Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas Page: 87 of 894
762 p., [172] leaves of plates : ill., ports. ; 30 cm.View a full description of this book.
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78
INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
guish between the sexes, and three squaws were
killed. The short struggle was fruitful in blood.
Our losses were:'
Killed: Judge Hood, of San Antonio; Judge
Thompson, of Houston; Mr. Casey, of Matagorda
County; Lieut. W. M. Dunnington, First
Infantry; Privates Kaminske and Whitney, and a
Mexican
7.
'Wounded: Capt. George T. Howard, Lieut.
Edward A. Thompson and Private Kelly severely;
Capt. Matthew Caldwell, Judge James W. Robinson,
MIessrs. Higgenbottom, Morgan and Carson
8."
"John Hemphill, then District Judge and afterward
so long Chief Justice, assailed in the council
house by a chief and slightly wounded, felt reluctantly
compelled (as he remarked to the writer
afterwards) to disembowel his assailant with his
bowie knife, but declared that he did so under a
sense of duty, while he had no personal acquaintance
with nor personal ill-will towards his antagonist.
"The Indian loss stood: Thirty chiefs and warriors,
3 women and 2 children killed. Total, 35.
"Prisoners taken: Twenty-seven women and children
and 2 old men. Total, 29.
"Escaped, the renegade Mexican, 1. Grand
total, 65."
Over a hundred horses and a large quantity of
buffalo robes and peltries remained to the victors.
By request of the prisoners one squaw was
released, mounted, provisioned and allowed to go
to her people and say tht the prisoners would bereleased whenever they brought in the Texas
prisoners held by them.
A short time afterwards a party of Comanches
displayed a white flag on a hill some distance from
town, evidently afraid to come nearer. When a
flag was sent out, it was found that they had
brought in several white children to exchange for
their people. Their mission was successful and
they hurried away, seeming to be indeed "wild
Indians."
These are the facts as shown by the official
papers, copies of which have been in my possession
ever since the bloody tragedy. At that time a few
papers in the United States, uninformed of the
underlying and antecedent facts dictating the
action of Texas, criticised the affair with more or
less condemnation; but the people of to-day,
enlightened by the massacre of Gen. Canby in
Oregon, the fall of the chivalrous Gen. Custer, the
hundreds of inhuman acts of barbarism along the
whole frontier of the United States, and the recent
demonisms of Geronimo and his band of cutthroats,
will realize and indorse the genuine spirit
of humanity which prompted that as the only mode
of bringing those treacherous savages to a realization
of the fact that their fiendish mode of
warfare would bring calamities upon their own
people. Be that as it may, the then pioneers of
Texas, with their children in savage captivity,
shed no tears on that occasion, nor do their survivors
now. Their children of to-day dispense
with that liquid, eye-yielding manifestation of
grief.The Great Indian Raid of 1840
Attack on Victoria
Sacking
and Burning of Linnville
Skirmish at Casa Blanca
Creek
Overthrow of the Indians
at Plum Creek.Of this, the most remarkable Indian raid in the
annals of Texas, numerous fragmentary and often
erroneous, or extremely partial, accounts in former
years have been published. It was a sudden and
remarkable inroad by the savages, took the country
by surprise, drew the fighting population together
from different localities for a few days, to speedily
disperse to their homes, and there being no officialcontrol, no one was charged with the duty of recording
the facts. The great majority of the participants,
as will be seen in the narrative, witnessed
but a portion, here or there, of the incident.
The writer was then nineteen years old and,
though living on the Lavaca near Victoria and Linnville,
happened to be with a party from that vicinity
that passed to the upper and final field of opera
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A history of pioneers in Texas and their confrontations with local American Indians.
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Brown, John Henry. Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, book, 1880~; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth6725/m1/87/?rotate=270: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.