A New History of Old Texas
Arts & Culture Podcasts
Explore the history of early Texas as you’ve never heard it before. The most recent season ("Lipan Apocalypse") unveils the legacy of the Lipan Apaches on modern Texas. Season 6 recounts the outsized impact of José Francisco Ruíz on the state's history. Season 5 traces the roots of Texans' unique psychology - their "Texanity" - to the technological innovations that shaped its people. Season 4 relates the largely unknown story of the Republic of the Rio Grande. Season 3 tells the remarkable tale of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his journey across the North American continent. Season 2 covers the Battle of Medina, the largest, bloodiest battle in Texas history...and the narrowing search for the battlefield itself! And Season 1 traces the identity of modern-day Texas to the first 160 years or so of San Antonio's history. -- As seen and heard on Texas Standard, KSAT12, Texas Public Radio, the San Antonio Express-News, the San Antonio Report, the Austin Chronicle, and more! --
Location:
United States
Description:
Explore the history of early Texas as you’ve never heard it before. The most recent season ("Lipan Apocalypse") unveils the legacy of the Lipan Apaches on modern Texas. Season 6 recounts the outsized impact of José Francisco Ruíz on the state's history. Season 5 traces the roots of Texans' unique psychology - their "Texanity" - to the technological innovations that shaped its people. Season 4 relates the largely unknown story of the Republic of the Rio Grande. Season 3 tells the remarkable tale of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his journey across the North American continent. Season 2 covers the Battle of Medina, the largest, bloodiest battle in Texas history...and the narrowing search for the battlefield itself! And Season 1 traces the identity of modern-day Texas to the first 160 years or so of San Antonio's history. -- As seen and heard on Texas Standard, KSAT12, Texas Public Radio, the San Antonio Express-News, the San Antonio Report, the Austin Chronicle, and more! --
Language:
English
Website:
http://www.brandonseale.com
Episodes
Triumph and Tragedy, Tolerance and Toughness
9/16/2024
This is the audio from my October 2024 SA PechaKucha talk, which you can find on YouTube as well. As a summary of my thoughts after thinking deeply about San Antonio and early Texas history for the last decade, I'm pretty happy with it. But I'll admit that it's a little incomplete.
BTW, the punchline (which you can't see in the audio version) is the picture of the Alamo that I throw on the screen at the end...the "two-sided tactical miscalculation that we turned into the most celebrated defeat in American history."
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:07:15
The Battlefield(s) of Medina?
6/6/2024
We found another site. But so did someone else. And there's a rumored fourth site out there as well now? What in the name of Miguel Menchaca's ghost is going on?
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:13:41
Apache Empire
1/4/2024
Thanks to the horse, Plains Apaches expand their influence over an increasingly broad swath of the Great Plains and Northern Mexico. In the course of one remarkable generation, they drive the Spanish out of New Mexico and absorb their old Jumano rivals, despite an epic last-ditch effort by Jumano Captain Juan Sabeata to frustrate them.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:23:38
Changing Woman
1/4/2024
A new Spanish outpost on the San Antonio River represents an opportunity and a threat to the Apaches' Texas plains trade. The great empires test each other with equal turns generosity and violence. And a new rival appears on the Texas Plains.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:21:48
Unshared Sovereignty
1/4/2024
In the turmoil of the War for Mexican independence, Lipan Captain Cuelgas de Castro emerges as a beacon of stability in Texas. Perhaps no one saw the Texas geopolitical checkerboard better at this moment. Captain Cuelgas de Castro wins for his people recognition by the new Emperor of Mexico. But it won't be enough to secure true sovereignty for his people.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:25:50
El día de los gritos
1/4/2024
All pretense of accommodation with Native Americans disappears in the 1870’s. Lipanes are pursued equally and openly by American and Mexican forces on both sides of the border. One-by-one, they see their old native rivals picked off and carted off to reservations. But the Lipan Apaches refuse to play the doomed savage. After a brutal massacre by US Army troops at their sacred El Remolino site, they declare “war with the whole world.”
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:35:09
Alliance and Advantage
1/4/2024
Proto-Apaches, Jumanos, and Puebloans vie for control of the Texas Plains in the face of Spanish entradas, epidemics, and slaving expeditions.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:16:37
Lipanes at Last
1/4/2024
Following the great peace of 1749, San Antonio becomes the great outlet for native North American trade and for the mediation of Native Texas culture into Spanish society. In turn, Texas Apaches commit to a symbiotic existence with the settler communities around them, and come to take on a distinct identity as “Lipan” Apaches – the "People of the In-Between."
