A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I, Part 15

Author: Paddock, B. B. (Buckley B.), 1844-1922; Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing co.
Number of Pages: 968


USA > Texas > A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I > Part 15


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"contains about eleven hundred souls. On this reserve there are six hundred acres of land in successful cultivation in wheat and corn. The Brazos Reserve Indians have made extraordinary progress in civilization since their settlement in 1853; and are very honest, trustworthy and industrious. They have a school, under the charge of Mr. Ellis Combes. On this reserva- tion there are several good houses built expressly for the transaction of all and any business con- nected with the Indians. Capt. S. P. Ross, an old Texan, and a worthy man, is the special agent of the United States government in charge of the Brazos Agency.


"The Comanche Reserve is about sixty miles distant from the Brazos Agency. This reserve extends over four leagues of land and contains four hundred souls-all Comanches, known as the Southern band of that tribe. The Comanches have not made the same progress as the Brazos Reserve Indians-not that they are more indo- lent or lazy, but because of their total estrange- ment heretofore from the manners and customs of the white man. The Indians on the Brazos Reserve have always lived near and frequently among the white settlers, while the Comanches have been outside of all intercourse of a friendly nature. Col. M. Leeper is their agent. Maj. Neighbors disburses annually about eighty thou- sand dollars for the use of the Texas Indians."


But this romantic attempt at civilization failed. Some reprobate Indians at the reserves occasion- ally got away and indulged in a inarauding expe- dition among the white settlements, and the crime when traced to the agency, because of the diffi- culty in fixing it upon the responsible parties, was laid to the whole tribe. Then, too, the rob- beries and murders committed by the wild tribes outside the reservation confines were often charged to the agency tribes. The reserves soon became the convenient objects of logical and il- logical invective against the red men in general, and it was only a question of time until the plague spots would have to be removed. Retrib- utive justice, as between the white man and a lower race, is relentlessly and undiscriminatingly sure, and the banishment of the Indian beyond1


the pale of the white man's greed never lacked the show of moral and practical motives.


"In spite of the attempts to civilize these tribes and domicile them in their native land," says the writer already quoted, "Indian depredation" with harrowing details of murder and capture of women and children were reported constantly. The troops at the posts were frequently com- pelled to follow the trail of the marauders in or- der to recapture prisoners and other property, which, if successfully accomplished, was general- ly at the cost of a bloody encounter.


"In 1858 L. S. Ross, familiarly known as 'Sul' Ross, a youth of eighteen years, while at home on a vacation from college, organized a com- pany of one hundred and thirty-five warriors of the friendly tribes of the Brazos Agency and joined an expedition under Maj. Earl Van Dorn, commanding the U. S. forces in this section of the frontier against the Comanches. October I, 1858, the party came upon a large Comanche village on the False Washita river, in the Indian Territory. A sharp conflict followed, in the course of which ninety Indians were killed and a considerable number captured. The whites lost five killed and several wounded, including Ross and Van Dorn. The severe punishment thus inflicted on the hostile tribe was easily for- gotten and they were soon on the warpath again. The reserves on the Clear Fork and the Brazos were located in a region possessing unexcelled grazing facilities, and the Texan stock raisers, in constantly increasing numbers, braved the dangers of Indian attacks and brought their herds hither to fatten upon the rich pasturage. The reserve Indians were accused of commit- ting depredations as well as the hostiles, and conflicts ensued in which a number were killed. The result was that the experiment of domicil- ing the Texas tribes within the state proved a failure, and in August, 1859, Maj. George H. Thomas of the U. S. army transferred the tribes to the Indian Territory. The Indians were so in- censed at their removal that they began at once a series of depredations on the frontier of Texas."


This forcible removal from their ancestral par- adise of range and hunting grounds and, the shortly subsequent outbreak of the war between


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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.


the states were the leading causes which turned the Indians from desultory depredations to a frenzied hostility which left a trail of murder, massacre and pillage extending over nearly twen- ty years. After they were removed to the Terri- tory the Indians were even better advantaged than before to continue their ravages upon the settlements and at the same time have a safe refuge to which they might retire.


