Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Wednesday, July 12, 2000

Padre Island's sands of history

A poet once wrote about leaving footprints on the sands of time, a line that always reminds me of Padre Island. The longest barrier island in the world has seen a lot of footprints in its sandy history.
   Not long after Columbus discovered this continent, Spanish explorers called the 112-mile-long island, which is shaped like a skinny string bean, Isla Blanca. Later it was called Isla Santiago, Isla de Corpus Christi, Isla San Carlos de los Malaguitos, and Isla del Padre Balli.
   In 1553, in Veracruz, a fleet of 20 galleons hoisted anchors to sail for home. This treasure fleet sailed through the Gulf in fine weather, touched at Havana, and then were caught in a storm near the Bahamas. Three ships went down, four sailed on for Spain, while 13 others were forced back across the Gulf, running before the storm. These ships were wrecked on Isla Blanca. For 300 survivors, it was the worst place they could have landed, halfway up the island, near where the Karankawas had a camp.
   The survivors recuperated on the beach. Karankawas brought fish, started a fire, made signs of friendship. As the Spaniards grabbed broiled fish from the hot coals, the Indians attacked. The Spaniards fled into the dunes and used two crossbows to drive the Indians back.
   As the Spaniards fled down the island, they were attacked by the relentless Karankawas. The Spaniards reached a pass and made driftwood rafts to cross. A monk accidentally threw over a parcel containing their two crossbows. The Indians captured two men, stripped them of their clothes and turned them loose. The Spanish decided the Indians wanted their clothes; men, women and children took off their garments and piled them on the sand. A man refused to give up his red coat; the Indians noticed the action and targeted him. After he was killed in a hail of arrows, the Indians cut the red coat into shreds.
   Naked, the Spaniards ran on, parched with thirst, shells cutting their feet, the sun blistering their bodies. At every chance, the Indians attacked. Children, wounded by arrows, cried while their mothers tried to save them. The women and children were all killed by the time they reached the tip of the island. At El Paso de los Brazos de Santiago (Pass of the Arms of St. James), a canoe was found, but 50 men were slain before they could cross. They finally left the Karankawas behind, but then were attacked by another tribe. One monk, Fray Marcos de Mena, made it back to Tampico to tell the story.
   At the site of the wreckage, Francisco Vasquez found drinking water by digging deep in the sand. He hid in the wreckage, salvaged food from the ships, and waited for rescue. It came the following April when a fleet arrived to salvage the lost treasure.
   More than two centuries later, in 1804, Padre Nicolas Balli, with a grant from the Spanish crown, established a mission and ranch, Rancho de la Santa Cruz, a third way up the island from Brazos Santiago. In 1820, ranchers on the mainland, led by Father Balli, took herds of cattle across the Laguna Madre to Padre Island to preserve them from raiding parties during the Mexican revolution. Padre Balli's Rancho Santa Cruz was abandoned after a hurricane in 1844.
   Three years later, the schooner Alice Slidell (sometimes spelled Sadell) was wrecked on the island. The ship carried the family of John V. Singer, brother of the inventor of the sewing machine. Singer and his wife had planned to establish a shipping business at Port Isabel.
   After they were wrecked on the island, the Singers made a sailcloth tent and settled down. They built a house of driftwood and bought part of Padre Balli's ranch. The Singers ran cattle and combed the island for salvage. After oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1859, Singer tried to convince Eastern capitalists there was oil on the island; he had found pools of the black substance. A derrick was being built before it was discovered that the black substance was rotting vegetation. Singer's oil venture collapsed.
   At the beginning of the Civil War, the Singers, Union supporters, decided they had to leave the island. They buried jewelry, gold coins, and silver bars - worth $60,000 to $80,000 - in stone jars in the sand, within a clearly marked area.
   Singer should have known better. After every hurricane, the island recomposes itself. A storm washed over the island in 1867 and when Singer returned to dig up the hoard, the topography had changed. Gone were the markers of the plot where the jars were buried. Singer had amassed his treasure from the island and the island reclaimed it. He died at the age of 106, but he never found his money. It's still buried in the sands of Padre Island.
  
  (This is the first of two columns on Padre Island. Part two will appear next Wednesday. Source notes will be included at the end of the second column.)
  

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