USA > Texas > Wise County > Pioneer history of Wise County; from red men to railroads-twenty years of intrepid history > Part 12
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Impressed by so sententious and sincere a speech and so critical an environment, the leader returned to his men and counseled immediate departure. This they were allowed to do without molestation.
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DEMONSTRATION OF THE UNION LEAGUE.
No return of this kind was ever made to Decatur, and this was the beginning of the end of the Union League, a specious organiza- tion which had for many months exercised petty tyranny over the people of the county. Perhaps the band encountered a degree of manhood at Decatur, with which it had not reckoned, and in the face of which it saw the futility of further prosecutions of its outlawed actions, pendent upon which it fell into dis- bandment.
CHAPTER X.
CONDITIONS BRIEFLY SUMMED UP.
Upon the close of the hostilities "the pall of industrial death hung everywhere," but the beginnings of redemption are shown with the meeting of the first Legislature. This met in 1866 and granted many incorporating rights to business enterprises and schools which had applied. No new counties, however, asked for permission to organize which is significant as applied to con- ditions on the frontier. The Legislature was also busy with numerous immigration schemes and much railroad building activity was reflected therefrom.
Wise County had now been settled beyond ten years. The following general statistics will indicate the effects which four years of war and Indian scourge had visited upon this section of the state, as well as from a local standpoint. The fragmentary notes are taken from the Texas Almanac of 1867. Of the town of Sherman it states:
"Sherman is a small town with two churches and one fine school established and supported by the Odd Fellows."
In Jack County the population had decreased from 168S in 1860 to 1000. Montague from 890 to 849. Montague was the extreme frontier county and laments as follows: "We stand as a breakwater for the protection of the State against the Indians, have done so for years. We will be forced to give up the frontier unless sustained. Sustain us and we will protect you."
Stock raisers had begun to move into Clay County in about 1858, but now "have almost all left on account of the Indians."
The population of Wise County for the year was about 400. Not a mill was left in the county, the nearest being in contiguous counties. A Decatur correspondent writing to the Dallas Herald in the spring of 1867 says, "The town of Decatur is the point where the Overland Mail touched as it passed through Wise County. Now that peace has been established, the people of North Texas desire the re-establishment of the Overland Mail."
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CONDITIONS BRIEFLY SUMMED UP.
The destroying of the mail facilities came with the downfall of the Confederacy and the efforts at re-establishment were slow and discouraging. Mail continued to be brought from Denton to Decatur, the carrier charging ten cents an item for his services, this in addition to the regular postage.
In 1866 proposals for mail routes were published: to run from Meridian to Decatur, via Weatherford and Veal's Station; Denton to Decatur; Decatur to Prairie Point; Decatur to Belknap via Antelope and Jacksboro.
A useful improvement at this juncture was the building of a telegraph line by the government which connected all the frontier garrisons. The line touched at Decatur where an office was maintained. This line was instrumental in partially holding the Indians in cheek, as forewarning communications of their ad- vance could be had.
A vigorous protest is registered at this period against that inhibitory measure of the government which prevented armed resistance to Indian attacks and depredations. All parties col- lected in numbers beyond three and bearing arms were arrested if found by Federal police. This was one of the iniquituous measures aimed at holding the people in the grip of the rapidly alternating provisional governments over which the Federal authority exercised power and contro.l A more severe and un- just condition could not have been imposed upon a defenseless people. The government's contention was that sufficient defense and protection was guaranteed by the Federal troops which had succeeded to the occupation of the frontier posts upon the surrender and withdrawal of the Confederate forces. But the situation was a duplication of that which had obtained previous to the departure of the Federal troops at the inception of the war.
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The Indians in small murderous bands dodged between the large unwieldy bodies of troops and perpetrated fiendish out- rages upon the people. Most effectually preventing this had been the small bodies of home guards and the Confederate Rangers, the latter sweeping in regular and effective patrols up and down the settlement line, keeping the savage at bay.
But now by Federal direction the frontier settlements were
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PIONEER HISTORY OF WISE COUNTY.
denuded of all such capable troops and the home guards espec- ially interdicted from assembling in any kind of defense to the merciless foe. The government troops, concentrated in large, slow moving bodies at widely separated posts, served to present but small opposition to savage marauding, leaving the people exposed to murderous attacks and without the legal right to join themselves together for protection. Such a species of negli- gence will long remain a blot upon the fair eseutcheon of the general government.
