USA > Texas > Indian wars and pioneers of Texas, Vol. I > Part 10
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70
strong ties that bound the modest but ever faithful and fearless Karnes to the hearts of the people of San Antonio and the whole Southwest. Living, fighting and dying in the country without family or kindred; leaving no traee on paper indieating his long and faithful service; largely winning achieve- ments of which neither official nor private record was kept ; though personally having had very slight acquaintance with him, it has ever been to the writer a sineere pleasure to reseue from oblivion his many gallant deeds, and place his memory where it right- fully belongs in the galaxy composed of the truest, best, most unselfish and bravest men who wrought for Texas at any time between 1821 and 1816.
The Captivity of the Putman and Lockhart Children in 1838.
In the summer of 1837, succeeding the great exodus of 1836, Mr. Andrew Loekhart returned to his frontier home on the west side of the Guad- alupe, and nearly opposite the present consider- able town of Cuero, in DeWitt County. He was accompanied, or soon joined, by Mitehell Putman, with his wife and several children. Mr. Putman was a man of good character, and had been honor- ably discharged from the army after having served a full term and being in the battle of San Jacinto. The two families temporarily lived in the same yard.
When the peeans began ripening in the fall, the children of both families frequented the bottom near by to gather those delicious nuts, which, of course, were highly prized at a time when nearly all, and oftentimes all, the food attainable was wild meat, indigenous nuts and fruit.
On one oceasion, in October, 1838, Matilda, daughter of Mr. Lockhart, aged about thirteen, and three of Mr. Putman's children, a small girl, a boy of four and a girl of two and a half years, left home in search of pecans. The hours flew by - night came, and through its weary hours parental hearts throbbed with anguish. Signal fires were lighted, horns blown and guns fired - the few accessible settlers were notified, but the morning sun rose upon two disconsolate house- holds. The four children, as time revealed, had bren cunningly surprised, awed into silence, and swiftly borne away by a party of wild Indians. Pursuit was impracticable. There were not inen
enough in the country and the families needed nightly` protection at home.
Mr. Lockhart, more able to do so than Mr. Put- man, made every effort to recover his daughter and the other children. For this purpose he sccompa- nied Col. John H. Moore on expeditions into the mountains in both 1838 and 1839. In one of these expeditions Col. Moore made a daylight attack on a large hostile village on the San Saba, or rather just as day was dawning. Despite the remon- strances of others the resolute seeker of his lost child rushed ahead of all others, exclaiming in stentorian voice: "Matilda Lockhart! Oh, my child ! if you are here run to me. I am your father!" He continued so to shout, and, dear reader, Matilda heard and recognized that loved voice repeatedly ; but the moment the fight opened she was lashed into a run by squaws and speedily driven into the recesses of thickets. So time passed, the stricken father seizing upon every hope, however faint, to recover his ehild.
Negotiations were opened with the hostiles, by direction of President Lamar, in the winter of 1839-40, seeking a restoration of all our eaptive children, and there was known to be quite a number among them. The wily foe betrayed the cunning and dissimulation of their raee from the first. They promised much in two or three interviews, but performed little.
During the spring of 1840 the little boy of Mr. Putman was brought in and restored to his parents. The elder daughter was not heard of until during
٠٤٫٢٠
52
INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
the late war, in 1864, twenty-seven years after her captivity, when she was providentially restored to her family at Gonzales, and it happened in this wisc : Judge John R. Chenault, of Southwest Missouri, who had, in former years, been an Indian agent west of that State, refugeed to Gonzales, where he had kindred. In his family was a girl he had in that day recovered from the Indians, and educated. She was identified beyond doubt as the missing daughter of Mr. Putman and resumed her place among her kindred. Judge Chenault died several years since, a citizen of Dallas County.
In fulfillment of one of their violated promises to bring in all the prisoners they had, the warriors only brought in one poor woman, who had been cruelly treated throughout her captivity - her body burnt in small spots all over - and this was Matilda Lockhart.
Restored to her family and adorned in civilized costume, she speedily developed into one of the prettiest and most lovely women in the surround- ing country, becoming a great favorite, distin- guished alike for modesty, sprightliness, and affectionate devotion to her kindred and friends. A few years later a cold contracted at a night party, fastened upon her lungs, and speedily closed her life, to the regret of the whole surrounding country. The story, from her own lips, of the eruelties practiced upon her throughout her cap- tivity, would fill a small volume, the reason for which was unknown to her and unexplainable at home. Temporary brutality to captives is common among the wild tribes, but in a little while the young are treated as other children.
This leaves the little girl of Mr. Putman alone to . account for. She was two and a half years old when she was captured in 1838.
