Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, the Texas History podcast. I'm your host, Ken Wise,

and thank you very much for tuning in today for a little Texas history. This episode is being

recorded and released in the Texas Revolution time period.

That is, for me anyway, the time between October 2nd and April 21st,

which is the Battle of Gonzales, October 2nd, to the Battle of San Jacenno on April 21st.

And during this time period, the battles of the revolutions took place,

resulting, of course, in the ultimate victory at the Battle of San Jacenno. Today, though, I want to

focus on October 2, 1835, in the Battle of Gonzales. Specifically, I want to talk about a piece

of white cloth that has become such a famous symbol of the Texas Revolution that it's been copied in dozens, but maybe hundreds of different ways.

Of course, I'm talking about the famous Come and Take It flag.

So let's go back to 1835 and get wise about Texas.

Yeah. 35 and get wise about Texas. This story starts with a cannon, specifically a small Spanish bronze six-pound cannon.

Now, poundage is the caliber of the cannon. That's how you talk about.

The cannon's caliber is by the weight of the ammunition that it fires. So this cannon fired a six-pound ball. Now, a six-pound cannon ball is not very big. It's a little bigger, of course, if you're on the receiving end of it. But this was a pretty small cannon. And in 1831, James Tumlinson, Jr., from the DeWitt colony, where Gonzalez was located,

received the cannon from the Mexican authorities in Behar.

We don't know how the colonists use this cannon.

And what I mean is how they deployed it.

It was there to scare away Comanche

Raiders. One historian of Texas Revolution artillery believes that the cannon was likely

mounted on a swivel in a blockhouse because we know there were some blockhouses at Gonzalez.

And if it was mounted on a

swivel the Indians would be able to see it and hopefully go a different direction but we don't know

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