Thus at the close of the civil hostilities, while other sections were striding toward restoration of normal conditions, the chain of frontier counties, of which Wise was an important link, re- mained in a death struggle with a long and unhappy decade perquisite to its uncertain termination. In the following seetion the essential character of the Indian warfare will have treatment.
INTRODUCTION.
INDIAN DEPREDATION PERIOD.
"The first great racial struggle began when the Caucasian began to take America from the Indians." (Paddock.)
"It is doubtful whether any state in the union has suffered more continuously and more severely from the Indians than has Texas - from its earliest days they have been a constant menace to all efforts at civilization and permanent habitation. The name Apache and Comanche have become synonyms for ferocity, bloodthirstiness and the worst traits of savagery, and for years the tribes of that race harried the frontier and carried their war- fare even to the heart of the settlements. The history of Indian warfare and outrages in Texas would fill volumes." (Paddock, "History of Northwest Texas").
A contributor to the Texas Historical Quarterly describes the various tribes as follows: "The native tribes of Texas consisted of two classes, the argricultural and the nomadic-twelve of the agricultural class belonged to the Caddo family and inhabited that part of the state lying cast of the Brazos river, while the range of the class that depended upon the chase for subsistence was found in the western portion. The Caddos were more ad- vanced toward civilization than any tribes north of Mexico, living in villages of good tents, wearing dress and ornaments and cultivating the ground, producing crops of corn, melons, pump- kins, etc., which they providently stored for winter use.
The nomadic tribes of Texas were the Karankawas, Lipans, Tonkawas, Kiowas, Apaches and Comanches. The Franciscan missionaries who had labored in Texas during the preceding cen- tury to civilize the more interesting and kindly disposed agri- cultural tribes had not been neglectful of these ferocious denizens of the province and had established missions for some of them. The Karankawas at this period had entirely disappeared. The Lipans ranged from the Brazos to the Mexican frontier along the foot of the mountains. The Karankawas ranged between the
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PIONEER HISTORY OF WISE COUNTY.
Brazos and the Nueces from the coast as far inward as the upper Colorado. The Apaches, whose village was at Bandera Pass, were a ferocious tribe that devastated the southwestern frontier from its earliest settlement by the Spaniards. After annexation, on account of the protection given their habitual range by the United States forts, they had fallen back into New Mexico. The Kiowas claimed the Pan Handle of Texas for their range. The numerous and powerful Comanches were in three divisions, and the band which was the dreaded foe of the Texas frontier was the southern Comanches, for whom the Comanche reserve on the Clear Fork of the Brazos was established."
The red races were the original occupants of Texas. They began to defend their country against eneroachments of the whites when the latter race began to colonize the state along the coast region. Gradually and slowly the white settlements extended northward and westward, the Indians disputing every step. Beginning with the inception of the last century and lasting until the carly seventies, Texas became a vast contest ground, the regions involved extending from the southern coast to the Pan Handle of the state. After fifty years of warfare the hated insti- tutions and civilization of the whites had projected west into the territory of Wise County and for twenty-five years more this and contiguous counties must settle with the Indians for the land they would call their own.
The Indian question becomes of significance to the people of Wise County from the date of the arrival of the first white set- tlers here.
Texas had joined the Union a few years before Wise County had joined Texas as an organized entity. Prior to that time the Republic had dealt with the Indian problem. Now, in pursuance of the agreement of admission the United States government took charge of the Indian affairs and proceeded to handle them after the style followed on other frontiers. At that time all this section, including Wise County, was a vast Indian camp, a menace to immigration and settlement.
The United States established two posts, garrisoned with sol- diers, one in Hill County and the other at Ft. Worth, this in the later forties. White settlers began immediately to flow in and
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INTRODUCTION.
the regions around the posts were filled up. The posts, in order to keep in advance of settlements, were then advanced west- ward; one was established on the Brazos in Young County, and called Ft. Belknap, the other was placed on the Clear Fork of the Brazos, in what is now Jones County, and named Ft. Phantom Hill. The Indians were being crowded further west and intimi- . dated by armed white force. They resented with the inaugura- tion of an intermittent warfare, depredations and killings.
