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| Michael Ome Untiedt: On the Nueces Strip. Rangers and Another Heye Saddle. San Antonio, Briscoe Western Art Museum |
A man gallops his horse up a dusty path. Judging by the starry sky, It’s night, but there must be a full moon because the rider casts a moon-shadow on the trail. The rider looks back at two pursuing men, also riding full-tilt, trying to catch him. Way in the background are some darker hills with a few lights of a town at their base. The brushstrokes are broad, impressionistic. In spite of the fugitive’s red shirt, moonlight makes the colors cool and ghostly.
The painter of this work is Michael One Untiedt, a contemporary Western artist and this work, entitled On the Nueces Strip: Rangers and Another Heye Saddle, is recent (2014). A lot of Untiedt’s work falls in the western genre. Some of them have historical figures such as Charlie Goodnight and Quanah Parker. Sometimes two almost identical compositions have divergent backstories, for example, On the Nueces Strip is very similar to another of his works, When Faith Takes a Fast Mount, where there is only one pursuer, the weather is stormy rather than nocturnal, and a crucifix is on a low hill to the right. On his website, the painter comments on many of his works, accompanied by photographs of them. Quite a number are night scenes; he gives tribute in these to earlier Western painters in the genre, Frederic Remington and Frank Tenney Johnson. Many are general nostalgic scenes of cowboy life, others are pure but recognizably western landscapes, and all appear to narrate something, identifiable or not.
The title “On the Nueces Strip: Rangers and Another Heye Saddle” certainly implies a specific story being told here, but unless you happen to be a die-hard Texas history buff, you are probably asking “Nueces Strip? Where is that?” “Heye Saddle—is it a type of saddle, or does it refer to one owned by somebody named Heye, or made by Heye?,” not to mention exactly what did these rangers do and when did they do it? Were they Texas Rangers, and if so, this certainly is not the major league ball club, since they’re in Arlington—nowhere near the Nueces river in south Texas.
The particular incident referred to here was a robbery of a general store on the Nueces River, the theft of eighteen valuable saddles among the loot, and the story of their recovery in 1875. The Nueces River, which flows from Edwards County in central Texas, to Corpus Christi Bay, was considered the boundary between Mexico and Texas, until Texas, the winner of the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 definitively fixed its border southward at the Rio Grande with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. But there were many Mexican citizens who had had land grants in the “Nueces Strip”—the area between the two rivers. They still considered their lands theirs, even as Anglo-American settlers began to populate the territory and take property for themselves. Conflict in the region raged for another thirty years or more. One of the biggest Mexican land-grant leaders, Juan Nepumaceno Cortina, lost a considerable amount of property claimed ancestrally by his family north of the Rio Grande in the vicinity of Brownsville. He became the leader of disenfranchised Mexicans in the region, and fought two local wars during the period 1859-1861 before he was driven back over the border.
From the end of the Civil War and later, as Anglo-American ranches were being established, great numbers of feral longhorn cattle were rounded up, claimed by the ranchers, and branded with their brands. After 1870 Cortina became active again, directing raids into the Nueces strip area, stealing cattle and looting Anglo-American settlements and ranches, taking all of it across the Rio Grande to Mexico. To Mexicans, he was Robin Hood. To many Anglo-Americans, he was more like Attila the Hun.
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| Captain Leander McNelly |
This is not the place to talk about the Texas Rangers, a sort of Texan “Special Forces” with a long and checkered history; just to mention one short part of it. A company of Rangers was commissioned by Texas Governor Edmund J. Davis to settle a long-standing feud between the Sutton and Taylor families in south Texas in 1874. It was commanded by 30-year-old Captain Leander McNelly, a Civil War veteran and former state policeman. Though they were only partially successful, McNelly was called to action again in 1875 to try and establish some law and order in the Nueces Strip. He recruited forty men, and for the next two years, often using brutal and unorthodox methods (McNelly was a disciple of the “take-no-prisoners-school), they succeeded. For a detailed account of their activities at this time, I recommend the account of the youngest member of the company, George Durham called Taming the Nueces Strip.”
