Indian wars and pioneers of Texas, Vol. I, Part 5

Author: Brown, John Henry, 1820-1895
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Austin : L.E. Daniel]
Number of Pages: 922

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Canoma, a faithful and friendly Indian, was the chief of a small band of Caddos, and passed much of his time with or near the Americans at the Falls. He was then in the vicinity. He took seven of his tribe and pursued the Toncahuas. On the eighth day he returned, bearing as trophies seven scalps, Reed's horse and baggage, receiving substantial commendation from the settlers.

In the spring of 1835 the faithful Canoma was still about Tenoxtitlan. There were various indi- cations of intended hostility by the wild tribes, but it was mainly towards the people on the Colorado. The wild Indians, as is well known to tliose conver- sant with that period, considered the people of the two rivers as separate tribes. The people at the

Falls, to avert an outbreak, employed Canoma to go among the savages and endeavor to bring them ering two children of Mr. Moss, then prisoners in their hands.

Canoma, leaving two of his children as hostages, undertook the mission and visited several tribes. On returning he reported that those he had seen were willing to treat with the Brazos people; but that about half were bitterly opposed to forming friendly relations with the Coloradians, and that at that moment a descent was being made on Bastrop on that river by a party of the irreconcilables.

The people at the Falls immediately dispatched Samuel McFall to advise the people of that infant settlement of their danger. Before he reached his destination the Indians had entered the settlement. murdered a wagoner, stolen several horses and left. and Col. Edward Burleson, in command of a small party, was in pursuit.

In the meantime, some travelers lost their horses at the Falls and employed Canoma to follow and recover thein. Canoma, with his wife and son. armed with a written certification of his fidelity to the whites, trailed the horses in the direction of and nearly to the thirce forks of Little river, and re- covered them. On his return with these American

INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.

horses, Burleson and party fell in with him, but were not aware of his faithful character. He ex- hibited his eredentials, with which Burleson was dis- posed to be satisfied ; but his men, already incensed, and finding Canoma in po-session of the horses under such suspicious circumstances, gave rein to unreasoning exasperation. They killed him and his son, leaving his wife to get in alone, which she lost no time in doing. She reported these unfortunate facts precisely as they had transpired, and as they were ever lamented by the chivalrous and kind- hearted Burleson.

This intensely incensed the remainder of Cano- ina's party, who were still at the Falls. Choctaw Tom, the principal man left among them, stated that they did not blame the people at the Falls, but that all the Indians would now make war on the Coloradians, and, with all the band, left for the Indian country.

Soon after this, in consequence of some depreda- tions, Maj. Oldham raised a company of twenty- five men in Washington, and made a successful attack an the Keechi village, on the Trinity, now in Leon County. He routed them, killed a number and captured a considerable number of horses and all their camp equipage.

Immediately after this, Capt. Robert M. Cole- man, of Bastrop, with twenty-five men, three of whom were Brazos men well known to many of the Indians, made a campaign against the Tehuacanos, at the famous springs of that name now in Lime- stone County. He crossed the Brazos at Washing- ton on the 4th of July, 1835. He was not discovered till near the village. The Indians manifested stubborn courage. A severe engage- inent ensued, but in the end, though killing a considerable number of Indians. Coleman was com- pelled to retreat - having one man killed and four wounded. The enemy were too numerous for so sinall a party ; and it was believed that their recog- nition of the three Brazos men among their assail- ants, stimulated their courage and exasperated them against the settlers on that river, as they were already towards those on the Colorado.

Coleman fell back upon Parker's fort, two and a half iniles above the present town of Groesbeck, and sent in an express, calling for an augmentation of force to chastise the enemy. Three companies were immediately raised - one commanded by Capt. Robert M. Williamson ( the gifted, dauntless and eloquent three-legged Willie of the popular legends), one by Capt. Coheen and a third by Dr. George W. Barnett. Col. John HI. Moore was given chief command and Joseph C. Neill (a

soldier at the Horseshoe) was made adjutant. They joined Coleman at the fort and rapidly advanced upon the Tehuacanos at the springs ; but the wily red man had discovered them and fled.

They then scoured the country up the Trinity as far as the forks, near the subsequent site of Dallas, then passed over to and down the Brazos, crossing it where old Fort Graham stands, without encoun- tering more than five or six Indians on several occasions. They, however, killed one warrior and made prisoners of several women and children. One of the women, after her capture, killed her own child, for which she was immediately shot. Without any other event of moment the command leisurely returned to the settlements.

