The Bloody Mexican-American War | Battlefield Detectives (S2, E5) | Full Episode

On May 8, 1846, the armies of Mexico and the United States met in battle. The Mexicans exuded confidence, fresh from winning independence from Spain. They had twice the manpower and had chosen the time and place for combat. But at some point that day, things went terribly wrong for Mexico. For more than 150 years, what really happened here has remained a mystery. Now, battlefield archaeology and cutting-edge research techniques are helping to crack the puzzle of how the Mexicans lost the Battle of Palo Alto. On these bloodstained plains, two armies fought over Texas. By day's end, hundreds of Mexican dead would litter the ground. When you hold an object like a sword hilt that has a graze in it from a shrapnel ball, and what it must have done to the individual who was holding it at the time that his hand was ripped off, you start seeing these are individuals, too. Fire! It was a bloodbath here. It was a slaughterhouse. There was a great deal of disorder among the Mexican ranks toward the end of the battle. But who can blame them after taking hours of pounding by that artillery? In 1836, the Lone Star State had declared independence from Mexico. Nine years later, Texas joined the Union. Relations between the US and Mexico deteriorated over the issue of which river divided the countries. Mexico wanted it to be the Nueces. The US wanted the Rio Grande. The war with Mexico is many years in the making. The immediate cause is the annexation of Texas by the United States. Mexico refused to recognize that as a legitimate act. But events leading up to the war really had been going on since about 1800. The Americans had been very aggressive in moving westward. But it's that final act of the United States taking Texas and adding it to the United States that brings on the war. In April 1846, Mexico laid siege to a US border fort. In response, 2,000 American soldiers were sent into the disputed territory. But 4,000 Mexican soldiers were blocking the road down to the border town of Matamoros. Both sides were led by future presidents, General Zachary Taylor at the helm of the US troops and General Mariano Arista leading the Mexicans. Todos los Yaquis! General Arista's plan was to attack Taylor's line in the middle and involve him in a battle so that he couldn't withdraw. And then around his flanks would come the cavalry. And since his line of attack was so much longer than Taylor's, he was going to surround Taylor by going around his flanks. He would be shooting at Taylor from both sides, cut him off, and then destroy him. But the battle wouldn't be decided as General Arista had hoped. By making Taylor attack them, the Mexican army should have had an advantage because in military doctrine, the defense usually has an advantage. But it turned out not to be the case. So why did the battle go wrong for Arista? Archaeologist Charles Hecker has spent the last decade uncovering the truth about Palo Alto. Today, he's investigating whether the site Arista chose for the battle played a part in his defeat. We're turning now. We're going to be looking at the location where the Mexican battle line was positioned at the first phase of the battle, where General Arista is believed to have stood during the battle to direct the troops. Actually, the battlefield is in pretty good condition after 150-some years. Relentlessly flat, Palo Alto offers no place to hide. What's more, this prairie is covered by a vicious reed called cordgrass, which can tear lakes to shreds. Down on the battlefield, Hecker is joined by ecologist Steve Wissamot. Oh, gee. This cordgrass is such a pain. Ulysses Grant is a young second lieutenant in the Battle of Palo Alto. And he describes this as sharp as darning needles. Stuff could, well, poke through your shirt. It's fairly accurate. Yeah. Look. Just like that. Yeah, imagine just poking at you like that for hours on end going through this stuff. Mexican soldiers, many of them had just sandals or even barefoot and having to go through cordgrass. How common was it at the time of the battle? I mean, it's a sea of this stuff here. What was it like then? It would have been even more common in those times. Really? Wissamot also believes the soil here might have influenced events. It's pretty sticky. Geez. And as you can tell from this particular soil, it's got a lot of clay in it. It goes from concrete when it's dry to extremely slippery, really. Would have been very difficult to walk in, to run in, very uncomfortable to spend some time in. We know from letters written by soldiers that the spring of 1846 was extremely wet, turning the clay soil of Palo Alto into a boggy marshland. To find out what it would have been like to fight on this terrain, we have brought 10 reservists of the Texas National Guard here, each carrying the equivalent weight of an 1846 infantryman's load. How you feeling, dog? The soldiers will run on dry and then on wet ground. They will measure their pulses after both tests. And stop. 5' 2". 84. 90. 