Prologue

Fencing is the art and science of wielding swords or sword-like weapons. The history of fencing is the history of the sword, a uniquely Old World weapon. We might well suppose, then, that along the coast of modern Texas, the history of fencing begins with the advent of the Europeans. To a degree, this is true, but only to a degree.

The indigenous peoples of the Texas Coast lived in a Neolithic culture virtually devoid of metalworking during the Pre-Columbian period. In fact, even the more advanced American civilizations of Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, and Moche only worked in the softer metals such as gold, silver and copper. In the New World the earliest bronze was cast in Bolivia circa 1100 AD. The Inca civilization used bronze tools and weapons but never mastered iron.

No Native American culture appears to have developed a true sword before making contact with the Europeans, despite the fact that the earliest metal swords of the Egyptians and other Old World peoples were also made of copper.

One reason metal swords may not have developed naturally in the New World is that those first copper swords would have been far inferior to weaponry already in use by the combatants of the more advanced cultures to the south.

The Aztec warriors, for instance, favored the somewhat sword-like maquahuitl, or macuahuitl. This device was a kind of heavy, hardwood, single-handed club edged along two sides by razor sharp obsidian blades. As with the sword in Europe, the maquahuitl was often wielded in concert with a shield. There was also a less-common two-handed version of the macuahuitl, called the cuahololli.

The maquahuitl was also the instrument of traditional combat between elite champions who settled their disputes without the involvement of armies. It was, in essence, the weapon of the duel. Presumably, it was wielded like something between a club and an edged sword. Success with the maquahuitl no doubt rested upon the personal skills of the adversaries. In a culture like that of the Aztec, with clearly marked social castes and a well-organized military, it seems not too far-fetched to presume there were masters who instructed neophytes in its subtleties and perhaps organized practice (or fencing) sessions.

Bernal Diaz, in The Conquest of New Spain, describes how a soldier in Cortez's army, Pedro de Moron, had his horse killed by a blow from this weapon.  Diaz refers to the maquahuitl as a "two-handed cutting sword" and as a "dreadful broadsword".

Diaz describes one scene vividly, "Pedro de Moron, was a very good horseman, and as he charged with three other horsemen into the ranks of the enemy the Indians seized hold of his lance and he was not able to drag it away, and others gave him cuts with their broadswords, and wounded him badly, and then they slashed at the mare, and cut her head off at the neck so that it hung by the skin, and she fell dead."

One anonymous conquistador reportedly remarked, "They have swords that are like broadswords, but their hilts are not quite so long and are three fingers wide; they are made of wood with grooves into which they fit hard stones blades which cut like a Toledo blade."

In describing the Aztec warrior Cortez faced, Walter Prescott noted, in The Conquest of Mexico, "Those of a higher order wielded the terrible maquahuitl with its sharp and brittle blades of obsidian."

He also observed, "The emperor was himself very expert in the management of the maquahuitl, or Indian sword, and took great delight in witnessing athletic exercises, and the mimic representation of war by his young nobility."

Captain Alonso de Leon, in his Historia de Nuevo Leon, written in 1649, describes the tribes of the region around Monterrey, Cadereita and Cerralvo. He notes, "They use bow and arrow. Both in making them and shooting them they are expert. They are accustomed to carry with the bow a stick, arched to the form of a Japanese cutlass which serves them alike, as a staff, when afoot, as a pillow for sleeping, as a cudgel, and as a tool for all their needs."

While his use of a phrase such as "Japanese cutlass" may grate on the sensibilities of a modern audience it does illustrate that the 17^th century Spaniard had knowledge of both Japanese swords and the stick weaponry of Native Americans.

It should be noted, however, that no actual maquahuitl specimens have been found and the present knowledge of them comes from contemporaneous accounts and illustrations from the sixteenth century and earlier.

The Texas Gulf Coast, however, was far to the north of Aztec influence. The Carancua, or Karankawa, who roamed the Texas Coast, were stone-aged hunter-gathers. A bit further inland were the Tonkawa. The southernmost area of what is now Texas coastline was the domain of the Coahuiltecan.

Robert A. Ricklis, in his work, the Karankawa Indians of Texas, notes that their territory was from the West End of Galveston Island down the coast to where Corpus Christie is today. There were several bands, or maybe even several tribes. It is uncertain because much of the history of the Karankawa is lost. None bothered to study them in any detail while they were still around to study. Making things worse, the Karankawa were favorite targets of many false myths and made up stories.