[NOTE. Maj. Oldham was afterwards one of the Mier prisoners. Dr. Barnett, from Tennessee, at 37 years of age. on the second day of the next March (1836), signed the Declaration of Texian Independence. He served as a senator for a num- ber of years and then moved to the western part of Gonzales County, where, in the latest Indian raid ever made into that section, he was killed while alone, by the savages. The names of Robert M. Williamson and John H. Moore are too intimately identified with our history to justify farther notice here. As a Lieutenant-Colonel at San Jacinto, Joseph C. Neill was severely wounded. Robert M. Coleman was born and reared in that portion of Christian County, Kentucky, which afterwards be- came Trigg County. He came to Texas in 1830. He, too, at the age of 37, signed the Declaration of Independence and, fifty-one days later, com- manded a company at San Jacinto. He was drowned at the mouth of the Brazos in 1837. In 1839 his wife and 13 year-old-son were killed at their frontier home in Webber's prairie, on the Colorado, and another son carried into captivity by the Indians, never to be restored to civilization. Two little girls, concealed under the floor by their heroic child brother before his fall. were saved. Henry Bridger, a young man, then just from Cole County, Missouri, afterwards my neighbor and close friend in several campaigns and battles --- modest as a maiden, fearless as a tiger - also a Mier pris- oner, saw his first service in this campaign of Col. Moore. Sam MeFall, the bearer of the warning from the Falls to Bastrop. from choice went on foot. Ile was six feet and three inches high. lean, lithe and audacious. He was the greatest footman ever known in Texas, and made the distance in shorter time than a saddle horse coukl have done. He became famous among the Mier prisoners at Perote, 1843-4, by feigning lunacy and stampeding whenever harnessed to one of the little Mexican carts for hauling stone, a task forced upon his comrades, but from which he escaped as a " lunatico." He died in MeLennan County some years ago, lamented as an exemplar of true, inborn nobility of soul and dauntless courage. ]

INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.

The Attempted Settlement of Beales' Rio Grande Colony in 1834- Its Failure and the Sad Fate of Some of the Col- onists-Twelve Murdered - Mrs. Horn and Two Sons and Mrs. Harris Carried into Captivity - 1834 to 1836.

Before narrating the painful seenes attending the attempt to form a colony of Europeans and Americans on the Rio Grande, about thirty miles above the present town of Eagle Pass, begun in New York in November, 1833, and terminating in bitter failure and the slaughter of a portion of the colonists on the 2d of April, 1836, a few precedent facts are condensed, for the more intelligent and comprehensive understanding of the subject.

Dr. John Charles Beales, born in Aldborough, Snffolk Connty, England, March 20, 1804, went to Mexico, and, in 1830, married the widow of Richard Exter, an English merchant in that country. She was a Mexican lady, her maiden name having been Maria Dolores Soto. Prior to his death Mr. Exter had become associated in certain empresario con- tracts for introducing colonists into northern or rather New Mexico with Stephen Julian Wilson, an English naturalized citizen of Mexico.

In 1832 Dr. Beales and Jose Manuel Roquella obtained from the State of Coahuila and Texas the right to settle colonists in the following described limits :-

Beginning at the intersection of latitude 32º north with longitude 102' west from London, the same being the southwest corner of a tract peti- tioned for by Col. Renben Ross : thence west on . the parallel of latitude 32° to the eastern limit of New Mexico; thence north on the line divi ling New Mexico and the provinces ( the State) of Coa- huila and Texas, to a point twenty leagues (323 mike's) south of the Arkansas river : thence east to longitude 102°, on the west boundary (really the northwest corner) of the tract petitioned for by Col. Reuben Ross ; - thence south to the place of beginning. Beales and Roquella employed Mr. A. Le Grand, an American; to survey and mark the boundaries of this territory and divide it into twelve or more blocks. Le Grand, with an escort and proper outfit, arrived on the ground from Santa Fe, and established the initial point, after a series of observations, on the 27th of June, 1833. From that date till the Both of October, he was actively engaged in the work, running lines north, south,

east and west over most of the large territory. In the night, eight inches of snow fell, and on the 30th, after several days' examination of its topog- raphy, he was at the base of the mountain called by the Mexicans " La Sierra Oscura." Here, for the time being, he abandoned the work and pro- eeeded to Santa Fe to report to his employers. Extracts from that report form the base for these statements. Neither Beales and Roquella nor Col. Reuben Ross ever proceeded farther in these enter- prises ; but it is worthy of note that Le Grand pre- eeded Capt. R. B. Marcy, U. S. A., twenty-six years in the exploration and survey of the npper waters of the Colorado. Brazos. Red, Canadian and Washita rivers, a field in which Capt. Marcy has worn the honors of first explorer from the dates of his two expeditions. respectively, in 1849 and 1853. Le Grand's notes are quite full, noting the cross- ing of every stream in all his 1800 to 2000 miles in his subdivision of that large territory into dis- tricts or blocks numbered 1 to 12.

