The Treasure Of The Salinas De San Andreas

The Treasure of the Salinas de San Andreas

When Billy Ford headed across the Guadalupe River, he couldn’t have known that he was about to push America to the brink of war. Had the sheriff understood the high stakes that night in 1854, he might have formed a bigger posse than seventeen Americans, ten Mexicans, and an Englishman. He surely needed more firepower than his sixty-four-pound howitzer, especially if he was going to seize the Salinas de San Andreas.

Acre for acre, this was the richest land in Texas, worth its weight in gold. As far back as prehistoric times it had been a bonanza. Aztecs and Mayans traveled great distances to extract its riches. In 1647, a Spanish king granted Don Diego de Vivar exclusive rights to mine its wealth, making his family fabulously wealthy.

By 1854, powerful men were willing to sell their souls to possess the Salinas de San Andreas. But Sheriff Ford should have known better. For more than two hundred years, Comanches, Apaches, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Mexicans, Americans, and Tejanos had fought to the death over this treasure trove of the Trans-Pecos. Somewhere in the badlands of Texas, Ford’s outgunned posse ran into an army of Tejanos. After a deadly shoot-out, he hightailed it back to New Mexico.

Some twenty-three years later, this simmering conflict erupted again. Like a scene out of the cowboy comedy Blazing Saddles, several small armies converged west of El Paso. Mexican federales crossed the Rio Grande, Apaches rode in from the west, Comanches swooped down from the north, vigilantes stormed out of El Paso, and five hundred Mexican American locals rushed to protect their claim to the Salinas de San Andreas. Just when things couldn’t get crazier, hired gunslingers came in by railroad just as Texas rangers arrived from Austin. In the confusion that followed, Tejanos captured Texas rangers, Apaches scalped vigilantes, Comanches shot it out with gunslingers, and federales fled back across the Rio Grande. The Ninth Cavalry, made up of African American buffalo soldiers, finally galloped in to restore order. This fiasco looked like an eye-poking contest between the Three Stooges, but it garnered world headlines and almost caused a war between the United States and Mexico.

What was this treasure that made men crazy with greed? It wasn’t gold, oil, or cattle. But it was the richest salt preserve in North America. Unless you hail from West Texas, you have probably never heard about these shoot-outs. After the San Elizario Salt War, America turned to cheaper salt from Kansas. Today Salinas de San Andreas is a deserted stretch of badlands.

In a day of cheap table salt, it’s hard to believe that more wars in history have been fought over salt than have been waged over gold or religion. People can live without gold or oil but not salt. Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13). We are to do what salt does: heal, preserve, and bring flavor to life. So get out of the shaker and spread yourself around.

Salty Christians make others thirst for Jesus, the water of life.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Matthew 5:13, NIV