Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
Sally Skull's Saddlebags of Gld
El Camino Real was an important route during the Texas Revolution, the Mexican War and the Civil War. Actually, the King's Highway was more theoretical than real, more of a suggested way to go than an actual roadway. The Camino Real ran north from the Rio Grande, across the Big Sands, to the Santa Gertrudis where Richard King would build his ranch headquarters, then to the Agua Dulce.
In June, 1832, merchants from Matamoros followed the Camino Real to a lake near where Banquete is today. They arrived to hold a four-day feast that began on St. John's Day, June 24. The purpose of the trip was to promote commerce and friendly ties between Matamoros and the new Irish settlement at San Patricio.
The "Feast at the Banquet Lake" included contests and activities that would later be common on St. John's Day at ranches throughout South Texas. One contest involved burying goats or more up to their heads in the ground. Skilled vaqueros would ride by at a fast gallop and try to rope the head of a goat and yank it from a hole. There were horse races, cockfighting, bull-tailing, dances and monte games.
Twenty years or more after the original feast, St. John's Day was still being celebrated at Banquete. J. Williamson Moses, who had a store at Banquete in the 1850s, described the events on one St. John's Day celebration. He wrote that people came from all over -- rancheros with their families riding in ox carts, colorful caballeros riding high-stepping horses, and others came in wagons and buggies. The events of the day included horse races, cockfighting, and bull-tailing. This involved catching the tail of a running bull, looping it over the saddle horn, and spurring past the bull, causing the surprised animal to do a somersault.
The Camino Real was the route followed by one of Santa Anna's armies during the Texas Revolution. After Santa Anna's defeat at San Jacinto, his troops retreated back down the Camino Real. When Zachary Taylor moved his army from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, in 1846, he followed the same route. It was called Taylor's Trail then.
During the Civil War, when Southern ports were blockaded, thousands of bales of cotton were hauled by wagons and oxcarts down the Cotton Road, which followed the Camino Real.
An important way station on the Cotton Road was Banquete. Long trains of wagons and oxcarts passed through day and night. Those traveling south were piled high with cotton -- to be sold at Matamoros to European buyers. Those going north were loaded with war materiel for the Confederacy. Banquete was a busy place. The town had the Byington Hotel, saloons, stables, and supply stores.
A detachment of Confederate troops under James Ware -- and later Mat Nolan -- camped on the San Fernando near Banquete, there to guard this important stopping place on the Cotton Road.
South from Banquete, the slow-moving wagon trains -- which made about eight miles a day -- crossed the Big Sands, an ordeal of searing heat, with no shade trees and no water. It was said that the route of the Cotton Road was marked by the sprigs of cotton that snagged on chaparral and prickly pear.
Banquete's Sally Skull was a regular traveler on the Cotton Road. Her real name was Sarah Jane Newman. She had married a gunsmith named Scull or Skull. He disappeared and, when asked about his whereabouts, she said, in a voice that shut off questions, "He's dead." She kept his name, though, calling herself "Sally Skull."
She bought horses below the border and, with hired vaqueros, took them to East Texas for sale. She carried a rifle and two pistols and was not timid about using them. In Corpus Christi in 1852, about the time she had moved to Banquete, the Ranger Rip Ford heard a gunshot. He saw a man falling to the ground and a woman lowering a pistol. It was Sally Skull. "She was famed as a rough fighter," Ford wrote, "and prudent men did not willingly provoke her."
Some were not so prudent. Once, she heard that a man had been talking about her. When she ran into him, she said, "So you've been talking about me? Well, dance, you son of a bitch!" and began shooting at his toes. Another time, she ran into a freighter who owed her money. She grabbed an ax and said, "If you don't pay me right now, I'll chop the front wheels off every damned wagon you've got." He paid.
Eli Merriman, whose doctor daddy had a ranch at Banquete, once wrote that Sally Skull came to their house once. He said she had the look of a hawk, with staring eyes, and rode her horse astride, which ladies didn't do back then. "She came to our house bringing some of the finest butter ever made, large yellow balls of butter packed way down in a stone jar."
When the Civil War broke out, Sally Skull turned to hauling cotton down the Cotton Road; she operated a fleet of wagons. One man who ran into her was John Warren Hunter, who wrote about his experience in "Heel-Fly Time." "Superbly mounted, wearing a black dress and sunbonnet, sitting as erect as a cavalry officer, with a six-shooter hanging at her belt, complexion once fair but swarthy from exposure to the sun and weather, with steel-blue eyes that seemed to penetrate the innermost recesses of the soul, this in brief is a hasty outline of my visitor -- Sally Skull."
Sally Skull vanished after the end of the Civil War. Suspicion fell on her fifth husband, a man nicknamed "Horse Trough." It was thought he killed her for the gold she carried in her saddlebags and buried her in an unmarked grave, somewhere near Goliad. Sally Skull, Banquete's most famous citizen, defined life on her own terms. She was one of the most colorful characters in South Texas history.
http://www.caller.com/news/2007/aug/01/from-kings-highway-to-the-cotton-road/
El Camino Real was an important route during the Texas Revolution, the Mexican War and the Civil War. Actually, the King's Highway was more theoretical than real, more of a suggested way to go than an actual roadway. The Camino Real ran north from the Rio Grande, across the Big Sands, to the Santa Gertrudis where Richard King would build his ranch headquarters, then to the Agua Dulce.
