Reached Lipantitlan Fort
100 Years Ago Today.
By Edna May Tubbs.
San Antonio Express newspaper, May 31, 1936, Sunday.
The last retreating remnant of Santa Anna's defeated army swam the bank-full Nueces river and toiled up the muddy slope to the adobe walls of Fort Lipantitlan 100 years ago, May 3l, 1836. Here they rested, secure from the "revengeful Texan," for Fort Lipantitlan guarded the lower Nueces border between Texas and Tamualipas.
Centuries before America was discovered Lipantitlan guarded the border between the Lipans and the Aztecs. This, we deduce from the name which has come down to us, a name which was patently given the place, before the mighty temple-building Aztecs migrated southward to the high plateau of Mexico. Lipantitlan is simply Aztec for "village of the Lipans" the difficult pronunciation has been widely corrupted to "Panticlan."
Hence Lipantitlan, today, many lay claim to one of the oldest names in continual use in the nation, a name of historic, almost legendary significance.
The Bluntzer family, who for almost three quarters of a century have owned the Lipantitlan Grant, recognized its importance long before the Centennial awakened interest in historic points in Texas, and placed a square white marker at the site, three miles from the Nueces river bridge north of the town of Bluntzer on Highway No. 9.
One that May day a hundred years ago, Filosola and his half- starved soldiers doubtless wished that they had found Lipantitlan as De Leon and Father Massanet found it in 1690, a well organized Indian village of pole and palm tepees surrounded by rudely cultivated fields of corn, squashes and hard yellow turnips. Tradition, becked by some historic fact, says that these Spaniards attempted to establish one of the earliest mission in the southwest at Lipantitlan, but abandoned the project three years later.
In 1734, however, they did build a strong fort there. Santa Anna's retreating army, still half-fearing more Texan reprisals than the defeat at San Jacinto, may well have wished, too, that their refuge was the same strong fortress built by the Spaniards a hundred years before, for it was then described thus:
"Fort Lipantitlan was defended on the north by a steep bluff and deep lake, on the west by a ravine, on the south and east by a palisade and moat, the water for the moat being furnished by the Lipantitlan Creek. An ingenious log draw-bridge spanned the moat, making an almost impenetrable fortress in this isolated location."
The century old defenses of the fort had been strengthened in the fall of 1835, when Captain Rodriguez, who a goodly force of men had been dispatched to Fort Lipantitlan to command the arteries of communication between San Antonio, Goliad and Matamoros.
As episode, similar in some respects to that that caused the first shots of the Texas revolution at Gonzales, occurred at Lipantitlan. Rodriguez, with the excuse that his artillery had not arrived from Matamoros, send couriers across the Nueces, to San Patricio to request the loan of Impresario McGloin's cannon "to be used for practice purposes in training his men."
The Irish Impresario did not have entire confidence in his neighbor's good faith, so the couriers and their oxen plodded back across the Nueces with the message from McGloin that: "The cannon is my private property, purchased to protect my family and people from the Indians and any other enemy that might dare to molest them."
Rodriguez, quick to grasp the veiled threat, ordered the cannon seized and delivered to him, with Impresario McGloin bound to it. Lieut. Marcelino Garcia intervened and asked to go to the ayuntamiento or council of San Patricio and request the councilmen to persuade McGloin to make "so harmless a loan."
So diplomatic was Lieut. Garcia that this time the oxen left San Patrico trundling McGloin's cannon. While Rodriguez's men practiced with the Irish gun, the battle of Concepcion was fought, Dimmit and Collingsworth captured Goliad, and Texan couriers were made prisoners at Lipantitlan.
Captain Ira Westover was then dispatched with a company to capture Lipantitlan. Reinforced by the Irish colonists they crossed the Nueces and took the fort on Nov. 3, 1836, while Rodriguez and his main force lay in wait for time at Paso Piedra some miles beyond. The river was rising, a wet norther blew up, and Westover decided to leave his exposed position and return to San Patricio.
The Texans had loaded the captured supplies, ammunition and McGloin's cannon on a hastily made raft when Rodriguez's troops rushed upon them. The fight in the freezing rain and mud was lively. The loaded raft was jerked first to one bank of the river then to the other, and in the midst of the battle cannon and raft sank in mid-channel. (Rewards have been offered in late years for the recovery of McGloin's cannon, but it apparently lies where it sank that day.)
A few of the men camped at Lipantitlan in May and June, 1836, had been among the garrison some months earlier when the fort was captured by Dr. Grant and Col. Francis W. Johnson.