One of the most enduring legends of the tribe concerns its cannibalistic practices. It accounts for why their relations with subsequent European settlers went badly. While it is true that they sometimes ate the captured enemy warriors and leaders after a battle or war, this was not for food. As with many primitive societies, the practice was designed to allow the victors to acquire the courage and power of the dead warrior or leader.

The chief weapon of the tribe, for both hunting and warfare, was the long bow and arrow. Bows were made of red cedar and reached from the eye or chin level to the foot of the bearer. One should note it was not unusual for a Karankawa warrior to be six feet tall. The bowstring was made of twisted sinew. The arrows were made from cane with wooden fore shafts with three feather fletching. When shooting they drew the arrow to their cheek and wore guard on their left wrist. The arrows were often 3 feet or longer. Such arrows are better than short ones when shooting at fish, alligators, and things under shallow water. After striking their target, the arrows continue to extend above the water surface, giving away the animal's location. It also made these arrows easier to retrieve.

So far as is currently known, the sword would not reach Texas before the 16^th Century. Even by then, European settlement along the Texas coast was virtually nonexistent, save for the sporadic intrigues and maneuverings of Spain and France.

The Karankawas' entrance into the historical record in 1528 is as one player in the first recorded contact between Europeans and Native Americans in Texas. Two small boats carrying survivors of the ill-fated Spanish expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez landed on a small island to the west of Galveston Island. Karankawas inhabited that island, which was later named Malhado, or Isle of Misfortune, by the Spanish. The written account by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, one of those shipwrecked survivors, provides our earliest knowledge of the coastal people. Cabeza de Vaca lived among the Karankawa for several years and provided invaluable ethnological accounts of those Native Americans.

Most certainly Cabeza de Vaca and the other ragtag survivors included men who, by virtue of their position in life, would have studied the sword, but they arrived in Texas naked and unarmed.

In 1685 a French expedition, led by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, established Fort St. Louis on Garcitas Creek near Matagorda Bay, in the heart of Karankawa lands. After La Salle and a contingent of men set out for Canada to find help for the struggling colony, Karankawas attacked the remaining settlers, killing all but six children who were taken captive. Those children, five of whom were members of the Talon family, were later rescued by Spanish expeditions in the early 1690s. When those Spanish soldiers located the ruins of Fort St. Louis, they found broken rapiers among the ruins.

In the early years of the eighteenth century, French interest in the Texas coast was rekindled, and the lands of the Karankawa became one of many chessboards in the game of Spanish-French rivalry. The French continued to explore the coastal area, and in 1719 the Karankawas captured a shipwrecked sailor named François Simars de Bellisle. The Frenchman lived with the tribe for fifteen months before escaping to Louisiana, where he provided French authorities with extensive information about the Texas coastal tribes. In 1721 a French expedition, led by Jean Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe, crossed Karankawa territory.

In response to French incursions, the Spanish established numerous missions in Texas. The first was founded in 1690 as San Francisco de los Tejas near present-day Weches, Texas. In 1731, the mission transferred to the San Antonio River area and renamed Mission San Francisco de la Espada (St. Francis of the Sword). A friary was built in 1745, and the church was completed in 1756.

Nuestra Señora de Loreta Presidio and Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission were established near the site of La Salle's ill-fated Fort St. Louis. As a result of their locations near Matagorda Bay, both became known simply as La Bahía (The Bay). The mission was established specifically to civilize and Christianize the Karankawas and make them loyal Spanish subjects, but hostilities quickly developed between Spaniards and Indians.

By 1726 no neophytes remained at La Bahía, and the mission was moved to the Guadalupe River where it remained until 1749. At that time, it was relocated to the San Antonio River near present Goliad. In February 1748, one writer of that era noted a fiesta was held a La Bahia in honor of the Spanish King. The celebrations included parades, dancing, duels with mock weapons and a rodeo complete with bullfighting and roping.

In 1754 a second mission, Nuestra Señora del Rosario de los Cujanes, was established for the salvation of the Karankawas on the San Antonio River, upstream from La Bahía. Rosario Mission enjoyed some small success. In 1764 it boasted a neophyte population of 101. The success was short-lived; however, and in 1781 the mission was closed due to a high rate of desertions by the Native Americans.

A third mission, Nuestra Señora Del Refugio, was built for the Karankawas in 1791. That mission relocated three times. It finally settled at Rancho de Santa Gertrudis, near the site of present Refugio. A reported 190 mixed Karankawas and Coahuiltecans occupied Refugio Mission in 1814, but by the early 1820s repeated Comanche attacks had caused the virtual depopulation of that mission.

