Dawson massacre

Background

Following the Republic of Texas's victory at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its southern border but could effectively control only territory north of the Nueces River. Mexican forces, along with allied Cherokee fighters under Vicente Cordova and Chicken Trotter, continued to resist Texan efforts to occupy the disputed land between the Rio Grande and Nueces rivers. For the Cherokees, this resistance followed a 1839 massacre of Cherokee and Delaware people by Texas Army regulars; for Mexico, the aim was to demonstrate its capacity to reenter Texas.

On September 11, 1842, a Mexican force of about 1,600 soldiers occupied San Antonio with minimal Texan resistance. Upon hearing of the town's fall, Mathew Caldwell organized a militia of 210 men at Gonzales and marched toward San Antonio, making camp roughly thirteen miles east of the town near Salado Creek to plan an attack.

The Massacre

On September 17, 1842, Caldwell dispatched a small ranger detachment to lure Mexican forces toward his chosen battlefield, drawing out at least 1,000 Mexican soldiers. Separately, a company of 54 Texans — mostly from Fayette County — under Nicholas Mosby Dawson arrived and began advancing on the rear of the Mexican army. Mexican commander General Adrián Woll, concerned about being surrounded, sent 500 cavalry troops and two cannons against Dawson's group. The Texans initially held off Mexican muskets, but Mexican artillery fire caused fatalities to mount quickly. Dawson, recognizing the situation was hopeless, raised a white flag. Amid the confusion of battle, firing continued from both sides and Dawson was killed. The engagement lasted a little over an hour and ended with 36 Texans dead, fifteen captured, and two who escaped.

Meanwhile, at the main engagement, Caldwell's forces repelled the Mexican attacks with heavy Mexican casualties, forcing Woll to retreat first to San Antonio and then toward the Rio Grande. The following morning, Caldwell's troops found the Dawson battle site and buried the dead Texans in shallow graves; the Mexican dead were left unburied. Caldwell pursued Woll's retreating forces but was unsuccessful before the Mexican army recrossed the Rio Grande.

Legacy

In late summer 1848, after Texas had become a U.S. state, citizens from La Grange retrieved the remains of the men killed in the Dawson massacre from their burial site near Salado Creek. These remains, along with those of men killed in the failed Mier Expedition, were reinterred in a common tomb in a concrete vault on a bluff about one mile south of La Grange — now part of the Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites. Milvern Harrell, the last surviving Texian participant in the massacre, died on August 10, 1910.