Wrangling Pelicans : Military Life in Texas Presidios.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Seiter, Tim.

Series:

Charles N. Prothro Texana series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spain. Ejército--Colonial forces--America.

Spain.

Spain. Ejército--Military life.

Soldiers--Texas--Presidio La Bahía--History--18th century.

Soldiers.

Spain--Colonies--Administration--History--18th century.

Texas--History--To 1846.

Texas.

Presidio La Bahía (Tex.)--History.

Presidio La Bahía (Tex.).

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (298 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2025.

Summary:

"In 1775, the Spanish King Carlos III decided that he required pelicans for his wildlife park. The orders were relayed to Texas's only coastal fort, Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía, so the captain of this ramshackle military settlement could send his already overworked men to capture pelicans. However, it seems that the soldiers of La Bahía simply ignored the command. The fort's roughly fifty soldiers had no intention of risking their lives in Karankawa country simply to expand a distant king's menagerie. Catching pelicans was not part of the Spanish presidial soldier's job description, but Tim Seiter uses it as a representation of the gap between the expectation of these soldiers as agents of the crown, actively patrolling the borderlands to protect Mexico's profitable interior provinces from other imperial forces, and their day-to-day reality. In "Wrangling Pelicans," he shows that presidial soldiers were hard-pressed to simply protect themselves and their immediate communities from the area's powerful Indigenous peoples and that they were more concerned with their own economic interests than Spain's. Seiter starts out by giving the history of Presidio La Bahía before showing across eight chapters what daily life looked like for an 18th-century soldier and, in a ninth, how women experienced life in the presidio. This includes military duties, health risks, desertion consequences, and diplomacy, but also the ways soldiers addressed injury and disease, popular forms of entertainment, and the legal system. He uses the life of one particularly interesting soldier as a loose narrative thread through the book; Antonio Treviño rose from a private to a sub-lieutenant and was commended for valor, but along the way he was also indicted for smuggling and nearly imprisoned for insubordination"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Perspiring walls and incessant insects : environment and education

Strangling La Bahía : supply lines and smuggling

The work seldom ceases : duties and defense

A poultice of lion fat fomentations : manpower and medicine

A most dangerous and desirable profession : desertion and death

La Bahía vice: cockfighting and card playing

How best to retrieve stolen horses : diplomacy and disobedience

Suffocating under animal skins : insubordination and incarceration

Señora Treviño : courtship and conjugality.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4773-3281-2

1-4773-3282-0

OCLC:

1536515313