88. OK, we're moving across terrain so far. We're going from 5 to 6 inch brush. We're now going on wetland instead of dry land. So we're moving from a dusty environment to a wet environment. OK, now, let's get in position. A yellow bird, a yellow bird, a yellow bill, a yellow bill. Handed on, handed on, my windowsill, my windowsill. I load him in, I load him in, with crumbs of bread, with crumbs of bread. And then I stomp his little head. The soldiers now do exactly the same run, but this time in conditions more similar to the Battle of Palo Alto. On my mark, go. Comparing both runs from the beginning, when we did our pulses on the first run, which was the dry run, I noticed the pulses were already relatively high when that was the heat index. And that's just normal movement of troops out in this heat alone. 110. 84. 148. 167. When we got into the run, when it came to the water, it was almost doubled. Unbelievably how high it went and so quickly. Because pulling out of the water, we already have, our bodies are already heated up. And then they were going at a quicker step. I'm telling you, they were really fatigued. These guys are in pretty good shape. They got their pulses up extremely high. I was surprised. So what does a modern soldier think about the location picked by General Arista? Never would we choose this as a battle site. It's wide open. In those days, I guess, if we're being comparative to what they had, artillery would be the first thing you'd be afraid of. Because you're in the open field like this, you're just an easy target. It's just a poor site. And today's warfare, we use cover and concealment constantly. There was nothing out here. The battle was lost prior to them even getting here. Defeat for Arista was still five hours away. His problem started as soon as he discovered the Americans wouldn't advance on his line. The Mexican troops would need to maneuver both men and weapons. And this would be their undoing. Here on the plains of Palo Alto near Brownsville, southern Texas, US and Mexican soldiers met in May 1846 in this, the first battle of the Mexican-American War. Despite having almost twice as many men, 400 Mexican soldiers perished, yet only five Americans died. My dear sister, no doubt but that you are uneasy on my account. Our loss of soldiers was not great. And most of them were wounded. The Mexicans lost about 300 as near as I can learn. I hope to see you all. When you actually hold in your hands a letter that's got little bits of blood and gray where sweat was bitten and writing to their wife or their girlfriend back east trying to describe what happened, that's a very powerful thing. For the last decade, Charles Hecker has been investigating the Battle of Palo Alto. He hopes that working with Karen Weaver at the battle site might help him discover the reason for Mexico's defeat. We're very fortunate to have the registers of enlistments which list either the state or the country that the different soldiers came from. We see people from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, but also a whole bunch of soldiers from Ireland. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight in a row. Right here, nine, ten. Oh my gosh, 12 and 14 years old. Oh my gosh, they're musicians. They're drummer boys. Many of the American troops were immigrants. Many were also trained in the art of warfare. Look at what their trade and occupation from Ireland. Soldier, soldier, there were a number of soldiers. These were professional. Six of them were professional soldiers. Let's see, what else can we tell from this? Well, of course, the height, simple thing like this. But look at the 5' 7", 5' 6", 5' 7", 5' 7". This is about 5' 7", 5' 8", is around the general height of the American soldier. No bodies have ever been found at the battlefield. Heavy rains after the battle disturbed the shallow graves, and the bodies were eaten by coyotes. Then in 1967, human remains were found 10 miles south of Palo Alto, where a battle took place the following day. Michael Collins was part of a team of archaeologists from the University of Texas. We thought we were going down to excavate two skeletons. And we got there, we could tell immediately that we had part of the historically recorded mass graves. This wasn't just one or two bodies, but 33 souls tossed into a deep pit. We could tell from the soil around the two skeletons that had been exposed by machinery that it was part of a much larger mass grave. These bones couldn't talk, but inside their mouths lay clues to who these soldiers really were. One very distinctive trait is the incisor teeth of American Indians have edges of the teeth curl around something we call shovel-shaped. And the teeth of these have that characteristic. Collins and the team used forensic techniques to explore both the ethnicity and the health of the soldiers. Genetically, the population of Mexico has a very strong admixture of American Indian. That's clearly expressed in these skeletons. They were between about 20 and 40 years old. Some of them weren't so young to be soldiers. Evidence of disease in the bones and previous injuries, broken bones, a broken jaw. They had a puncture wound or a bad bruise. Fighting that infection, it reaches down clear to the bone. They had been knocked around quite a bit before they got to Palo Alto. The bones by themselves do not tell us that these individuals were soldiers. The skeletal traits are consistent with soldier, but we have to have confirmation from the associated artifacts which are military uniform and from the context of having been buried on a battlefield. Only after examining both bones and artifacts could Collins be sure these bodies were