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Podcast: New Books in American Studies
Episode: Tim Seiter, "Wrangling Pelicans: Military Life in Texas Presidios" (U Texas Press, 2025)
Description: A richly detailed history of daily life for colonial Spanish soldiers surviving on the eighteenth-century Texas Gulf Coast.
In 1775, Spanish King Carlos III ordered the capture of American pelicans for his wildlife park in Madrid. The command went to the only Spanish fort on the Texas coast—Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la BahÃa in present-day Goliad. But the overworked soldiers stationed at the fort had little interest indulging a king an ocean away. Their days were consumed with guarding their community against powerful Indigenous peoples and managing the demands of frontier life. The roya...