It was late afternoon on March 6, 1836, when word came to the little log building at Washington-on-the-Brazos that the Texian forces defending the Alamo in San Antonio had been overrun that morning. Jose Francisco Ruiz did not record the feelings that must have flooded over him with the news but they had to have been many and deep.

Four days before he had walked to the front of that log building to be only the second to sign the document declaring Texian independence from Mexico. He and his nephew, Jose Antonio Navarro, were the only signers to have been born within the boundaries of what was now the new nation of Texas. But he was there as the elected representative of the fallen city of San Antonio. Ruiz’s son-in-law had ridden from Laredo to San Antonio bringing news of Santa Anna’s crossing of the Rio Grande, earning the right to later be called the “Paul Revere of Texas”. One of the Alamo’s commanders, Jim Bowie, was Navarro’s nephew by marriage. Members of the Navarro family were being held by Santa Anna during the siege of the old mission. And it had only been two years since Ruiz’s mother had been buried in the hard, bare soil floor of the room to the left of the main altar in the “little chapel” of the church in the Mission San Antonio de Valero, commonly known as the Alamo. The flood of 1819 had covered the graves of her family in the San Fernando Church and she had wanted a higher, drier burial.

At this point in his life, Ruiz had taken part in three rebellions and helped to put down two others. Before the year would be out he could claim to have negotiated a dozen treaties in the name of three different nations. The name given him among the most hostile, war-like Indian tribes of Texas translated roughly to “No Lie”. The report he wrote about the tribes of Texas in 1828 is perhaps the most informative written before the 20^th century. He would be dead in slightly less than four years but in just over half a century he could claim having been a teacher, lawyer, soldier, diplomat, public official, rancher, and patriot. One title he could consistently claim from the turn of the 19^th century was that of staunch federalist with a decided distrust of centralized government.

The father of Jose Francisco Ruiz had been a European-born Spaniard who came early to the New World of the 18^th century to test himself and build a life. The mother was a criollo (European Spanish blood but born in Mexico). It was in the far northern, isolated end of New Spain where the couple finally made their home along the Medina River. Only the most strong, independent, and determined of Spanish settlers came there in the early- to mid-1700s. San Antonio sat in the open plains exposed to the horseback raiders who hunted buffalo and traded in both livestock and human captives. There were Spanish settlers to the east in the relative safety of the Piney Woods but those who stood their ground around San Antonio were the toughest and none lasted to the north of de Bexar. Spain and later Mexico could never find enough hardy souls to populate this hard, dangerous land.

The Ruiz clan was joined by others of the same independent stripe with names like Perez, Navarro, Hernandez, and Casillas. But they were few in number. For many danger and hardship also offered opportunity denied elsewhere and Canary Islanders and the Basque found de Tejas a place to be accepted more on ability than breeding. Throughout Mexico the Spanish sistemade castas (caste system) held sway. The European born sat at the top while the criollo was just below them. Next came the mixed European and Indian blood of the mestizo while the Indio sat at the bottom.

On the northern frontier, the Indians were of a separate group altogether by the choice of both red and white but all the rest tended to be judged on their ability and contribution. Status tended to be determined by one’s contribution to mutual survival.

Ruiz was born in San Antonio on January 28, 1783, and was raised on the ranch a few miles to the south along the Medina. His family was far from the wealthiest of the San Antonio area but were considered leaders having come to the frontier with little and prospering by wit and effort. Jose began taking a leadership role at age 14 with the death of his father. In 1802, he was appointed as San Antonio’s first schoolmaster and he set up classes in a small house on the edge of Military Plaza built by his father in 1745. The building has since been moved to the grounds of the Witte Museum and is still used for education today. By mid-decade, he was elected regidor (city council) and by 1809 had been selected city attorney.

The strong independent nature of those who best survive the frontier of any continent does not always mix well with a heavy, centralized hand from a government convinced of its entitlements. Ruiz, who was already an officer in the Mounted Militia, led troops in the 1813 rebellion against the Spanish demanding that Texas at the very least be granted equal status with other regions of Mexico. The rebels lost the Battle of Medina in 1813 and Ruiz had a price on his head for the next nine years.

He found refuge in the woods of East Texas and the border along what was then Spanish Louisiana. From there he developed a healthy trading network bringing goods from Louisiana ports to the Indian tribes of first the Piney Woods and then finally onto the plains to deal with the Comanche and Kiowa. He came to speak the Cherokee and Comanche languages almost without flaw.

By 1822, he was offered amnesty and a commission by the Spanish if he would negotiate a treaty for them with the Comanche and Lipan Apache. He accepted and was able to create the treaty and even led a delegation of Lipan chiefs to Mexico City in September of that year.

When Mexico revolted against Spanish rule in 1824, Ruiz again joined the effort that this time proved a success. He was a strong supporter of the federalist constitution of 1824 and felt that Mexico’s best hope was to break with the top-down traditions of Europe. As a lieutenant colonel of the Mounted Militia protecting the northern frontier, he rode north to greet the first members of Stephen F. Austin’s colony of Americans. He and Austin became fast friends.

In 1826, both Ruiz and Austin led troops into East Texas to put down the misguided Fredonian Rebellion in Nacogdoches where Haden Edwards had led a land grab scheme that would have displaced Spanish/Mexican settlers of long-standing. But most of his military activity during the last half of the 1820s revolved around the Indian tribes. In 1828, he wrote “Report on the Indian Tribes of Texas, 1828” for his superiors. It stands as probably the best description of the tribes of that century. His detailed report on not just activities but customs, habits, values, rites, and language a great resource to this day.

By 1830, he was ready to retire from military life and return to ranching and family full-time. Although the events leading to the Texas Revolution requires a full discussion to completely understand, its roots were an independent culture of both the Anglo and Hispanic Texians, a refusal to allow Texas to have its own statehood within Mexico, and the dictatorial suspension of the Constitution of 1824. The flag flown at the Alamo was the Mexican tri-color with “1824” in the middle of it expressing the demand for the reinstatement of the federalist constitution which had led to the early fighting. The Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos had met, decided that independence was now their only course since the invasion by Santa Anna and declared independence. The defenders of the old mission in San Antonio were unaware of the declaration in the early morning darkness of March 6. Both before and after the Convention, Ruiz treated with the Comanche to keep them in check while the newly formed Texas government began its business. After the adoption of a constitution by the Republic of Texas, Ruiz served as a senator in the first Texas Congress. He would serve as both legislator and negotiator until his death on January 19, 1840.

There is a long, sincere letter still in the Ruiz family written by Jose to his son-in-law toward the end of 1836 expressing his great support and hopes for the new Republic of Texas as well as the warning to be ever ready because “tyrants always come back”. He understood that the struggle for freedom is a constant one.

In another letter written to a fellow signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and member of the first Texas Congressional Delegation, Ruiz lamented that the people of central Mexico might never enjoy freedom. He said that just as important as revolt against government was the revolt against the class hierarchy of “old Europe”. He feared that the mentality of the caste system could be hard to break and commented that a “fearful and compliant people could never hold freedom for long, or even seek it with the determination it requires.”

Those who value liberty might do well to listen to the ponderings of an old 19th-century freedom fighter who had a feel for the struggle that has been a part of mankind’s journey from the beginning. It might be that as hard as it is to obtain, the battle to keep and grow liberty could be the greater challenge. Those of us who have been gifted with it by centuries of sacrifice can surely betray it by becoming a “fearful and compliant people”. And we can never forget that there is always a tyrant ready to “return”. Regardless of the mistakes made in the determined quest for liberty, they will always serve us better than the mentality of a “fearful and compliant people”.