A richly detailed history of daily life for colonial Spanish soldiers surviving on the eighteenth-century Texas Gulf Coast. In 1775, Spanish King Carlos III ordered the capture of American pelicans for his wildlife park in Madrid. The command went to the only Spanish fort on the Texas coast-Presidio Nuestra SeNora de Loreto de la BahIa in present-day Goliad. But the overworked soldiers stationed at the fort had little interest indulging a king an ocean away. Their days were consumed with guarding their community against powerful Indigenous peoples and managing the demands of frontier life. The royal order went ignored. Wrangling Pelicans brings to life the world of Presidio La BahIa's Hispano soldiers, whose duties ranged from heated warfare to high-stakes diplomacy, while their leisure pursuits included courtship, card playing, and cockfighting. It highlights the lives of presidio women and reveals the ways the Spanish legal system was used by and against the soldiers as they continually negotiated their roles within the empire and their community. Although they were agents of the Spanish crown, soldiers at times defied their king and even their captain as they found ways to assert their autonomy. Offering a fresh perspective on colonial Texas, Wrangling Pelicans recreates the complexities of life at the empire's edge, where survival mattered more than royal decrees.
Tim Seiter is an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Tyler.
List of Maps and Figures Introduction Chapter 1. Perspiring Walls and Incessant Insects: Environment and Education Chapter 2. Strangling La BahIa: Supply Lines and Smuggling Chapter 3. The Work Seldom Ceases: Duties and Defense Chapter 4. A Poultice of Lion Fat Fomentations: Manpower and Medicine Chapter 5. A Most Dangerous and Desirable Profession: Desertion and Death Chapter 6. La BahIa Vice: Cockfighting and Card Playing Chapter 7. How Best to Retrieve Stolen Horses: Diplomacy and Disobedience Chapter 8. Suffocating under Animal Skins: Insubordination and Incarceration Chapter 9. SeNora TreviNo: Courtship and Conjugality Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index
Easily the most engaging study of Presidio La Bahia (today's Goliad), Wrangling Pelicans is a tour de force that blends archival research and historical literature to tell the most complete story possible about common soldiers and their families navigating life on the Spanish Texas frontier.--Jesus "Frank" de la Teja, Professor Emeritus, Texas State University, author of A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguin In its detailed overview of eighteenth-century Texan presidio life, Wrangling Pelicans personalizes the everyday experiences of the soldiers who served in these isolated frontier military garrisons. This book is distinguished both by its impressive scholarly achievement and its effective narrative approach, using one soldier as a prism through which to examine the social and cultural world of La Bahia. It will stand the test of time as an enduring contribution to our historical understanding of Spanish Texas and the Southwest. There is nothing else like it.--Light T. Cummins, Austin College, author of To the Vast and Beautiful Land: Anglo Migration into Spanish Louisiana and Texas, 1760s-1820s
