Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Manuel Musquiz of the Davis Mountains
December 7, 2005

While sitting at the ruins of Mr. Musquiz’s house between Fort Davis and Alpine, I tried to create how I thought a letter that he wrote to save his nephew’s life would sound.

To the Honorable; General Jose Miguel Blanco;

Our family has been in service to our country for two centuries in the El Norte Region. A hundred and fifty years ago, in 1730, your great grandparents settled the town now named for a member of our family. Your grandfather served at Nacogdoches in East Texs and established the presidio on the San Saba in 1757. Your great uncle was the first governor of Texas. Another uncle killed the filibustering mustanger Philip Nolan and captured his men in 1801. Your great-great grandfather led an entrada in 1707 into Texas. I briefly served as an interim president of our country. You, of course, know all of this, but I am beseeching you for leniency for my brother’s son, a relative of yours.

Years ago my brother was captured by the Apaches. Some of our family had been less than honorable trading with the family of my brother’s captors. After my uncle took advantage of a young girl on her first visit to our town, they took my brother in retribution. His captors did not return to our town to trade for years. They traded far to the east, to the Camino Real from Saltillo to San Antonio, until Leaton opened his trading post.

Instead of living in the Montanas Del Carmen as they had for years, they moved far to the north, to live near where los Americanos later built the fort on the Chihuahua Trail. They often stayed in the valley that is now named for our family. I lived in that valley in the 1850s during the troubles associated with the political turmoil instigated by the liberal Benito Juarez – I had made too many enemies speaking against Juarez’s anti-clerical beliefs. I had not known where my brother lived until I met him at La Junta de los Rios a few years before my forced political exile.

By then he was one of them, and had a wife and children. We talked for a few minutes, but my troop was on patrol and I was but a subordinate. I have not seen him in the years since I lived “al otro lado” in the valley south of Fort Davis, but he asked for me when the captives, including my brother and his son, arrived in our town on their way to the prison in Mexico City. I did not recognize my brother until he showed me where his sixth toe had been cut off. As you know, that is a sign of our royal blood, as our oldest grandmothers always tell us. By the generosity and grace of the officer in charge, my brother was liberated to my care, but his son was the prize captive. For the last decade he and his people have been living in the most remote canyons along the Rio Bravo del Norte, staying on the move, avoiding the soldiers of both countries.

My brother’s son has avoided his father’s people, since the day those who hunted Apaches for their scalps for pay killed his mother and his sisters. He spoke for me when Chief Nicolas attacked the Confederate soldiers during the norteamericano’s Civil War, but was not powerful enough to protect me from Nicolas as that chieftain fought to rid the mountains of everyone not Indian. I returned to Mexico, to serve the conservative junta before the reign of Emperor Maximilian.

He has never been mean – he has never wantonly killed. But it is true that as a younger man he was a deft rustler and raider who often traded at the San Carlos fiestas where nobody asked questions of the provenance of his goods. The avisadores along the river were his friends, and would warn him of the presence of our troops. You know how quickly they pass information with their blinking flashes of lights from their mirrors held towards the sun.

My brother’s son forged a truce with the raiders from Palo Duro when only 30 years of age, when they were attacking the town named for our family. My brother asked him to do so. He honored his father despite his rejection of our people. He has led his people well, and has been part of our life in this remote region for many years. Stories abound about him. I am sure you have heard the story, for example, when he traded for the freighter Burgess’s coat and then wore it into Polvo, causing people to believe he had murdered Burgess. The spring where the trade occurred held his name until the Anglos began ranching near there.

I am asking of you a favor that if granted could cost your rank in the army, I realize that. But I also know of how things are done in the Federal District under the great volcanoes. I know there might be a way to allow them to escape. My honorable relative, as one who has had to shoulder the burden of responsibility, I know decisions such as this one will dominate your life if the decision goes badly. Trust in God – what seems instinctual, the protection of one’s family – is the confidence of God speaking to you. It is the right thing to do. I urge you to release my nephew, Pedro Musquiz, otherwise known as Alsate.

Con respeto,
Manuel Musquiz

After a month or two, Alsate and his people were allowed to roam the streets of Mexico City freely because of Musquiz’s letter to Blanco. Within a week they found where to steal horses and supplies and fled northward. Upon their return he and his people tried to perpetuate their way of life, but within ten years the mountains were emptied of the Indians by death and captivity. Captives were sold into slavery in southern Mexico, where they died within three years from overwork and systematic corporeal punishment. The ones remaining married into the families of the peons working on the haciendas, or became wards of the United States on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. Alsate was eventually killed at a “peace treaty” in Mexico, a trap forged by a Judas who had traded with him many times.