Untiedt’s painting invokes this campaign. The San Antonio Daily Express sounded a general alarm about the threatening situation on the Nueces Strip on May, 20, 1875. Cortina sent out four groups of marauders consisting of Mexicans and some allied American over the border five days later. Three were soon repulsed, but the fourth group charged north, heading towards Corpus Christi. On the way, they destroyed ranches and homesteads, raided a store run and owned by George Franks, and took some prisoners of both genders, driving them in front as human shields and/or bargaining chips.
On March 26 (Good Friday), they reached Nuecestown, a small place then, and now absorbed into Corpus Christi. There, they attacked the general store owned by Thomas J. Noakes, who was also the town’s postmaster. Noakes, knowing of the local potential for disaster, had dug a tunnel under the house, where he hid after shooting one of the robbers, and then realizing the overwhelming odds against him. His five children escaped to the river, but Noakes’s wife Martha took a stand. As the robbers attempted to set fire to the store, she managed to douse it twice before ducking inside to grab her feather comforter. One of the Anglo robbers, described by her with a distinctive facial scar, beat her severely with his riding quirt, but she eventually escaped, quilt and all. T.J. Noakes survived as well, but the store was completely sacked and burned before the banditsrode away.
Among their haul were eighteen luxury saddles, heavily adorned with silver in distinctive pattern and design, manufactured by Dietrich Heye of San Antonio.
This robber band was prevented by traveling further by a posse who came down from Corpus Christi, and other armed locals. Retribution was evidently very intense and violent, but did nothing to stop the lawless carnage between both Mexicans and Anglos in the region over the next month.
According to George Durham, when NcNelly and his rangers Nuecestown and the site of the burned store, he gave his men very specific instructions.
Captain seemed mighty concerned about those eighteen saddles. He got Mike Dunn
[one of the prisoners the posse freed from the gang after the raid] to give him a good
picture of them—length of the tapideros, if the skirts were cinched. He wanted all
details…and ordered: “Describe those saddles to the Rangers. Make sure they
understand exactly. Then order them to empty those saddles on sight. No palavering
with the riders. Empty them. Leave the men where you drop them and bring the
saddles to camp.”
The following month, McNelly and his rangers caught up with many of the raiders at the salt marsh of Palo Alto, north of Brownsville. He and his men slaughtered them all—and George himself killed the scarfaced man who beat up Mrs. Noakes. McNelly had the bodies brought back to Brownsville and stacked them in a public square—shocking friends as well as the unsympathetic. A tally of the loot recaptured from the battle included twenty-two pistols, twelve rifles and fourteen saddles. Durham reported that
Nine of the saddles…look to be almost brand new. they are dandies. Garnished with
two-inch silver conchos, foot-long tapaderos. The first ones I’ve seen. Came from Dick
Heye saddlery in Santone. “Captain perked up and said, ‘Let’s have a look at them.
Sounds like they’re part of the plunder taken up in Nuecestown in a raid last
March.” They were. No mistaking them.
Befitting their special value, Cortina had given them to his trusted and honored lieutenants. McNelly, in the instructions to his men, practiced what art historians call “connoisseurship:” analyzing the traits of a distinctive style to determine the authenticity of a work of art. It worked for the art of saddles too.
McNelly died young at 33. He had been suffering from tuberculosis and had originally migrated to Texas from Louisiana in search of drier air. He lived long enough to conduct more skirmishes along the Rio Grande, including one over the border in Mexico itself. The Nueces Strip was pacified, but the Rio Grande is, to this day as we well know, a volatile border.
T.J. Noakes got these saddles back—and eventually all eighteen—plus seven more! They were evidently prized targets. The problem was, according to Durham at least, they had morphed from notable to notorious—no one wanted to buy them, given their history.
So who knows which incident in this border war involving Heye saddles, if any, is the specific pursuit depicted in Untiedt’s painting? It’s more a poetic narration of pursuit—and for this writer, a lot more moving and impressive than such standard “western issue” paintings depicting Captain McNelly by Joe Grandee or Clyde Heron.
