137. Rediscovering San Antonio’s Forgotten Battle

Bob Rivard [00:00:03]:
Welcome to Big City Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Rivard. This week's guest is Brandon Seal. He's an energy entrepreneur, but he's also much more an armchair historian who's left the armchair and is out in the field making new discoveries about Texas history. And we're going to talk about that today. Brandon is to me, one of the most interesting people I've met in San Antonio. From building cross border pipelines to drilling the first shale wells in Mexico, to retrofitting clean hydrogen plants in Corpus Christi, to searching for lost battlefields and recovering first declarations of independence, Brandon has built a career leading teams, working on some of the region's most enduring challenges, often by finding ways to communicate complicated subject matter to diverse audiences. His podcast, A New History of Old Texas, which I might add, is first premiered on the Rivard Report.

Bob Rivard [00:01:00]:
How many years ago?

Brandon Seale [00:01:01]:
Seven or eight years ago now. Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:01:03]:
That has been downloaded more than 700,000 times and may have recently helped rediscover the biggest battlefield in Texas history. That's the Battle of Medina. We'll talk about that in a minute. Brandon Seale, welcome to big city, small town.

Brandon Seale [00:01:16]:
Bob, thanks for having me.

Bob Rivard [00:01:17]:
So where are we on finding the Battle of Medina?

Brandon Seale [00:01:20]:
So I do want to give you credit for, you know, seven or eight years ago that it was the then Rivard Report, Now San Antonio Report that really gave a platform to the podcast that we had created initially around a new history of old San Antonio. But one of the biggest mysteries and most salient issues, events that happens in early San Antonio history is the 1813 Battle of Medina. And I got it entirely wrong in the first season. I think I located it near Poteet somewhere and I only realized after the fact. Oh, God, this is embarrassing. This is such a big event. I didn't get the location right. And then you start to dig into it and you start to realize that we don't really quite know where the location is.

Brandon Seale [00:01:52]:
It's been lost at least to academic history for 100 years or more. Anyway, fast forward. You know, we've had, starting in 2022, a couple of pretty remarkable field seasons with a group called the American Veterans Archeological Recovery Project. The Atascosa County Historical Commission, led by Martin Gonzalez, has, has never let the memory of the battle die. They've probably done more to keep it alive in the last 50 years than anybody else. And their teams have been out there working as well. And at this point now we've identified three, if not four or five conflict sites that are consistent with the battlefield of Medina and which are pretty definitively linked to artifacts that are also linked to the battlefield of Med.

Bob Rivard [00:02:28]:
Let's tell our listeners. First, how did an energy executive when I met you, you were the president of Howard Energy in Mexico, building a pipeline in northern Mexico across the border. How did you get so fascinated with early Texas history?

Brandon Seale [00:02:41]:
I grew up on J. Frank Doby and Walter Prescott Webb and all those books, and so was always fascinated by it. And again, you can't grow up in San Antonio and not be a little bit surrounded by Texas history. But also growing up in San Antonio, too, you grew up with a sense of there's something different about San Antonio, Texas history and about the events that went here, that the forces that drive the larger, say, United States history, they aren't quite the same as they are out on our little lonely outpost here on the first the New Spanish and then the Mexican and then the Texas and United States frontier. A moment I point to that was a little bit formative for me was in Those years from 2015 to 2018, I was building that pipeline from Laredo to Monterey. And I remember there was one week where at the beginning of the week I was in Monterrey negotiating for a piece of right away at an office building right in front of a church. It was called La Purisima, La Purisima Concepcion that was founded by Father Margiel de Jesus. Later that week, I was up on the right of way on the construction in a town called Lampas de Naranjo, which was a mission founded by Father Margiel de Jesus.

Brandon Seale [00:03:39]:
And then that weekend I was back at a wedding here in San Antonio at Mission San Jose, which is another mission founded by Father De so I kind of felt like I was retracing some of the steps of the Camino Real and some of these events in history. But, you know, I just, when I was young, I went off to college, to Virginia for a couple years, and in some ways, you know, felt like I was a little in a foreign country or it felt like a very different place than what I what I had thought it to be. And then I went and lived in Monterrey for a year or two at an earlier point in my life and just felt like, like something had opened up about the story of where I was from that I just felt the need to share.

Bob Rivard [00:04:10]:
Wow. They say Father Margiel walked all the way from Saltillo to San Antonio to found what we now call the Queen of the Missions that's right. San Jose. That's remarkable. Why do we not talk about the Battle of Medina? So 1836, the Battle of the Alamo. Shortly after it. San Jacinto. San Jacinto.

Bob Rivard [00:04:28]:
We win our independence from Mexico. Santa Anna is captured and surrenders. Only 23 years earlier, we were part of a much larger force across New Spain, which encompassed present day Mexico and present day Texas, trying to win our independence from Spain. And yet your average San Antonian knows very little about the 1813 Battle of Medina or even our attempts to join other forces in what is now Mexico to win that independence from Spain. Why, in a city and a state so obsessed with its history, do we know so little about that era?