Mexican. And slowly, a clear picture of the Mexican soldier came to life. When we began this project, we thought, as many people did at that time, that much of Arista's army was made up of just conscripts that were poorly trained, poorly equipped. But as we got into this and we found so many pieces of military uniform in amongst these bones, that strongly suggested that they were part of a well-trained professional army. It would seem these soldiers were on a par with US troops. So why did they suffer such a defeat? A clue could come from the reporting of George Wilkins Kendall of the New Orleans newspaper, The Daily Pecayune. This was the first war to be covered by a news correspondent. Wilkins' reports provide strong evidence of what these soldiers experienced before they died. I counted some 30 dead bodies stretched out as they fell. As they fell, stretched out in their line. They just fell right there. Some had nearly severed in two by cannonballs. Others had lost a part of the head, both legs, a shoulder, or the whole stomach. One man who had been shot between the hips with a large ball lay doubled up as he fell. Dead horses were scattered about in every direction. And the buzzards and wild dogs were fattening upon the carrion. My god, does that paint a picture? Paints a true picture of just what the, it's very powerful. Wilkins' eyewitness accounts are echoed in the evidence of the bones. Here is a lead ball embedded in the upper tibia, just below the knee. It just had enough energy to slightly shatter that bone and lodge in it. We found another one. If you take a representation of a .65 caliber ball, there's a hemispherical depression in the femur here, just above the knee. Fits perfectly with one of these balls. That one didn't even stay. It just hit and was either gouged out by the soldier or fell out. Why did Mexico suffer such a huge loss of life? Perhaps exploring the weapons used by both sides can help unravel the enigma of the Mexican debacle. On the afternoon of May 8, 1846, American and Mexican troops prepared for battle. Both General Zachary Taylor and Mariano Arista thought this would be a close combat fight. Taylor, known to his men as Old Rough and Ready, assumed infantry would save the day. Rough and Ready gained his fame from the Seminole War in the late 1830s, early 1840s. He actually won the only battle of the Seminole War. At the Seminole Wars in Florida against the Native American Indians, the bayonet served Taylor well. And he planned the same here in Palo Alto. Taylor announced to the troops before the battle that the main dependency was going to be on the use of the bayonet. And what he had planned to do was march through to Matamoros and drive the Mexicans off the road with the bayonet. Move! As events unfolded, the bayonet would have little effect here. For as soon as the battle started, American artillery took control. Moreover, decisions on the battlefield weren't made by General Taylor, but by younger officers, much lower down the echelons of the army. And so on the surface, that seems like that would be a disadvantage. But it really turns out to be an advantage for Taylor. Many of the junior officers had attended the United States Military Institute at West Point. The American troops are actually being handled by better officers than they normally would have been. 51 of these junior officers would go on to become generals. They decided that this battle would be won not with bayonets, but with cannons. May 12, 1846. My ever dear Maddie, the vicissitudes of war have interrupted for a week our conversation. While they moved so doggedly slow under fire, I could not tell, but perhaps it was their Mexican pride. As already reported in my first brief dispatch, exposed for hours to the severest trial, a cannonade of artillery. The US artillery had a total of 10 cannons, 6, 12, and 18 pounders, firing solid shot, canister, and exploding shells. The Mexicans also had 10 cannons, but they were smaller, 4 and 8 pounders, firing predominantly solid shot. When Charles Hecker found his first Mexican cannonball, he was in for a surprise. It was made of an unusual metal. Now, this is quite an impressive artifact. This is a Mexican cannonball, 4 pounder cannonball. It's made of copper. It's quite heavy. Well, of course, it's 4 pounds. So doing the excavating, and here was this nice blue-green spherical object appearing at me. And I know I jumped around in great joy. It was like an Easter egg hunt. Hecker was so excited because he had read about copper cannonballs in the daily Picayune. Oh, OK, hold it. OK, oh, here we are. Most of their shot, cannonballs, grape, and canister was copper, brass in some composition, which is against, if not the laws of nations, their usage, et cetera. A correspondent from the Newark Daily Advertiser writing from the camp near Matamoros states that the severely wounded of our army are mortifying and dropping off. And he attributes his fatality not only to the excessive warm weather, but also to the fact that the Mexicans use copper instead of lead or iron balls. Yeah, you can't get lead poisoning, but by God. Such a proceeding has justly outraged the feelings of the whole army. And vengeance, vengeance, says the writer, is the cry day and night from the wounded comrades dying from the poisonous shot. US soldiers thought Mexico used copper because it was