In December, 1859, the Comanches raided Parker county, and scalped alive and shot with arrows Mrs. Sherman, at Weatherford. In the following April several were killed in Young county, and Palo Pinto and Jack counties also suffered. The inability of the regular troops to ward off these attacks caused many Texans to volunteer as rangers. Among them Sul Ross, re- ceiving a commission from Governor Houston, enrolled sixty men as rangers and established his camp at Fort Belknap, co-operating with the regulars under Capt. N. G. Evans, then at Camp Cooper. In December, 1860, Capt. Ross, with his rangers and some of the U. S. dragoons, sur- prised the Comanche camp on Pease river, and in the battle that followed captured or killed many of the Indians, among them their chief, Peta No- cona. It was in this fight that the famous Cyn- thia Ann Parker was captured from the Indians, after she had lived in the tribe tor twenty-five years, had adopted their ways, become the wife of an Indian and almost completely merged her identity with the foreign race. The Weatherford White Man, in a current issue at the time, said : "We learn that the captive rescued by Capt. Ross from the Indians turns out to be the niece of Isaac Parker of Tarrant county. She was captured twenty-five years ago and has grown up amongst them. She has now three children. The narrative of her captivity is interesting and thrilling in the extreme. She was captured in Anderson county at the same time that her father was murdered by the savages." The venerable Isaac Parker just mentioned died only a year or so ago, at an advanced age, having lived near Fort Worth for many years. When the news of the capture of a white woman among the Indians reached him, some details of her description per- suading him that in her he would find his long-


lost niece, he at once journeyed to the frontier post. "The captive had lost all knowledge of her native tongue," narrates Fannie M. Clarke in the Texas Historical Quarterly, "and maintained a stolid silence when addressed by her aged uncle. At length he said very distinctly to the inter- preter, 'The girl's name was Cynthia Ann.' The familiar name aroused dim recollections of her past life, which time and suffering had well nigh obliterated. The moment she heard her name she sprang to her feet and, patting herself on the breast, with joy beaming in her eyes, said ex- citedly, 'Cynthia Ann! Cynthia Ann!' She re- turned to the home of her uncle, and gradually adapted herself to a civilized life, learning to spin, weave and sew, and made herself generally useful in domestic life. It has been said that she was not contented, and more than once at- tempted to escape and return to the Indians, but if this is true it was because of her desire to re- cover her other children-a hope she was often heard to express. But death ended her checkered career before this hope was realized. Her little child died shortly before its mother. Her son, Quanah, is now chief of the tribe, living in peace and quiet on the princely reservation of over three million acres, set apart by the general gov- ernment for the three roving tribes, Apaches, Kiowas and Comanches, in the southwestern part of Indian Territory, in which Fort Sill is lo- cated." Quanah, the well known town in Harde- man county, is named after this noted half-breed chief.


The reign of terror inaugurated by the In- dians in 1859 is of especial moment to us in its effects upon the advance of settlement. Some of the current sentiments of the time are ex- pressed by the newspapers. For example, in June, 1859, a citizen of Jacksboro enters his protest against a pacific policy in dealing with the Indians in the following language: "Our county commenced settling under the most favor-


*Capt. J. C. Terrell is authority for the statement, which he says he received from Isaac Parker himself, that the mother of the captive also made this trip to Belknap, and that, when all other methods had failed to restore her daughter to a conscious- ness of her early life, she began crooning softly the old lullaby with which she had often hushed her children to sleep, and at the same time drew her daughter to her bosom. This proved suc- cessful, and the old memories thus revived linked her mind again to the past, and without more opposition she went back to her old home and civilized associations.


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able auspices about two years ago, and soon after which Indian depredations commenced and have been continued to the present time, to such an extent as effectually to paralyze all industrial interests and, of course, all business. The horses of the country have been swept off as fast as they have been brought in, so that it has been' impossible to sow, plant, cultivate or gather, and sufficient murders have been committed from time to time to keep our citizens in constant fear of their lives. This state of affairs has been endured with more forbearance than ought to be expected of any community, in the hope that some means would be adopted, either by the state or general government, which would render our condition tolerable. To this end we have repeat- edly petitioned the powers that be-told our tale -expostulated and begged. We have treated with Reserve Indians and communicated with the agents, obtaining always fair promises and fine talk, while our troubles constantly grew worse. In February last it was almost if not entirely unanimously resolved by citizens of several border counties that the country must be im- mediately abandoned or the Lower Reserve In- dians be speedily removed." This was with ref- erence to the state of affairs just before the res- ervations were broken up and the Indians re- moved to the Territory. A letter from Gaines- ville in December, 1859, says: "It is distressing to see two counties as rich in virgin soil and all elements of an agricultural and grazing country as Jack and Young so sparsely populated solely for want of security to life and property."