Brandon Seale [00:05:06]:
Just to give people a little context too, for the Battle of Medina. So, September 16, 1810, which is, as he says, the Septimbre. Father Miguel Hidalgo unleashes his grito, which sets off the war of Mexican independence. And it quickly engulfs the entire country, including here in San Antonio. There's a first little initial revolt. Well, Father Miguel Hidalgo, he raises an army of tens of thousands of insurgents and they march through Guanajuato and later they're at the edges of Mexico City. But eventually he gets defeated and he's pushed back through the Mexican highlands and he's actually headed to San Antonio, though where he's trying to retreat to is San Antonio, which is just kind of this known bastion of insurgency, of individualism, you know, of opposition to centralized government. He never makes it.

Brandon Seale [00:05:45]:
Father Miguel Hidalgo gets ambushed between Sotillo and Montlova. But four days before he's ambushed, he commissions this man, Jose Bernardo Gutierrez de Lara, who's from the Rio Grande Valley, as his emissary to continue the fight, to go to the United States and raise money, raise men. And it works. Gutierrez de Lara actually makes it all the way to D.C. but ends up in Louisiana and raises this multi ethnic army of obviously Tejanos, Tonkawas, Lipan Apaches, the Comanches will later ally Alabama Coushada. But also too, a huge contingent of Anglo American volunteers, many of them ex borites, like from the Aaron Burr conspiracy. There's a great new book by James Bernson called the Lost War for Texas, which really goes into that Louisiana component and frankly has kind of recast my views of United States history from that period. Anyway, you know, over the course of the next year, in one of the most remarkable military campaigns you haven't heard of, Gutierrez de Lara and this Republican army of the north defeats three different Spanish armies.

Brandon Seale [00:06:36]:
They capture Nacogdoches and then Goliad and then San Antonio. They capture the Spanish governor. They declare a declaration of independence. Texas is and actually Mexico's first declaration of independence. On April 6, 1813, they defeat another Spanish army that comes up to try to attack them. But then there's dissension in the ranks. Gutierrez de Lara actually gets deposed by his own ruling junta, and he gets replaced by a young Spanish nobleman who very well may have been an agent of the Spanish king. But anyway, so that's the force that goes into battle on August 18, 1813, is about 1400 Tejanos, Anglos and Native Americans, Native Texans under the command of this Spanish nobleman, going up against the Spanish royalist forces under Joaquin de Arredondo, which is about 1,930 Spanish regulars, veterans by this point, very, very good soldiers.

Brandon Seale [00:07:21]:
And the battle ends disastrously for the cause of Texas and Mexican independence. And so it turns into a mass slaughter. You know, something like a thousand men probably died that day on the battlefield or near it. After the battle, Arrlando marches into the city, executes another two or 300 men, some of whom he pulls out of San Fernando Cathedral where they had sought sanctuary, and then imprisons the women, imprisons the women of the most visible insurgents in a building called la Quinta for 54 days. 54 days and nights, where he works them for 20 hours a day. They're having to basically make tortillas for the men outside the walls who are executing their fathers, brothers and husbands. Eventually, their children are ripped away from them and thrown out into the street. So they can still hear their pleas for help and hunger, and they can't do anything about it.

Brandon Seale [00:08:04]:
And so when you ask why isn't the Battle of Medina? I think the first answer is that it is a bit of a trauma response to suppress it. San Antonio is effectively occupied by Spanish troops for eight more years after the Battle of Medina until Mexico wins its independence in 1821. And so for eight years, you couldn't bring it up. The other hard part of that, too, was there were elements of San Antonio society that were royalist that had collaborated or participated with Spanish royalists. And so there was always an uncomfort there of feeling like there was never quite the same satisfying reckoning, you know, that we see maybe in the American independence movement or something, because ultimately, too, when Mexico wins its independence, it's that the Mexican royalists kind of switch over to the side of independence and make an alliance of convenience with Mexican insurgents. And so I think that's the first reason, it's a trauma response for just a third of the men of the non Indian men in the state of Texas were dead after that battle.

Bob Rivard [00:08:57]:
And half of the men in San Antonio.

Brandon Seale [00:08:59]:
Exactly, exactly. And so, I mean, like, that kind of. It's hard to find any other, even Mexican town that suffered like that for Mexican independence. You know, the other obvious or I think, important reason, too, is that after 1835, 36, the events of the Alamo and of Goliad and of San Jacinto are much more present in people's minds, the drama of it. And of course, that ends in a victory for the insurgent cause in 1836. And so it's more visible. It's what people think of more. But it's something we point out in a video documentary which we just produced and which will premiere this month.

Brandon Seale [00:09:30]:
There's still something funny about the Alamo and even the goalie and even Goliad, if you think about it, in the Anglo American kind of United States tradition, like, they are still defeats, you know, and we don't typically celebrate defeat in this country. You know, we don't celebrate Little Bighorn or Pearl Harbor. You know, we remember them, but, like, they're kind of different things.

Bob Rivard [00:09:47]:
No one does.

Brandon Seale [00:09:48]:
Right, right. Well, no one mistakenly thinks that the US Navy won Pearl harbor either. You know, half of Texas students apparently leave fourth grade, you know, thinking that the Texas forces won the Battle of the Alamo. But. But, you know, and it's because of the way we celebrate it. And I think one of the theories that we explore in the documentary is to what extent is some of the Alamo myth making attributable to Tejanos, you know, like Juan Seguin, people who were direct descendants of the men and uncles and fathers and sons who died in 1813, who are still leading the fight in 1836. Because remember, too, Tejanos participate in higher percentages than Anglos in the events of 1835, 36. And so why are they doing that? Well, for them, it's very much a rematch.

