DID TAYLOR AND CORTINA MEET AT ARROYO COLORADO CROSSING?

By Juan Montoya

It's March 1846, and Brevet Brigadier General Zachary Taylor has been ordered by President James A. Polk to advance from his base in Corpus Christi and to establish himself on the northern bank of the Rio Grande following the annexation of Texas into the United States.

Instead of following the coastline, Taylor chose to take an inland route known to natives who lived in the area and later to smugglers operating under Col. Henry L. Kenny, a  filibuster known as the founder of Corpus Christi, who became one of the main suppliers to Taylor's army.

It was this trail leading to Matamoros that Taylor chose to make his way down to the Rio Grande. 

On March 19 and the 20th, Taylor and his army met the first resistance from Mexican forces. Mexican vaqueros on the southern bank of the Arroyo Colorado said they would attack if his troops crossed the arroyo. 

In his March 21 dispatch to the  Adjutant General of the Army, Washington, D. C., Taylor described the encounter.

"A party of irregular cavalry (rancheros) was discovered on the opposite bank, but threw no obstacle in the way of examining the ford. They, however, signified to the officer charged with the reconnaissance that it would be considered an act of hostility if we attempted to pass the river, and that we should, in that case, be treated as enemies. Under these circumstances, not knowing the amount of force that might be on the other bank, I deemed it prudent to make dispositions to pass the river under fire..." https://libraries.uta.edu/usmexicowar/node/6540

One of these vaqueros might well have been Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, then only 23, a local rancher and heir to the Espiritu Santo Grant, whose northern limit was the southern bank of the Arroyo Colorado. He was recruited as a scout for the Mexican forces and was in a group of vaqueros called Defensores de la Patria.

"I was sent to perform many dangerous missions," Cortina recounted when he was interviewed in his later years in Mexico City. One of the vaqueros is said to have shouted at the American troops on the northern bank that "Los mexicanos no concocemos el miedo," an attitude that characterized Cortina – and which Americans would acknowledge – in the years to come.  

If Cortina was among the vaqueros there, he was standing on his own land. Cortina was a heir to the Espiritu Santo Grant, a huge chunk of land that covered 284,415.8 acres in what would later become Cameron County, and the future site of the city of Brownsville. 

Acknowledged historical maven Gene Fernandez said the northern grant limits was on the southern lip of the Arroyo Colorado and that the grant extended east to the "tidal lands" of the "agustadero," where the Buena Vista, San Martin and Santa Isabela grants begin.

"The western boundary of the grant was an ordinary line of survey, and the southern was the Rio Grande," Fernandez wrote.

What the Mexicans and Cortina probably didn't know was that the takeover of the disputed space between the Nueces and the Rio Bravo was but one part of the overall plan by Polk to wrest California and part of the Southwest by provoking a confrontation that would give him an excuse to take the disputed territory. 

Maj. General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Taylor's quartermaster, wrote about it in his diary while the army was in Jessup, Louisiana and before they were ordered to proceed to Corpus Christi. Hitchcock was against war against a weaker opponent and stated his feelings about a war with Mexico, which by now appeared unavoidable.

Hitchcock wrote in his diary on September 1845 from Fort Jessup in Louisiana. His entries were published later in a book titled Fifty Years of Camp and Field.

"General Taylor came into my tent this morning and again, as frequently of late, he introduced the subject of moving upon the Rio Grande. I discovered this time more clearly than ever that the General is instigated by ambition – or so it appears to me. He seems quite to have lost all respect for Mexican rights and willing to be an instrument of Mr. (James) Polk for pushing our boundary as far west as possible.

"When I told him that, if he suggested a movement (which he told me he intended), Mr. Polk would seize upon it and throw the responsibility on him, he at once said he would take it, and added that if the President instructed him to use his discretion, he would ask no orders, but would go upon the Rio Grande as soon as he could get transportation. I think the General wants an additional brevet, and would strain a point to get it."

After crossing the Arroyo Colorado, Taylor would go on to establish Ft. Brown and after the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, occupy Matamoros before traveling to Camargo which he used as a platform to take Monterrey and then the Battle of Buena Vista. These victories would propel him to the presidency. 

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Cortina, who also fought on the Mexican side at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma remained in Rancho La Carmen, his mother's ranch a few miles upriver from what later become Brownsville after Mexico lost the war in 1848.

Thirteen years later, his rage at the invading settlers and dispossession of Mexican land owners in South Texas triggered his takeover of Brownsville on September 1859 and exploded into the Cortina wars.

Years later, he became a principal player in Mexican military and political events, becoming a general and twice the military governor of Tamaulipas. He was with Ignacio Zaragoza when he defeated the French at Puebla on Cinco de Mayo and at Austrian Archduke Ferdinand's execution in Queretaro.

But on March 25, when both may have encountered each other for the first time, those events were years ahead. 

Taylor's Crossing lay along a road used as a stagecoach route called Old Alice Road that later became known as Paso Real. However, if you attempt to find Taylor's Crossing today, a gas plant on the northern side of the arroyo in Willacy County prevents the approach to the site, and a state wildlife management area makes it inaccessible on the southern Cameron County bank. 

Like many important aspects of the Mexican-American War, the site remain hidden.