Another party of warriors in the spring of 1810, brought in and delivered up at San Antonio a little girl of about five, but who could not or would not tell where she was captured, and no one there from hier appearance, could imagine her to be one of the lost children of whom he had any information. The child could not speak a word of English and was wild - afraid of every white person -and tried on every occasion to run away. The military authorities were perplexed and knew not how to keep or how to dispose of her. Ilere, again, eame providential interposition.
The District Court was in session, the now lamented Judge John Hemphill presiding for the first time. In attendance as a lawyer was his pre- decessor, Judge James W. Robinson, who theu lived two miles above Gonzales, and one mile below him lived Arch Gipson, whose wife was a daughter
of Mitchell Putman, and a sister of the missing little girl. Hearing of the ehild he examined her closely, trusting she might show some family re- semblance to Mrs. Gipson, whom he knew well and whose father lived only fifteen miles from Gonzales. He could recognize no resemblance, but deter- mined to take the little stranger home with him, for, as he assured the writer, he had a presenti- ment that she was the Putman child, and had a very sympathetic nature. He, Judge Hemphill and John R. Cunningham (a brilliant star, eclipsed in death as a Mexican prisoner two years later), made the trip on horseback together, the little wild crea- ture alternating behind them. They exhausted every means of gentling and winning her, but in vain. It was necessary to tie her in camp at night and watch her closely by day. In this plight they arrived at Judge Robinson's house as dinner was about ready, and the Judge learned that Mrs. Gip- son was very feeble from recent illness. He deemed it prudent to approach her cautiously about the child, and to this end, after dinner he rode for- ward, alone, leaving the other gentlemen to follow a little later with the child who, up to that time, had not spoken an English word.
Judge Robinson gently related all the facts to Mrs. Gipsou, said it could not be her sister, but. thought it would be more satisfactory to let her see in person and had therefore brought the little thing, adding: " Be quiet, it will be here very soon."
The gentlemen soon rode up to the yard fence, the child behind Judge Hemphill, on a very tall horse. I quote by memory the indelible words given me by Judge Robinson a few days after- wards : -
" Despite my urgent caution Mrs. Gipson, from her first realization that a recovered child was near at hand, presented the strangest appearance I ever saw in woman, before or since. She seemed, feeble as she was, to skip more as a bird than as a person, her eyes indescribably bright, and her lips tightly elosed -- but she uttered not a word. As the horsemen arrived she skipped over the fence, and with an expression which language cannot describe, she stood as if transfixed, peering up into the little face on horseback. Never before nor since have I watched any living thing as I watched that child at that moment. . As if moved by irresistible power, the instant it looked into Mrs. Gipson's face it seemed startled as from a slumber, threw up its little head as if to collect its mind, and with a second piercing look, sprang from the horse with outstretched arms, clasping Mrs. Gipson around the neck, piteously exclaim-
53
INDLIN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
ng: 'Sister, sister ! '"' And tears of joy mingled with audible sobs fell from three of the most distinguished men of Texas, all long since gathered to their fathers - Cunningham in Mexi- can bondage in 1842, Robinson in Southern Cali-
fornia about 1850, and Hemphill in the Confederate Senate in 1862. But when such tears flow do not the angels sing pæans around the throne of Him who took little children " up in His arms, put His hands upon them and blessed them ! "
Texas Independence - A Glimpse at the First Capitals, Harris- burg, Galveston, Velasco, Columbia, the First. Real Capital, Houston, and Austin, the First Permanent Capital.
Independence was declared in a log cabin, with- out glass in its windows, in the now almost extinct town of Washington-on-the-Brazos, on the second day of March, 1836. The government ad interim, then established, with David G. Burnet as Presi- dent, and Lorenzo de Zavala as Vice-president, first organized at Harrisburg, but soon fled from Santa Anna's army down to the barren island of Galveston, where it remained till a short time after the battle of San Jacinto, when it moved to Velasco, at the mouth of the Brazos. After the first elcetion under the Republic, President Burnet, by proclamation, assembled the First Congress, President and Vice- president, at the town of Columbia, on the Brazos, on the 3d of October, 1836. No other place in Texas, at the time (excepting, perhaps, Nacog- doches, in the extreme east), had sufficient house room to meet the emergency. There was in Columbia a large two-story house, divided in the center by a wide hall and stairway into large rooms shove and below - one on each side of the hall, and an ell containing several rooms. It had been erected and occupied in 1832-3 by Capt. Henry S. Brown, father of the author, and in it he died on July 26, 1884, his attending physician being Dr. Anton Jones, afterwards the last President of the Republic. This building was torn down early in
In this building the First Congress of the Repub- he of Texas assembled under President Burnet's ¡ toclination on the third of October, 1836. In it on the 22d of the same month, President Burnet delivered his farewell message, and at the same Wir Sam Houston, as first constitutional Presi- 1751, and Mirabeau B. Lamar, as Vice-president, I'ma the oath of office and delivered their inaugural
addresses. In it all of the first Cabinet took the osth of office, viz. : Stephen F. Austin as Secre- tary of State (died on the 27th of December fol- lowing ) ; Ex-Governor Henry Smith, as Secretary of the Treasury (died in the mountains of Cali- fornia, March 4, 1851) ; Thomas J. Rusk, as Secre- tary of War (resigned a few weeks later and was succeeded by William S. Fisher, who died in 1845, while Gen. Rusk died in 1857) ; and Samuel Rhoads Fisher, as Secretary of the Navy (who died in 1839.) A portion of the officers were in other buildings and for a time one House of the Congress occupied a different building.