Brandon Seale [00:10:26]:
Santa Anna was a first lieutenant in 1813 on the Spanish Royalist army. You know, Domingo Ugartechea and others of his high command in 1836 were Royalists in 1813 in the same way that Juan Seguin and the Navarros and the Menchacas and all of these Arrochos and Delgados were the leaders of the Republican, Little R. Republican movement in 1813. And so I think it's a trauma response. I think it's also, you know, it's the events of 1836 are culminate in victory, like you said, and they're more visible. But I also do think that there's an effort, and I think it's successful by people like Juan Segin and Jose Antonio Navarro and Jose Francisco Ruiz to cast the suffering of 1835-36 in the same way that they had experienced the suffering of 1813 after the battle of Medina, in an attempt to really make the argument that suffering can be the basis, shared suffering can be the basis of a new people, of a new mixed system. This is a direct word from Lorenzo de Zavala, the first vice president of Texas. You know, this vision of creating in Texas a mixed society of kind of the Anglo American model of government with the Spanish traditions and customs.

Brandon Seale [00:11:32]:
And I don't know if they achieved it, but I think it contributes to how we remember it today.

Bob Rivard [00:11:36]:
Tell us more about the documentary that's.

Brandon Seale [00:11:38]:
Coming up on September 29th at 9pm on KLRN, we will be premiering a 44 minute documentary that we produced with Josh Huskin as the director. What it attempts to do since the beginning, the story of the Battle of Medina, it screamed out for maps and for images and for these kind of things. And you know, we did something interesting on the Revard Report when we published it was that every episode we published attachments and sources that people could use. But it's still not quite the same. Right. You know, most people consume podcasts, driving or doing other activities. And so for what, it's always been a little interesting to me how much people have, have locked into that story. And I think it like, it taps into like the true crime kind of genre a little bit, this kind of search for the battlefield and the mystery surrounding it.

Brandon Seale [00:12:15]:
But anyway, we finally produced a video documentary that, that really takes us out to the field. Reviews some of the primary sources, shows the artifacts that we found and that we've been finding, many of which are on display at the Whittier Museum by the way too. And I think it's interesting to walk people through the logic of how we've been able to connect these sites back to the battlefield. Namely, we search at this point dozens of sites and hundreds of acres and most of the time you find nothing. But in a few concentrated areas you'll find a few dozen musket balls of varying sizes and they're very easy to, to tell that they're pre industrial if they're the right kind of musket ball. But what you get really exciting is when you find things like buckles and buttons. And again, the Atascosa County Historical Commission has found a distinctly Spanish regimental button at one point for the 13th Something Regiment or whatever, which has been a great linking point to some of the forces that we know were involved in this battle. Avar found a piece of grape shot, which is exciting because that's artillery, and artillery means battles, not just, you know, deer hunters or skirmishes or something like this.

Brandon Seale [00:13:20]:
And so the way we've been able to link them was going back to a body that was found in 1963 on Blue Wing Road that had a 1.18 inch lead ball in its neck, and yet the clothing of it was decidedly pre or late colonial kind of 1813 era buttons, again, buttons are a great. They're really a great context anchor for a lot of these things that you find because there's a bunch of scholarship around it, and the way that they're made is very distinctive and definitive.

Bob Rivard [00:13:44]:
And.

Brandon Seale [00:13:45]:
And so by then sending the munitions, the lead munitions that we were finding, to Todd Allman at Texas State University, he's been able to metallurgically link those identically to the Blue Wing ball to the different sites themselves and differentiate them from other lead artifacts that aren't from the period or aren't from that area. Because basically every piece of metal, especially in the pre industrial era, has a very distinctive signature metallurgical signature of what it's made of. And so anyway, the documentary will kind of go through and. And both in the same way. The podcast did tell the story the lead up to the battle, talk about, you know, the battle itself, talk about the search for the battle, but also try to consider the larger implications for one, like, why don't we remember it and. But also, for example, too, like, why do we remember the Alamo so vividly when it was such was a defeat, at least from the perspective of the people that celebrate it the most. And we've got some theories about it that also will help set up a volume two and volume three of documentaries, which we plan to start filming soon.

Bob Rivard [00:14:38]:
Well, I suppose we'd celebrate the Battle of the Alamo less if we hadn't been victorious at San Jacinto.

Brandon Seale [00:14:43]:
Good point. Right?

Bob Rivard [00:14:44]:
Yeah. I've never heard about the Blue Teal find, Brandon. And for people in our audience that are unfamiliar with that, that's in Bear county, just south of Southton Road and the San Antonio river, the missions. So I assumed that the Battle of Medina, that the evidence you're uncovering is, Is showing that it was a running skirmish, a running battle throughout Atascosa County. But now you're introducing something from Bexar County. So it could have been an even broader.

Brandon Seale [00:15:14]:
And that is part of the conclusion we've come to. You know, when we started this search, there were four historical markers that had been placed out in kind of southern bear in Atascosa County. There were at least another five or six proposed sites that people had published, but none of them were linked to artifacts. You know, they were based on archival sources. So what we always, I think, kind of thought in the back of our minds was, all right, we'll find one spot. We'll find one spot where you've got this concentration of. Of something. And, you know, artillery rounds would be kind of the marker of.