Le Grand, in his diary, states that on the 14th of Angust : " We fell in with a party of Riana In- dians, who informed us they were on their way to Santa Fe, for the purpose of treating with the government. We sent by them a copy of our jour- ual to this date."

On the 20th of Angust they visited a large en- campment of Comanche Indians, who were friendly and traded with them.

On the night of September 10th, in the country between the Arkansas and Canadian, five of the party - Kimble, Bois, Caseboth, Boring and Ryon - deserted, taking with them all but four of Le Grand's horses.

On the 21st of September, near the northeast. eorner of the tract they saw, to the west, a large body of Indians. This was probably in " No Man's Land," now near the northeast corner of Sherman County, Texas.

On the night of September 27th, twenty miles west of the northeast corner, and therefore near the northwest corner of Sherman County, they were attacked by a body of Suake Indians. The

INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.

action was short but furious. The Indians, evi- dently expecting to surprise and slaughter the party while asleep, left nine warriors dead on the ground. But the vietors paid dearly for the triumph; they lost three killed, MeCrummins, Weathers and Jones, and Thompson was slightly wounded. They buried the dead on the 28th and remained on the ground till the 29th. The country over which this party carried the compass and chain, between June 27th and October 30th, 1833, measuring on the ground about eighteen hundred miles, covers about the western half of the present misnamed Texas Panhandle, the castern portion (or a strip thereof) of the present New Mexico, the western portion of "No Man's Land," and south of the Panhandle to latitude 32. The initial or southeast corner (the intersection of longitude 102 with latitude 32), judging by our present maps, was in the vicinity of the present town of Midland, on the Texas and Pacific Railway, but Le Grand's observations must necessarily have been imperfeet and fixed the point erroneously. It was, however, sixteen miles south of what he called throughout the "Red river of Texas," meaning the Colorado or Pasigono, while he designates as " Red river" the stream still so called. This large territory is now settled and being settled by stock raisers, with a decided tendency towards farming pursuits. The writer of this, through the press of Texas, ever since 1872, has contended that in due time Northwest Texas, from the Pacific road to latitude 36° 30', notwithstanding consid- erable districts of worthless land, would become the seat of an independent and robust agricultural population. It is now being verified.

BEALES COLONY ON THE RIO GRANDE.

Dr. Beales seeured in his own name a right to settle a colony extending from the Nueces to the Rio Grande and lying above the road from San Antonio to Laredo. Next above, extending north to latitude 32º, was a similar privilege granted to John L. Woodbury, which expired, as did similar concessions to Dr. James Grant, a Seotchman naturalized and married in Mexico ( the same who was killed by the Mexican army on its march to Texas, in February, 1836, in what is known as the Johnson and Grant expedition, beyond the Nueces river), and various others. Dr. Beales entered into some sort of partnership with Grant for settling colonists on the Rio Grande and Nueces' traet, and then, with Grant's approval, while re- taining his official position as empresario, or con- tractor with the State, formed in New York an

association styled the " Rio Grande and Texas Land Company," for the purpose of raising means to encourage immigration to the colony from France, Ireland, England and Germany, in- eluding also Amerieans. Mr. Egerton, an English surveyor, was sent out first to examine the lands and select a site for locating a town, and the first immigrants. He performed that service and returned to New York in the summer of 1833.

The Rio Grande and Texas Land Company organ- ized on a basis of capital " divided into 800 shares, each containing ten thousand acres, besides sur- plus lands." Certificate No. 407, issued in New York, July 11, 1834, signed, Isaac A. Johnson, trustee ; Samuel Sawyer, secretary, and J. C. Beales, empresario, with a miniature map of the lands, was transmitted to me as a present or memento, as the case might be, in the year 1874, by my relative, Hon. Wmn. Jessop Ward, of Baltimore, and now lies before me. As a matter of fact, Beales, like all other empresarios under the Mexican colonization laws, contracted or got permission to introduee a specified number of immigrants (800 in this case) and was to receive a given amount of premium land in fee simple to himself for each hundred families so introduced. Otherwise he had no right to or interest in the lands, and all lands not taken up by immigrants as headrights, or awarded him as premiums within a certain term of years from the date of the contract, remained, as before, public domain of the State. Hence the habit generally adopted by writers and map-makers of styling these districts of country " grants" to .1., B. or C. was and ever has been a misnomer. They were in reality only permits.