poisonous. In fact, it was just a byproduct of their silver mining. Got one here, Charlie. OK, sounds pretty good. It sounds like it could be copper. Hecker's research identified the battle lines. Sometimes they were as much as 1,500 yards apart. Documentary evidence suggests the Americans fired three times as many cannonballs as the Mexicans. What do you think? Look at that. OK, this looks like a four pounder. What's more, many of the copper balls fell short of their target. They are still being found today in no man's land between the two lines. Look at that. So why did things go wrong for the Mexican gunners? Was it their cannon or their ammunition? Battlefield detectives commissioned two six pound cannonballs in the nearby Mexican town of Matamoros, one from iron, the other from copper. The aim, to work out the range and terminal velocity of each cannonball and to find clues as to why the Mexican cannons were less effective. Finding out the terminal velocity of a copper round versus a six pound iron round, it will be interesting. Because that'll mean what kind of range or effective killing power. Determining the maximum range and terminal velocity of a round is really important because once a round reaches terminal velocity, it means it's not going to do anything. It might roll around on the ground when it hits or something and maybe bruise somebody, but it's not going to do any serious damage. So terminal velocity is when it reaches its ability to harm a living object. Presumptively, since the Americans won, they had better artillery and were able to outfight the Mexicans. But in fact, did they? Were there other causes that affected that outcome of that battle? This is the high security US Army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. From heat seeking missiles to anti-tank cartridges, thousands of munitions are tested annually in this 2,000 square mile no fly zone. But today, a cannon will be tested by forensic weapons expert Doug Scott and director of ground combat systems, Julio Dominguez. Well, the 1841 gun that we're going to use was the kind of gun used at Palo Alto. And I don't know if there's any modern sort of technology applied to understanding what the range is and terminal velocity of the weapon is and things like that. So how are we going to do that today? This is certainly the first time that we get involved in something like this. We have an array of high speed cameras and target array that you see down there at about 1,200 meters. I guess I'm going to withhold my opinion until we see the first few muzzle velocities out of the cannon. None of the stuff we shoot today is even remotely similar to what we're shooting in this test. We have brought this replica cannon 1,000 miles from southern Texas. We'll be monitoring the flight of each cannonball with high speed tracking cameras able to record projectiles flying above the speed of sound. We'll also be using high tech radar to track the speed of the cannonball as it flies 1,500 yards to its target. Standby for an iron shot. This will be a pound and a quarter. Standby for 20 seconds. Your target. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Yeah, there it is. There it is. Oh. Yeah. Did it skip? Yeah. Every time the cannonball skips, it kicks up dust in the Arizona desert. OK, it missed to the right, but that's the reality of the 19th century artillery. It's in range. It's striking the line. The iron cannonball's range looks good. Now, Scott and Dominguez need to look at the radar data to work out its terminal velocity. Here's the actual front line of the Mexican army. OK. This will be that iron shot here. Yeah. You still had a velocity of about 140 meters per second, which is way back behind the lines. Still doing damage, still hurting people. For the iron cannonball, the data is impressive, and it confirms our experts' predictions. This is the radar data for this shot. As you can see, it left the gun somewhere in the vicinity of 270 meters per second, came down here, degenerated to 200 meters per second by the time it hit here, and went on and bounced to another skip point, at which point it left there with more than 140 meters per second of velocity. Yeah. It's still very high kinetic energy. Yeah, but behind the lines. Still plenty of energy to hurt somebody seriously, kill them. But the decisive test will be the investigation of the performance of the Mexican copper cannonball. At the US Army Yuma Proving Ground, Doug Scott is using state-of-the-art equipment to measure the range and terminal velocity of cannonballs used in the Mexican-American war battle of Palo Alto. With that set of information, we can begin to model what expectations you have of the artillery. And then we can compare that to the archaeological record, the historical record, and build a more comprehensive understanding of what the role of artillery was in the battle of Palo Alto. The high-speed tracking camera can capture images of projectiles flying above the speed of sound. In the first test, the iron cannonball's trajectory was impressive. High speed. But now, the crucial test, a Mexican copper cannonball. There's the round. All right. Perfect. Look at that. Oh, look at that. All right. In flight. Yeah. All right, nice curve on it. Yeah, that's a good trajectory. All right. Outstanding shot. By analyzing this visual data, our experts can examine