Tfee Ag<my of the Clmrcli in Te:ras, 182r-1836
339
Miller returned to Thomas on the Trinity, told his story and asked advice of his friends as to what he should do. He asserted that they told him that since Liberty was seventy-five miles away, it would take too long to arrange a legal examination by the authorities, and at any rate there was no one who could go after the judge. He decided, there- fore, to return to bury the body. Aided by Thomas, Miller buried Father Diaz de Leon on the north bank of the little creek on November 5, 1834, about noon. Taking with him the Padre's horse, saddle, bridle, saddlebags and their contents, he then went to Liberty to make a report to the Alcalde. 69 On November 14, 1834, Primer Alcalde William Hardin, of Liberty, conducted a formal inquest. He was taken to the spot of the tragedy by Miller himself. This was on the road that goes from the lower Coushatti Village on the Trinity and the village of the Alabamas on the Neches River, about twenty miles from the former and about the same distance from the latter, some seventy-five miles from Liberty. The body was found buried on the east side of the road, three-quarters of a mile from the point where the road crossed Big Sandy Creek, immediately north, on the bank of a small rivulet running westward. 70 The body was exhumed and an autopsy was performed by Doctor L. Orville Thompson, assisted by J. N. Moreland. "We found a gun or pistol shot in the left breast, between the fourth and fifth. ribs, about two inches from the medial line of the breast bone; an inclination upward had been given to the ball or balls so that in entering the chest it frac- tured the fourth rib ... and from its apparent direction we should think opened the largest artery of the body known to physicians as the 'arch of the aorta' as it emerges from the heart in a manner sufficient to cause instant death." 71 Thus died the veteran missionary, the last Franciscan of the Spanish and Mexican period to labor in Texas. January 10, 1835. The report was not made until May, 1835, although the depositions of the witnesses are dated November I 4, I 834. For copy of the requests of Rueg for investigation, see Blake, Documents. The text is published in Oberste, o-p. c;t., 331-332. 69 Deposition of Miller, November 14, 1834, Nacogdoc!,es .A,-c!,ives, Vol. 79, pp. 146-r 48. ·70 This places the spot definitely In the present Alabama-Coushatti Indian Reservation in Polk County, between . the Trinity and the Neches rivers in the area of Goodrich, Corrigan, and Rockland. San Augustine, generally designated as the place, was then in the jurisdiction of Nacogdoches. See copy of "En- quiry ... ," Nacogdoclu.s A,-cl,ives, Vol. 79, p. r37. 71 Deposition of Doctor L. Orville Thompson and J. N. Moreland, November 14, 1834, Nacogdoches .A,-cl,ives, Vol. 79, pp. 137-138. Italics are not in the original.
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