Brandon Seale [00:15:42]:
That's like the central spot. And yet here we are now. You know, we've gone from having nine proposed sites spread out over 10 miles to now having four confirmed conflict sites also spread out over 10 miles. And so it's the funny circumstance of, in some ways we're proving the confusion correct. We're proving that the differing sources, the competing sources, all correct in some way. Although that's like, a little more, you know, postmodern. And I think we want to accept, you know, this idea that, like, well, it was everybody's battlefield, but. But it really was.

Brandon Seale [00:16:12]:
I mean, and the sources are clear about that. It's a moving battle. And, you know, something I've learned from the veterans that we have out there with American Veterans Archeological Recovery, you know, they talk about that people in battles don't just stand and get shot at. You know, like, there's some image of, like, Napoleonic lines of men just lined up and trading volleys with each other. These are irregulars, you know, and even the. The Royalist regulars, there's accounts of them being underclothed. So there's real question about how disciplined these forces really are. And never underestimate people's survival instinct.

Brandon Seale [00:16:40]:
And so I think what we seem to be finding in these little clusters suggests that there were a bunch of fights. There were a bunch of fights, and half the men were mounted in the battle. And so in terms of looking for analogies, one of the ones we've come upon is the Battle of Little Bighorn, maybe one that spreads out seven or ten miles. But it's. It can be disappointing if we were guided in this by thinking that we were going to be able to ever put, you know, one spot on a map and say, like, this was it. This was the Battle of Medina. But I Think what it's forcing us to do is just engage more deeply with the sources and realize what kind of battle it really was.

Bob Rivard [00:17:12]:
Well, I assume that most of the areas that you've searched and that you want to search that haven't been searched yet are private property, largely agricultural or ranching properties, not developed properties. So they're, they're ripe for exploration. But wouldn't you expect sooner or later to find some mass burial sites?

Brandon Seale [00:17:30]:
The biggest challenge of this search is getting access to the properties. You know, obviously they are private property, they are privately owned. You know, people are suspicious of having people come onto their property. We spent more time, it's been easier to raise the money to fund these searches than it has been to actually, you know, build the relationships to get onto the properties. And then you have to hope that it's the right properties, you know what I mean? Like, this neighbor may be friendly, but there may not have been a conflict there. And so that's a huge variable in this right now, you know, is that there's a, there's a bias around or a selection bias, self selection bias around just which properties that we can actually get onto. And I'll say this, there's increasing urgency too, because development of San Antonio is now reaching those areas. You know, that it's, it's possible now to get onto a 60 acre property, which is enough room to really make it worth your while to send out a team and survey.

Brandon Seale [00:18:15]:
But as it gets chopped up into smaller and smaller properties, it's going to make it virtually unless unexplorable. You know, that said, the city preservation office has been good, you know, through their, their etj, they've been requiring people that are doing master development plans to do metal detecting surveys. And that's part of what may have uncovered yet another site which, which is coming up in the area. So there's two places you might look for burials, maybe three. The first is that El Carmen Church historically was thought of as the burial site for the Royalist dead after the battle. And that's pretty well attested.

Bob Rivard [00:18:46]:
That's where.

Brandon Seale [00:18:47]:
That's in La Soya, Texas, the unincorporated community of Lasola, right along the southern bank of the Medina river, right across from Southside High School. But, you know, it's sacred ground at this point. It's an active cemetery. And we're not proposing to go dig it up or anything to go confirm that. And I'm not sure what that would confirm. That's never been really contended to be the battle site per se. You know, there's an account in 1822. So after Mexico wins its independence and the first Mexican governor is coming back or coming to Texas to take office, he stops on the road there near the battlefield, and there's a ceremonial internment of the bones, which for the previous nine years had been forbidden to be buried by order of the victorious Spanish general.

Brandon Seale [00:19:22]:
They left them out on the field. And so there's always been some thought that, you know, somewhere you might have some mass grave of, you know, a thousand cadavers or something. I'm a little suspicious of that. Just for one, like if you leave a calf out in the pasture for a week, you know, what's left of it. You know, I mean, there's just very little. And so I've always kind of thought that was maybe a more ceremonial burial than an actual internment of a thousand bodies. And the other issue just is, you know, after, after 200 years, there may not be much left behind. You know, it's, it's, it's well drained soil, it's sandy, you know, like you would expect some pretty severe decomposition at this point.

Brandon Seale [00:19:57]:
One angle we've thought about, there are these things called human remains detection dogs. So not cadaver dogs, but human remains detection dogs, which they've started using with some success for identifying old cemeteries, particularly old cemeteries for enslaved persons in particular. There's a thought that we might could try that in some of these areas. But the best marker, it seems like, is still going to be metal detecting, which, by the way, is a bit of a novel thing here. You know, historically, metal detecting has been looked a little bit down on as kind of a stepchild of proper archeology. But some of the techniques that we're pioneering and using here by Avar and the Atascosa County Historical Commission are, I think, writing metal detecting into the playbook. More for this kind of stuff in the future.

Bob Rivard [00:20:34]:
I had an opportunity recently to be with some archeologists in the United Kingdom. They regard metal detecting enthusiasts there as being absolutely central to telling in particularly the story of the Saxons, where there was not much written history, but where people continue to uncover hordes and other physical evidence of, of, of, you know, pre 11th century, what is now England.