Settlements began in Wise County at this time. Ranger forces were then occupying the attention of the Indians in the Pan Handle, but in the course of half a dozen years the Indians raided and murdered citizens in the counties adjoining Wise on the west. Complaints against the inefficiency of the slow-moving Federal troops were being made. The State of Texas came to the rescue with the inauguration of a grand scheme which looked to the pacification and civilization of the warring tribes, an enter- prise to be co-operated in by the national government.
In 1853 the State of Texas set apart 55,728 acres of public domain in the vicinity of the above mentioned posts to be used by the United States as a reserve whereon schools and farms were to be established for the schooling and training of the Indians. Numerous tribes of rebellious Indians were placed thereon; others became unmanageable and remained at large. For a few years the government made sincere efforts to inculcate the arts of white civilization into the conceptions of the savage tribes, but on the whole the experiment was a grand failure. The outlaw tribes from without broke through and depredated upon the white settlements and certain renegade Indians stole away from the reserves and committed like depredations. The policy soon came into disrepute and the people demanded the breaking up of the agencies and the removal of the Indians further away.
The slow action of the government further heightened the incendiary feelings of the people. The Indians grew bolder and committed atrocious erimes in neighboring counties to Wise. Finally they murdered Bill Holden on Salt Creek, Young County, and the circumstances were so brutal that the people became
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PIONEER HISTORY OF WISE COUNTY.
inflamed and uprose, marching against the reserves with war- like demonstrations.
The details of this instance are recorded in the following chapter, but it is to be generally remarked here that the presence of the outraged citizens to the number of hundreds about the agencies had the effect of persuading the government to abandon the reserve policy at Ft. Belknap and to remove the Indians from the occupation of Texas soil. This was done in 1860. Gen. Thomas of the regular army forcibly removed the Indians and established them upon the old reservation at Ft. Sill in the Indian Territory.
The effect was far from salutary as respects the peace and safety of Wise County. The Indians now became more violent than ever, and in their incursions, penetrated as far south as Denton, Parker and Tarrant Counties, sweeping Wise County with a bitter fire as they scurried across. Thence they would return to their safe harbors in the territory.
Wise County's afflictions became doubled. Civil war broke out coincidental with the afflietions of savage rapine and butchery. The war period has been described. It remains now to cite some of the essential details of the prolonged period of savage attack, during which Wise County sacrificed much of the innocent blood of her men, women and children; also to describe the course of events that brought the great troublous period to a close.
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SECTION THREE.
INDIAN DEPREDATION PERIOD.
"Nowhere has the contest between the Indian and the American been waged more stubbornly than in the state of Texas; nowhere has the barba- rian surrendered his happy hunting grounds with greater reluctance and with greater cost to the white man. The annals of the Indian troubles would fill a library."-(Paddock -- History, N. Texas).
CHAPTER ONE.
It is estimated that beyond four scores of people sacrificed their lives to savage fiendishness and brutality during the twenty years of predatory warfare on this county. Details of the more important of these murders, captures and assassina- tions have been secured and are here given. Due to a combina- tion of circumstances the nature of which has been indicated in preceding remarks, Wise County had enjoyed a few blissful years of freedom from anxiety and attack during which rapid strides towards substantial settlement had been made. Never- theless, it is true that savage murder and depredation was of frequent occurrence during these years at remoter points on the frontier.
But here the people had been lulled into a peaceful and in- apprehensive state, and were in a fair condition to be markedly shocked at the brutal and initial crime committed in a region so near as to jeopardize their future welfare and safety.
This crime occurred in Lost Valley, in the western part of Jack County, on Camerons Creek, in 1859. Two families, the Masons and the Camerons, were annihilated with the exception of one or two members who were captured.
The details of this shocking crime were brought by runner to Wise County and to Sand Hill camp grounds where the majority
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PIONEER HISTORY OF WISE COUNTY.
of the people had assembled for worship. Expectedly a crisis was precipitated. It was like pressing a button at some remote point which set the machinery of this particular section of the frontier into electrical action. The families at Sand Hill scurried to their homes. The curtain had risen upon the opening scene of a lurid drama of twenty years' duration, and the people must prepare as spectators and defenders.