In this really first Capitol of Texas were enacted all the original laws for organizing the Republic and its counties, and the afterwards famous law defining its boundaries, the western line of which was the Rio Grande del Norte from its source to its en- tranee into the Gulf of Mexico; and in it Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, then a distinguished member of the United States Senate, was received as the guest of the infant nation.
From Columbia the capital was moved to the new town of Houston in the spring of 1837. From Houston it was removed to the newly planned frontier town of Austin in October, 1839, and here is where I propose to locate what follows.
The government was established at Austin in October, 1839. Mirabeau B. Lamar, one of the truest knights of chivalry that ever figured on Texas soil, was President; David G. Burnet, the embodi- ment of integrity - learned and experienced --- was Vice-president ; Abner S. Lipscomb, one of the trio who subsequently gave fame to the judicial decisions of Texas, was Secretary of State; Albert Sidney Johnston, the great soldier and
54
INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
patriot who fell at Shiloh on the 6th of April, 1862, was Secretary of War ; Louis P. Cooke, who died of cholera at Brownsville in 1849, and had been a student at West Point, was Secretary of the Navy ; Dr. James II. Starr, of Nacogdoches, was Secretary of the Treasury ; Jolin Rice Jones was Postmaster- General ; Jobn P. Borden was Commissioner of the Land Office ; Thomas J. Rusk was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Associates being the Dis- trict Judges of the Republic; James Webb was Attorney-General; Asa Brigham, Treasurer; E. . Lawrence Stiekney, Stock Commissioner ; Wm. G. Cooke, Quartermaster-General ; Hugh MeLeod, Adjutant-General ; Wm. L. Cazneau, Commissary- General ; Jacob Snively, Paymaster-General ; Peter H. Bell (afterwards Governor), Inspector- General; Edward Burleson was Colonel command- ing the regular army ; Charles DeMorse was Fund Commissioner, or something of that sort.
These men arrived in Austin as the government, in September and October, 1839. Austin was the outside settlement on the Colorado and so remained until annexation was perfected on the 19th of February, 1846. Through those six years it remained exposed to the forays of all the hostile Indians in upper Texas, from which many valuable lives were lost and quite a number of women and children carried into savage captivity. Just com- pleting my eighteenth year, I became a denizen of Austin at its birth, setting type on one of the two newspapers then started, and so remained for a considerable time, in which it was my privilege to make the personal acquaintance of each of the gentlemen named as officials of the government, and ever after to enjoy the friendship of nearly all of thein, the cxeeptions arising from early and per- manent separation by distance.
