MOST COUNTY PIONEER FAMILIES WERE MEXICAN TURNCOATS

By Juan Montoya
The year is 1848.
U.S. military forces under Gen. Winfield Scott have just beat Mexico into submission and made them sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that would transfer not only California and Texas – for which President Polk had launched the invasion – but more than half of that country's territory.
As Scott lifted the occupation of Mexico City and moved his army toward Veracruz and then on to the U.S., his flotilla also carried a goodly number of Mexican citizens who could surely be killed by the Mexicans for their role in helping Scott's army defeat them.
They were the spies and family members of the Dominguez Spy Company, a group of former highwaymen numbering in the hundreds who had aided and abetted the Americans by controlling the road between Veracruz and the Mexican capital and provided them with crucial information on Mexican troop movements and troop morale.
Had they left these spies and their families behind, a slaughter would surely have followed for before the fall of Mexico there had been prizes out on their heads. Instead, at the insistence of Gen. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a cerebral spymaster who had been with Zachary Taylor at the start of the campaign when he left Corpus Christi on the Nueces to occupy the north side of the Rio Grande and later Northern Mexico, they left with the U.S. troops .
But before they came into the picture, Hitchcock had been transferred to Scott's army as an inspector general and was one of the officers Polk took from Taylor to assist the Scott on his voyage to Veracruz and then the assault on the Mexican capital.
Hitchcock wrote a diary during the campaign and roundly criticized Taylor for not gathering adequate intelligence in his maneuvers. The Polk administration was displeased at Taylor's reluctance to push the war further into Mexico's interior and took his best officers, including Hitchcock and one Ulysses S. Grant.

While at Puebla, Hitchcock was authorized by Scott to hire a spy company of 200 men to aid the army as it moved along the guerrilla-infested national road. Thus the famous Dominguez Spy Company and was formed of criminals and highway men who Hitchcock found languishing in a prison in Puebla.
They were led by Colonel Manuel Dominguez and served under Scott in Central Mexico 1847-1848. Domínguez, a weaver, himself was said to have joined the Americans because he was subjected to extortion by a Mexican officer. He was languishing in a prison at Puebla when Hitchcock recruited him.
Their duties included protecting U.S. troops and wagon trains that traveled between Vera Cruz and Mexico City and providing intelligence in respect to the movement of regular Mexican troops and guerrillas.
Texas Online lists their involvement in intelligence gathering and sometimes they even took part in battles such as those at the convent of Churubusco where the San Patricios were captured. Historians say  the spies fought for the United States because they thought the leaders of Mexico were corrupt and had abused their power.
After U.S. troops won, they were carried away by the American forces and thought they would receive some recognition or financial reward for their services.

Despite Hitchcock's support for them and Gen. William O. Butler suggestion that Congress authorize enlisting the Mexicans into the regular army and paying them salaries, the administration declined.
Later General Butler recommended they be given a land bounty and three months' pay. Finally, each member of the company was given a gold double eagle and passage to Corpus Christi. Some of the ships put in at New Orleans and some at Galveston. None apparently sailed to Corpus Christi, since that city had no port facilities for ocean-going vessels at that time.
Sixty-two men with 30 dependents landed at New Orleans.
It is not known how many landed at Galveston, though it was probably about the same. Domínguez went to Washington and was greeted by the president. American newspapers represented him as a traitor to his race and a bandit, even though he was allied with the United States Army.
In the end, nearly all the company, except for Dominguez and his family were resettled in Cameron County, Texas.
Now, we know that Cameron County was established in 1948 immediately after the war. At that time, the population was minuscule, made up primarily from resettled U.S. soldiers, merchants and pioneer land-grant families on their ranches.
It is logical, then, that a group of perhaps hundreds of new settlers made up of the remnants of the Mexican spies and turncoats probably formed the core of the county's population and that its descendants are still among us. Does anyone know who they might be?