Yucatan Soldiers' Burial Site

In early 1836, General Jose Urrea, governor of Durango, Mexico, was sent northeast by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to fight Texas colonists seeking independence. With superior numbers, he won easy victories at and near San Patricio, about 40 miles southwest of here. At mission Nuestra Senora del Refugio, however, his troops, made up mainly of non-Spanish-speaking Yucatanians pressed into service by Santa Anna, met heavy resistance from the townsmen of Refugio, and Urrea lost many men in action. After Texas volunteers under Captain Amon B. King and Lieutenant Colonel William Ward left the mission, Urrea prevailed. Following the looting of Refugio, he ordered his dead dragged into a four-foot by four-foot ditch that a colonist named Poland had used as a fence around his town lot. Eyewitness Sabina Brown said the bodies formed a stack as large as twenty cords of wood, and when the ditch was filled, it became the common grave of these Yucatanians.

Refugio, Texas · United States