A f termat/, of San Saba Massacre
1 37
this was not all. He assured the viceroy that he had personally counte<i fourteen Frenchmen among the enemy. No one questioned the fact that it was the French who supplied them with both the arms and the ammunition so effectively employed in repelling the attack. The tactics adopted by the defenders were distinctly those used by European troops.• 0 In a later report Parrilla explained the full extent of the activity of French and English traders among the native tribes of Texas. The prisoners taken in the surprise attack on the Tawakonis had frankly admitted the frequent visits to their village of Frenchmen and other white men that resembled them. These men gave them guns, powder, and lead in exchange for pelts, skins, and horses. While in San Antonio three French deserters from Natchitoches had publicly confessed in the presence of the Governors of Coahuila and Texas that they had been instructed to accompany the Indians that attacked San Saba in 1758. They described in detail the method used in penetrating new territory and in winning the friendship of the Indians. Five or six men would go out at a time, well supplied with merchandise attractive to the natives. These men would then establish their residence among the Indians and live with them, learning their language, their customs, and their habits, and winning their friendship by trading with them guns and ammunition for skins and stolen horses. The declarations of the three deserters were more than borne out, Parrilla declared, by the revelations made by the Frenchmen captured in New Mexico recently by Governor Tomas Velez Cachupin and by those taken by Governor Barrios y Jauregui near the Orcoquisac. The first of these knew the language of the Comanches and Yutes, while the latter were well acquainted with the dialects of the Orcoquisacs and the Bidais, among whom they had lived for several years. A ctivit.y of French and English traders. But it was not only the French who were penetrating into the confines of Texas. Just recently two Apache warriors and a squaw, who had been taken prisoners by the Taovayas and forced to live among them for a while, had returned to San Saba. They told how they had seen some strange white men come to the village of the Taovayas. Although they were fair like the French and resembled them somewhat in their dress and manners, they were different. These men made frequent visits to the northern tribes and sold them guns and ammunition. The Apache captives further explained how they tried to teach the Indians the use of mortars.
tO/bid., pp. 228-240, 182-190.
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