(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to The Bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today, my guest is Dave Dyer, author of The Road to San Jacinto: Retracing the Route of Sam Houston's Army.

Dave, thank you so much for being here today.

- Well, thanks for having me.

Happy to be here.

- I'm so excited to talk about something we don't necessarily think about, which is kind of the geography of a battle, of an army's movement.

So before we dive into the book, I wanna ask you, where did the idea for this come from?

- Well, you know, one of the things, and this was a PBS series back in the late 1970s.

I know I'm not supposed to advertise somebody else's book, but there was a wonderful British historian named Michael Wood, and he had a program on CBS...

I'm sorry, on PBS, that traced Alexander the Great's travels across Asia, and I was addicted to that back in the '90s.

I thought, "How much fun."

Of course, he was this charming British guy, bounding across the rocks, and going to places where people hadn't been in a while.

But that's always stimulated me, because I think history is often mistaught.

People think of history as big thick books about things that happened with kings and generals a long time ago, and it's kind of boring, and involves dates and everything.

But Michael Woods's approach was, no, it's out here.

You have to get out and explore.

You have to see where people were, and that's a way to get interested.

So anyway, for me, this was a pandemic project.

I wanted something to do during the pandemic that would get me out of the house, but not involve airports, and trips around a lot of people.

So I drove out to Gonzales.

I'd never been to Gonzales, and I just, "Oh, what's here?"

And I said, "Oh, okay.

Well, I wonder where Sam Houston stayed the next night."

And I searched around, and pretty soon, I was looking for a book like this as a guide, and I couldn't find exactly what I wanted.

There were some very detailed things, but not exactly what I wanted.

So each one, as I went, I took notes, and I wrote 'em up as little articles, and each one is like a separate article almost.

And that's the way it started.

But the original motivation was this book by Michael Wood from the late 1990s.

And then I used to do, in Houston, I had a magazine column once a month that was called Footprints.

And I would go to some historic spot in Houston and see what's there now.

And it was just sort of a special feature type column.

And sometimes it was funny, sometimes I found something interesting, took some photos, and so this book is sort of based on that approach to history.

But the idea is that location is important, and location is a fun way to get started in history.

And once you understand a location, then if you're interested in things, you can integrate that into the whole picture, and start out with a basis.

But local history is real accessible, whereas the big thick history books are not.

- You don't have to go far, or you don't have to dive deep.

We can look around and find history down the road.

- Down the road.

Well, where I grew up in Indiana, there was a low spot on the river where we used to play as kids, and did the sort of things that you do when you're 10 years old, throw rocks, and break beer bottles, and stuff, and it never occurred to me.

I was interested in history as a kid.

I thought it was fun, but I didn't know that anything ever happened there.

And after I grew up, and left the town, and read a little history of it, I learned that that location in 1740 was the center of the French fur trade.

And all the fur trade from Canada down to shipping out of New Orleans went through that spot.

And if I'd known that, that would've improved my whole understanding of a place that I lived, and my appreciation for the things around me.

So that's what local history does.

It gets you started.

- I'm glad you mentioned being a child, because I'm gonna tie that in here, 'cause you... You wrote this book, and it's structured in a way that it's accessible for all age groups, and then also the idea is to get maybe field trips going to visit some of these places.

- Field trips.

The ideal market for this would be college or high school field trips, and this is... My publisher, State House Press, Don and Susan Frazier, this is their idea, not mine, but if you look through the book, there really aren't any maps in there, there's QR codes, and the way you use the book for a field trip is you can pick a chapter, read through it, and there's a QR code at the end, put your phone over it, pop, you're in Google Maps, it gives you the directions on how to get to that site.

So their idea was that it would be like a geocaching event.

You would go out and look for something, and then when you go to the site, when you're there, if you've got it popped up on Google Maps, you can check in, and your instructor can know who was there when.

But also, more importantly, I recorded every chapter, and you can click on a link, and hear my recording of a chapter, so you don't have to walk around trying to read a book when you're out in the countryside.

You can walk around and listen to a podcast essentially.

So it's a whole integrated way to get started.

And again, the goal is to encourage people to explore and have fun.

- I love the idea of the audio recordings, 'cause it's like in a museum, when you can listen to someone tell you what the art means, but I imagine it's a lot more impactful to be standing out in a field and hearing about the trials and tribulations that the army was having in this particular location.

- Right at that spot.

And the other thing that fits in with that, at each site, I've tried to incorporate some material from primary sources, some sort of a quotation from a soldier who was there.

There were a lot of soldiers who wrote accounts of their time with Sam Houston, personal accounts.

And in fact, if you look at the...

I know nobody should advertise a bibliography for a book.

(Christine laughing) But if you look at the bibliography, it's broken out into primary sources and secondary sources, and you can see where the primary sources are.