No new town, in this or any other country, ever began its existence with a larger ratio of cducated, talented and honorable men, especially of young men. A few of the latter now, in the fiftieth year afterwards, still live there. Among them are James II. Raymond, John M. Swisher, Joseph Lee, James F. Jolinson, James M. Swisher, Fenwick Smith, Wm. S. Hotchkiss. Among those known or be -. licved to be living elsewhere, are Henry H. Collier, in Canada; * Thomas Gales Forster, in Cineinnati ; Wm. B. Billingsly, in Bastrop ; Archibald C. Ilyde, of Uvalde County ( the first postmaster and one of the first justices of the peace at Austin) ; John P. Borden, of Colorado County ; Gen. Geo. W. Morgan, of Mount Vernon, Ohio ( then Captain in the Texisn army ) ; * Rev. Joseph A. Clark, living at Thorp's Spring, and founder of Ad Ran College; Parry W. Humphries, of Aransas Pass; John Adriance, in
Columbia ; Alex. T. Gayle, Jackson County ; and ex. Governor Bell, living in North Carolina. Of those who are dead I recall George J. Durham, who died in 1869; James M. Ogden, Thos. L. Jones and *Martin C. Wing, all of whom drew black beans and were put to death in Mexico, March 25, 1843; Capt. Ben. Johnson, killed by Mexicans near the Nueces soon afterwards ; - Dodson and - Black. killed by Indians opposite Austin, in 1842; Henry W. Raglan, Richard H. Hord, died in Kentucky ; George D. Biggar, Capt. Joseph Daniels, died in San Francisco in 1885; M. II. Nicholson, *Joel Miner, *Alexander Area, *William Clark, Ambrose B. Pattison, died in Onondaga Hollow, N. Y. ; Maj. George W. Bonnell (editor, and killed as one of the guard at Mier, December 26, 1842); * James Glasscock (a Mier prisoner) ; * -- McClelland, died in Tyler ; * William Carleton, Wm. H. Murrah, Alex. C. McFarlane, George K. Teulon (editor), died in Calcutta ; Maj. Samuel Whiting (founder of the first paper in Austin), died in New Jersey ; Rev. Edward L. Fontaine, died in Mississippi; John B. Ransom (poet), accidentally killed in 1841; John W. Lann, died a Santa Fe prisoner ; Thos. Ward and Col. Thomas Wm. Ward, Dr. Richard F. Brenham (killed in the rescue of the Mier prisoners at Salado, Mexi- co, February - 1843) ; Horaee L. Upshur, M. H. . Beatty, M. P. Woodhouse, Wm. H. H. Johnson, James W. Smith ( first Judge of Travis County), killed by Indians in sight of Austin, in 1843; Harvey .Smith died in Bell County ; Thomas W. Smith (their father), killed by Indians near Austin in 1841; Francis P. Morris, died a dis- tinguished Methodist preacher in Missouri; * W. D. Mims, Dr. Moses Johnson ( first Mayor of Austin), died in Lavaca ; Charles Schoolfield, killed by Indians ; Henry J. Jewett, Judge Luckett, Alfred W. Luckett, Wm. W. Thompson, died in Arizona; Wayne Barton (the first sheriff), killed in Washington County in 1844; Capt. James G. Swisher, "George W. Noble, died in Mobile ; Mus- grove Evans, Charles Mason (respectively first and second Auditors), James Neweomb, L. Vaneleve, Capt. Mark B. Lewis, killed in 1843; Jesse C. Tanncliill, Jacob M. Harrell, Wm. Hornsby, Na- thaniel Townsend, Samuel Browning, Capt. Stephen Crosby, Abner H. Cook, Alfred D. Coombs, Neri Chamberlain, Joseph Cecil ( both arms shot off), Massillon Farley, John Green, Joseph Harrell, Anderson Harrell, Mrs. Angelina Eberly, died in Kentucky ; Mrs. Eliza B. Logan, Mrs. Anna C.
* All those marked thus *, including myself, were printers.
٣٫٠٠٠٠٠
55
INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
Luckett, R. D. MeAnelly, Nelson Merrill, A. B. McGill, B. D. Noble, Dr. Joseph W. Robertson, Mrs. Aan T. J. Wooldridge, Moses Wells, Joseph Waples, Thos. G. Western, Michael Ziller, Charles R. Sossaman, Martin Moore, Charles De Morse.
These names, drawn from memory, in a very large sense, apply to persons who then or subsequently became widely known in the public service --- in- deed, in their respective spheres valuable men in the country. Of course I can only recall a portion of those entitled to honorable mention in an article of this character. Gathered together from all parts of the Union, and a few from Europe, their bones are widely asunder, at least as far as from New York to San Francisco, and one in China.
The then future of Austin, seemingly bright, was invisibly portentous of evil. On the capture of San Antonio by Mexicans, in March, 1842, Austin was abandoned as the seat of government, and so remained for four years, or until February, 1846. Many of the inhabitants thereupon left their homes, and with a greatly depleted population, the town was left open to savage attacks from the north, east and west. Their trials and deprivations were great. The day of comparative deliverance came when, in connection with annexation, the govern-
ment was returned to Austin, from which period the place slowly grew until railroads reached it, since which time its increase in population, wealth and costly edifices has been rapid, until, with ample public buildings, and four State asylums, and a State House pronounced equal in grandeur and appointments to any in the Union, it is regarded with pride by the State and admiration by stran- gers as one of the most charming and beautiful of State capitals of the Union. Though perhaps the youngest of its self-governing inhabitants at the time of its birth, it was my privilege on numerous subsequent occasions, covering a period of twenty years, to represent other portions of the State in its deliberative bodies assembled there, and I have never ceased to feel a deep interest in its prosperity. Hence, on this fifty-third anniver- sary of Texian independence, and in the fiftieth of the life of our State capital, with the utmost sin- cerity, I can and do salute thee, oh! thou dearly won but beautiful city of the Colorado, and would gladly embrace each of its survivors of fifty years ago - male and female-and their children and grandchildren as well, we're it practicable to do so. May the God of our fathers be their God and bless them.
