DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the marker on Battleground Prairie tells it, and I'll give it to you straight as the stone does. Out here on the Guadalupe county prairie, the ground itself remembers a March day in 1839 — and what went down on it was the hard, violent end of something that had been building like a storm on the horizon. They called it the Cordova Rebellion.
And Vicente Cordova was the name at the center of it. He'd gathered a force — seventy-five men, a mix of Mexicans, Indians, and Negroes — and they were moving. Where they thought they were going, well, the prairie had other ideas.
Because waiting for them, or maybe riding hard to meet them, were eighty volunteers. Eighty men under the command of General Edward Burleson. Now, you do the math on paper and it looks about even — but battles don't get decided on paper, and this one didn't linger long in the deciding.
March 29, 1839. That's the date this ground locked into history. Burleson's volunteers hit Cordova's force right here on this prairie, and when it was over, twenty-five of the enemy were dead.
Many of the volunteers were wounded — many, the marker is careful to tell you — but not a single one of them fatally. Not one. Cordova and what remained of his force were driven from Texas entirely.
The rebellion that bore his name was finished. Done. Ended right here on this stretch of Texas ground, where the grass probably grew back quiet and ordinary come springtime, as if nothing had happened at all.
But something had. And the prairie remembers.
What the marker says
Where 80 volunteers commanded by General Edward Burleson defeated Vicente Cordova and 75 Mexicans, Indians and Negroes, March 29, 1839, and drove them from Texas, ending the "Cordova Rebellion." 25 of the enemy were killed. Many volunteers were wounded, but none fatally. 1936