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:30:45
San Sabá
1/4/2024
In the course of a single generation, Spanish policy toward Lipan Apaches shifts from alliance to extermination. But a generation of alliance-making by Lipan Captain Bigotes makes the Lipan alliance more powerful than ever. They beat back the Comanches to the Red River and the Spanish to a line of presidios that still cuts across the North American continent like a scar as the US-Mexico border.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:31:16
Indios Bárbaros
1/4/2024
Spanish army officers prove reluctant to change their mindset, however, even as the Lipan alliance under the great Captain Picax-Andé brings to a definitive halt the advance of Spanish conquest.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:21:58
The Unbroken
1/4/2024
Pressed on all sides by European and native rivals, the Lipanes never should have survived into the nineteenth century. Yet not only had they survived, they had done so with their numbers and their range undiminished. They were wealthier than ever, and more powerful too, and would play a vital role in driving the Spanish out of Texas for good.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:24:33
Fidelity to the Texian
1/4/2024
No Native Texan captured Anglo-Texians’ hearts like Lipan Captain Flacco the Younger. His exploits as a Texas Ranger and his people’s defense of Texas’ borders against Mexico make him the darling of Texas newspapers. Texas newspapers fail to distinguish, however, between hostile native Texans and Lipanes living in their midst. And Lipan wealth becomes an irresistible target of Texian raiding and retaliation.
Painting of Flacco the Younger by Jay Hester, available online.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:25:16
Grass Will Not Grow on the Path between Us
1/4/2024
The Lipan Apaches become proxies for a Texian guerilla war against northern Mexico, until Texian policies cut them off from their lands and their livelihoods. Ever adaptable, the Lipanes flip the script, relocating to their old haunts in Mexico and raiding Texas property. The Texas-Mexico border itself – and the freedom it offers – becomes an artifact of enduring Lipan resistance during these years. The annexation of Texas, however, unbalances the playing field in an oddly legalistic way.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:22:59
Bronco Apaches
1/4/2024
The United States dispenses with the pretense of Native American sovereignty and adopts a policy of forced assimilation. Mexico waxes poetic about the “cosmic race” while sending airplanes to track down "Apaches broncos” living free in the mountains. The Lipan Apaches avoid the reservation by dispersing and using the reservation system to project their power and spread their religious ceremonies to the native communities of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Chihuahua, and Coahuila.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:23:43
Emergence
1/4/2024
Contrary to popular usage, an “Apocalypse” isn't an ending. In Greek it means an “unveiling," an "uncovering," a “revelation.” But what have we really revealed about the most powerful, most unconquerable, most exceptional people in Texas history?
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:23:21
The Whirlwind
1/4/2024
Killer-of-Enemies teaches the proto-Apaches, the “Nde,” how to treat with the peoples they meet as they descend into the Texas panhandle: the Puebloans to the west, the Jumanos to the South, and the Caddoan-speakers to the east. Yet the arrival of yet another newcomer – this one from across the ocean – challenges the diplomatic skills of even the most effective Nde alliance-makers.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:18:19
The Last Lipanes
1/1/2024
Intro to Brandon Seale's podcast on the Lipan Apaches.
Despite centuries of conflict with Spanish, Mexican, Texan, United States, and native rivals, the Lipan Apaches managed to do what perhaps no other native community in the United States has been able to: carve for themselves a place in their ancestral homeland without surrendering it.
Join us this season on “Lipan Apocalypse” as we pull back the veil on the Lipanes in our midst and their outsized legacy on modern Texas.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:07:59
The Conscience of a Republic
12/21/2023
José Francisco Ruíz's reputation and personal relationships went a long way toward preserving Tejanos' status in the newly independent Republic of Texas. They weren't enough, however, to ensure true equality. That was a fight that his nephew, his great-great-grandson, and many other Tejanos would have to carry on. Yet Ruíz's life stands as perhaps the best and fullest exemplar of a Tejano Patriot.
Click here to purchase the complete audiobook of "Tejano Patriot" by Art Martínez de Vara and read by Brandon Seale.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:16:13
The Die is Cast
12/14/2023
For the fourth time in his life, José Francisco Ruíz had to decide where his loyalties lie: to his flag or to his ideology. In 1835, however, there would be no hesitation. Too old now to carry a rifle, Ruíz became a sort of "first quartermaster" of the 1835-36 Texas Revolution, in addition to one of only two Texas-born signers of this second Texas declaration of Independence. His support for the cause of Texas independence was among the most crucial factors holding together the Tejano-Anglo alliance of 1836, for all of the uncertainties that Tejanos would face in an Anglo-dominated republic.
Click here to purchase the complete audiobook of "Tejano Patriot" by Art Martínez de Vara and read by Brandon Seale.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:15:25
Immigrants and Indians
12/7/2023
1820's East Texas was a melting pot of native Texans, old time Tejanos, Indian immigrants pushed out of the United States, and newcomer Anglos. For all their distaste of José Francisco Ruíz's revolutionary past, the old Mexican officer corps had no choice but to turn to him once again to manage the chaos. It would leave Ruíz more disillusioned than ever with the prospects for Mexico.
Click here to purchase the complete audiobook of "Tejano Patriot" by Art Martínez de Vara and read by Brandon Seale.
www.BrandonSeale.com
Duration:00:09:16