Brandon Seale [00:21:01]:
And I think it's, it's, it's more emerging into the mainstream, you know, as, as well look as people use it in a more disciplined fashion too. You know, where you go up and you set up a grid and you're documenting every find, not just selecting, cherry picking the stuff and really GPS locating exactly where you found it. So you can go back and see patterns, especially in a battle like this. You know, that's a. That's an important thing to be able to go back and look at, to understand the architecture of the battle itself.

Bob Rivard [00:21:24]:
Will you tell us a little bit more about the American Veterans organization that is actively working with veterans who are combat experience, who have ptsd, who have traumatized themselves, and they're using archaeology as a therapy?

Brandon Seale [00:21:40]:
Yeah. So Avar was founded about 10 years ago by a gentleman named Dr. Stephen Humphries, who actually trained in England in the techniques of conflict archeology. And so they work all over the world, Sicily and Yorktown and Saratoga and all these other places, helping recover, principally to recover remains, but also just to recover the architecture of lost battlefields. And so it's been really moving to be a part of these teams that are out there and seeing these people that have worked all over the world now and. And that, you know, bring a combat veteran's eye to what you're looking for in a battlefield as well. I also, you know, I think it's important to mention and highlight the work of the Atascosa County Historical Commission's metal detectorist as well, too. So led by David Emery is kind of their leader.

Brandon Seale [00:22:21]:
You know, they've been searching sites for years now, and by far the biggest concentration of finds that anyone's come across so far is the site that they recently found in Atascosa county, where I think they found three dozen musket balls, three dozen, you know, buckles and buttons and pieces of ramrods and things like that. And so I think to one of your earlier points, there is something emerging into a more general consciousness that, by the way, has never left that part of the world. You know, that part of the world always remembered the Battle of Medina. You know, some of the original people that lived there are the direct descendants of people who got those land grants initially. In some ways, the Anglo migrations, they kind of stopped at about San Antonio. They didn't quite get down the Medina river. Always remained, or not principally remain, land that was held by descendants of the Herreras and the Perez and the Martinez and all these other families that have been there since near 1813. And I think this is interesting, you know, a mark of how the battle has reached a wider prominence probably than it had before was.

Brandon Seale [00:23:15]:
So this legislative session at the Texas Legislature, there was a bill, Senate Bill 3059 was the bill around the Alamo Commission. So creating this Alamo Commission to manage the Alamo going forward. And as the Bill was on the floor, there was an amendment introduced by Representative Briscoe Cain and co sponsored by like a dozen other representatives from around San Antonio from both parties. And it was really fascinating to me that the amendment was commissioning the governor to negotiate for the loan of the 1813 Texas Declaration of Independence to the Alamo for display in the Alamo, which, for one, is a totally appropriate thing to do, you know, given the context of what leads to the events of the Alamo. But also, I think just the fact that it's reached the general audience of Texas legislators at this point says that there is increasing awareness around this and the influence of it and that it is a direct line. You know, that when you're telling the story of 1836, you can't do it without the events of 1812 and 1813, too. And so I definitely want to. That bill passed, by the way.

Brandon Seale [00:24:10]:
So that bill is law. And so it's something that representatives of the state government and of the Alamo will start working on is the loan of this document, which is in. I've seen it's in the Archivo General de la Nacion in Mexico City. And it's actually. I mean, I have the first words tattooed on my arm now, so I've heard.

Bob Rivard [00:24:25]:
I was going to ask you about that. Do you think it's likely that the Mexicans will loan that and other artifacts, both from the Battle of the Alamo and from, you know, the general battle for independence from both Spain and Mexico that relate to San Antonio and South Texas?

Brandon Seale [00:24:43]:
I don't know. I think there's as good a chance as any that the 1813 document would be loaned. You know, it may be more complicated around some of the battle flags from San Jacinto and from the Alamo and stuff like that. But, you know, the 1813 document is a piece of shared history of Texas and Mexico. Like I said, it precedes the first Mexican declaration of independence by about six months. It's one of the earliest uses of the word Republica de Mexico, the Republic of Mexico that gets used there, which traditionally has been more attributed to Morelos y Pabon down in Morelia in kind of that area. But I think it's. But unfortunately, too, I'd say even within Mexican historiography, The events of 1812 and 1813 in Texas also kind of get lost, because Texas gets lost.

Brandon Seale [00:25:25]:
It's not a part of their story at this point, but it's a critical part of what keeps the fight for Mexican independence alive for two or three very crucial years. There.

Bob Rivard [00:25:32]:
I wanted to ask you because, like a number of my friends, you've sort of grown up with one foot in Mexico and one in Texas. You speak fluent Spanish. You obviously are obsessed with our shared history. Do they care much about this? And learning more about this particular chapter of Texas Mexico history?

Brandon Seale [00:25:50]:
I think what this chapter within Mexican historiography uncovers is a tension that's existed for a long time between the northern Mexican states and kind of the centralized, authoritative version of Mexican history. Especially after the trauma of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920, there's. The 20th century is very much consumed by this centralizing narrative of telling the story of kind of one Mexico. And frankly, I think it's a little unfair to all of the pieces of Mexican history that take place outside of the Valley of Mexico. And in fact, too, a whole lot of that historiography is very critical of the northern Mexican federalist movements as they view those as contributing to the dissolution or the challenges of nation building in Mexico in the 19th century. As northern Mexicans will remind people, however, in central Mexico, you know, that it was the insurgent forces, you know, it was the federalists or the little Republican, you know, little republican forces that really impelled Mexican independence in the first place. Benito Juarez, you know, was coming out of the federalist tradition in opposing Maximilian when he comes in in the 1860s. That.