Part of the irony of it all, is that no part of the saddle and its rich adornments is visible in the painting, but visitors to the gallery where the painting is hung can examine a genuine Heye saddle, with all its silver concho trimmings (Durham mentions that these were particularly large), and characteristically long and silver-plated tapaderos (stirrup covers) on display in the same room.
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| Diedrich Heye and his workers, 110 Commerce St., San Antonio |
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| The Site of the Original Saddlery Today |
It would be cool to say that this particular saddle was actually part of the Nuecestown loot, but it isn’t, for the firm of D. Heye and his sons kept the enterprise going well into second third of the 20th century. Deidrich Heye was part of a wave of German settlers who came to central Texas during the mid 19th century. Born in Holstein in 1837, he received his initial training in saddlery in his native country, then moved on to an apprenticeship in England, which had the reputation for being the best in the business. He then moved on to Mexico city, where he learned the art of silver-decorated saddles, the basis for the American western saddle. He came to San Antonio in 1866, where he set up a shop on Commerce Street, then the principal business street in the city. He and his workers quickly built up a reputation for quality saddlery, and prospered during the period of the cattle drives during the next two decades. The firm produced work saddles too, but the Heye saddle became the darling of wealthy stockmen, with their distinctive concho pattern and quality leather work (Durham called them “the Cadillac of Saddles).”
Heye died in 1896, but he had taught his trade to his sons, and later the business was continued by his grandson. Among other projects, the Heye enterprise made many of the saddles for Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, who trained in San Antonio. Later on, they became saddle makers to Hollywood cowboy stars and wealthy ranchers, and as automobiles displaced horses as transportation, they branched out into all sorts of luxury leather goods, including fancy luggage.
Over their long business operation, the enterprise moved several times to larger quarters, but the upper facade of the original workshop is marked by a commemorative sign that still reads “G. Heye, Est. 1867” (it is now occupied by the Coyote Ugly Saloon).
The saddle on exhibition at the Briscoe Museum was made for Rex Stout, a now-forgotten country singer who was popular in the mid-20th century, and so was presumably custom made at that time. It has the characteristic conchos and silver-adorned tapaderos. I can’t say how closely it resembled the Diedrich (or Dick) Heye saddles of the 1870’s, but I think it’s terrific that it occupies the same gallery as Untiedt’s painting, so you can really understand what the painter’s reference is.
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| The Rex Stuart Heye Saddle. Briscoe Museum of Western Art |
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| Rex Stuart (?) |
But it gets even better: the D. Heye original San Antonio saddlery site, nicely marked, is just one block north of the Briscoe Museum—you could even see it from a window in the gallery if it weren’t blocked by a parking garage. For Art Historians, it is completely rare for a work of art, its iconographical source and the location of its origins are all in the same place. We should all go to Coyote Ugly after a Briscoe Museum visit and raise a glass to Heye, McNelly, Untiedt and brave Martha too!
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Michael Ome Untiedt’s personal website is at: https://michaeluntiedt.weebly.com
There are numerous recounting of the attack on the Nuecestown store. Though it was written down nearly 50 years after it happened, there is the eyewitness account by former “Little McNelly” George Durham (written in 1934 as told to Clyde Wantland, it was not published until 1962):
George Durham (told to Clyde Wantland), Taming the Nueces Strip. The Story of McNelly’s Rangers. UT Press, Austin 1962
Leopold Morris, “The Mexican Raid on Corpus Christi,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Vol. 4, No. 2 (October 1900), pp. 128-139
William A. Hager, “The Nuecestown Raid of 1875: A border Incident,” Arizona and the West, No. 3 (Autumn, 1959), pp. 258-270
More contemporary newspaper accounts:
Noakes’s account in the Galveston News:
“Statement of the Postmaster at Nueces. A Narrow Escape from Death,” Galveston News, March 30, 1875, p. 1.
Consequences of the battle in the salt marsh at Palo Alto:
”Letter from Brownsville” The San Antonio Daily Express, May 29, 1875, p.2
Diedrich Heye’s Obituary:
“Death of an Old Citizen,” The San Antonio Daily Light, February 26, 1896, p. 2
A brief history of the Heye Saddlery:
“Identified With Growing Cattle Business,” San Antonio Express, October 25, 1935, p. 16.
