Mier Mutineers Take Wrong Turn Into Mountains

By Feb. 18, 1843, a week after the Mier mutineers escaped en masse from their Mexican captors, Santa Anna’s soldiers had rounded up most of them. Eight weeks earlier on the banks of the Rio Grande, the officer in charge of the punitive expedition had ordered an about-face.  The hit-and-run invaders that temporarily terrorized San Antonio were long gone, and the pursuers were strictly prohibited by President Sam Houston from crossing the border.

    By Feb. 18, 1843, a week after the Mier mutineers escaped en masse from their Mexican captors, Santa Anna’s soldiers had rounded up most of them.

    Eight weeks earlier on the banks of the Rio Grande, the officer in charge of the punitive expedition had ordered an about-face.  The hit-and-run invaders that temporarily terrorized San Antonio were long gone, and the pursuers were strictly prohibited by President Sam Houston from crossing the border.

    Egged on by Col. William S. Fisher, 260 volunteers mutinied and continued the chase.  The rebels celebrated Christmas by fighting 3,200 Mexican troops to a standstill at the town of Mier, but a clever general bluffed them into laying down their arms.

    The first day of the forced march to Mexico City gave the prisoners a bitter taste of the misery in store for them.  Covering 25 miles without a drop of water, they were served child-sized portions of barely boiled beef and nothing more.

    By the time the Texans reached Rancho Salado 90 miles from Satillo, Capt. Ewen Cameron had been chosen to lead a mass escape.  The captives were told during the night by whispered word-of-mouth to plan on skipping breakfast.

    All eyes were on Cameron the next morning.  Two narrow doors, 400 soldiers and 500 miles of desolate countryside stood between the mutineers and their homeland, yet all but a handful went along with the suicidal scheme.  A bullet was better than the slow, agonizing death of captivity.

    It seemed like an eternity before the captain finally gave the go-ahead.  Waving his weather-beaten hat high above his head and shouting at the top of his lungs, Cameron rushed the heavily defended door.

    In the brief battle that followed, the unarmed Texans lost ten comrades before the Mexican resistance melted.  Grabbing the guns dropped by the guards as well as a number of horses and mules, the fugitives fled north.

    Had they stuck to the main road, the Texans might have made it safely out of Mexico.  But over Cameron’s strenuous objections, the majority opted for the mountains and the rest reluctantly took the wrong with them.

    Without guides or maps, the mutineers became hopelessly lost in the inhospitable desert.  Driven mad by thirst, some drank their own urine – a self-imposed death sentence.  Only three ever reached Texas, while 173 survivors were rounded up by Mexican patrols.

    One prisoner, who kept a detailed diary of the ordeal, recorded the heartbreaking scene as the escapees were returned at gunpoint to Rancho Salado.  “Their eyes were sunken far back in the sockets and seemed to have lost the lustre of human intelligence.  Their death-like visages covered with dust gave them the appearance of a congregation of the dead.”

    Santa Anna wanted more than just the semblance of death and demanded an instant replay of the Goliad Massacre.  Putting his life and career on the line, Gen. Francisco Mexia refused to obey the barbaric order.  As the dictator looked for a spineless lackey to do his dirty work, the United States, Great Britain and other foreign powers pressed for clemency.

    Convinced that a little compassion would score a point or two with world opinion, Santa Anna devised a fiendish formula for punishing the hated Texans.  One out of ten would be shot with the victims chosen by the luck of the draw.

    The infamous Black Bean Lottery was held on Mar. 25, 1843.  Seventeen black beans and 159 white beans were dumped into a crock, and the blindfolded prisoners were forced to determine who lived and who died.  After digging their own graves, the 17 losers were shot.

    Postponing the gruesome burial until the next day, the executioners retired for the night.  A badly wounded victim played possum until the firing squad departed and then slipped away in the darkness only to be hunted down and finished off.

    A month later, the Mexicans suddenly announced that a mathematical error had left them one Texan short.  To correct the mistake, Ewen Cameron would be shot.  For his role as ringleader of the mass escape, the brave Ranger paid the supreme price.

    Several Texans avoided the anguish of prolonged imprisonment at Perote, the notorious Mexico City dungeon.  Several vanished while on a road work detail, others tunneled out of Perote and the wounded left behind at Mier bought their freedom by bribing the guards.

    The remaining prisoners, minus 22 that succumbed to the inhumane conditions, were not released until September 1844.  But in a matter of months there would be the devil to pay.

    During the Mexican War, the memory of the Mier atrocity drove Texans to acts of bloody revenge.  Toward those who showed no mercy, no mercy was shown.

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