the spin of the cannonball to better understand its performance. Is this it? Two, three, four. Second bounce part would have been right on his target. Yeah. That means that copper can hit the maximum range without a problem. Even if you don't hit the exact target, because you've got multiple down the line, you're going to hit the guys to the right or left, which is what you want to do. Without even a maximum charge. Yeah. You know a lot more now, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. This is fantastic. Range really isn't a factor here. And the cannonballs are not a factor. There are the other things that become the variables that we aren't controlling for. Speed and mobility, possibly. Yeah. So there's got to be other issues about what the effects are. The Mexican ball has performed well. But Scott and Dominguez need to check the radar data. They walk a narrow tightrope into the firing range to avoid unexploded munitions, keeping an eye out for debris. Well, there's the copper cannonball. Hot. It's dinged up a bit. Yeah, it sure is. But it's there. It's burned on one side with powder. Yeah. Exactly what you'd expect from a round ball coming out of a bore, the basic powder dimpling. And then that's an impact scar of some sort, isn't it? We'll probably be finding those things for years around the space. The copper cannonball has hit the target. But what about its terminal velocity? Here we have the radio velocity track for this shot. As you can see, it leaves a gun at about, oh, 280, 285 meters per second. And it degenerated rapidly after it hit the ground here. It degenerates right down to about, oh, 160 meters per second, hit the ground again. And again, it degenerated this time down to about 125 meters per second. The performance of both cannonballs is similar. For Scott and Dominguez, it is an unexpected result. I think I'm probably most impressed with the information on the copper in that the assumption's been that that copper shot wasn't good. And yet, your data that you've collected shows that it'll reach range. It still has the kinetic capability in it. And it would do damage. And that is important information. Because we're going to have to go back and relook at whether or not it was the gunpowder or other issues that caused the defeat. So what about the gunpowder? Made from a combination of saltpeter, charcoal, sulfur, and water, the Mexican gunpowder had a reputation for being unreliable. My supposition is that in Mexico, the gunpowder was made far less sophisticated than it was in the United States. The United States had done experiments in 1842 and 43 and was advanced as any place in the world. Mexico did not have the access to the ingredients or did not have access to the equipment. Both of their arsenals at the time of the Mexican War were in disrepair. And the odds are that their process for making gunpowder was not very sophisticated at all. Nobody had ever been able to establish this. Then, by an amazing piece of luck, Mexican gunpowder from the time of the war was found in southern Texas. Battlefield detectives arranged for it to be analyzed. And the results sent to gunpowder expert Rob Howard. Most revealing information to come from the test is that you had a high calcium content, which means you had a very poor quality gunpowder. Because the calcium nitrate is a very bad oxidizer and gives you a very, very weak gunpowder. If, indeed, this was typical of Mexican gunpowder, it would suggest that the Mexican gunpowder was made very, very crudely. Inferior gunpowder on its own could not explain the scale of Mexico's defeat. Perhaps the different tactics used by the two sides can provide the answer. Both sides had anticipated fighting with classic Napoleonic line and column formation. But within an hour, West Point graduates decided to break with convention. It was this single decision that changed the course of Palo Alto. There are some officers that emerge in the American Army that are critical. One of them is Samuel Ringgold. And the reason he's critical is because he begins to study French artillery and trains the American artillery in this idea of flying artillery or mobile artillery. Ringgold and James Duncan were pioneers of this tactic, where light cannons were maneuvered rapidly by horses. To the US, therefore, the difficult terrain now became less of an obstacle. Member up that gun. You can use your artillery not as a static of form, but you can really maneuver it about the battlefield at will to fire, to move into another location very rapidly. Lightning artillery to move wherever you needed to go, where the enemy was about to break through, you moved it right there. And you blasted holes in that. Fire. Then if they were starting to attack you, you would move out to fire them at another angle and then retreat wherever and move about. Just a little gadfly moving about. Contrast, the Mexican guns were static and an easy target for the flying artillery. The Mexican Army, definitely their morale was sinking after several hours. It was ordered that the band play a particular tune. And simply what happened was that Captain Ringgold said, let's blow that up. They aimed on that band, 40 some men, aimed exactly with an explosive cannonball, and they were killed. The Mexicans would have their revenge when one of their copper cannonballs hit the hero of the day, Samuel