An issue of the Dallas Herald in October, 1860, thus comments: "By private letters from Weath- erford we learn that about thirty of Col. M. T. Johnson's men came from Belknap a few days since, foot-back and a-walking, half starved. Some of them stated they had subsisted several days on what they could pick up by the way, and most of them were barefooted. Their horses were stolen by the Indians and even the blankets pilfered. Rumor has it that out of sixty- five horses fifty-nine were stolen or stampeded. and the company was left without provisions ninety miles in the wilderness beyond Bel- knap."


When the Civil war began in 1861 the federal forts on the frontier were abandoned and some of them destroyed by the Union troops. Then the hostile tribes, still chafing under their forcible removal from Texas, and seeing the frontier de- nuded of troops, renewed their attacks on the settlements. Some of the Indians gave their services to the federal army, and, it is charged, carried on their rapacious expeditions under the quasi-authority of the Union officers. The Tonk- awas remained true to the Texans, and after the war they found their way back to their beloved ranges and for a time were allowed to remain on a reservation near Fort Griffin, where we shall have occasion to refer to them again.


Though the frontier posts were garrisoned by a regiment of Confederate states troops under Col. Henry E. McCulloch, the line was too long to be adequately protected by this force, and the settlements, moreover, lacked much of the power of self-defense by the absence in the armies of the majority of the able-bodied men. Before the opening of hostilities, in January, 1861, Young county is experiencing the following state of af- fairs, according to a correspondent: "The In- dians have been scourging this county. On the 22d of December some fifteen Mexicans met a party of Indians and succeeded in retaking about 140 horses, but killed no Indians. On the 23d they killed two citizens of Belknap connected with the O. L. mail, and chased in some buffalo hunters. On the 24th they stole Mr. S. Weather- ford's horses, and the same night got Mr. Bragg's horses within a short distance of Capt. Ross's camp. There must be a frontier at some point. To the north and northwest of us lies a belt of country from fifty to one hundred miles in width, once settled by an enterprising and industrious people, but who have been compelled to recede before the overpowering savages and have fallen back, at each step letting them in nearer to you, and when and where shall this retro-migration cease? Esq. Metcalf and Capt. Hays gave us a gloomy account of the condition of affairs on the west border. Indians were numerous and during the last week stole a few horses in Palo Pinto. The country is depopulated and women and children are all concentrated in the towns.


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Capt. Currenton is a veteran in the frontier serv- ice and deserves well of the state, The mail from Dallas to Belknap has been anything but regular for some time. That portion of the route west of Weatherford has been discontinued entirely, ever since the Indian depredations commenced a month or so ago. The citizens of Belknap recently paid a large amount to have their mail brought from Weatherford."


In 1862 and 1863 the counties of Clay, Mon- tague, Jack, Wise, Palo Pinto and even Cooke, were never secure from Indian raids, their work of desolation being carried on with almost mo- notonous repetition of atrocity and spoliation. Many thousand head of cattle were driven off to be sold to the Union armies. In August, 1863, the state militia of the Twentieth Brigade, under Brigadier Gen. Nat. Terry, met at Robinson's Mills, in Tarrant county, for the purpose of or- ganizing to protect the outside counties against Indian raids. Their depredations on the frontier had created such intense excitement among the militia from Parker and Johnson counties that it was almost impossible to retain the men in camp long enough to complete the organization, since their families were in iminediate danger every hour. In one family the mother had been killed and four children carried off, and in another the mother and two of the children had been killed and two children seriously wounded. Such hor- rible information, told as the latest but by no means an uncommon piece of news, was calcu- lated to stir the settlers to action and increased their anxiety to be where they might afford all possible protection to their homes. Prowling bands of Indians had been seen in so many neighborhoods that the settlers were satisfied of the great danger and called loudly for supplies of ammunition, of which there was a great scar- city. In December, 1863, a raid into Cooke county resulted in the death of nine citizens and three soldiers, and the wounding of three sol- diers and four citizens, and ten houses were burned and also a great quantity of grain. A number of the citizens left their home and moved farther east, some in a destitute condition, with- out bedding or change of clothing. All the houses in Gainesville were crowded with refugees


