Stephen F. Austin, the most
respected member of the community, commanded the militia of about 300
volunteers who brought their own weapons.
None of them, including Austin,
were professional soldiers.8 Travis was also there "simply as
a recruit."9
"On Oct. 2, 1835,
the Texans challenged the Mexicans with a 'come-and-take-it' flag over the
cannon. After a brief skirmish, the
Mexicans withdrew, but the first rounds in the Texas Revolution had been
fired."10 The
distraction created an opportunity for Mexican General Cos,
brother-in-law of Santa Anna, to move a large Mexican army force into San
Antonio undetected.11 On
October 12, the Texans left Gonzales with the cannon and started for San
Antonio to confront Cos where he had fortified the
Alamo and the town plazas west of the river with his force of 650 men.12 Because of problems in transporting the
cannon, they were forced to abandon it at Sandy Creek, halfway to San Antonio,
leaving it to be appropriated by anyone who happened along, Mexican or not. It had served its purpose.13
Noah Smithwick
was a gunsmith by trade and arrived at Gonzales just after the initial battle,
in time to help with the arms and ammunition.
Among the preparations they made, ". . . we cut slugs of bar iron
and hammered them into balls; . . . formed a company of lancers and converted
all the old files about the place into lances, which we mounted on poles cut in
the river bottom."14
After making preparations and learning a few military tactics, the
volunteers began their march to San Antonio
and Smithwick described the appearance of the new Texas
army.
Buckskin breeches were the
nearest approach to uniform, and there was wide diversity even there, some
being new and soft and yellow, while others, from long familiarity with rain
and grease and dirt, had become hard and black and shiny. Some, from having passed through the process
of wetting and drying on the wearer while he sat on the ground or a chunk
before the camp fire, with his knees elevated at an angle of eighty-five degrees,
had assumed an advanced position at the knee, followed by a corresponding
shortening of the lower front length, exposing shins as guiltless of socks as
a–Kansas Senator's. Boots being an
unknown quantity; some wore shoes and some moccasins. Here a broad-brimmed sombrero overshadowed
the military cap at its side; there a tall "beegum"
rode familiarly beside a coonskin cap, with the tail hanging down behind, as
all well regulated tails should do. Here
a big American horse loomed up above the nimble Spanish pony ranged beside him;
there a half-broke mustang pranced beside a sober, methodical mule. Here a bulky roll of bed quilts jostled a
pair of "store" blankets; there the shaggy brown buffalo robe contrasted
with a gaily checkered counterpane on which the manufacturer had lavished all
the skill of dye and weave known to the art–mayhap it was part of the dowery a wife brought her husband on her wedding day, and
surely the day-dreams she wove into its ample folds held in them no shadow of a
presentiment that it might be his winding sheet. In lieu of a canteen, each man carried a
Spanish gourd, a curious specimen of the gourd family, having two round bowls,
each holding near a quart, connected by a short neck, apparently designed for
adjusting a strap about. A fantastic
military array to a casual observer, but the one great purpose animating every
heart clothed us in a uniform more perfect in our eyes than was ever donned by
regulars on dress parade. So, with the
Old Cannon flag flying at the head, and the "artillery" flying at the
heels of two yokes of long-horned Texas
steers occupying the post of honor in the center, we filed out of Gonzales and
took up the line of march for San Antonio.15
Albert Gholson was a member of
the motley band of rebels. On the way to
San Antonio, Sam Houston visited
them briefly. Smithwick
described his first encounter with Houston,
which may have been Albert's first look at the man also.
At the Cibolo, Sam Houston came
up with us. It was my first sight of the
man who more than all the others was destined to win enduring fame from the
struggle we were inaugurating. I have a
vivid picture of him before my mind's eye as he rode into our camp alone,
mounted on a little yellow Spanish stallion so diminutive that old Sam's long legs, incased in the conventional buckskin, almost touched
the ground. He made a speech to us,
urging the