Bridles and Biscuits

Breakfast and his horse’s bridle: these were what a Spanish soldier in 1790s Spanish East Texas traded for the unregulated goods found in his possession. Here Gary L. Pinkerton uncovers the true nature of contraband trade and why it was so pervasive. “This poor soldier,” Pinkerton writes, “was willing to ride bridle-less on horseback to Béxar and risk arrest so he could give his wife a gift. No nation on earth could stop that kind of trade.” The soldier’s confession further reveals that while so