Brandon Seale [00:26:54]:
And, by the way, takes refuge in the future Ciudad Juarez, El Paso, up here. So, you know, Texas is kind of a refuge for that. Francisco Madero, who sets off the Mexican Revolution of 1910, writes his plan de San Luis Potosi right here in San Antonio. Venustano Carranza takes refuge in San Antonio. Texas has always kind of been this relief valve for this Mexican revolutionary impulse. But that impulse, it's an autochthonous. It's a homegrown impulse within northern Mexico. And look, there's things about that impulse that I think are real familiar even to Texans coming out of the Anglo Texan tradition, too.

Brandon Seale [00:27:27]:
We're on the frontiers of our respective society. We're distant from the centers of power. Like, you're always going to feel a sense of neglect from the people governing you when they're 1,000 miles away or more. And I do think it's interesting that shared experience and that shared impulse, I think, was present in 1836. I think it's even a little bit present today. And it's something that Texans and northern Mexicans can relate to at a similar level.

Bob Rivard [00:27:51]:
I also wonder if you think that the Battle of Medina, the context of it will be incorporated into some of the other developments as we reconsider our history in San Antonio. We're 10 years now into being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, principally the missions and the Alamo. There's San Fernando Cathedral. That's been totally redone and is so central to our story. And now we have $550 million being invested in redevelopment of the Alamo, the Alamo Plaza, the new education center, the museum that will be coming online in 2027. Does the battle of Medina become a higher profile chapter in our history with all of this happening?

Brandon Seale [00:28:32]:
It does. And I know for a fact that folks at the Alamo are working to incorporate the story of the Battle of Medina and the War of Mexican Independence into the narrative of battle history of the Battle of Medina itself. And part of the exchanges that they're doing with Mexican academics to really figure out how to speak some of the same language on these points where it was truly a shared history. You know, other things too, like just having it involved in legislation, you know, having it involved in having the governor's office involved and helping to participate in recovering this battle. Because that's what's been cool about this story too, is it's a story that people can participate in in terms of searching for it or finding new ways to remember it and tell the story. It's a narrative that hasn't been written for us quite yet, you know, that we're writing it as we go. And, you know, another piece of that too, I'd add, is we've been working with the Lieutenant Governor's office to hang Jose Francisco Ruiz's portrait on the wall of the Texas Senate chamber. So Ruiz is the highest ranking Tejano survivor of the Battle of Medina.

Brandon Seale [00:29:25]:
So the Tejano commander at the time was a guy named Menchaca, Miguel Menchaca, who dies, who dies in the battle. And so Ruiz is then the highest ranking survivor. And he takes the survivors, those that he can, and they flee to Louisiana and have this incredible 10 year period where actually, for one, they participate in the Battle of New Orleans, you know, assisting the United States in that battle. But then Ruiz orchestrates this kind of proxy war using his Comanche and Lipon Apache allies against Spanish rule in Texas. And quite effectively. And actually, it's funny, he's refused a pardon from the Battle of Medina until fully 10 years afterward, until he can negotiate a peace treaty for the New Mexican government with the Lipan Apaches and the Comanches. And so I think part of it is finding the central figures on whom we can fixate and whose stories we can tell that span these stories, because they are there too, both Tejano and Anglo. James Gaines is one of the highest ranking Anglo participants in the 1813 Texas Revolution.

Brandon Seale [00:30:17]:
He becomes a provisional Secretary of War, a senator from the Sabine District. Him and Ruiz are the only ones that are kind of actively involved in both the declarations of independence of 1813 and of 1836. So there's these really fascinating figures that I think help span that historical era that give people something to lock onto instead of having to look for, you know, single moments of people.

Bob Rivard [00:30:36]:
If someone is a US Veteran or knows a US Veteran who they think might want to get involved with that organization, how would they go about doing that?

Brandon Seale [00:30:45]:
So contact American Veterans Archaeological Recovery. It's a, it's a long website, but if you Google it too, you'll find it. But American Veterans Archeological Recovery Project. Yeah, they have an intake process where they can give you training because that's what it is too. I mean they're getting professional training hours for doing this, to be licensed as practicing, but still amateur or in some cases professional archaeologists.

Bob Rivard [00:31:03]:
And for people with a metal detector or just a general interest, if they wanted to say, go visit some of these sites, are any of them open or is there any access or can they otherwise sign up to perhaps, perhaps in the next search?

Brandon Seale [00:31:16]:
For reasons that you'll probably understand, you know, access is tightly controlled. You know, people who participate have to sign non disclosure agreements. And obviously it's private property. Anything that's found belongs to the landowner. People can't, can't take things off of them. The Atascosa County Metal Detectorist group has been the best at enlisting local detectorists in the Atascosa county and southern Bexar county area. And so David Emery there leads a great group of people that are, that are actively and responsibly conducting these searches while respecting the privacy of the landowners.

Bob Rivard [00:31:42]:
And what's, what's the formal title of that organization?

