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    Song of the Balcones
    Song of the Balcones
    Song of the Balcones
    Ebook69 pages45 minutes

    Song of the Balcones

    By Robert Bogan

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    About this ebook

    Five years before the Texian Revolt, canny spy Deaf Smith witnesses war.

     

    In late 1831, the Republic of Mexico battled Native Americans in the Hill Country north of San Antonio, then an outpost on the northeastern frontier. Song of the Balcones tells part of the legend of the lost Bowie Silver Mine that J. Frank Dobie called “The great epic of Texas.”

     

    A recording of a radio broadcast can be downloaded at http://soundcloud.com/user-172550072/sets/song-of-the-balcones.

     

    On August 21, 1988, Howie Richey brought together Robert Bogan, Bill Averbach and other musicians who improvised without rehearsal this debut performance of Song of the Balcones in a broadcast of Live Set from KUT-FM’s studio 1A on the University of Texas campus. Musicians included Bill Averbach, Marvin King, Beth Kelly, Mark Madley, Horacio Rodriguez, R. B. Harlequin and Robert Atwood. The broadcast was engineered by Larry Monroe.

     

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobert Bogan
    Release dateSep 30, 2017
    ISBN9781386562566
    Song of the Balcones

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      Book preview

      Song of the Balcones - Robert Bogan

      Song of the Balcones

      Robert Bogan

      Dedication: Dominae Lunae

      Four years before the Texian Revolt, canny spy Deaf Smith witnesses war.

      THE LAFUENTE EXPEDITION AND BOWIE’S RAID

      A November 13, 1831 Before dawn, Lafuente’s troops attack Menchaca’s

      village; the slaughtered include Chief Barbaquista, the peacemaker.

      B November 21, 1831 First of two coinciding retaliatory attacks against

      European interests from San Antonio, this one against Bowie’s raiders.

      C November 21, 1831 The second retaliatory attack takes place against the

      Lafuente expedition on their march back to San Antonio de Béxar.

      After decades of hostilities, in 1828 the young Republic of Mexico ratified a peace treaty with Barbaquista, Great Chief of the Comanche in Texas. Four years later, several non-compliant Comanche tribes launched a series of attacks against Mexican interests in Texas. They spread lies blaming other tribes, the Waco and Tawakoni.

      On October 18, 1831, Mexico sent a force of 200 men from San Antonio to stop those attacks and punish the attackers. After weeks of stalking, before dawn on November 13, the force massacred an innocent Tawakoni village. Among the slaughtered lay Great Chief Barbaquista, the peacemaker.

      For revenge, the survivors of this assault launched two attacks in a single day. On November 21, the combined forces from several tribes ambushed the attackers on their way back to San Antonio. Seventy miles to the west, a larger number surprised a small, unrelated expedition led by James Bowie who was chasing rumors of Apache silver

      These battles are part of a longer 19th Century war, the fatal collision of three cultures in Central and South Texas. Song of the Balcones tells part of the story that J. Frank Dobie called ‘the great epic of Texas.’ Many of these characters, such as Bowie, Casteñeda and the narrator, Deaf Smith, acted on both sides of the Texian Revolt four years later.

      An epic ballad written to be read aloud with music, Song of the Balcones is a 750-line dramatic monolog composed in 10-line stanzas of iambic pentameter, arrayed in five cantos. A jazz ensemble backed the author in the debut performance of Song of the Balcones that was broadcast on KUT-FM in 1988. Listen to a recording of this broadcast at Soundcloud. Read more on the last page of this book.

      C A N T O   O N E

      October 18, 1831. Erastus and Guadalupe Smith say goodbye on the porch of their house at the corner of Presa and Nuéva Streets in San Antonio de Béxar, an outpost on the northeastern frontier of the new Republic of Mexico. Erastus Deaf Smith joins, as a militia spy, the Lafuente expedition whose ill-defined mission is to punish Tawakoni tribes, partly for misdeeds of renegade Comanche chiefs. The army travels northeast on the road to Nacogdoches then ranges north in pursuit of the Tawakoni. Meanwhile in San Antonio, James Bowie and eight companions, all from the United States, prepare for their own expedition: a raid on a hoard of Apache silver. The italicized portions represent asides from the narrator, whose point of view is approximately six years in the future.

      I

      Conejo, you never leave. Rabbit she calls me

      since I raise my hand palm-out behind my ear.

      She laughs and fields of March blue in her eyes

      blow with a quick wind. Her sun-browned shoulders

      boulder down like Fall Creek's round granite lip.

      I ride in those bright fields to talk to the sibyl

      that walks there: Guadalupe who calls me Rabbit.

      Tell it right and it might make sense, she says.

      So I sing about fire, risk, fate, weapon and man

      but I

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