In June, 1832, merchants from Matamoros followed the Camino Real to a lake near where Banquete is today. They arrived to hold a four-day feast that began on St. John's Day, June 24. The purpose of the trip was to promote commerce and friendly ties between Matamoros and the new Irish settlement at San Patricio.
The "Feast at the Banquet Lake" included contests and activities that would later be common on St. John's Day at ranches throughout South Texas. One contest involved burying goats or more up to their heads in the ground. Skilled vaqueros would ride by at a fast gallop and try to rope the head of a goat and yank it from a hole. There were horse races, cockfighting, bull-tailing, dances and monte games.
Twenty years or more after the original feast, St. John's Day was still being celebrated at Banquete. J. Williamson Moses, who had a store at Banquete in the 1850s, described the events on one St. John's Day celebration. He wrote that people came from all over -- rancheros with their families riding in ox carts, colorful caballeros riding high-stepping horses, and others came in wagons and buggies. The events of the day included horse races, cockfighting, and bull-tailing. This involved catching the tail of a running bull, looping it over the saddle horn, and spurring past the bull, causing the surprised animal to do a somersault.
The Camino Real was the route followed by one of Santa Anna's armies during the Texas Revolution. After Santa Anna's defeat at San Jacinto, his troops retreated back down the Camino Real. When Zachary Taylor moved his army from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, in 1846, he followed the same route. It was called Taylor's Trail then.
During the Civil War, when Southern ports were blockaded, thousands of bales of cotton were hauled by wagons and oxcarts down the Cotton Road, which followed the Camino Real.
An important way station on the Cotton Road was Banquete. Long trains of wagons and oxcarts passed through day and night. Those traveling south were piled high with cotton -- to be sold at Matamoros to European buyers. Those going north were loaded with war materiel for the Confederacy. Banquete was a busy place. The town had the Byington Hotel, saloons, stables, and supply stores.
A detachment of Confederate troops under James Ware -- and later Mat Nolan -- camped on the San Fernando near Banquete, there to guard this important stopping place on the Cotton Road.
South from Banquete, the slow-moving wagon trains -- which made about eight miles a day -- crossed the Big Sands, an ordeal of searing heat, with no shade trees and no water. It was said that the route of the Cotton Road was marked by the sprigs of cotton that snagged on chaparral and prickly pear.
Banquete's Sally Skull was a regular traveler on the Cotton Road. Her real name was Sarah Jane Newman. She had married a gunsmith named Scull or Skull. He disappeared and, when asked about his whereabouts, she said, in a voice that shut off questions, "He's dead." She kept his name, though, calling herself "Sally Skull."
She bought horses below the border and, with hired vaqueros, took them to East Texas for sale. She carried a rifle and two pistols and was not timid about using them. In Corpus Christi in 1852, about the time she had moved to Banquete, the Ranger Rip Ford heard a gunshot. He saw a man falling to the ground and a woman lowering a pistol. It was Sally Skull. "She was famed as a rough fighter," Ford wrote, "and prudent men did not willingly provoke her."
Some were not so prudent. Once, she heard that a man had been talking about her. When she ran into him, she said, "So you've been talking about me? Well, dance, you son of a bitch!" and began shooting at his toes. Another time, she ran into a freighter who owed her money. She grabbed an ax and said, "If you don't pay me right now, I'll chop the front wheels off every damned wagon you've got." He paid.
Eli Merriman, whose doctor daddy had a ranch at Banquete, once wrote that Sally Skull came to their house once. He said she had the look of a hawk, with staring eyes, and rode her horse astride, which ladies didn't do back then. "She came to our house bringing some of the finest butter ever made, large yellow balls of butter packed way down in a stone jar."
When the Civil War broke out, Sally Skull turned to hauling cotton down the Cotton Road; she operated a fleet of wagons. One man who ran into her was John Warren Hunter, who wrote about his experience in "Heel-Fly Time." "Superbly mounted, wearing a black dress and sunbonnet, sitting as erect as a cavalry officer, with a six-shooter hanging at her belt, complexion once fair but swarthy from exposure to the sun and weather, with steel-blue eyes that seemed to penetrate the innermost recesses of the soul, this in brief is a hasty outline of my visitor -- Sally Skull."
Sally Skull vanished after the end of the Civil War. Suspicion fell on her fifth husband, a man nicknamed "Horse Trough." It was thought he killed her for the gold she carried in her saddlebags and buried her in an unmarked grave, somewhere near Goliad. Sally Skull, Banquete's most famous citizen, defined life on her own terms. She was one of the most colorful characters in South Texas history.
http://www.caller.com/news/2007/aug/01/from-kings-highway-to-the-cotton-road/