Many of them had been with Urrea in the skirmish with Grant's small band on the Auga Dulce. Thence, after a brief pause at Lipantitlan, they had crossed the Nueces into Texas. Following San Ana's ruthless command they had captured and burned San Patricio, shot Ward and King's men at Refugio, and massacred Fannin's surrendered troops at Goliad. A small part of them had followed their dictator-president to defeat at San Jacinto.
Their retreat through the mud of the Texas prairies, and across river swollen by heavy May rains, had been dogged by the watchful Texans under Col. Sidney Sherman, who at San Jacinto had first raised the dread battle cry, "Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!" Then after Sherman and his men had turned back at La Bahía, the much-feared Texan scouts, Deaf Smith, Henry Karnes and R. E. Handy, had herded in their rear.
When the pitiful and bedraggled retreating force reached San Patricio, the Irish colonists who had returned to their burned city, refused to allow them to pass down their cleared 10 mile long "main street."
These men half expected that when the promised supply of ship had landed at Copano they would be thrown back into Texas to rescue Santa Anna. But Maj. Burton and his "horse marines" had captured the ships and supplies at Copano, and the days spent at Lipantitlan were lean and hungry days for the poor common solider who had been so little to blame for their commander's bloodthirsty course in Texas. After they had dismantled the fort and thrown the two cannons into Lake Lipantitlan. Filosola led the straggling compnaies forth on their wearisome march through the sands to Matamoros.
A half-dozen of the young and venturesome Mexicans, who did not relish the retreat, contrived to be left on the Nueces. Three years later several of them joined the ranks of Ross and Fisher's men when those two adventurers made headquarters at Lipantitlan before descending into northern Mexico in an attempt to establish the fantastic "Republic of the Rio Grande." Two others of the deserters acted as scouts for Vasquez on his invasion of San Antonio in 1842.
One of the ex-soldiers, Antonio Moya, lived in Texas for 50 years after his desertion of the retreating troops. For a time he worked as a vaquero for Martin Culver, later he herded sheep for Milton Dodson. In his declining years old Moya passed his days riding slowly around the countryside telling tales of the days at Lipantitlan to whomever would listen.
The story of Lipantitlan would be incomplete without more than a mention of the Bluntzer family who treasured the history and traditions of Lipantitlan and marked the site for posterity.
Peter Bluntzer, who was later to be the colonizer of Yorktown and Myersville, first came to Texas with Count Castro, but due to the illness of his wife he remained at Victoria instead of proceeding on to Castroville. From there three of his sons, Nicholas, Lee and Urban, followed Zachary Taylor into Mexico, and Lee fell on the battlefield at Buena Vista.
Nicholas Bluntzer was a scout for Col. Robert E. Lee on his punitive expedition against the Comanches a few years later, and was stationed with the Texan troops on the Rio Grande during the Civil War. He was with "Rip" Ford in the last battle of the war fought at Palmito near Brownsville.
With his young wife, who had been Justina Peters, Nicholas Bluntzer first came to the Nueces county in 1860, and in 1870 he bought the Lipantitlan Grant, which was to form the beginning of a ranch which eventually fronted nine miles on the Nueces river. The young couple built their home not far from the crumbling walls of old Fort Lipantitlan.
Nicholas Bluntzer was one of the first men to appreciate the agricultural possibilities of the section, and one of the first Southwest Texas ranchmen to put the land into cultivation. He built a gin on his ranch-farm, and established a store, which is still operated in the town of Bluntzer by his son, William.
Tales of the reassure of Lipantitlan have long been current in the southwest, and treasure seekers have caused the owner of the property untold annoyance. Searchers tunneled and cross-tunneled under the old Bluntzer home, which was standing vacant, until the building collapsed in the excavation, and they then burned the wreckage. The tall chimney which remained standing has likewise been torn apart by vandals.
Not long ago a valuable bull was missed from the herd, and when after many days his weak bellowing guided the men to him, they found the animal deep in a recently dug pit near the site of the old fort. It took the Mexican hands days to fill in the hole so that the bull could clamber out.
These are but a few of he incidents of the searches after goodness knows what at Lipantitlan, for certainly the starving remnants of Santa Anna's soldiers, who rested there one hundred years ago, left no treasure.
The Bluntzer descendants, who are today prominent south Texas bankers and business men, farmers and cattleman, lawyers and teachers, consider the treasure of Lipantitlan lies in the centuries of a historic past.