And a lot of 'em are just, again, easily accessible.

And I have some sort of a quotation from somebody who was there on a specific date that you can read.

And again, that just connects you.

The goal is, it's not intended to be a complete history of everything that happened, but it's intended to be something that generates some interest, and gets you started in appreciating it.

- I wanna talk more about the primary sources, and why they're so vital, because I think the start and endpoint of this journey, Gonzales and San Jacinto, are very well documented, but some of the interior spots, maybe it's a little harder to know exactly where they are.

And so I liked how in some of the sections, you're like, here's our clues.

This letter said this, this person said this.

So those primary sources, I imagine are just...

It's so important to pinpointing the spots.

- And it was like a detective project, because some of these places have historical markers.

Some of 'em that were supposed to have historical markers don't have 'em anymore.

Some of 'em that were supposed to have historical markers, the markers are no longer where they were originally, but they've been moved by local residents who had a better idea on where they ought to be.

But some are not marked at all.

And you have to go back and read the historical, the primary sources, and somebody says, "Well, we traveled three miles, and then we stopped by a little stream, and then the next day, we traveled six miles."

And one of the things that was common for every campsite that he had was you need water.

You need water for horses.

And so he zigzagged across Texas, being chased by the Mexican army, a larger, more professional army.

And he was evading them at various times as he crisscrossed the scenery out there.

And so some of these were made to be hidden, actually, by him.

- I also think perhaps when they were making those original markers, they didn't have the benefit that we have now of like satellite imagery.

So I think the idea of taking these historical documents, and then also using the latest in cutting edge technology to map, to literally draw a line and say, "Okay, if they were here, three miles this way," I mean, I imagine having that technology really did help you find... - Google Maps was excellent.

Also, the geological survey, geographics, USGS, to find out where a spring was, for example, in one case.

And I said, "Okay, yeah, that has to be it."

So yeah, it's... And I was always looking for something that, is there some footprint from the time that Sam Houston was here?

Is there anything that looks like it looked when Sam Houston was there?

And in many cases, trees, as we mentioned, these large live oak trees that live 500, 800 years, some of those same trees had to be there at that time.

- I think one of the...

I actually had, several episodes ago, I had somebody talking about the famous trees of Texas, and I think... We love our trees.

I love our live oaks here in Texas, especially out here in the prairie land.

So the idea that you could stand under a tree that Sam Houston stood under, that must really ground you to the past and the history.

- And it makes you appreciate your environment.

And that's really what history, I think, ought to be about, is letting you have a feeling for, not to be able to memorize a lot of dates and names, but to have a feeling for how we got to where we are now.

- I wanna go back to your comment on the historical markers, because there's some hijinks in some of these chapters here, where as you mentioned, they get moved around, they're not where they're supposed to be.

Can you talk more about how that happens?

- There was one marker that the local residents in two different counties had a divergent idea about where it ought to be.

And sometime in the middle of the night in 1964, they took a marker that had been there since 1936, and moved it from one county to another.

And they were so sure that they were right, they actually put their initials and the date in the bottom of the marker, and nobody found it for another 30, 40 years that it had been moved.

I guess the, you know, it's in a remote area.

And so anyway, when it was finally found that it had been moved, some people were horrified, some people... And they'd also actually ground down the inscription that was on the marker, and taken it off, and written their own inscription, so... - So this isn't just a couple of joy riders moving a marker.

I mean, this was a concerted effort.

- These things weigh hundreds of pounds, they're solid granite, and they must have had a fair amount of help.

But anyway, once it was discovered, the Texas Historical Commission, who actually owns the markers, said, "Oh my gosh, we'll fix this."

But they left the phony inscription on there, and put the new inscription on the other side, because now the phony inscription was part of the history.

So it's the only, as far as I know, historical marker in Texas that has two inscriptions on it that say different things.

- Sure.

And that, I feel like that's worth seeing just as another piece of local history.

- That was fun, yes.

- How long would this, and I know you said you didn't take this journey all in one trip, but if we were to drive from end to end, about how long would it take us, and then how long did it take Sam Houston to do it?

- Well, it took him 20 some, well, 30, maybe 40 days.

It was from March through April, early March through the end of April, April 21st, as we all know, March 11th through April 21st, so you could add that up.

But it's about, if you drove it, it's 160, 170 miles, and you could probably do it in a day, not if you stopped at every stop.

I didn't do it that way.

And in fact, the book is designed to work, even if you didn't do it sequentially.

Each one is a little self-contained story.

So it's not required that you start in Gonzales, and go here, go there, go there.

You may want to, if you get interested in this, and I think it's a wonderful story, because this is how Sam Houston won the war.

Everybody knows about the Alamo, but the Alamo was a loss.

The Alamo was not a winning strategy, to stand there and defend a fixed object against a huge external force that's gonna overwhelm you.

