Given
a chance to talk to anyone
from Texas history I would not pick Sam
Houston, Davy Crockett or even Bigfoot
Wallace but instead I would like to hear the stories of Creed Taylor because
he saw more of the most interesting pieces of Texas
history than anybody else. He was one of the fortunate few who grew up with
Texas and one whose personal history most closely
matches the state’s.
Born in Alabama in 1820, he came to Texas
when he was four years old. Creed was 15 when he defended the “Come
and Take It” cannon at Gonzales,
one of the earliest skirmishes in the fight for Texas independence. By the time
he was 16 he had served as a soldier and scout in the revolution, led his family
to safety during the Runaway
Scrape following the fall of the
Alamo, and hooked up with the Texas army again in time to fight at the Battle
of San Jacinto.
With independence won, Creed Taylor turned his attention
to fighting the Comanche. He was at the pivotal Battle
of Plum Creek, the beginning of the end of the Comanche reign in Central Texas.
He was with Matthew Caldwell at that battle and also fought Comanches with Col.
Jack Hays at Bandera Pass and participated in many other skirmishes.
When
a renegade soldier of fortune gathered forces to take back Texas for Mexico, Taylor
volunteered for duty again and turned back the advancing troops at the battle
of Salado Creek near San Antonio.
There, Hays and 50 or so men lured the Mexican soldiers from the confines of the
Alamo into a trap set by Caldwell.
Taylor, Henry McCullough and half a dozen other men covered Hays’ furious race
back to Salado Creek. During the chase the 20-year old Creed Taylor and McCullough
escaped an estimated 100 to 200 shots without a scratch, though Taylor was wounded
later in the battle.
We
see Taylor in the historical record again in 1846 with the Texas Ranger during
the Mexican War, where he served with Samuel H. Walker, who is perhaps best known
as the namesake of the Colt Walker firearm. In 1864, at the age of 44, he signed
up with Col. John S. “Rip” Ford, another man who got to see a lot of Texas history
first-hand.
One
of the stories for which Taylor is known today concerns his role in a grisly prank
played by Bigfoot
Wallace and recorded for posterity by J. Frank Dobie. An erstwhile officer
in the Mexican army known as Vidal used the ruse of being a Texas patriot to establish
a horse-stealing ring. The thefts were invariably blamed on the Comanches. One
day when Creed Taylor was away fighting a band of marauding Comanches, Vidal and
his gang gathered up a bunch of horses and headed off toward Mexico with them.
Among the horses thus obtained were some that belonged to Taylor and some
more than belonged to a Mexican rancher named Flores; Taylor and Flores set off
in hot pursuit. Along the way they met up with Bigfoot
Wallace, whose heart overflowed with joy at the prospect of chasing down some
horse thieves.
The three men eventually caught up with Vidal and killed
him and his compadres. They cut off Vidal’s head and tied the rest of the former
rustler onto the back of a mustang and sent the horse and rider off into the world
to establish the enduring story of the headless horseman of South Texas.
As for Taylor, he returned to ranching and was present for the entire Taylor-Sutton
feud, the longest running and bloodiest feud in the history of the state.
The killing and counter-killing and collateral damage went on for the better part
of two decades but Creed Taylor lived on.
Late in his life he supposedly
told his story in the book “Tall Men With Long Rifles” but the title alone
suggests there may be problems with the narrative. Historian Charles M. Yates
has studied the manuscript and correspondence relating to the book and concluded
that there is no evidence that the author, James T. DeShields ever actually talked
to Taylor.
If I could, I would.
© Clay
Coppedge December
9, 2011 Column
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