Raid on Norias Ranch
The Raid on the Norias Division of the King Ranch was an attack August 8, 1915 by a large band of disaffected Mexicans and Tejanos in southern Texas. It was one of the many small battles of the Mexican Revolution that spilled over into United States soil and resulted in an increased effort by the United States Army to defend the international border. Five to fifteen attackers were killed in the raid and more among the wounded may have died shortly afterwards.
Background[edit]
When Mexico ceded its claim on Texas to the United States, the treaty protected the rights of Tejanos who became U. S. citizens. There was never any official policy to force them off their land, but banking practices at the time made it difficult for people of color to obtain credit from banks.[1] With each drought and economic depression during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tejanos would lose land which Anglos would then buy up, increasing the size of their holdings. Hispanics on both sides of the border between Texas and Mexico came to hate the ranches as they saw businesses like the King Ranch increase their land in the hard times when Tejanos were losing theirs. The rapid expansion of railroads into south Texas in the late nineteenth century also brought a flood of Anglo Americans wanting land when these large ranches then subdivided. This drove up property prices as well as taxes, increasing Hispanic animosity against the United States and Anglos in general. Into this tense situation the infighting and turmoil of the Mexican Revolution sent waves of refugees north across the border, rapidly increasing demand for goods, services and competition for land and jobs.[2] In January 1915 the Plan of San Diego was drafted by Mexican political prisoners in Monterrey, Mexico which called for Hispanics, Blacks and Japanese in the U. S. border states to rebel against the government and kill all white male inhabitants more than sixteen years old as a first step in creating their own republic.[3] The Plan came to light when one its signatories entered the U. S. to gather support for Venustiano Carranza, leader of one of the factions in the revolution, but was arrested by officials in Texas who supported Pancho Villa.[4] It was found in his belongings and he was taken to Brownsville where he was questioned by Immigration Service inspectors there. Scholars believe the Plan was supported by Carranza as a means of gathering favor for his faction in the revolution.[5]During the years of this strife, though, it was believed that Germany had a hand in the border friction, hoping to distract the United States from involvement in the First World War by destabilizing relations between the U.S. and its southern neighbor. But relations between Carranza himself and Germany at the time made this impossible.[6] In any case, the overall plan was so unrealistic that it changed many times and resulted in only a few small raids into Texas from the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The raid on Norias Division was one of these.
Norias, a southern division of the 825,000-acre King Ranch, is located about seventy miles north of Brownsville and about sixty miles south of Kingsville in what was at the time the newly-formed Kenedy County.[7][8] A watering stop for the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway, the site itself resembled a hamlet.[9] Fifty feet west of the tracks was the two-story wooden building that served as headquarters with a kitchen out the back.[10] A netting fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the house and a bit of yard. A hundred feet north of the headquarters were two bunkhouses. Three hundred feet south of the headquarters was the section house where a few Hispanic railway workers and their families lived. Across the tracks from the section house was a tool shed and a pile of railway ties.
On August 8, ranch manager Caesar Kleberg was in Kingsville when he learned that a large group of armed Mexican men on horseback were stealing horses at El Sauz, the division of the King Ranch on Norias' southern border.[11] Kleberg immediately telephoned the U. S. Army commander at Fort Brown near Brownsville who informed the head of the Texas Rangers, Adjutant General Henry Hutchings. Hutchings assembled thirteen rangers led by Captains Henry Ransom, George J. Head and James Monroe Fox, and seven privates from Troop C of the 12th Cavalry Regiment led by Corporal Allen Mercer. He also commandeered a special train to leave at two pm, ninety minutes earlier than usual, go to the Norias Division to investigate. Immigration inspector D. P. Gay, whose department had investigated the Plan of San Diego, was at the Brownsville station and saw the train leave early.[10] He learned from the station master about the bandits so he got his rifle and ammunition and caught the normal northbound train to Norias at about 3:30. Customs inspector Joe Taylor was on the platform at the San Benito station when Gay's train got there and on hearing what was afoot, Taylor joined him. When the two of them got to Harlingen they were joined by another Customs Inspector, Marcus Hinds, and Cameron county deputy sheriff Gordon Hill.
The soldiers would have arrived at Norias before four pm. General Hutchings ordered Mercer and the cavalrymen to stay behind with the ranch personnel. Ranch foreman Tom Tate provided the rangers with horses and, taking along a few ranch hands, rode back south with them toward the El Sauz Division. While they were gone the second train arrived at about 5:30 pm, dropping off the heavily armed Gay, Taylor, Hinds and Hill. Gay found the cavalrymen guarding cowboys Frank Martin, Luke Snow, and Lauro Cavazos Sr., ranch carpenter George Forbes with his wife, ranch cook Albert Edmunds with his wife, a track foreman with his wife and toddler, Manuela Flores with her husband and son, and other Hispanic rail workers and their families.
Aftermath[edit]
The Americans reported that they had killed five of the Mexicans but only four appear in pictures taken of the dead on the following morning of August 9 when Hutchings and the Texas Rangers returned. However, Cavazos claimed that he was tasked with burying the bodies of ten rebels at the ranch that day and that five wounded Mexicans who were strapped to horses later died and were buried by their comrades somewhere on the ranch. Considering this and the casualties the Sediciosos suffered approaching the Rio Grande, the group which actually made it back into Mexico had suffered significant losses.
Cavazos later noticed unfamiliar tracks on the ranch and followed them to find a trespasser.[16] The man turned out to be a bounty hunter and in his pocket Cavazos found a piece of paper with his own name on it, as well as the names of the others who defended Norias, and that of King Ranch owner Bob Kleburg and Caesar Kleberg. Written next to their names was the amount of money offered for the death of each victim.
Lauro Faustino Cavazos avoided future threats and went on to work the rest of his life for the King family as a highly valued employee, becoming division manager for the Santa Gertrudis Division and raising his children in Kingsville, dying in 1958.[17][18]
Thomas Rankin Tate also worked the rest of his life for the King family, staying on the Norias Division as division manager. He married Mabel Waters and raised his children there, dying in 1947.[19]
Frank Martin survived his wound and became a deputy sheriff. He was shot to death November 26, 1917 trying to bring order to a Mexican dance where things had gotten out of hand.[20][21]
David Portus Gay went on to become a patrol inspector of the Immigration Border Patrol in Brownsville when that was founded in 1924. He became Chief Patrol Inspector in Brownsville when the Border Patrol became a separate unit in 1926. He died in 1936.[22]
Ranger Captain Henry Ransom continued in his service in the Rangers until he was accidentally shot to death in a hotel hallway April 2, 1918 in Sweetwater, Texas.[23]
Ranger Captain James Monroe Fox continued his service in the Rangers until the Porvenir Massacre. Though he did not participate, he was the commanding officer of the participants and invented a fiction to cover their deeds. He joined again as a captain in 1925 but resigned again when anti-ranger Texas governor Miriam Ferguson was elected. He was commissioned a Special Ranger in 1934 and discharged in 1935.[24] He died quietly in 1937.[25]
George John Head had been a captain in the Texas National Guard, forming up an honor guard to greet William Jennings Bryan on his visit to Brownsville in 1908.[26] A few months before the raid he resigned, then was arrested and indicted for embezzling from the Guard.[27][28][29] On January 20 following the raid, his trial for embezzlement was set to begin in federal court.[30] By the middle of that March he was in Tampico where he applied to the consulate for a passport, listing his occupation as "broker" and stating that he had left the United States for his own safety.[31] He listed his occupation as "wood seller" on his draft card in 1917, and again as brokerage business on his 1919 passport.[32] He collapsed suddenly, dying instantly in 1929.[33]