The following account from Kennedy’s History of Texas [129] has been
contributed by Mr. E. G. Little John. As I have suggested, it may,
after all, be the original of the better known version quoted from Mrs.
Davis. The endless confusion among the earlier Spanish regarding the
nomenclature of rivers is fully set forth in the extract from Miss
Buckley’s article on the Aguayo Expedition already quoted. Thrall makes
the matter a little too simple perhaps when he says: “The Spaniards
gave the name of Brazos de Dios to the Colorado, and Rio Colorado to
the Brazos, but blundering geographers afterwards interchanged their
names.” [130] A French map dated 1733, in the University of Texas
archives, has the Brazos River marked the “Therese” and the San Marcos
the “San Markos or Colorado.” Mr. Littlejohn’s “Indian legend” of a
flood, which follows this legend, seems largely based on the early
Spanish confusion of the Brazos and the Colorado.
“About thirty miles from the mouth of the San Saba, there was once a
Spanish mission and fort, the destruction of which is thus recorded in
Mexican tradition:
“Prosperity reigned at the post, which carried on an extensive trade
with the Comanche Indians, and a large revenue was derived from certain
silver mines in the vicinity. The mines occupied about one hundred
laborers; the post was protected by an equal number of soldiers, and
there were some women, who manufactured articles for the Indian trade.
At a time when all the soldiers, save about a dozen, were absent on an
expedition, the Comanches appeared, under pretense of traffic, and were
admitted to the fort in great numbers. At a signal from the chief, the
Indians drew weapons concealed under their buffalo robes, and massacred
the small guard and the women. The laborers in the mines fled, and were
butchered in detail. The priest alone escaped, and by a miracle. The
holy man having fled to the Colorado River, the waters divided,
permitted him to pass through, and closed upon the pursuing Indians,
consigning them to a common grave. After great suffering, the priest
reached the Spanish mission of San Juan, at that period the only
settlement on the San Antonio River. The absent soldiers, returning in
a few days to the fort, where lay the mingled bodies of their
companions, found the banks of the Colorado covered with dead Indians,
and as they could discern no marks of violence upon them, they
pronounced it a retributive miracle, and named the river Brazos de
Dios, or ‘the Arm [sic] of God.’ In the ignorance of after times, it
received the name of Colorado, which previously distinguished the red
and muddy stream now known as the Brazos. The preceding tradition is
devoutly believed by the old Mexicans about San Antonio.”