Antonette’s Leap or the Legend of Mount Bonnell
I
The legend of Mount Bonnell is among the half dozen most widely known Texas legends. It has been printed again and again, both in prose and in verse; it is still told in many quarters; and the details of the various versions have come to a wide divergence. So far as I can learn, the oldest printed account of the legend is that given by Morphis, published in 1874. For other accounts, the reader is referred to the bibliography.
In the main, there are three versions of the legend: first, the Morphis account in which an Indian chief steals a Spanish belle, who is rescued by her lover only to perish later with him at the cliff; second, a version, the details of which are similar to those of various other Lovers’ Leap legends, in which an Indian maid and an Indian brave make an interdicted elopement and are finally forced to the leap; third, a version in which an Indian maiden in love with a white man is forced to a precipitate death. It is an interesting fact that all the versions hitherto printed follow very closely the Morphis story, all being revampings of it. Noteworthy variations seem to exist in oral accounts only. As Morphis’ history has long been out of print, his version of the legend is here reprinted.
The word Antonette belongs to no language: the French spelling is Antoinette; the name in Spanish is Antonia. No lady of pure Castilian blood would have borrowed a French translation for her name. Yet Antonette is the spelling generally given in the legends.
II
The Legend as Told by Morphis1
The following legend of the Colorado Valley was related to me years ago by that reliable gentleman, good citizen, and gallant soldier, George L. Robertson of Austin.
Mount Bonnell was called by the early settlers of Colorado Valley, Antonette’s Leap, which name was given to it in consequence of the self-immolation on that picturesque spot, at an early day, of a most lovely and accomplished señorita, who came over from Spain at the first settlement of the mission of San José, San Juan, Espada, and the Alamo.
“The fame of Antonette’s beauty and intellectual charms was spread abroad through the settlements, and even extended to the hunting ground and camp fires of the red men of the forest. It came to the ears and inflamed the passions of Cibolo, the chief of the Comanches, who selected a band of his favorite warriors, made a raid upon the settlements, captured the beautiful Antonette, and carried her far away to his camp in the wilderness, on the headwaters of the Colorado.
“The parents and friends of the unfortunate señorita mourned her as lost forever, except Don Leal Navarro Rodriguez, her betrothed lover, a brave and elegantly educated young Spanish caballero, of fine personal appearance and honorable, as well as brave to a fault, who determined to follow the murderous Indians to their homes and rescue his beloved Antonette, or perish in the attempt.
“Don Leal mounted his favorite steed and, well armed, started from the Alamo alone in pursuit of the Indians, and after many hair-breadth escapes, undiscovered, descried the camp of the savages. Selecting a dark night, he entered it, and by imitating the mocking bird, of which Antonette was very fond, and whose singing they could both imitate to perfection, he soon discovered at what spot inside the encampment she was, then came into the very tent which she occupied and found her tied securely to prevent her escape.
“In an instant the lover severed the bonds which confined the dear idol of his heart, and with her cautiously returned to where he had left his horse when he entered the Comanche camp; then quickly mounting and taking Antonette up behind him, he started to regain the Mission of Alamo.
“The fury of Cibolo in the morning, when he discovered the escape of his fascinating captive, knew no bounds. He raved and blasphemed terribly; then, sounding the alarm, with a hundred chosen warriors, he hastily started in pursuit, leaving the main body of his tribe to await his return.
“For several days Don Leal and his beloved Antonette made good speed toward the settlements, subsisting most bountifully upon game, which was easily obtained through Don Leal’s rifle, and at night sleeping under the forest trees; but on the seventh day, leaving the prairie land, they became tangled in the mountains bordering the Colorado. Early in the morning of the eighth day the lovers discovered themselves surrounded upon all sides by the cruel savages. All attempts at further flight were hopeless.
“The wrathful Cibolo, with cow horns on his head and face horribly painted, advanced in all pride of power to where they had fled as a last refuge, but when he was about fifty yards off, Don Leal, who had firmly resolved to fight and die rather than surrender, raised his rifle to his shoulder and, taking deliberate aim, fired! In an instant the savage chief bounded in the air and fell to the ground a corpse; but in another instant at least twenty arrows pierced Don Leal’s body, and he, too, fell to the earth and expired without a groan.
“After surveying the situation and revolving in her mind the miserable fate awaiting her from the merciless Comanches, … the poor, unfortunate girl bent over the prostrate and lifeless form of her lover and kissed his dear lips. Then rising, with her eyes toward heaven, and murmuring her last prayer to God, she plunged headlong down the precipice and struck the rocks beneath, mangled, bleeding, and dead!