The first, and so far as known or believed, the only body of immigrants introduced by Dr. Beales, sailed with him from New York, in the schooner Amos Wright, Capt. Monroe, November 11th, 1833. The party consisted of fifty-nine souls, men, women and children, but how many of each class cannot be stated.

On the 6th of December, 1833, the Amos Wright entered Aransas bay, finding nine feet of water on the bar; on the 12th they disembarked and pitched their tents on the beach at Copano and there remained till January 3, 1834, finding there only a Mexican coast-guard consisting of a corporal and two men. On the 15th of December Don Jose Maria Cosio, collector of customs, came down from Goliad (the ancient La Bahia), and passed their papers and goods as correct and was both courteous and kind. Throughout the remainder of December, January and February there were rapidly succeed- ing wet and cold northers, indicating one of the

INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.

most inclement winters known to the inhabitants - fooding the coast prairies and causing great dis- comfort to the strangers, who, however, feasted abundantly on wild game, fish and water fowl.

On the 20th Dr. Beales, his servant, Marcelino, and Mr. Power started to Goliad to see the Alcalde, Don Miguel Aldrete, and procure teams for trans- portation, the roads being so flooded that, although the distance was only about forty miles, they did not arrive till the 22d. Returning with animals to draw their vehicles, they arrived at Copano late on the 31st of December, having halted, both in going and returning, at the Irish settlement of Power's and Hewetson's infant colony, at the old mission of Refugio. (This colony had for empresarios Mr. James Power and Dr. James Hewetson, both well known in the subsequent history of that sorely desolated section. )

The party left Copano on the 3d of January, 1834, and after numerous vexations and minor accidents, arrived at Goliad, crossed and encamped on the east bank of the San Antonio river on the 16th, having thus left behind them the level and flooded coast lands. Dr. Beales notes that, while at Goliad, " some of the foreigners in the town, the lowest class of the Americans, behaved ex- ceedingly ill, endeavoring, by all means in their power, to seduce my families away." But only one man left, and he secured his old Majordomo (overseer or manager), John Quinn, and a Mexican with his wife and four children, to accompany the party. He also notes that on Sunday (19th) a Carancahua Indian child was baptized by the priest in Goliad, for which the collector's wife, Senora Cosio, stood godmother.

On the 20th of January, with freshly purchased oxen, they left for San Antonio and, after much trouble and cold weather, arrived there on the 6th of February. A few miles below that place (a fact stated by Mrs. Hoin, but not found in Beales' diary ) they found, Mr. Smith, a stranger from the United States, lying by the roadside, terribly wounded, and with him a dead Mexican, while two others of his Mexican escort had escaped severely wounded. They had had a desperate fight with a small party of Indians who had left Mr. Smith as dead. Dr. Beales, both as physician and good Samaritan, gave him every possible attention and conveyed him to San Antonio, where he lingered for a time and died after the colonists left that place. While there a young German couple in the party were married, but their names are not given.

On the 18th of February, with fifteen carts and wagons, the colonists left San Antonio for the

Rio Grande. On the 28th they crossed the Nneces and for the first time entered the lands designated as Beales' Colony. Mr. Little carved upon a large tree on the west bank - " Los Primeros colonos de la Villa de Dolores pasaron el 28 de Febrero, 1834," which being rendered into Eng- lish is: " The first colonists of the village of Dolores passed here on the 28th of February, 1834," many of them, alas, never to pass again.

