Welcome to a new history of old San Antonio.

Episode 12, Mexican San Antonio.

I'm Brandon Seal.

I'm a city, San Antonio. tonight I'm looking at your lovely life.

In the summer of 1822, a somber procession of San Antonio's marched southwest out of town.

Nearly every family in town was represented in the convoy.

As they reached the Medina River in its oak groves,

half-buried partial skeletons began to appear in the brush, as if the dead were trying to dig their way out of their graves.

In truth, however, many of these dead had never known a grave. The hundreds, perhaps as many as a thousand

skeletons scattered throughout the brush and concentrated on one particularly thick and sandy oak grove,

had been exposed to the elements for almost a decade now, by order of the same General Arredondo who had massacred them. It had been a part of his policy of terror against San Antonioans,

along with the executions of some 300 civilians meant to teach San Antonioans the cost of

rebellion. The irony, of course, was that by 1822, General Arredondo was now technically a rebel himself.

He retained his authority as a sort of super-governor of Texas and neighboring provinces,

only now he held that authority under a Mexican flag, having abandoned his Spanish loyalties,

along with most other Mexican royalists in 1821.

Perhaps he was self-conscious of his own flip-flop.

Perhaps it was out of some sense of Catholic decency.

Perhaps it was just a political ploy to placate San Antonio's, but in 1822, Aradondo

finally allowed them to venture out to the Medina battlefield and collect the remains of

their loved ones.

He also extended general pardons to the many families who had fled, acquiescing in some

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