With the missions came an introduction to the use of firearms, swords, and knives.  Soldiers detailed from the presidio to protect the missions were few, usually limited to two military men and their families.  This made it very important for some Native Americans to learn some limited European-type military skills to protect their community.

Other tribes, further inland, learned to acquire and master the weapons the Spaniards had introduced. Don Antonio Bonilla, an infantry lieutenant in the service of the Spanish Crown noted the weapons used in a raid by indigenous tribes. "On the 22nd day of March, 1758, the aforesaid Northern Indians dashed boldly upon the Mission of San Sabas; they were all on horseback, armed with guns, sabres, and pikes, painted with various colors, decorated with skins. Their war-whoop (algazara y griteria) terrified the religious, who bolted the door of the mission. Under pretense of peace and friendship, however, they treacherously took it by surprise; the father president, Fray Gerardo de Terreros, Fray Josef de San Estevan, and three soldiers, lost their lives at the cruel hands of the infidels; the rest were freed by a manifestation of the divine mercy. The barbarians sacked the mission, destroyed the images, profaned the sacred vessels, and burned everything in horrible flames."

The Indians who attacked the San Sabá Mission in 1758 were unusual for their time in that they were equipped with European weapons. They obtained the armor, swords and firearms from the French in Louisiana, who had hopes of acquiring Spanish territory in Texas. The French knew that the Indians would use these arms against the Spaniards. In the attack on San Saba, it was the first time that the Spaniards had come up against a force of Native Americans armed at their elvel. The many lead musket balls found at the mission were concentrated in the area of the site where the church had been. This was the building where Juan Leal and the other survivors had held out until nightfall, when they escaped the burning mission and made it to the safety of the presidio. It is easy to imagine the Indians circling the church (at a safe distance, because Juan Leal and the others were firing their muskets at the Indians) and firing musket shots into its walls in hopes of killing the Spaniards within.

Bonilla also recorded a punitive campaign begun in August 1759 against these tribes. "When, however, he advanced to the village of the Taovayases he found it fortified with entrenchments, stockades, and ditches; and inside more than six thousand confederated Indians, who with boldness and arrogance were flying a French flag.

"In well concerted sallies they attacked our troops; and, increasing their outposts and detachments, they tried to cut off the retreat, so as to entrap their enemies and leave them no other alternative than death or surrender.

"This mode of warfare, never [before] experienced among the Indians-in which they not only used a regular military discipline, but also dexterously inflicted injuries with the musket, saber, and lance, throwing aside the bows, arrows, and macanas, the arms peculiar to their ancient usage-so astounded Parilla's troops that this officer's ardor, good example, and persuasions were of no avail. They retreated, leaving behind all the baggage-train, and the six field-pieces; and the memory of this [event] remains to this day on the Taovoyases frontier, as a disgrace [to the Spaniards]."

Jean Louis Bernaldier, a French naturalist who studied the Indians of Texas in 1800, had written several things about the Karankawa Indians. Berlandier reported that, "the Karankawa wore their hair loose to the shoulders but cut in the front to level of the eye brows, like the Mexicans. They wear cock feathers behind their ears and wreath of Indian grass or Palm leaves on their heads, they paint lines of Vermilion around their eyes and of ten smear their brown bodies with white or black or red paint. They never wear Teguas, which is Buckskin footgear. Their Peregoso, or breechcloth, is white, and their favorite weapons are the Bow and Dagger. The Bow and Arrows which Caranchuases use are of extraordinary size; the Arrows are two-and-a-half to three feet in length and the bow is the height of the Indian who used it. Among the other Indians of Texas, these weapons do not have such large dimensions. When they used the Bow unhurriedly, it is well seated using the Knee to support it. Thus they launch arrows with a truly surprising force, capable of piercing a Bull from one side to the other. When some obstacle prevents them from seeing the object at which they are shooting, like artillery men with a shell, they shoot their Arrows in such a way that they will fall perpendicularly on the object they wish to kill. A matter which surprised me was their fishing. After beating the water and gathering together in a small inlet the fish which they encountered, they kill the largest with Arrows, and with such skill that often they designate the species of fish which they thus want to catch."

Beyond, perhaps, the occasional duel by military officers (and this author is personally aware of none), there was little swordplay by the armies of the king along the Texas coast at this time. There were occasional punitive measures taken against the indigenous peoples, but these largely consisted of the use of artillery and firearms. By the early 19^th Century, however, edged conflict would become real and grim.