The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 34, July 1930 - April, 1931 Page: 83
359 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Historical Note on Dimmit County, Texas
they would smuggle their families over. This practice was suffi-
ciently general along the entire South Texas frontier that a Mex-
ican government commission in the seventies complained that it
entailed losses of more than one million pesos yearly.7
The early settlers were cattlemen on an international frontier,
living in jacales, and exposed to Indian raids from Comanches,
Apaches, and Kiowas. In July, 1866, two sons of Captain Eng-
lish, on the range hunting horses, met seven Indians in an encoun-
ter in which one Indian was killed and Ed English was wounded
by an arrow tipped with a steel spike. In 1870 a band of 200
Indians swooped down on the ranch of Charles Vivion, where they
killed a Mexican and captured a Mexican boy. They also killed
Dave Adams, a rancher, and advanced on the cluster of jacales at
Carrizo Springs. "The alarm was spread, and when some of the
Indians were within half a mile of Carrizo Springs, several men
went out and engaged them in battle, but were driven back. Other
men had come in from the upper region [toward Uvalde] and got
around the Indians to the Adams ranch and engaged the main body
in a desperate fight."s Neither side was victorious.
The citizens of Carrizo Springs organized and scouted against
the Indians, who used to come in on the light of the moon to steal
domesticated horses. Captain Benavides of Laredo, famous on the
frontier, aided with State troops in the pacification of the region.
In the seventies, Federal troops under Lieutenant Bullis, a well-
mknown campaigner against the Indians, operated in this country
and, for a time, maintained a camp of colored troopers not far
from Carrizo Springs. The last Indian raid took place in the late
seventies, when Indians said to have been Apaches descended on
the Oak Grove ranch, where a Mexican boy was shot by an arrow.
Cattle raising was accompanied, as might be expected, by cattle
stealing and the buying of stolen cattle. These practices were par-
ticipated in by some Americans, as well as some Mexicans." Under
7Comisi6n pesquisidora, 388.
'The Trail Drivers of Texas, under direction of George W. Saunders,
Bandera, Texas, 1920, 2 vols. I, 448.
'The above is based on statements of residents; note also the statement
(translation): "By these circumstances and various others which the
witnesses enumerate, and especially that the authorities of Mexico have
given diligent notices of the places selected in Texas . . . for the
formation of parties and the passages of the river which they prefer,
notices of which the cattlemen of Carrizo, Dimmit County, have not
availed themselves a single time, merit has been lent to the belief that
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 34, July 1930 - April, 1931, periodical, 1931; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101091/m1/93/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.