Between the Spanish and French expeditions to the El Cuartelejo Apache, Antonio Valverde sent Pedro de Villasur east to investigate activities of the French in 1720. His troops were slaughtered in a dawn raid in August. Few lived to tell the tale.
These are the uncontested facts. Not even the date or location are definite. The last known date for the expedition was August 10 when Villasur sent an interpreter to tell the band they met that "they might confer with us in entire safety." The last documented view of the young man was when he "took off his clothing in order to swim across" what scholars believe was the Platte river.
Some have calculated the death date as August 13, others as August 14.
The identity of the enemy band isn’t known for sure. Valverde accepted the word of a Pawnee captive owned by Cristóbal de la Serna that they were Pawnee. The young man apparently volunteered, and may have been hoping to escape. His reliability as a source depends a great deal on how Serna, the man who led the attack on the Ute encampment at San Antonio mountain in 1716, had treated him.
The ambush occurred when men were dismounted to change saddles from one set of horses to another. Most who survived were with the horse herd. The man who may have been the expedition’s official scribe, Felipe de Tamaris, was sent by Valverde to report to the viceroy. Three years later he and Alonso Rael de Aguilar were among the six who testified at the governor’s trial for dereliction of duty.
The number of men in the expedition is unknown. Only the names of the dead soldiers, settlers and priest were recorded. It’s known at least two had servants with them, but servants almost never appeared in rosters. Nothing more is known about the auxiliaries than a total count. One has to guess the pueblo and speculate on any Apache who may have joined as escorts or guides.
The names of the Spanish who didn’t return were recorded, but the names of the survivors can only be gleaned from the diligencias matrimoniales. Remarriages for the widows were difficult because there were no bodies. Priests depended on testimony from witnesses that someone hadn’t deserted, forcing a woman into bigamy.
The observations of many of the survivors were not recorded at the time, and have not been perpetuated in family traditions. We know now many who experience traumatic military experiences only talk guardedly with comrades.
Native reports spread from group to group and generation to generation. Coureurs returning to Kaskaskia from a horse trading expedition to the Wichita told Pierre Dugué in October that the Kansa had a Spanish captive taken during the confrontation. Six months after the attack,
Wisconsin Otchagras visiting Michilimackinac told Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix the foray was made by the Octotata. They themselves heard about the raid from the Iowa. As proof, they offered him a Catalonian pistol and a pair of Spanish shoes.
The Pawnee and Wichita were Caddo-speaking, the Octotata, Kansa, Iowa and Otchagras were Sioux. If the young interpreter, indeed, had communicated with them, they were probably Caddo speakers like himself.
Oral versions must have traveled south through Caddo groups and beyond into México. In 1758 Philipp von Segesser von Brunegg sent a painting of the raid to his brother in Switzerland. Many liked to believe the hide work was made by a group of artists working in Santa Fé who had talked to eye-witnesses.
More likely it was done in Sonora. Thomas E. Chávez said, this and another painting of another raid first may have been owned by Juan Bautista de Anza, the governor of Sonora. Segesser was a Jesuit priest there. Chávez noted their stylistic similarity to a group of documents produced in the Toluca Valley, west of Mexico City, between 1685 to 1703. Fernando Horcasitas thought that revival of an earlier codex tradition had been encouraged by Jesuits.
The only actual primary source surfaced in Paris in 1921. Natives scavenging the battle site found a page from Villasur’s expedition log. It had been sent to Dugué. The copy Marc de Villiers unearthed in the archives of the Hydrographic Service of the Marine and of the Minister of War had been translated into French. Addison Sheldon converted it into English in 1923.
The indios of the Spanish had become the sauvages of the French, who in turn became the savages of Anderson. The fruit eaten by the enemy was published as "des feuilles d'Oloues (?) fraiches." Anderson interpreted that as sand cherries, with the note "any one familiar with the Platte Valley in the month of August knows that sand cherries are the most abundant fruit to be found and most likely to be the one eaten by this band of Indians."
The captive’s name was given as François Sistaco. The last wasn’t a surname. Michael Shine believed it represented the Pawnee words Chahis and taka, meaning Pawnee and white, a "white Pawnee." Francisco may have been either a Pawnee or the son of a Pawnee woman and a Spaniard.
The record began with the sandcherries, presumably on August 5, and ends on the tenth when Francisco was swimming the Platte.
Notes: Serna’s attack was mentioned in the post for 9 July 2015. Pierre Dugué was the sieur de Boisbriand or Boisbriant. Ototacta are now known as Otoe, Otchagras as Ho-Chunk or Winnebago. Western sand cherries are Prunus pumila besseyi.
Charlevoix, Pierre-François-Xavier de. Letter, 5 April 1721, extract published in Nebraska History, January-March 1923.
Chávez, Thomas E. "The Segesser Hide Paintings: History, Discovery, Art," Great Plains Quarterly 10: 96-109:1990.
Horcasitas, Fernando. Cited by Stephanie Wood, "The Techialoyan Codices," University of Oregon Wired Humanities Project website.
Shine, Michael A. "In Favor of Loup Site," Nebraska History, July-September 1924
Villiers, Marc de. "Le Massacre de l’Expedition Espagnole du Missouri (11 Aoüt 1720)," Journal de la Société des Americanistes de Paris, 1921; translated and annotated by Addison E. Sheldon for Nebraska History, January-March, 1923; quotation on swimming the river.
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