francisco Pereira, do. Juan Ignascio Arrambi<lc, do. Gregorio Amado, Lieutenant. Antonio Lopez, Farmer, (Paisano).
MEXICANS.
Miguel de Arcos, Captain. Louis, his son, Lieutenant. Francisco, his son, Ensign. Juan Caso, Lieutenant.
I myself saw s. uspended from their saddle;; pieces of bloody garments and jewelry which reveale<l the ;:;hameless fe" rocity of these tigers. The ensanguined fiends had divided the spoils among themselves. It is thus seen that Gutierrez receiwd in his own Government Palace the information given by Delgado of this terrible massacre, although he sub sequently sought to deny any participation in the bloody transaction. In a manifesto which he C;aused to be published in the City of Mon terey the 25th of May, 1827, Gutierrez declares that he never ordered the execution of these fourteen unhappy men - that the extrem-:! cruelty of the Spanish Governors influenced the majority of the Junta to decree, that the guard who held them prisoners should deliver them up. "The Guard" continues Gutierrez, "were not forced to obey, without waiting, as they should have done, for my consent and order. Having taken possession of all the prisoners, they immediately con ducted them to their inhuman and cruel slaughter, which they per petrated without my knowledge and without the temporal and spiritual dispositions that the holy church establishes. God thus permitted their deaths, in signal punishment of the barbarities which these unfortu nate victims ha<l preYiorn,l.Y perpetrated." To one who can form eYen an imperfect idea of the men of that period -their extreme degree of ignorance and the wild fen·or of their pas sions - to one who is aware, that with but few exceptions, there was not a single correct political �rntiment, and that the true meaning of the words Independence and Liberty was unknown, and that the causes of the rising of the Curate Ydalgo, were not understood except as a cry of death and war without quarter against the Gachu,pines, (for thus wer� the Spaniards callrfl) -·- To suC;h an one there can be no doubt that this band of so-called patriofa, aF Rernar,lo Gutierrez has said, devoured of their own accord these fourteen victims. Yet is the excuse of Gutierrez so frirnlous, 8(1 cowari\lv, so unworthy of a Gen eral, that we are led to lwliPve he would not lrnYe avoided a similar
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