Glossary

  • acequía aqueduct, irrigation ditch
  • adecuada appropriate
  • alcalde magistrate, mayor
  • ayuntamiento town council
  • belduque large sharp knife with pointed blade (possible precursor to Bowie knife)
  • burdel house of prostitution, brothel
  • El Colorado redhead; nickname for redheaded character Will Jones
  • empresario land agent in early Mexican Texas (then Coahuila y Tejas)
  • escopeta rifle, shotgun
  • esposa wife, spouse
  • estanco government-licensed shop selling tobacco products; tobacconist
  • Isleños islanders; in particular, residents of San Antonio de Béjar area who immigrated to Coahuila y Tejas from Canary Islands in the early 1700s
  • jacal shack; hut
  • jefe politico political chief of district in early Mexican Texas (then Coahuila y Tejas)
  • ladrones thieves
  • mescalito peyote button derived from peyote cactus, containing hallucinogens, particularly mescaline
  • nadar to swim
  • ojos de agua natural spring, bubbling up in limestone or other porous rock, forming a kind of pond or swimming hole
  • rubia blond
  • sal salt
  • sangre blood
  • sitio parcel of land; commonly used in Mexican Texas for land grant, the equivalent of 4,428 acres (called a league in English)
  • tuna red bulb-like fruit of Opuntia, or prickly pear cactus, also called nopales
  • counterpane bed cover, bedspread
  • dogtrot an open-ended passage running through the center of a house, flanked by living spaces on each side; style of house, also known as a breezeway house or dog-run, used throughout the southern United States during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and common in Mexican Texas in the early 1800s
  • dragoon mounted infantry using horses for mobility but dismounting to fight on foot; used throughout Europe from early seventeenth century and common in Mexican Texas in early nineteenth century
  • headright a grant (of land) formerly given one who fulfilled certain conditions relating to settling and developing land (as in Mexican Texas in the 1820s and 1830s)
  • league league of land in Mexican Texas in 1831 contained 4,428 acres
  • puncheon heavy slab of timber, roughly dressed, for use as a floorboard