The First Republic of Te:i(I.S
99
It has long been contended that Gutierrez pardoned the prisoners and left the impression among the Americans that he had made arrangements to send them to Matagorda Bay, where they were to be placed aboard ship and taken either to the United States or to Mexico provided they promised on their word of honor not to participate in the war in Texas again. Late that evening, however, a group of one hundred armed men, commanded by Antonio Delgado and Pedro Prado, forcibly took charge of the prisoners and marched them out by the south road, which leads to La Bahia. After proceeding a short distance to a site called "La Tablita," described as a small ridge that runs down to the river bank and variously estimated as from two to six miles from the city, the grim cavalcade halted as darkness enveloped the shadowy figures. The prisoners were ordered to dismount. Without permitting them the last comforts of religion, they were bound hand and foot before their throats were cut. Their bodies were stripped, and left to be devoured by the coyotes and the buzzards. The opinion has been generally held, too, that fourteen prisoners were executed. The list of the men put to death, however, names seventeen: Governor Manuel Salcedo; Colonel Simon Herrera, in command of frontier troops; Lieutenant Colonel Jeronimo Herrera, in command of tr~ps from Larnpasos and adjutant to Simon Herrera; Captain Miguel Arcos, who figured in the counterrevolution of Colonel Zambrano; Captains Juan Ignacio Arrambide, Bernardino Montero, of Nacogdoches, Francisco Pereira, and Jose Amador; Lieutenants Juan Cantu, Juan Caso, N. Mu.squiz; Ensign N. Rodriguez, Francisco Arcos, N. Parras; and Ser- geants Juan Bautista Solis, Luis Arcos, and Miguel Prado. 31 The murder of these men has consistently been imputed to Me.xkan cruelty and barbarism. It is well to note, therefore, that the only witness to the sad departure of the death caravan does not support this opinion. Guillermo Navarro, a veteran in the Lampasos Company, orderly to Lieutenant Colonel Jeronimo Herrera, escaped from San Antonio on April 5, at four in the afternoon and, after riding hard, arrived in Laredo at noon on April 8. There he submitted to a close interrogatory as to what had happened in San Antonio after the fall of the city. He stated that two years later (1835), has generally been disregarded. Gaines asserted that on the way from La Bahia, Gutierrez and the American officers had agreed that Mexican prisoners would be tried by the Mexicans and American prisoners, by the Americans. Lamar Papers, I, 280-281. SlThe complete list is given in Garza, Dos Hermanos Herou, 51-52. This work, based on the papers of Gutierrez, states that secret agents of Shaler and Toledo were responsible for the death sentence and the action of the mob that took them out and so cruelly executed them. Op. cit., 49.50.
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