That's not how you win a war.

Sam Houston was about winning, and he was about zigzagging across the country, out-maneuvering the army that was trying to kill him.

And that's why there are so many little movements in here.

- As you say, this isn't a full accounting of everything that happened, and there are big history books that do those full accountings.

But I do wanna touch on something you just mentioned, which is his strategy, and the dissent that maybe it caused among the men, because he had the knowledge of what happened at the Alamo.

And not right at first, but then later, he had the knowledge of what happened at Goliad.

And this is weighing heavily on him, but he also has the knowledge of how small his force is, how large their force is, and what is his only chance to make this stand work.

- Yes.

His force started out with 300 men, and when you lose 185, or 189 at the Alamo, his army would've been half again as large if he had had those men, those are experienced wonderful people.

And then the same thing at Goliad, there were 400 people who were slaughtered there, so he would've had a much larger army, and his job would've been much easier.

But his strategy was to out-maneuver them, and he didn't tell any of his soldiers what he was doing.

And that was on purpose.

And they all wanted, they were all angry.

They wanted to stand and fight.

Many of 'em just had shotguns.

They were not really well prepared for war, but they were angry and wanted to fight, and Houston knew they basically have probably one good battle in 'em, and that's all.

And I don't wanna win a lot of small battles.

If I can out-maneuver 'em and wait for Santa Anna to make a mistake, and I can catch him somehow, I can win, but I can only win once.

And it worked out, in part, one of the things that Houston was worried about is that some of his men would be captured by the Mexican army and would spill the beans on his strategy.

So he kept it to himself, and sure enough, one of the guys was captured, and sure enough, he spilled the strategy.

He said, "Oh, well, the Texas government has just escaped, and they're going to Harrisburg, but Sam Houston is a coward, and he's taking his men to the United States to be safe."

And that was exactly what spurred Santa Anna to say, "Okay, I'm going right to Harrisburg to get those guys, to get the Texas government."

And that was a chapter called Almost Checkmate, and he missed them by just a few hours in Harrisburg.

But if he had gotten them, he would've killed the president, President Burnet, and all his cabinet, and the war would've been over, because Sam Houston's army wouldn't have a government that supported him anymore.

But they just barely missed it.

And then the president of Texas was going to take a boat to Galveston, and Santa Anna sent 30, no, 50 cavalry after him down to, it's now... Well, it was New Washington at the time.

It's now Morgan's Point, it's called.

But he sent them down, and they arrived just as the boat was leaving the shore.

And these are 50 Mexican riflemen who were ready to start firing on a boat with the entire Texas government, all the officials, in one rowboat rowing out, and the president of Texas had his wife with him.

And he personally stood up to draw fire to himself away from his family.

The Mexican colonel saw that, and ordered his men to cease fire, and that would've entered the war right there.

But he said, "No, we're not gonna kill women."

And that, so it was that close, several times.

- There's a lot of close calls, quick decisions.

I mean, certainly, Sam Houston was a very smart strategist, but he also was very lucky, I think in some moments.

- He got lucky on a couple of things like that.

But the overall strategy was basically Napoleon's strategy.

You know, Napoleon was around until 1813.

Sam Houston was in the war of 1812 as an officer.

I'm sure he learned Napoleonic strategy.

And a lot of the Napoleonic strategy was travel light, be maneuverable, and don't focus on the small wins, focus on one big total annihilation.

Plus Sam Houston, as we all know, had lived with the Indians.

And he learned Indian warfare, which was a lot of retreat, a lot of feinting, a lot of ambush.

And that's exactly what I think fed his strategy.

And the interesting thing, you know, everything was against him.

The men hated him, at least for a long time.

The weather was bad.

He had the whole runaway scrape.

He had all of, he had destroyed Gonzales.

He ordered that Gonzales be burned.

All the people who lived there, the women and children had nowhere to go.

They were tagging along with the army.

So he had all of these poor people that he tried to take care of along the way.

He had everything going against him.

But the president of Texas ordered him to stop, and stand, and fight, and he wouldn't do it.

And so the president sent in Thomas Rusk, the Secretary of War, who was officially Sam Houston's boss.

And Rusk's role was to come in and take over if Sam Houston still refused to stop and fight.

And they had a meeting, and he told Rusk what his strategy was.

And Rusk, I think was the only person that understood the strategy, and he became a supporter after that.

- It's so interesting to try and strip away what we think of as Sam Houston, the legend, the myth.

I mean, one of our largest cities is named for him.

But to go back to this moment where he was not well liked, not well loved by his men, everyone was against him.

But this is why he's a legend now.

This decision making like this that is the reason we revere him so highly.

And it comes to an idea, we had an earlier conversation about can one person really change history, and did Sam Houston do that?

- He absolutely did.

I think his strategy, any other strategy would've lost, I think.

