Welcome to Lipon Apokane Epacombe.

Episode 10, Fidelity to the Texian.

I'm Brandon Seal.

A southeast wind carried the sounds of gunfire up into the hill country and into the ears of the Lippanes living there.

They hadn't expected to hear the cannons of San Antonio firing again so soon after the December 1835 defeat of the Mexican Centralist Army there by rebel Hexians, as we typically refer to Texans from this upcoming Republic of Texas era.

But sure enough, the Mexican army had been defeated back in December, paroled, and promised to never return.

The Lipanes actually had been the ones to try to make sure of this,

sending the son of Captain Flaco, also named Flaco,

to trail the defeated Mexican army all the way across the Rio Grande.

But once they reached Sao Tio, the defeated Mexican army stopped and turned

around. They were joined there by an even larger army, led by none other than General Santa Ana,

fresh off of his sack of Sakatecas. Flacco the younger heard the gruesome details, Hundreds killed, thousands in prison, the town looted. He rode back as fast as he could to report this to his people and to their Tejano friends. It was only six weeks ago. Could the cannon fire that they were hearing now from San Antonio in February 1836 be Santa Ana's army already?

Could 6,000 men really have covered 300 miles from Saltyo through a foot of snow during one of the coldest winters in memory in just six weeks?

Captain Quelgas de Castro took a handful of trusted men and rode into San Antonio to check it out and try and link up with the hundreds of Lipanes and Lipan descendants living there.

But as they approached town, they were cut off by Mexican scouts,

officered by skeptical old Spanish royalist officers on the lookout for untrustworthy Lipon types

to come to the aid of these rebel Texians. Quelgas de Castro and his men hung around the outskirts

of San Antonio for the next 13 days, helpless. One descendant, Quelgas de Castro, recalled what

they eventually witnessed on March 6th.

Quote, we witnessed how the Mexican soldiers caused and burned the bodies of the dead Texans into fires.

We lost family at the Alamo. We buried our dead, end quote.

Seeing their Tejano friends, like Jose Francisco Ruiz and a young Jose Antonio Menchaca, whose last name I hope you

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