from the north and west part of the county. Thus the warfare went on, and though the war between the states ceased in the spring of 1865, there was no abatement in the fierceness with which the Indians hurled themselves against the white frontier. The settlements had receded so far that Belknap was almost isolated, and only the fact that it was a military post kept Young county from returning to the wilderness. In Oc- tober, 1864, a large party, consisting of three or four hundred Indians, raided the settlements ad- jacent to Fort Belknap and murdered several families and drove off a number of horses.


A correspondent at Decatur, writing in January, 1865, speaks in commendation of the military on the frontier. "It is true that the state legislature and the government have done what they could to protect this region by organizing three military districts, each composed of certain frontier coun- ties. The Confederate States have one regiment and one battalion of cavalry on the frontier ; yet small bands of savages and jayhawkers enter the settlements and murder and steal. Bounded as we are on the west by a vast wilderness, we must continue to have a frontier to protect, and all reasoning citizens must deprecate the retreat of the frontier line to the eastward."


In September, 1865, one of the onslaughts of the enemy penetrated even into Tarrant county, one man being killed and another wounded. In the next year there were murders in Parker county. In 1868 the Comanches made their last raid into Cooke and Denton counties. In 1869, in 1870 and in 1871 murders were committed by the Indians in Parker county, at or near the town of Weatherford, while other hostilities are re- ported in Jack, Palo Pinto and Young counties. Every year up to 1873 witnessed similar atroci- ties in Parker and neighboring counties. The last Indian warwhoop was still vivid in memory when the welcome whistle of the locomotive pierced the frontier country and announced for- ever civilized domination. In 1874 the state sent a battalion of rangers to assist the regular troops in repelling the incursions of the savages, and this was one of the moves which brought the long and harassing game between the red man and the white man to a close. Many fights took


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place between the rangers and Indians during 1874. The regular army likewise inaugurated a more effective campaign, and the vigilance of the military compelled the Indian either to live quietly on the reservation in Indian Territory or to roam beyond the pale of civilization on the great plains with the buffalo. The Comanches as a separate force opposing civilization had sub- sided, and the sporadic cases of the "bad" Indian were hereafter listed in the same class with the white desperado. The barriers which had held back from West Texas the human floods and the industrial forces were let down at about the same time the Indians as a race ceased to terrify, and in the phenomenal activity which has marked this section of the state during the last thirty years the red men and their deeds have been as effectually forgotten by all but the oldest citizens as the same epoch has passed out of mind in the states where no Indian has been seen for seventy years. Material prosperity is its own scavenger, consuming the useless husks of the past and, without a grateful memory, absorbing in its great bulk all the elements of power that a former epoch has contributed.


The last Indian hostilities in Texas were con- tributed by the Apaches, who are to be consid- ered as only a partly native tribe of Texas. From time within the memory of white man or semi- civilized Indian they had been an inveterate and implacable foe, and they remained so as long as they were allowed to range in their native haunts of New Mexico and Arizona. From the time El Paso, on the American side of the Rio Grande, was occupied by the Americans in 1846 they were constantly hostile, making incursions far into the state and killing the cattlemen and running off stock, or, as a more favorite diversion, attacking the overland stages. It was not, indeed, until the railroad supplanted this stage route that Apache marauders ceased to be a terror to all who ven- tured upon that famous highway. In El Paso county, in January, 1881, Col. Baylor and his rangers fought the last battle on Texas soil with some of these savages who had killed a stage driver and a passenger; it was yet some years before Geronimo and his bands were finally re-


duced to subjection and permanent peace by the United States soldiery.


COL. JAMES BUCKNER BARRY, better known as "Buck" Barry, whose Texas Rangers, before and during the Civil war, became famous for their valor in defending the frontier and their high individual courage in all forms of danger, is now eighty-four years of age, almost totally blind, but with mind clear and definite on the many and varied events connected with his life- time. Interviewed at his home in Walnut Springs, Bosque county, he reviewed his career as a panorama of interesting pioneer history, and despite the ebbing of a strength that once made him foremost among men of action and daring, his recital was often vividly eloquent in describ- ing scenes the like of which can never again be known in Texas or the world.