Other hair-raising crimes followed in Parker, Jack and Palo Pinto Counties. Savage mauraudings were encroaching upon Wise County, and it was only a question of time until their fiendish operations would be extended into its confines. With the murder of Bill Holden on Salt Creek, Young County, the enraged feeling of the people reached a decided climax. What action they took is recorded in the introduction to this section, where it is recited that the Indians were forcibly removed from the reservation in the vicinity of Ft. Belknap to a second reserva- tion in the Indian Territory.
William Weatherby, Sr., of Denton Creek, Wise County, was a brother-in-law of Bill Holden, and was the person who found Holden where the Indians had secreted his body after murdering him. Briefly recited, the circumstances are as follows: Dick Holden, father of Bill Holden, and family, and William Weather- by, had removed from Wise County and settled on Salt Creek, Young County, in about 1858. Sometime afterwards the Indians suddenly descended upon the premises and drove off all the horses and stock. The morning following the raid Bill Holden went by foot to a neighbor's, six miles distant northwesterly, to secure - the loan of a horse. Late in the afternoon, gun firing was heard in the direction from which he was expected to return, but slight attention was paid to so common an occurrence. The following morning William Weatherby went out hunting and returned afoot leading his horse, which was weighted with antelope and turkey. The second morning the family of Bill Holden grew apprehensive about the latter's continued absence, and a search was instituted. About a mile northwest of the house, in the direction of the shots of the preceding afternoon, blood and arrows were found littering the ground. Soon after- wards William Weatherby, Sr., found Holden dead in a cave.
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SAD DEATH OF BRAVE YOUNG BILL BIRDWELL.
. On Weatherby's hunt the day previous, he had paused for a short rest over this cave. Holden was scalped, naked and shot full of arrows.
The crime was vehemently laid at the door of the reserve Indians and as vigorously denied by the agency officials as well as the Indians, who charged the unconfined tribes with the act. However, Holden's personal effects were soon after found in the possession of the reserve Indians, and Weatherby and others were called to the agency to identify them. While there the accused Indians protested innocence and explained their posses- sion of Holden's pistol by negotiating the following affidavit, to-wit: "This is to certify that this is the pistol that old Pinohochie took from the body of a Kickapoo Indian." The Kickapoos were of the wild unconfined tribes.
But the settlers of the surrounding counties believed no such stuff. They rose en masse. As Judge W. W. Brady, of Wise County, wrote in his memorandum: " Forbearance had ceased to be a virtue; we had patiently borne the loss of our property, but now to see our citizens murdered by the government pets was more than Texas blood could stand."
The point of concentration of the citizens was at Cactus Hill, Wise County. Gen. John R. Baylor took command. Col. Hunt and Judge Brady and other Wise Countyians were concerned in the rebellion. The final result was the removal of the Indians as before mentioned. The effect was far from salutary. From their stronghold in the territory the Indians began a murderous onslaught upon the Texas frontier, with Wise County as one of the principal points of attack. The following pages will, in part, describe the savage warfare waged against Wise County from about the years 1860 until the culmination of troubles in 1874.
SAD DEATH OF BRAVE YOUNG BILL BIRDWELL.
At the abandonment of the frontier garrisons by the Federal forces at the beginning of the war, the State of Texas organized a frontier guard of ranger troops and stationed them along the line of exposed counties. Several Wise Countyians, including Will Weatherby, Sr., Bill Birdwell and others, were members
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PIONEER HISTORY OF WISE COUNTY.
of one of these companies stationed at the old Buffalo Springs fort in Clay County. Weatherby and Birdwell were intrepid Indian fighters, the latter being a mere boy eighteen years of age.