Ringgold. In the afternoon of the battle, after seeing what it can do, he's actually mortally wounded, sitting on a horse back behind one of his guns. The projectile fired by the Mexican artillery hits Ringgold on the leg, passes through one leg, passes through his horse. This tells you how forceful a cannonball could be. As it exits the horse through the other leg, mortally wounds Ringgold. But he died knowing his flying artillery was winning the battle. And events were about to take a turn for the worse for the Mexicans. We give a lot of credit to the flying artillery and to the American infantry. But the terrain really works against the Mexican army as well, because they're the side that chooses to try to maneuver on this battlefield, and it's not a good battlefield for maneuvering. Shortly after 4 PM, the cord grass caught a light and a fire started. Knowing that they were staring defeat in the face, the Mexicans tried to use the fire to their advantage. During that fire, this is where they attempted toward the latter part of the afternoon to see if one more time they could try to get at the Americans behind them. So this is where Arista ordered his men on his right flank to make this one grand attempt to use this fire as the smoke, as a screen. And so the Mexican regiments crept up on the American flanks under cover of smoke. Charles Hecker wanted to get a sense of what it was like to fight in the midst of this. So ecologist Steve Wozniak demonstrated a controlled burn. So you know, this is really burning rapidly, and it's producing all this smoke. You wouldn't think that green vegetation would burn and produce so much. Why is that? Well, that's actually fairly rare for grasses, particularly to burn when they're green. But this particular grass, gulf port grass, has some volatile oils in it. So it's got oils in it that produce enough heat to be able to evaporate the water out of it. Yeah, yeah. And continue burning. I was thinking, too, geez, when this is burning, too, you had all the cartridges, paper cartridges with gunpowder in here lying around. Those things would have been exploding. You had the wounded soldiers, Mexican soldiers that were, this thing is moving so pretty rapidly. They couldn't pull their bodies out. Their comrades couldn't pull them out. And then you got those cartridges exploding. It must have been hell out there. By 5 o'clock, the Mexicans finally reached the American front line. But the US troops had also used the smoke as cover and were waiting for them. It must have been a terrible surprise to the Mexicans when they came out of that smoke and they saw the muzzles of Duncan's battery. And that was undoubtedly the morale. It was low already. That was it. And they had to fall back. For the next two hours, the flying artillery continued to pound the Mexican line. And as the sun set, the Battle of Palo Alto was drawing to a close. Duncan moved rapidly to a position not over 300 yards from the enemy's right flank and opened so unexpected and destructive a fire. To see them yelling at every shot they made reminded me of a band of demons. Our victory was complete. That fine Mexican army, which but a few days before had marched to meet us, was now a broken, dispirited crowd. The battle location chosen by Arista severely restricted his choices. But it was the flying artillery that spelled the end. What settled the question of Palo Alto is American artillery. That's the reason the Mexicans lost the battle here. It was not a hand-to-hand combat battle. It was a battle between artillery. American artillery could maneuver at will around the battlefield, could place American cannon within a few hundred yards of the Mexican battle line. Fire off several shots, move to another location rapidly before the Mexican could respond. That clinched the battle. Yet the official American maps of the battle suggest it was a draw and that the Mexicans held firm right up to the end of the day. As he would soon discover, these maps would launch Charles Hecker on a journey that would rewrite history. By 7 o'clock on the evening of May the 8th, 1846, the Battle of Palo Alto was finally over. Who knows what was going on? It must have been hell on earth at that time. They were just fleeing for their lives and getting slaughtered. Hundreds of Mexicans lay dead, while only five Americans lost their lives. One of the American dead was the US topographic engineer Jacob Blake. His death not only deprived the US Army of one of its finest engineers, it meant there would be no official American battle map for Palo Alto. Without Blake, the American Army could not produce topographically correct maps. It's an interesting irony that although the Americans won the battle, we ultimately became dependent upon the Mexicans for their version as far as the maps concerned. The only official battle maps were drawn by Jean-Louis Bellandier, who was on the payroll of General Arista. These were the sketches Hecker used as he searched for evidence on the battlefield of specific Mexican regiments. When I first began this project, the map that I had to work off of was the Bellandier's sketch map. And it showed that where the 4th Infantry was going to be. Though Bellandier was working as the Mexican topographic engineer, in the absence of US maps, Bellandier's were the ones that entered the historical record. They show the final position