E.L Deaton, who lived west of Stephenville, reported that “During this winter and spring I was set afoot five different times by Indians stealing my horses. I lost three work oxen, and about thirty head of grown hogs, all killed by the redskins.”
Floyd J. Holmes, Indian Fights on the Texas Frontier: A True Account of the Last Exciting Encounters with Redskins in Hamilton, Comanche, Brown, Erath, and Adjoining Counties, as recorded by E.L. Deaton, Fort Worth: Pioneer Publishing Co., 1927.
“Early settlers camped out until part of the land was cleared and [rail] fenced. That was just another pioneer trait – first plow the ground, plant the crops, and build fences; then cut the logs and build the house. The important thing was to look out for the future food supply. A pioneer could always count on the neighbors for miles around to help in building a house after the logs were on the ground.”
Sue Sanders, Our Common Herd, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1939
Texas experienced a dark age (AD 536-700) and it was the same one they had in Europe and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. There really were dark years, especially in the beginning with a series of large volcanic eruptions, mostly the Central American Ilpango series in the 6th century. So much dust was thrown into the atmosphere that the sun’s intensity was dimmed, causing frosty summers and acid rain that ruined the soil for decades all across the Northern Hemisphere. The acid rain released aluminum into the soil and water, creeping into the food supply, causing dementia and other neurological damage, which explains the irrational behavior associated with the dark ages. To make things worse it was a period of low solar activity, which has the effect of releasing some of the sun’s rays that cause diseases to jump to new forms. In some areas this meant smallpox, for Europe it meant Yersina pestis, the bubonic plague that killed millions. This was when the Western Roman Empire broke-up. In Texas, the dark ages were dark for the same climatic reasons, and the period is archeologically dark. Four major archeological studies from Central Texas report that the sediment formed during these years is empty of any human habitation. People had camped in these areas for thousands of years and would continue to occupy those sites after AD 700. But the people weren’t there anymore. The archeological record is more clear in the Eastern Woodlands (mostly the Mississippi Valley) where people scattered into small, family groups after the 6th Century climate catastrophe. They gave up village life for centuries. There may have been a disease that contributed to this fragmentation of peoples – Treponematoses – a terribly destructive disease that caused the face to crater, leaving disfigured marks on the skeletons. If the Texas Natives responded like Indians did in historic times when faced with smallpox and cholera, they broke into family groups and avoided the usual camping areas for fear of contagion. Around AD 700, the sedimentary record of human habitation continued in Texas and in the eastern part of North America, the Indians began to to try village life again.
A fence-cutter defended his actions in 1884: “The brave old Texan went to the front with their families and drove back the Indians . . . When danger disappeared capitalists flocked in, the land was sold in large bodies or given to rich corporations, the country fenced. The old Indian fighters find themselves surrounded by the wire fence . . . We ask punishment for unlawful fencing as well as unlawful cutting. Fort Worth Gazette In 1888, Bill Johnson of Shelby, received warning in February that if he did not stop using barbed-wire he would be visited by the Erath County Regulators who would cut his wire, burn his posts, and hang him. Stephenville Empire
James “Buck” Barry used to tell a story that took place in Erath County during the Civil War. A small band of Comanches were trying to leave the county with stolen horses. As larger party of settlers closed in they abandoned the stock and raced across an open prairie toward a wall of post oak timber. One Indian rode far behind the others in an attempt to draw the Anglo immigrant’s fire. While releasing a steady stream of arrows as the pursing settlers, he rode “literally all over his pony;” several times he vaulted his body around , facing backward, fired an arrow, then vaulted around forward. The last time he turned backwards, his horse was nearing the timber; he was struck by a limb and knocked to the ground. The other Indians had already entered the timber and did not see him fall. He skillfully dodged the first few Anglos that tried to run him down. Unable to find his bow, he drew his last two arrows and prepared to defend himself, but by this time the settlers were all around him. He was killed by a pistol shot in the back.
James Buckner Barry, A Texas Ranger and Frontiersmen: The Days of Buck Barry in Texas, 1845-1906, (ed.), James K. Greer, Dallas: The Southwestern Press, 1932.
An old-timer quoted in the February, 1911, Stephenville Tribune about an incident in 1884 in which a foraging cow destroyed his whole garden. The enraged gardener placed a gunny sack over the cow’s head, soaked it with coal oil, lit it and sent the cow running through Steohenville, starting fires everywhere.
In February of 1848, Indian Agent Robert S. Neighbors (murdered by Erath vigilantes in 1859) stayed a few days in Old Owl’s camp on the headwaters of the Leon River. While there he learned of the Comanche custom in which the first man to wake in the morning woke the others with a song.
Kenneth F. Neighbours, Robert Simpson Neighbors and the Texas Frontier: 1836-1859, Waco: Texian Press, 1975.
For decades cotton was the scourge of this area, requiring plenty of cheap labor in exchange for deep poverty. I don’t have information about the number of sharecroppers in this area, but I know that the degrading, feudalistic system was common wherever cotton was king. The cattle industry and later railroad work provided an escape from servitude. In 1881, railroad construction near Proctor drew away so many sharecroppers that the Comanche Chief ran an article that noted, “never before known here, and at least three hundred acres on different farms will consequently go uncultivated this year. We want emigrants – men to till our rich soil.”
During the night of February 9, 1899, someone slipped into W.E. Gregg’s lot and painted his beautiful buggy horse a deep Diamond dye green. “Such works as this is a dastardly outrage and the miscreants should hunted down and punished to the full extent of the law.” Erath Appeal
In February, 1897, a fire in one of Thurber’s coal mines suffocated eleven mules.
Mary Jane Gentry, The Life and Death of a Texas Town, Master’s thesis, University of Texas, 1946.
In 1871 Henry Strong “went to Stephenville for a load of flour . . . near the head of Blanket Creek, the Indians ran on to me. I stopped the mules and tied my lines around a small live oak tree. The Indians kept up a continual fire with bows, arrows, pistols, and old guns . . . I finally cut one mule loose and jumped on him and started for a small bunch of brush on Blanket Creek.” Having only one shot left, Strong waited until the Indians left, refusing to fire, although the Indians taunted him by holding out their hands as if to shake, saying “me good Comanche.”
Henry W. Strong, My Frontier Days and Indian Fights on the Plains of Texas. Waco: 1926.