Almost all of the first log cabins were built around the the town square in the midst of heavy post oak timber. At the time Stephenville was the farthest west of Euro-American settlement “on the waters of the Brazos,” located on an old bison trail that ran from present Brownwood to Fort Worth, and beyond, now highway 377. Game was plentiful with bison within three miles of town and there were fish and large alligators in the Bosque River. (no kidding about the alligators, they were hunted out in just a couple of years, but they came back upstream during floods until the dams were built at Waco in the 1920s) The peaceful relations with Jose Maria’s Anadarkos established by the Black family, only lasted a couple of years. There was an incident that was responsible of a period of violent attacks by the Comanches. The Anadarkos, who lived on a Reservation near Fort Belknap, were permitted to hunt near Stephenville. They were friendly with the immigrants but, fierce enemies of the Comanches and usually protected the settlements from Comanche attacks. Red Jack was an Anadarko known to Stephenville residents as a decent man who never touched alcohol until the fall of 1857, when he left his rifle and bow at a pair of post oaks at the present TSU dining hall and rode into the Stephenville village. For some reason, Red Jack bought a fifty-cent bottle of whiskey and became so drunk that he was asked to leave town. On his way back to his gear, he saw a log cabin and decided to try to ride his horse inside. No one was home except a terrified and sick mother and her sixteen-year old son. The boy snapped the capped but unloaded revolver chamber at Red Jack. Stupefied by drink, the Indian panicked and pulled a knife, causing the boy to load a live round and shoot him. Red Jack remained on his horse , falling off dead before reaching the tree and his gear, which wasn’t found for two more years. Because of the fearful Anadarko reputation as fighters, the terrified residents laid his body in state, in a store for as long as the smell allowed before burying him at the present location of the highway 377 bridge to Fort Worth. Jose Maria and one hundred warriors showed up in Stephenville, and while being offered food, they listened to the story and left. The Anadarkos withdrew their protection and a month later, Comanche attacks began. The raids lasted from 1857 to 1859, were carried out by Northern Comanches, with probably a few from the Texas Reservation joining them.

Euro-American settlers began moving up the Bosque River from Waco in the 1850s. In 1853, Norwegian settlers started a community half way up the river. The families of the men who died in the Alamo were awarded 4, 409 acres and the John Blair family were recipients and they refused to leave Tennessee and sold the land that became Stephenville. In 1848 James Stephen bought the land and six years later traveled up the Bosque River from Waco to established an as yet unnamed slave family in a trading post. The Black family was left on the site of the future Stephenville square for a year to determine the disposition of the mostly Comanche and Anadarko that frequented the area. The Natives and the Black family were on friendly terms as they traded for smoked buffalo hams and deerskin bags of honey. A year later, in 1855, the surveyor George B. Erath and early Waco settler, Neil McLennan, escorted the Stephen brothers, thirty mostly Scots-Irish settlers and eighteen slaves to the Stephenville site.

The western part of Stephenville (north of Chamberlain School) was a forest of large post oaks and many bee-attracting honey locust trees. The area was famous for its bee trees. In July of 1885, the entire congregation of the Methodist Church gathered to raid one of these trees, gathering several buckets of honey. Stephenville Empire

During droughty years there is at least one frequent source of nutrition. The honey mesquite tree (Prosopis glandulosa), whose seeds are found in Bosque River Native forage camps. The trees can be controlled by fire to maintain a savannah-like population. Individual, fire-trained trees grow straight, without those draggy limbs, to around twenty-five feet tall, and can live for up to 200 years. The drought-tolerant mesquite is often a reliable crop when the other Native foods trees failed to produce, and oddly the more intense the drought year, the heavier the yield. The mesquite produces tasty, fleshy pods, with 39% protein 39% protein, that surround the beans. The flavor is described as a cross between honey and pecans. A single tree can produce 20 pounds of pods if they are allowed to reach maturity. Spanish chroniclers report that the flowers were collected and roasted in balls, and the green pods were used to produce a sweet syrup that was dried as candy. An amber-colored gum was harvested from incisions made in the bark that provided antiseptic gum drops. The most important characteristic of mesquite is that the pods and the meal ground from the pods, can survive storage through the winter. The tan to purplish pods were gathered in the fall. Since he sweetness and yield vary enormously from tree to tree, it’s almost certain that leading families claimed the fruit from heritage trees for generations. European observers noticed that because the process was so sticky, the roasted pods were were pounded in cottonwood mortars rather than ground on metates, and the even more nutritious beans were removed and processed separately. The meal was then mixed with bone marrow and cooked as a porridge, boiled as “mezquitatole,” or baked as a long-lasting flatbread. The Apaches fermented the sugary meal and water into beer.