of the Mexicans facing north, holding their line, and holding the road to Matamoros. So it was simply a case, as far as I was concerned, is to go in this location and do a sweep and find evidence of Mexican 4th Infantry. We went to that location and found nothing, absolutely nothing. It seemed there was something wrong with these maps. It occurred to me that I needed to get a heck of a lot more maps of this battle. And that was not a particularly easy thing. Following clues and private letters, Hecker started to look elsewhere on the battle site to find the 4th Infantry, which, according to Bellandier, had remained steadfast, holding their line. And what he found made him even more suspicious of Bellandier. Initially, I was confused. You have a historic map. I was taking the attitude, well, gee, here it is. This is where things should be. And then when you don't find it that way, you have to stop and pull back and think, what's really going on? At last, Hecker did find evidence of Mexican units, but not where Bellandier had shown them. Oh, my goodness. That's what the Sheiko had, right? That's right. Go right about here on those leather. There's the Mexican eagle. My gosh, it was about a good, almost a half a mile away from the road where we started. We found the artifacts in the 4th Infantry. Well, here it is. But look how far we are. Something is not right. But for Hecker, what was so intriguing was not where he found the artifacts, but how they were arrayed. We found this artifact represents the 4th Mexican Regiment. It was intermixed with other badges of the other Mexican regiments, found all within approximately a half acre area. If the Mexican line had been standing firm, then the artifacts would have been spaced out. But they were found clustered together. This could only mean one thing, panic. When you find badges of four different infantry units in an area of less than an acre, something is, this indicated a route to me. When you have that kind of jumbling together of individuals from four different regiments, it was a total collapse of that battle line that these men were fleeing, moving rapidly away from where they're being killed. That is a very important aspect to look at for us. For a cluster of intermixing of this, it's a pattern. Hecker now had evidence that far from standing firm as Berlandier had shown them, the Mexicans had, in fact, been routed. And he found another inconsistency. According to Berlandier, the Mexican troops had held the Matamoros Road. To do this, they must have been facing north. Yet Arista and the Mexican troops had claimed the sun had been in their eyes. The only option for Hecker was to put himself in the shoes of a Mexican soldier. Here was an opportunity to actually see what a Mexican soldier had experienced at 7 PM on the day of the battle, to actually stand where a Mexican soldier stood. And in standing in that same place to actually see what he saw, he saw reflecting light off this cord grass. General Arista had said, we could not defend our position that well. The sun was in our eyes. Well, I guess he was right, wasn't he? It was in his eyes. But in order to do so, he could not have been facing north. It had to have been facing almost west, due west, for that phenomenon to happen. Hecker was now convinced the Mexican line was not facing north, nor holding the Matamoros Road. They were aligned north to south and were, in fact, facing west. This was the clencher, standing right here, seeing this happening on this day. It was really fantastic. And fate had one last blow to deal the Mexican soldiers. They had all this brass on them, highly polished, far more brass the American soldiers did not have anything like that. Think of the Americans along that road. They had perfect targets reflecting. Although the Mexican soldiers were half a mile away, they could still be seen because of that brass. And it was a perfect target. Yet surprisingly, these inaccurate maps have been accepted, not just by history, but by the US Army itself. This is the West Point Atlas of the American Wars. This is the textbook that is used by cadets at West Point to teach the battles as they were fought by Americans since the Revolutionary War. I have here an illustration of the Battle of Palo Alto. And I can look at it immediately and see it's based on Berlandier's map. It is very significant here because it shows the Mexicans were holding the Matamoros Road. And I know now that it was not the case, that they lost that position fairly early on. And archaeology has proven this to be the case. This map is wrong. The Battle of Palo Alto began a two-year-long struggle that resulted in Mexico losing more than 1 million square miles of land to the US. In the immediate aftermath, Arista could salvage some dignity by claiming the battle had been a draw. But the evidence on the ground tells a different story. I like the idea of actually challenging the written record that people have accepted for over 100 years to say, this isn't right. We have these artifacts here. The artifacts don't lie. People can lie. The written record can be wrong for various reasons. Artifacts don't lie. Expecting a traditional Napoleonic-style battle, Arista had chosen a bad spot to fight. And when West Point's young Turks tried their revolutionary new tactics of flying artillery, the Mexican soldiers paid with their blood.