“For a long time the place where these rare, devoted, but most unfortunate lovers met their sad and untimely fate was called ‘Antonette’s Leap,’ but years ago a wandering Bohemian, who happened to pass a few days in Austin … blotted it out and substituted his own, and now Antonette’s Leap is Mount Bonnell.”
III
For the details of the second version of the legend as here summarized I am indebted to Mr. Billy Minter, a West Point cadet from Austin.
Once two tribes of Indians living far to the north were at deadly enmity with one another; one tribe lived in what is now Oklahoma, the other in what is now the Panhandle of Texas. One day the son of the chieftain of the southern tribe was walking in the woods. It was springtime, the time to be in the woods, and there he met the daughter of the chief of the northern tribe. It was springtime; their hatred was forgotten, and often thereafter they met under the trees. But one day a brave of the northern tribe discovered the lovers. He was afraid to fight with this strong young Indian of the south whose fame as a warrior was already far known; so he watched from the bushes and then slipped away to tell the maiden’s father what he had seen.
When the lovers were parting, they discovered the trail of the watcher. They realized that they could never meet thus again and that if the maid returned to her people she would be terribly tortured. They fled to the south, hoping to find refuge in some friendly tribe that knew nothing of the quarrels of their ancestors. The next morning the father of the maiden sent to the enemy’s camp a demand for his daughter. Then the elopement was revealed. A truce was made and forthwith fifty picked trailers and warriors from each tribe were sent to pursue and capture the fugitives.
For many days the lovers fled, followed closer and closer by the warriors. At length they found themselves hemmed in on top of a mountain that faced precipitously on the Colorado River. Out of the scrub cedars and from over the gullies, they saw the cordon of pitiless pursuers nearing; beneath them they saw the swollen waters of the Colorado whirling over the rocks. On the one hand, was a captivity worse than death; on the other, the river below. “With one last prayer to the Great Spirit, the lovers embraced and, still locked in this embrace, leaped into the hungry water.”
“This,” concludes Mr. Minter, “is the legend of the Lovers’ Leap as told to me when I was eleven years old by an old settler, himself the son of a pioneer. He lived near the place, and told me the story while I was camped on Mount Bonnell. Last week (July, 1922) I went again to try to find him and have him retell the story, but I found that he had been dead for two years, and so I have not been able to use the names of the lovers, of the chiefs, and of the tribes, as well as many other minute circumstances that he made the tale vivid with. The river does not touch the foot of the cliff at the Lovers’ Leap. Indeed, it is a good stone’s throw from it to the water’s edge. The old man explained this discrepancy by saying that the legend was ages old and that at the time of the leap the river did touch the bottom of the cliff when it was on a big rise.”
IV
The third version of the legend was given me by Miss Etta Maddrey, a student at the University of Texas in the summer of 1922, who in turn heard it from an Austin woman who worked at the Driskill Hotel. This woman claimed that the witness in the circumstances that follow was one of her ancestors.
A pioneer couple had built a log hut near what is now the road to Deep Eddy. It was near a spring in some woods, and sometimes Indians camped near by. In the band was the tribal chief, and he had a daughter. He had, too, a hardened and cunning warrior who was in love with the daughter, and the chief was pleased at the match. The daughter was not pleased, and soon the brave came to realize that he was being repelled.
One evening when the settler’s wife was going to the spring for water, she saw in the dusk a tender greeting between the Indian maid and a young white man of the settlement. She saw too the form of a slinking Indian warrior spying on the lovers. The next evening the meeting was repeated, and the man and the young woman sat on a rock and watched the sunset. They parted; the paleface disappeared; the girl turned to go back to her camp and was confronted by the giant and menacing form of her spurned suitor. With vivid gesture he pictured the wrath of the father and chief when he should learn that his daughter had scorned one of his tribe for a hated paleface, and he gloated as he told how he would report her treachery.
The girl broke away from her tormentor. Perhaps she thought to return to her father and ask forgiveness; but the folly of such a course must have been apparent to her. Perhaps she thought of taking refuge with her lover, but then his helplessness in protecting her must have flooded her mind with the conviction that by such an act she would only bring about his death. A moment after she left the warrior she bounded out of the woods in a direction to the north. On and on she ran until she reached the topmost point of what is now Mount Bonnell. Below her was the dark river. “There was but a moment’s hesitation, and then the fatal leap—lover’s leap then, certainly; and Lover’s Leap today.”
Notes
1 Morphis, J. M., History of Texas, New York, 1874, pp. 510–513.