San Jacinto Day Festival, Battle Re-Enactment Will Be April 24

LA PORTE, Texas — More than 10,000 Texans and others are expected to gather at San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site on April 24 to celebrate the brief but decisive battle that brought Texas its independence from Mexico.

This year marks the 168th anniversary of Gen. Sam Houston’s Texan troops’ victory over the Mexican army under the command of Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna on April 21, 1836.

The festival is free and lasts from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. At 3 p.m. April 24, more than 200 re-enactors will dramatize the victory of the roughly 800 Texans under the leadership of Houston over the 1,200-strong Mexican forces attempting to quell their rebellion. Amidst the burst of cannon and musket fire, Texan forces will charge across the field toward the Mexican camp during the re-enactment of an engagement that Gen. Houston reported lasted only 18 minutes. Many of the "soldiers" are living historians and re-enactors who participated in the filming of the just-released Disney movie, "The Alamo," as well as two recent History Channel programs focusing on the Texas Revolution.

Some of the highlights of this year's San Jacinto Day Festival will be Armand Bayou children's games, Houston Archeology Society's mock archeological dig, Sam Houston Museum's Raven Rangers and guided tours of the restored marshlands. This year marks the first time the festival will offer hands-on history activities for children, such as the making of cornhusk dolls and pioneer vests, and playing of 1830s games.

Living history exhibits open at 10 a.m. Saturday, providing visitors the opportunity to wander throughout the Mexican and Texan camps to learn about what members of both armies were doing before the battle and what their life was like on a daily basis. Women and children in period clothing will demonstrate the hardships experienced by those who, with their husbands and fathers at war, were forced to flee advancing forces of Gen. Santa Anna in what became known as the Runaway Scrape.

Texas-style foods and beverages will be offered for sale at the park. K. R. Woods and the Fathers of Texas Band will provide period musical entertainment. Parking is available, with shuttle buses transporting park visitors from designated areas throughout the day.

The San Jacinto Museum of History invites park visitors to visit and view its collection of Texas Revolution artifacts that provide insight into early Texas history and attend hourly screenings of the theater show which vividly outlines the events leading up to and the Battle of San Jacinto. In addition, the museum will feature several authors and experts on the Texas Revolution who will be making presentations every half hour throughout the day.

Admission to the San Jacinto Day Festival — the San Jacinto Museum, the re-enactment, the nature boardwalk and the 1,200-acre park — is free. Nominal fees are charged for elevator rides to the top of the San Jacinto Monument and screenings of "Texas Forever!! The Battle of San Jacinto!"

On San Jacinto day at 11a.m., April 21, TV personality Ron Stone will emcee at a small ceremony at the San Jacinto Monument marking the actual battle anniversary. The Battleship Texas Foundation will have a brief ceremony aboard the Battleship Texas at 10:45 a.m. to recognize 56 years of being moored at San Jacinto Battleground.

San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site is located 22 miles east of Houston. For information and directions to the park, call (281) 479-2431. For information about the San Jacinto Museum of History and San Jacinto Day Festival events, telephone (281) 479-2421.

Rank	Location	Receipts	Donors/Avg	Freepers/Avg	Monthlies
19	Wisconsin	468.00	17	27.53	264	1.77	173.00	11

The battlegrounds..... the following is an account of some of the after battle events, if one is so disposed to believe them....

[snip]

One more little incident of San Jacinto and I will have done with my poor account of some of the things I saw there, although the event I am going to relate occured a day or so after I left, but it was told to me by several of the boys who were eyewitnesses. A large amount of ammunition had been captured, among which were quite a lot of cartridges gathered up loose and piled in a heap not far from Santa Anna's tent, which was guarded by a sentinel in front and one in the rear. Tom Nail was on duty that day as guard at the rear of Santa Anna's tent and no man ever breathed that hated the Mexican chief more than Tom. By some means during the day fire got out in the dry grass and reached the pile of cartridges with the result that there was a furious and prolonged explosion. It sounded like the continued rattle of musketry and produced quite an excitement in the camp. Hearing the uproar Santa Anna got the idea that there was an uprising of the prisoners and, rushing to the rear of his tent, he bent low to the ground and, raising the cloth, put his head out to see what was going on. Sentinel Nail was carrying a Mexican escopeta, with a fixed bayonet, and when he saw Santa Anna's head poked out, he made a vicious lunge at it with his bayonet which missing its mark, buried itself to the gun muzzle in the ground. Of course the general's head got back quicker than it came out, but until the day of his death Tom Nail cursed his ill luck in not pinning Santa Anna's head to the ground on that occasion.
Strange to say our histories of Texas say little or nothing about the disposition of the Mexican dead at San Jacinto and the question is often asked if they were buried. As stated, they were not buried but left to decay where they fell. But the sequel proved that these carcasses should have been buried or burned. Dead Mexicans lay everywhere and in every position. It was a ghastly sight I can never forget. Santa Anna evinced no desire to have his slain men interred, and of course we Texans were not concerned about the final disposition of these unfortunate "greasers." The fact is that immediate burial of so large a number of corpses was rendered impracticable by the great fatigue which the Texans had endured, and by the care of the prisoners and captured army property. Soon the bodies, drenched by the heavy rains and heated by the burning sun, presented a fearful, most ghastly sight, swelling to enormous sizes and decaying with a revolting stench. No one, of course, wanted to engage in the gruesome work. The boys saying that they came to kill, but not to bury Mexicans, and it was jocosely suggested that a dead "greaser" would turn to a mummy anyhow---that there was not vitality enough about them to cause decomposition; that at the Alamo and at Goliad our dead were burned, but that we would be more humane and leave the unfortunate Mexicans to rest in peace on the field. [Shields footnote: Colonel Delgado, complaining of the treatment of himself and his fellow prisoners of war, says, still more intolerable was the stench arising from the corpses on the field of San Jacinto, which they (the Texans) did not have the generosity to bury, after the time-honored custom, regardless of their own health and comfort, and those of the surrounding country.]
I have often heard the story of how a Mrs. McCormick, on whose estate the principal portion of the slain Mexicans lay, called at General Houston's headquarters and requested him to "have them stinking Mexicans removed from her land." The general, with mock seriousness, replied, "Madam, your land will be famed in history as the classic spot upon which the glorious victory of San Jacinto was won. Here that last scourge of mankind, the arrogant, self-styled Napoleon of the West, met his fate." "To the devil with your glorious history!" the madam replied, "Take off your stinking Mexicans." No buzzards or wolves came about them, and the odor exuding from the corpses which lay rotting south of our camp, became terrible, causing the army to move up to Harrisburg. After the flesh rotted off, the cattle pawed over and chewed the bones to the extent that their milk and meat was unfit for use. The citizens of the vicinity then gathered up and buried the bones, all except the skulls, which could not be chewed. The skulls lay on the ground and some of them could be seen many years later. Some of them were carried away as souvenirs; but I never had any desire for such relics.

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