On the 2d of March Mr. Egerton went forward to Presidio de Rio Grande to examine the route, and returned at midnight with the information that the best route was to cross the river at that point, travel up on the west side and recross to the pro- posed locality of Dolores, on the Las Moras creek, which is below the present town of Del Rio and ten or twelve miles from the northeast side of the Rio Grande. They erossed the river on the 5th and on the 6th entered the Presidio, about five miles from it. Slowly moving up on the west side, by a some- what circuitous route and erossing a little river called by Dr. Beales "Rio Escondido," the same sometimes called Rio Chico, or Little river, whieli enters the Rio Grande a few miles below Eagle Pass, they recrossed to the east side of the Rio Grande on the 12th and were again on the colony lands. Here they fell in with five Shawnee Indian trapper's, two of whom spoke English and were not only very friendly, but became of service for some time in killing game. Other Shawnee trappers frequently visited them. Here Beales left a portion of the freight, guarded by Addicks and two Mexicans, and on the 14th traveled up the country about fifteen miles to a creek called " El Sancillo," or " El Sanz." On the 16th of March, a few miles above the latter stream, they arrived at the site of the proposed village of Dolores, on the Las Moras creek, as before stated said to be ten or twelve miles from the Rio Grande. The name " Dolores" was doubtless bestowed by Doctor Beales in honor of his absent wife.

Preparations were at once undertaken to form tents, huts and cabins, by cleaning out a thicket and building a brush wall around it as a fortifica- tion against the wild Indians who then, as for gen- erations before and for fifty years afterwards, were a terror to the Mexican population on that frontier. On the 30th, Dr. Beales was unexpectedly com- pelled to go to Matamoras, three or four hundred miles, to cash his drafts, having failed to do so in Monclova. It was a grave disappointment, as money was essential to meet the wants of the peo- ple. Beyond this date his notes are inaccessible and subsequent events are gleaned dimly from other sources. It must sutlice to say that without irri-

- محمد:

INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.

gation the colonists, in the remainder of 1834 and all of 1835, failed to raise erops and, though guarded part of the time by a company of Mexi- cans employed for that purpose, were ever uneasy lest they should be attacked by the savages. As time passed dissatisfaction arose and the colonists in small parties left the settlement, at one time four families leaving, all probably to the Mexican towns of Monclova, Santa Rosa and San Fernando, but of' their ultimate fate no information is at hand. From Mrs. Horn's narrative it is learned that after many had left and some time in the winter of 1835-6, a new settlement of seven men and a boy (their national ty not being given), some thirty or forty miles distant, while two of the men were absent for a few hours, was attacked. Four of the men and the boy were killed - the fifth man left for dead and all of them scalped. The wounded man, much mutilated, was conveyed to San Fernando, about twenty miles distant, one arm amputated, and, scalpless, he recovered, only to exist as an object of pity and charity.

This last calamity determined all the remainder, excepting Mr. Power and seven others, to abandon the country and return to the gulf and their native lands. Power and party went to San Fernando, in vain to await the arrival of other immigrants. What became of them is not known .:

This brings us to the sad story of the murder of the twelve colonists and the captivity of Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Horn and two children. Mrs. Horn has been several times mentioned in this narrative and before proceeding with it, her history previous to leaving New York, on the Amos Wright, November 11th, 1833, may be briefly stated from her own notes. The youngest of ten children of a Mr. Newton, she was born in 1809 in Huntingdon. sixty miles north of London, her parents being respectable and sincerely pious people. When three years old she was left fatherless. Her mother successfully fulfilled her doubled mission and trained all her children in the strictest prin- ciples of virtue and religion. At the age of eighteen this baby daughter, on the 14th of October, 1827, in St. James church, Clerkenwell, London, married Mr. John Horn, who proved to be all, as husband and father, that her heart desired. They settled in Arlington, No. 2 Moon street, Giles Square, London. Her mother resided with her till her death late in 1830. Mr. Horn was well established in mercantile business in a sinall establishment. Soon after this many English people of small means were migrating to America to improve their condition. Mr. Horn was seized with the same desire and, after due deliberation,

they sailed from London, July 20, 1833, in the ship, Samuel Robinson, Capt. . Griswold (or Chriswold), and arrived in New York on the 27th of August. They took lodgings at 237 Madison street, and Mr. Horn procured a satisfactory clerkship with Mr. John Mckibben. About this time Dr. Beales, from Mexico, was in New York preparing for the colonization trip to the Rio Grande, already deseribed. Omitting many strange incidents and forebodings of evil - pre- sentiments, as generally expressed - on the part of Mrs. Horn, they sailed on the voyage as has been narrated, November 11th, 1833.

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Indian wars and pioneers of Texas, Vol. I, Part 5

Author: Brown, John Henry, 1820-1895 Publication date: 1890 Publisher: Austin : L.E. Daniel] Number of Pages: 922

Author: Brown, John Henry, 1820-1895
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Austin : L.E. Daniel]
Number of Pages: 922