But he was the right man for the right time, and he won big, and he loved Texas.

- He certainly did.

And his story is so fascinating.

I think we can get caught up in the myth.

But what I like about this book, and I've had another book about Sam Houston on here, is to talk about the man, to learn about the man and his thought processes, that to me, that's much more interesting than just the legend of Sam Houston.

- There's a great book, one of the primary sources that's in the book, I forget...

Title is My Master, and it was written by Jeff Hamilton, who was a young slave who Sam Houston bought in the 1850s at a slave market in Huntsville.

And Hamilton was with him his whole life as his driver and his servant after the war.

And when he was in his late 90s, he dictated in two days his memories of living with Sam Houston, and it's a wonderful story.

- I'm gonna read that, that sounds great.

(Dave laughing) I also wanna ask, you mentioned this a little bit, but about the Alamo, that's a big loss, but we all know the story of the Alamo.

Goliad is a big loss, we all know that story.

And they're great stories, we should remember the sacrifices those people made.

But also this story, this is the story of victory though.

This is the opposite story.

- This is a winning strategy that was implemented under great stress, and he won.

- Going back to the process of finding all these sites, I do want to highlight that not every single one is completely accessible to the public.

You can maybe see them from the road, but you can't access them.

What's the mixture, would you say, of public and private?

- Everything that I tried to do is based on publicly available information.

So I didn't, for example, at Morgan's Point, I wanted to see right where that rowboat was taking off.

But you can't get to that exact spot, because it's a container port now, and they're moving containers in and out.

Now, I probably could have written to management, and gotten permission to get a tour to see the spot, but I didn't.

I did everything that a normal end user would do.

And I would say 80 to 90% of them are visible from the roadway, if you can't go directly to them.

Many of 'em are in a park now, or something like that.

There are a few that you...

I went down a dirt road, and I got, I wanted to get to this one spot, and you get to the gate that says no trespassing, and I say, "Okay, well, that's as far as I'm going."

- Sure.

This is not a state we wanna be trespassing in.

(laughs) - I don't do a lot of trespassing.

I try not to.

- No, no.

I also, the point about the containers is another very stark difference of where we are today versus where they would've been, 'cause I'm sure back then, it was just open water, and now, it's a shipping port, it's industrial.

- They were still doing shipping, and in fact, that is where, supposedly, Santa Anna showed up after the cavalry event with Colonel Almonte, when he didn't kill the president.

Santa Anna showed up, and that's where he allegedly met the Yellow Rose of Texas, who was loading cargo on the dock.

And that's, at least that's part of the myth, we don't know for sure.

- Was there any spot that was particularly difficult to find that gave you the most trouble?

- No.

Well, there were some that took more inferences than others.

There's one spot in North Houston that is...

There are various neighborhoods that claim it, and claim that Sam Houston stayed here, stayed here.

But when you read the original documentation, it says, well, it was at the head of a bayou, and it was near the pine forest, the end of the pine forest.

And so I found, got the geological maps, and saw exactly where the source of this hunting bayou was.

And I said, "Okay, well it's gonna be in this area, then, it's not over there."

So it was difficult.

It took some inference, and I had to knock around a little bit.

But no, I think I've satisfied myself.

Now, some of these may still be questionable, you know, and I'm sure some people, I hope, will have better ideas, and better information than I had.

But again, everything was done with public information.

- Right, right.

Well, unfortunately, we're running a little short here on time.

So in our final two minutes, what do you hope people take away from the book, but also just the project of following in history's footsteps?

- The value of local history, the value of understanding your environment around you, what happened there, and how that fits in with the overall picture.

And if you get an interest in that, at that level, then you'll go out and read the thick history books, and see how it integrates into everything.

But this is a book to get you out of the library and exploring.

- I think it's the perfect book to do that.

I unfortunately wasn't, you know, I had to read it for the show, but I certainly wanted to get out.

You write in a way that made me wanna go see these, and there are pictures.

I mean, there's, we didn't say this.

There are lots of pictures in the books to help you to kind of orient yourself, but I can imagine it's nothing like standing in that spot.

- It's such a thrill to know that you're standing right where Sam Houston stood on a specific date.

And you can do it, because it's Texas.

- It is, and as you said, a lot of these are parks, and have historic sites, and markers.

And I think it's a fun way to hopefully take a field trip, but maybe just take your family.

If you've got an afternoon, they're spread around.

You can just, like you said, you don't have to do it all in one go.

Just pick a spot, go there, and just learn a little something.

I think that's a wonderful idea.

- Well, thank you.

- Thank you so much for being here.

I really appreciate it, and I love this idea of making it accessible and easy to find, so thank you for doing this.

- All righty.

- That is all the time we have for today.

Thank you so much for joining me.

The book again is The Road to San Jacinto, and I will see you again soon.

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