To the Honorable American and Mexican Joint Commission, in the city of Washington, District of Columbia. The Memorial of Margarito Teposte, Respectfully Showeth... [caption title]

Washington, D.C., 1870. Good.. [4]pp. Small quarto. Chips and short closed tears at edges; leaves separated. Slightly later ink stamp and manuscript annotation on first leaf recto. Paper browned, somewhat brittle. Memorial presented by attorney Bethel Coopwood to the United States and Mexican Commission, describing Capt. James Callahan and the Texas Rangers' sacking and burning of Piedras Negras in October 1855, and specifically the losses of Margarito Teposte, who was seeking redress from the United States government. Callahan ostensibly crossed the border into Mexico in pursuit of a band of Apaches, but ended up attacking the local citizenry and destroying the Mexican border town. The Rangers then, "drove your memorialist from his home and compelled him to flee to the woods with all of his family, where he wandered for three days, exposed to death under the tomahawk of the barbarous Indians, who frequented said woods at that time, suffering from hunger and thirst in a degree almost insupportable, whereby they caused him great injury in his person and those of his family, damaging him in the full sum of twelve thousand five hundred dollars, gold." A chart on the final page shows additional damage claims, resulting in a grand total of $24,640 in damages sought by Coopwood for Teposte. We locate similar printed claims by Coopwood on behalf of several other Mexican plaintiffs, at SMU, Texas Tech, and Baylor, but no examples of the present claim.