Brandon Seale [00:31:44]:
The Atascosa County Historical Commission. The Atascosa County Historical Commission has hosted the Ballon Medina symposium since 1986. I believe it's been chaired in the past by like Kay Hines, for example, who has been a crucial collaborator in the search with us was the city of San Antonio archaeologist for many years and very present and actually a newly appointed Texas Historical Commission member, board member by the way, too.

Bob Rivard [00:32:07]:
Terrific.

Brandon Seale [00:32:07]:
Yeah. As a part of this effort to find historical figures to fixate on, I think we can also find interesting historical groups, historical Texas groups that span all of these historical eras, and the one that I've definitely locked onto and that I did a whole podcast season about was the Lippon Apache. So the Lipan Apaches probably have the longest, most continuous, and most visible connection to Texas history of any native group. They participate in alongside the Texas Rebels in 1813 at the Battle of Medina. They participate, they ride to the aid of the Alamo, they're participating in the events of 1836. They're enlisted almost en masse into the Texas Rangers in the early years of the Texas Rangers. And what's part of what's interesting about the Lipan Apaches is that their entire strategy is a strategy of, I don't want to say assimilation necessarily, but it's a synergistic living. San Antonio, for almost its first hundred years, existed by trade with Plains Indians, principally Apaches, also Comanches and others, too.

Brandon Seale [00:33:03]:
And so they're a critical component of San Antonio's early life in those hundred years. And this is why we say, too, that a part of San Antonio Tejano identity is an indigenous identity related especially to these Lipan Apaches. There's this great scene in 1745 where you have this enormous peace treaty between the residents of San Antonio and the Lipan Apaches where they bury the hatchet, literally bury the hatchet. There's a mass marriage of a couple hundred Mission Indians and a couple hundred Lipan Apaches. And so even genetically, you know, they're intertwined. What comes to work against the Lipan Apaches because they live so enmeshed with Texas settler societies inside San Antonio, inside New Braunfels, inside Presidio, El Paso and Laredo and Macallan, that they sort of disappear into the general population in the early 1900s, which, unfortunately, to be recognized as an Indian in the United States, you have to be on a dawes roll. You have to be on a series of federal rolls, basically on the reservation in those years. And the Lippuyon Apaches always rejected reservations.

Brandon Seale [00:33:59]:
They refused to accept ward status of the federal government, which is like a pretty Texas sentiment if ever there was one. You know, actually right here in San antonio up until 1937, there where Apache Alisan Courts is now, that was Indian town. That was the Lippon Apache town, that for 200 years, that was their main settlement point where they would come in and trade and do whatever. So this last legislative session, we were working with the Lupon Apaches, and we were successful in getting a bill passed by the Texas House to officially recognize the Lipon Apaches. The state of Texas has never recognized an Indian tribe before. There's three federally recognized tribes in Texas, none of whom are actually from Texas in the historical period. Not to take away from their contributions during. In the more recent years.

Brandon Seale [00:34:38]:
But what was fascinating about the Leapon Apache story was the way, again, it resonated kind of across party lines. It got sponsored by Aaron Gomez, a Democrat from Brownsville, but also John McQueenie, a Republican from Fort Worth, and Dave Phelan, a Republican from Beaumont and the former speaker of the Texas House. So it was a really moving thing. It kind of came on late in session. It got unanimously passed by the Texas State Affairs House of Representative State Affairs Committee. We ran out of time to get it to the Senate, but we'll be coming back with it in two years. And I think it's a special moment and way for the state of Texas to acknowledge how the indigenous legacy in Texas just is different. You know, in the rest of the United States, you look for Indians on reservations that's under federal law.

Brandon Seale [00:35:16]:
You know, that's where they. Where they had to be. Essentially, between 1871 and 1924, an Indian off of a reservation was a Persona non grata, you know, that basically it was 1924 before Indians could be citizens of the United States. But the Lipan Apaches had a different path. And actually, I like this because I can link it back to Jose Francisco Ruiz, first senator, first Tejano senator in the Texas republic. He fights for and wins the right of Tejanos to be full citizens, just like white Texans or Anglo Texans, you know, within this republic. Maybe not fully equal in terms of their rights, but at least they're recognized as citizens. And so Lipan Apaches, in particular, like many other Texas Indian groups, have an alternative pathway in Texas that they don't have in the eastern United States.

Brandon Seale [00:35:55]:
They become Mexicans. You know, they're able to become Mexicans under census rolls, of course, you know, Texas Mexicans and to. To exist and own property and vote and, you know, do these other things. And so, you know, you ask, you know, why we're so history obsessed, too, in this state. I mean, I do think it's because we sense there's something different about the paradigm and the parameters and even just how we look and think about our own history. And this is just a great example of it. You know, the Texas Indian experience is something very different than what you have in the Eastern or even the Western the rest of the United States.

Bob Rivard [00:36:22]:
Well, before we leave the subject of history, Brandon, tell us again about the documentary when we can see it and tell people that are unfamiliar with your podcast how they can access that and start at the very beginning. And you encompass so much more than the Battle of Medina. There's so much San Antonio history there for people to listen to.

