THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RIP FORD

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RIP FORD

Part 23: The Cortinas Wars – The Start

by Bob Heinonen

Old Rip Ford, at sixty, was still in command and continued to influence the destiny of Texas. But Old Rip didn’t influence just Texas…he still had influence with the people in power south of the Rio Grande. This episode in his life actually started when he was only 43 years old.

“John S. Ford and others have described the 1850’s as the great days of Brownsville, then the gateway city to Mexico. At least six men made fortunes that added into millions of dollars, but very little of this trade affected the 2,000 inhabitants of the Mexican lower class. Meanwhile, the American newcomers jostled uncomfortably upon the old Spanish hacendados, most of whom were gradually dispossessed.”[i]

All classes of Mexican-Americans were treated with contempt; American law did nothing to protect them even though they were American citizens. “The imposition of American law infuriated most Mexican landowners. They had to defend their ancient [Spanish] titles in court, and they lost either way, either to their own [American] lawyers or to the claimants.”[ii] “One particularly angry member of the upper class was Juan Nepomceno [“Cheno”] Cortinas who saw his mother surrender [to lawyers] a square league [over 5,700 acres] of her patrimony in order to keep the rest.”[iii]

Cheno Cortinas was not like the aristocratic blue-bloods of his family. Born in 1824, “He was wild. He was of average size for Spanish stock, with brown hair, gray-green eyes, and a reddish beard. He had the manners of a gentleman, but he was uneducated by choice, and a vaquero, rather than a border aristocrat, by personal taste. Cortinas liked to ride with a roistering crowd of lowly cowmen.”[iv] “His enemy, Adolphus Glavaecke, records that during the Mexican War [Mexican-American War] Cortinas murdered his employer, stole his mules, and then sold them to the United States Army. Later he captured Charles Stillman’s freighting carts and took the goods to Mexico, but in 1852 was back in Texas stealing horses and killing sheep.”[v]

“In 1859 he was living at his mother’s ranch on the Texas side about nine miles northwest of Brownsville, and he was a fuse waiting to be lit. Each morning Cortinas liked to canter into the town to sit at a café and sip coffee with his friends. On the morning of July 13, 1859, the city marshal, Robert Shears, whom Cortinas called ‘the squint-eyed sheriff,’ arrested a drunken Mexican on the streets. This man had once been a Cortinas servant. The marshal, all accounts agree, was unnecessarily brutal; he gave the drunken Mexican the standard treatment. Cortinas protested, apparently reasonably, and was rewarded with an insult no caballero could take. Guns were drawn; the marshal fell with a bullet in his shoulder, and Cheno Cortinas put his rescued servant up behind his saddle and galloped out of town.”[vi] A folk hero is made.

“High and low were ready to support a champion of Mexican rights, one who would throw off American domination, redress grievances, and punish their enemies; and just such a champion arose in the person of Juan Nepomuceno Cortinas.”[vii]

For the next months, Cortinas stayed at his mother’s ranch. “That Cortinas was planning some move was indicated by the fact that he was gathering horses and men, sometimes in Texas and sometimes in Mexico. Thus things went along until the early morning of September 28 [1859]. On the night before, a fashionable ball was held in Matamoros and attended by many from the Texas side of the river; there was much noise and merrymaking by belated parties who were returning to their homes, and consequently, when at about three o’clock in the morning, wild yells and screams awoke the citizens of Brownsville, they thought little of it until they heard above the clamor and hoofbeat of horses such sounds as ‘Viva Cheno Cortinas! Mueran los Gringos! Viva la Republica de Mexico!’

By daylight Cortinas with his hundred men had complete possession of the town. He came to kill the Pole, Adolphus Glavacecke, and Robert Shears, whom he called the ‘squinting sheriff.’ Though both of these escaped, he killed three Americans whom he described as ‘wicked men, notorious among the people for their misdeeds.’ He killed one Mexican for shielding one of the Americans. Part of his band broke open the jail, liberated ten or a dozen prisoners, and killed the jailer. Others took possession of Fort Brown which had but recently been evacuated by United States troops who had gone to the Reservation war. The Mexicans attempted to break open the magazine where one hundred and twenty-five barrels of powder were stored. They tried to hoist the Mexican flag over the fort, but failed for want of tackle. During this time the Americans dared not appear on the street with arms or to gather in groups while Cortinas continued to search for his personal enemies. Finally, through the influence of Miguel Tijerina and General Caravajal, Cortinas was induced to gather his followers and move out of the city without doing more damage. ‘Thus was a city of from two to three thousand inhabitants occupied by a band of armed bandits, a thing till now unheard of in the United States,’ wrote Major S. P. Heintzelman to Colonel Robert E. Lee.”[viii]

Incursions in Texas…there was to be a fight but who would know this fight would go on for 17 years. And who would be right in the middle of it from start to finish? Who else but Old Rip Ford.

Next Month – Part 24: The Cortinas Wars – The Early Years

Bob Heinonen is the founder of Texas Heroes and has been portraying Rip Ford since 1993.