On a dreary winter's day in 1861, when the air was filled with freezing rain and ice, Lieut. Lindsay, with a squad which in- cluded Weatherby and Birdwell, were scouting in a vicinity ten miles distant from the fort, in hourly expectation of meeting the Indians, encounters with whom were ever imminent probabilities. Approaching a strip of timber a dead cow was found where she had been killed. Immediately Weatherby was over her and cutting an opening in her side, he thrust in his hand, when he turned to the Lieutenant and reported the interior to be yet warm. This plainly revealed that the animal had been dead but a short while. At the same instant a deadly fusilade of shots was turned on the group from a covert a short distance away. Confusion reigned for a moment and then young Birdwell gallant- ly spurred his horse forward into the very teeth of the firing. Weatherby and a few others closed up more cautiously. Bird- well's horse fell dead with a crash, pinioning the young man's leg under his body. The painted savages now leaped forward with fiendish yells and thrust their bayonets into Birdwell's trapped form killing him instantly.
Weatherby, Henry Wilson and Bill Lawrence fired manfully from a defense of trees behind which they stood at a distance of perhaps thirty yards; the other troopers had not come up. Weatherby, who was in advance, found his firearm working badly; at the same time he was shouting encouragement to his companions, not having time to look back to observe that only three of them were opposing forty Indians. This was soon discovered and the three wheeled to retreat. As they did so, Bill Lawrence was pierced in the back with an arrow. This was not allowed, however, to prevent the three from joining their companions at a place of safety on the road. Here the painful operation of removing the arrow from Lawrence's back was begun. The metal point had struck the bony spinal column and split into two jagged fragments which curled up into the flesh. With no instruments at hand the only means of removing
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SAD DEATH OF BRAVE YOUNG BILL BIRDWELL.
the arrow was by sheer pulling. Weatherby grasped hold of the stem with bullet molds and jerked the points through the torn and bleeding flesh, considerable of the latter coming out also.
Binding the wound with handkerchiefs the best they could, the squad proceeded to Buffalo Springs, from where they were ordered to the Wichitas to intercept the Indians as they passed out. At this order Weatherby rebelled, saying that he intended to obtain young Birdwell's body and return with it to the boy's father, Garner Birdwell, in Wise County. A wordy encounter with the company officers followed. Weatherby indignantly wished to know if the body of the brave young fighter was to be left for the wolves to devour. He called volunteers to assist, and they came. At night they approached the corrals and were threatened with shooting by the sentinel. This difficulty over- come, a wagon and team was secured and the lonely drive to the wilds for the dead body was begun. The owls hooted and some members of the company faltered, thinking of Indians. Weather- by and J. B. Riddle finally reached the corpse, carefully loaded it into the wagon and started on the long drive to Wise County. Coming first to Decatur the body was safely deposited in Garner Birdwell's home, a few miles distant north, the next afternoon. · The next day the men returned with the team to Buffalo Springs. FUTILE BUT BRILLIANT RIDE FOR SAFETY OF MISS SALLIE BOWMAN.
At the close of the war there lived a family by the name of Bowman in a picturesque valley on Deep Creek. Besides being a farmer the head of the house was a physician by profession ; he also owned a large bunch of fine horses which, miraculously enough, he had brought safely through the trying period of war. These latter had been consigned to the careful judgment and expert horsemanship of Miss Sallie Bowman, a courageous young daughter about eighteen years of age. The young lady ranged her herd about the valley, and sometimes, when it was considered safe to do so, ventured onto the higher prairies for the better grass. She usually rode a fleet animal, being at all times appre- hensive of being chased by the Indians. On the day of the occurrence about to be described, March 7, 1868, Miss Bowman was mounted on a horse of high speed qualities, and she felt, no
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doubt, perfectly confident that she could outdistance any pur- suing savages. On this day she had ventured with her herd a mile and a quarter from her home, and fresh tracks later dis- covered on both sides of a creek, made by her own horse and those of the Indians, indicated that the creek had been the starting point of her pursuit by the Indians. Presumably the latter had come upon her from the opposite side of the ercek, while she was watering her horse. Down the bank towards her dashed the redskins, and she, wild with fright, wheeled and turned her fleet horse's head in the direction of home. Over the prairies sped the frenzied girl turning now and then to gaze on the rapidly gaining demons whom she knew would give no quarter. A fallen treetop lay athwart the way, a clear leap of twenty feet would be required to bound it; yet over it without disturbing a leaf went the animal; on and on went the mad dash for life: wide chasms were spanned without a pause, hills were elimbed and valleys skimmed over, but all in vain.
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