Brandon Seale [00:36:41]:
Our documentary on the Battle of Medina will premiere on 929 at 9pm so September 29 at 9pm On KLRN, local PBS station here. It's the culmination of what is, at this point, five or six years of this search for the Battle of Medina with maps, with images of both the history of the battle and also the search for it. The podcast itself you can find on any podcasting platform, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, now, anywhere where you get your podcast. We have seven seasons, about 110 episodes. Each season is a narrative arc. And so the first one is the early history and founding of the city of San Antonio. The next one is the Battle of Medina. The next one is the story of Cabeza de Vaca.

Brandon Seale [00:37:17]:
Incredible story. The next one is the Republic of the Rio Grande. The next one is the story about the engines that move Texas history so technologies like the domestication of the horse and flood irrigation and the discovery of oil and transistors. The sixth season is about Jose Francisco Ruiz, and the seventh season is about the Lipon Apaches. And as I like to point out, nearly every season is a mea culpa for a mistake that I've made in a previous season. So the Battle Medina is to correct inaccurate information that I had in the first season about the Battle of Data. The leap on Apaches was because I spent about six seasons declaring them extinct in every single episode. And then they kept showing up and so eventually realized I probably ought to do something about this.

Brandon Seale [00:37:53]:
And so, yeah, but people can find it wherever they listen to their podcasts.

Bob Rivard [00:37:56]:
Nobody's more familiar with mistakes than me, so I'm glad you're correcting them. Is there going to be an eighth season of the podcast, or have you moved now to the documentary film platform and find that a more effective way to tell your story?

Brandon Seale [00:38:09]:
For the near term, we're focused on the video platform. So the first volume of this new history of Old Texas trilogy will be dedicated to the Battle of Medina. The second volume will be dedicated to the Republic of the Rio Grande. And the third will be dedicated to this theme of native Texas, kind of melding together the Cabeza de Vaca story and then leading up into this different indigenous legacy that we have here in Texas. What I found people have asked too. Sometimes it's you publish a book or have you published a book? But when you look at the numbers, if I published a book on any one of these seasons, I'd be lucky if I sold a thousand copies of it. Probably a few hundred would be more realistic. But each one of these podcasts gets downloaded 15, 20,000 times and I think video is another order of magnitude way to reach people who just consume their media differently.

Brandon Seale [00:38:57]:
But also the hope too is it's the kind of thing that a seventh grade teacher could share in a Texas history classroom very quickly.

Bob Rivard [00:39:02]:
Yeah, I know a lot fewer people are buying and reading books and a lot more people are watching screens and video, there's no doubt about it.

Brandon Seale [00:39:09]:
And I haven't figured out how to turn 12 hour history podcast seasons into 30 second shorts yet on Instagram, and I'm not sure I'm headed that way. But you do have to acknowledge, adapt yourself to your audience a little bit.

Bob Rivard [00:39:22]:
Well, we're almost out of time, Brandon, but given your background, not just in history, but your professional background in the energy space, one of the few people I know that's worked both in carbon based fuels and renewables, you're under consideration for becoming the next trustee of CPS Energy. Tell me a little bit about your interest in that and when that will be decided and so forth. I know you're an active applicant, so.

Brandon Seale [00:39:48]:
CPS Energy for me is just one of the most special artifacts of, and expressions of everything that makes San Antonio unique. I don't think it's a coincidence that a town that was founded on a collectively managed irrigation system should also own the largest municipally owned gas and electric utility in the state. And so I get this question a lot of like, what's the nexus between the energy business and history? And I've never come up with a really clean way to articulate it, but it has something to do with it's those two things are very, very tied to a Texas identity in the same way that, you know, cps, I think, is very tied to a San Antonio identity. You know, there's real opportunity right now in electric markets, you know, in the growth of demand that's, that's happening in Texas right now. It's an opportunity we haven't had in 30 years in the utility business. You know that for the last 30 years demand has been relatively flat and you've been managing aging infrastructure without having the ability to incorporate new investment into that aging infrastructure. The only other exciting thing that's going on is we have such a diversity of energy resources right now that we didn't have even, even 20 years ago. CPS is uniquely well positioned to both take advantage of the growth that's going on in general in electrical markets in particular in Texas, but also frankly, with some of the shortcomings of the ERCOT market design that CPS can take advantage of those in a way that will hopefully defer rate increases for San Antonio's and keep San Antonio affordable.

Brandon Seale [00:41:11]:
I mean, we have some of the lowest gas and electric rates in the state. We want to keep it that way. It's, it's a key part of our quality of life here. And so anyway, you know, that's the motivation is, you know, I most recently ran the West Texas Gas Utility, which is maybe the sixth, seventh largest gas utility in the state, and CPS is the fourth. And so it seems like a natural way to direct my, my experience both as an energy executive but, but a historian and passionate advocate for the city.

Bob Rivard [00:41:36]:
Good luck with that. That will be decided in the coming months and we'd like to have you come back on and talk energy onto Big City Small Town. So thanks for being with us today.

Brandon Seale [00:41:44]:
Anytime, Bob. Thank you.

Bob Rivard [00:41:49]:
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Big City Small Town. Please share this episode with friends and colleagues and if you haven't already, sign up for Monday Musings, my weekly newsletter. Just go to bigcity small town.com and add your your email. Big City Small Town is brought to you by Western Urban Building a city our children want to call home and by Geekdom, where startups are born and smart ideas become businesses. Thanks to Corey Ames of Ensemble, Texas for the production of this show. We will see you next week.