(Ed.'s Note: In 1942, Harvard graduate student Leroy Graf wrote his dissertation financed by a grandson of Charles Stillman grandson depicting his commercial ventures in the Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico. A note was found in the original Stillman boxes: "The Stillman papers have been placed in Harvard College Library for the use of Mr. Leroy P. Graf in preparing an historical account of the family's early activities in Texas. While Mr. Graf is at work on this project the papers should be considered private, to be consulted by no one except with his permission. T. Franklin Currier. November, 1939." [LeRoy P. Graf, The Economic History of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1820–1875 (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1942)]
There is a special section where Graf examines the role of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, the son of![]()
Doña Estefana Goseascochea de Cortina, daughter of Salvador de La Garza, the largest landowner in Cameron County whose ranch, Rancho Viejo was established in 1770 and the King of Spain gave him the royal grant in 1781.
There is a special section where Graf examines the role of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, the son of
Unlike most Texas historians and apologists, Graf's characterization is not one that brands him as a bandit and killer, but rather takes a dispassionate overview of the maligned heir of the Espiritu Santo Grant. Some excerpts follow below.)
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The Cortina Raid: The Cortina raid and subsequent disorders of the autumn months of 1859 may be regarded as the overt, though excessively violent expression of the accumulated friction between Mexicans and Texans in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
This is not to say that the raid was originally intended to line up the two nationalities on opposite sides of the conflict, but rather that the raid, once it was undertaken, became the rallying point for all the Mexican dissatisfaction with the rule of the dominant American element.
(Footnote: Whenever the term "Mexicans" is used to describe Cortina's followers in contrast with "Americans" it is not intended to be understood as embracing all the Mexican residents on the Lower Valley. It must be remembered that on both sides of the river there were Mexicans who identified their interests with those of the American, or mercantile, population and opposed, or at least di not abet, the movements instigated by Cortina and the post-CIvil War raiders. This distinction is especially true on the American side where established Mexican landholders remained loyal to their American neighbors is so far as their own safety permitted.)
"That there was fuel for such an outburst had for some time been recognized in the Valley. The methods of the Americans in obtaining possession of the land had created considerable discontent among the land-holding Mexicans. The expense of legal proceedings together with the uncertainty of the outcome combined to persuade Mexican owners to sell to their American neighbors at low prices which they must have often regretted later.
The legality of this type of "land robbing" is not important here; what is important is that the residue of ill-feeling and the belief that there was no justice for the Mexican.
Three years before the raid the American Flag had commented on the tendency of the Americans to mistreat the Mexicans. It pointed out that offenses which were overlooked if committed by Americans were meade occasion for severe punishment if done by Mexicans.
On the other hand, some Mexicans, like Cortina, were able to control a large block of votes in an election were permitted to go about freely though under several indictments for crimes. Such evasions materially reduced respect for law among the lower class of Mexicans who had already...been impressed by a belief that the Texan claim to land south of the Nueces was far from valid."
End Part 1