Col. Barry has all the picturesqueness of the frontier character ; but also he has the sanity of judgment and breadth of observation that mark the man whose mind has been formed by multiple influences and experiences. The story of his life adds value to this history, not simply as that of a typical Texan, but, more than that, its outlines weave into the splendid annals of North Texas and give color and interest to our narrative.


Col. Barry's history originates in what is, to his knowledge, the traditional mists of Irish an- nals. Some one hundred and fifty years ago his great-grandfather, whose name was James Buck- ner Barry, and three brothers, were involved in a rebellion against the British crown, which, be- ing put down, they were compelled to flee the country of their birth. To insure their disguise they traveled separately, the great-grandfather landing at Beaufort, N. C., with his four-year-old boy, and the other brothers finding homes else- where in the colonies. One brother was Commo- dore Barry, the father of the American navy. The four-year-old boy was Bryan Buckner, the grandfather of the Colonel. Of his twelve chil- dren, two of the older ones, David and Mark, were soldiers in the Revolutionary War. The Colonel's father, also Bryan Buckner, was seven years old when Cornwallis surrendered. He mar-


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ried Mary Murriw, whose father and two broth- ers were patriots of the Revolution.


Col. Barry was born in North Carolina, where his parents spent their lives, on December 16, 1821, passed his boyhood on the farm and re- ceived his education in the subscription schools, and, while a young man, taught the first free school in the state of North Carolina. Mean- while, in the early thirties, an older brother had gone to Texas, before it became independent, and on his return had many unusual narratives to relate of the wonderful country west of the Red and Sabine rivers. "I wanted to help the Tex- ans, and for that reason I came out while' this country was still a Republic, so that I have been a citizen of Texas for sixty years. I went up the Red river by boat to the place where Jefferson now is, and my first meal in Texas was eaten in the piney woods, on a pine log about three feet high, for which the price asked was twenty-five cents, but all the money I had was a dime, so my host had to take that."


The Peters and Mercer's colonies were then open for settlement, but Mr. Barry would not claim citizenship in the latter colony and, with other citizens, made application to the Texas Congress and located his 640 acres near Corsi- cana, directly under the authority of the Repub- lic. "You ask what my gainful occupation was in those days," rejoined the Colonel, in his inim- itably soft and pleasing voice. "Now. to be frank, I hunted most of the time. I had a farm, some negroes, and raised crops, but there was more hunting than anything else. The country was just as God Almighty left it. He had said 'Subdue the land,' and I went to work to subdue it. There were panthers, bear and every kind of feathered and furry game, and it was quite in line with my love for outdoor life to give my time to the chase rather than the more prosaic oc- cupations of farming." What wonderful con- trasts there have been in the life of this man of over fourscore, now feeble under the weight of years, who thus recounts the period when he was in the full tide of manly vigor.


He had not been here long, and the Republic was still in existence, when he became identified with the Ranger service, for which his life his-


tory is especially notable. He first joined an in- dependent company at San Antonio, and later became connected with Captain Jack Hays' com- pany in North Texas. "Let me tell you how the country was protected in those days. You have heard of the famous 'minute-men' of the Revo- lution, and right here on the Texas frontier all the settlers were subjected to the same sort of service. Every man kept his arms ready and forty rounds of ammunition in reserve, and when the call came, even if it was in the dead of night or in the midst of storm or sickness, he hurried from home to the defense of his brother pioneers. But these men under the command of Jack Hays were the couriers and messengers rather than actual protectors of the frontier. They were under the imperative order, 'Get into no fights,' which was the most difficult of all commands to obey, for they were born fighters and the enemy had never whipped them till they had killed the last man of them. No, these Rang- ers who were in regular duty had the task of Paul Revere, when the Indian alarm was given, they rode with dare-devil haste and recklessness throughout the country, arousing the minute- men and marshaling the militia army to battle with the savage foe. It was the duty of these Rangers to picket the entire frontier line, each being stationed within a few hours' ride of a comrade, so that an alarm could be sounded all over the country in a brief time. This was the kind of service I was in before annexation, and up to the time of the Mexican war I was with a surveying party along the Trinity river.




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