A Succession of Tragedies in Houston and Anderson Counties --- Death of the Faulkenberrys -- Cordova's Rebellion - A Bloody Skirmish - Battle of Kickapoo - Slaughter and Cremation at John Edens' House - Butchery of the Campbell Family - 1836 to 1841 - Etc., Etc.
In the account of the fall of Parker's fort, prom- inent mention was made of David Faulkenberry, his son Evan, a youth, and Abram Anglin, a boy of eighteen. They with others of the defeated party temporarily located at Fort Houston, as before stated, a mile or two west of where Palestine now stands. In the fall of 1836 these three, with Columbus Anderson (one account gives this name ag Andrews), went down to the Trinity to the point since known as Bonner's ferry, crossed to the west bank for the purpose of hunting, lay down under the bank and all fell asleep. James Ilunter
was in the vicinity also, but remained on the east .bank. While gathering nuts near by he heard the guns and yells of Indians, and hastening to the river, witnessed a portion of the scene. At the first fire Columbus Anderson received a death wound, but swam the river, crawled about two miles and died. David Faulkenberry, also mortally wounded, swam over, crawled about two hundred yards and died. Both of these men had pulled grass and made a bed on which to die.
A bullet passed through Abram Anglin's powder horn and into his thigh, carrying fragments of the
--
56
INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
horn, but he swam the river, climbed its bank, mounted behind Hunter, and escaped, to live till 1875 or 1876, when he died, in the vicinity of his first home, near Parker's fort. Of Evan Faulken- berry no trace was ever found. The Indians after- wards said that he fought like a demon, killed two of their number, wounded a third, and when scalped and almost cloven asunder, jerked from them, plunged into the river and about midway sank to appear no more-adding another to the list of heroic boys who have died for Texas. Honored be his memory! The dead were buried the next day.
THE MEXICAN REBELLION.
At the time of the revolution there was a consid- erable resident Mexican population in and around Nacogdoches. About the first of September, 1838, Jose Cordova, at the head of about two hundred of these people, aided by Juan Flores, Juan Cruz and John Norris, rose in rebellion and pitched camp on the Angelina, about twenty miles southwest of Nacogdoches. Joined by renegade Indians, they began a system of murder and pillage among the thinly scattered settlers. They soon murdered the brothers, Matthew and Charles Roberts, and Mr. Finley, their relative. Speedily, Gen. Thomas J. Rusk, at the head of six hundred volunteers, was in the field. Cordova retired to the village of " The Bowl," Chief of the Cherokees, and sougut, unsuccessfully, to form an alliance with him; but succeeded in attaching to his standard some of the more desperate of the Cherokees and Cooshattas. In a day or two he moved to the Kickapoo village, now in the northeast corner of Anderson County, and succeeded in winning that band to his cause. Rusk followed their line of retreat to the Killough settlement, some forty miles farther. He became convinced of his inability to overhaul them ; also, that they had left the country, and returned home, disbanding his forces.
BATTLE OF KICKAPOO.
Rusk had scarcely disbanded his men, when the numerous family of Killough was inhumanly butch- ered by this motley confederation of Mexicans and Indians, which alarmed and incensed the people exposed to their forays. The bugle blast of Rusk soon re-assembled his disbanded followers. Maj. Leonard H. Mabbitt then had a small force at Fort Houston. Rusk directed him to unite with him at what is now known as the Duty place, four miles west of the Neches. Mabbitt, reinforced by some volunteers of the vicinity under Capt. W. T. Sad- dler, started to the rendezvous. On the march, six miles from Fort Houston, a number of Mabbitt's
men, a mile or more in rear of the command, were surprised by an attack of Indians and Mexicans, led by Flores and Cruz. A sharp skirmish ensued, in which the little band displayed great gallantry, but before Mabbitt came to their rescue, Bullock, Wright and J. W. Carpenter were killed, and two men, Mckenzie and Webb, were wounded. The enemy, on seeing Mabbitt's approach, precipitately fled. This occurred on the 11th or 12th of Octo- ber, 1838. The dead were buried. Only one Indian was left on the field, but several were killed.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.