After the mesquite pods had been processed, sometimes there was a fall bonus if acorns came into season. For millennia, the most common oak tree in Erath County has been the post oak (Quercus stellata), which prefers to grow outside the Bosque Valley in sandy soil. The liveoak (Quercus virginiana) grew in the dark soil formed by dissolving limestone and grasses on the prairies and floodplains. The largest oak with the largest acorn, is the burr oak (Quercus macrocarpa) whose range spread from the Bosque Valley during times of increased moisture. The acorn crop depended on the masting cycle. Typically, oak trees would bear a heavy crop (mast) once in every three to five years. The strategy is intended to satiate predatory insects and rodents, allowing some acorns to sprout. Then starve them for a few years to keep their numbers low. The masting cycle responds to a collective signal not yet understood. The current theory is that the average temperature and rainfall in the spring can trigger oaks across several counties, to bloom at the same time. The time that the bloom occurs in the spring may decide what per cent will pollinate and become acorns. A careful observer, like a Native shaman, might have been able to make predictions accurate enough to plan for an acorn crop. Pollen studies show that during droughty years, rare acorn crops would have been a cause for celebration. In those years the acorns would have been boiled to get rid of the toxins, so that the pulp could be ground on metates, dried, and stored for winter as flour.

The Stephenville Illuminator closed in 1898:”With this issue ends our work on said paper and also the above named sheet. This issue ends the second month of our life as editor of a newspaper, and likewise, annihilates the paper. In the past two months we have done our darndest to edit respectably this sheet, while we have made many friends, there have been a few sordid brained scabs who considered that we were tramping too much on their pseudo modesty. In some instances we deemed it necessary to tell the unvarnished truth, and the truth always stings more than a lie.”

The Bosque River sanctuary became notorious as a source of liquor for the Comanches and other Native peoples, as well as a refuge for dangerous characters. So, when Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845, Houston’s land grant on the Bosque River was discarded and the “town” was closed. The location has faded from history. The new Indian Superintendent, Thomas G. Western, explained that Anglo settlements were getting too close to the Bosque River log cabin community, which attracted Natives too far south. Jim Ned and the other traders left the Bosque River under protest and moved their whiskey shops farther up the Brazos River.

Not all of the Bosque River village’s outstanding personalities were tireless workers for peace. Some, like the Afro-Delaware Jim Ned, and his brothers, Jack and Joe Harry, had mixed reputations. Jim Ned’s father had been a slave and to conceal his ancestry, he shaved his head and wore Delaware turbans or other headgear. He married a Delaware girl and was soon immersed in the culture. In his younger years, he was, like the other Texas Delawares, a valuable interpreter, scout, and spy in the service of Texas. But later, he devoted his efforts to stealing horses and causing trouble. Ned spent time among the Wichita and Penateka Comanches, and he became familiar with their customs only to be exploited later. Jim Ned attracted renegades from the Texas frontier in large numbers. They traveled beyond agreed boundaries to hunt, raid, and trade. For whatever reason, Jim Ned’s brother, Jack Harry, rushed into Waco to announce that two hundred Wacos were about to attack Torrey’s Trading House, and the neighboring settlements. Militias were called up and there was much excitement for a time. The renegade Delaware brothers alternated between selling whiskey and encouraging Texas Natives to violence and guiding official government expeditions. Later they moved their followers to Indian Territory.

Many of the residents and frequent visitors in the Bosque River community were larger than life frontier characters, like Scots-Cherokee Jessie Chisholm. Chisholm was born in Tennessee around 1805, then ended up in Texas. He became a successful trader and was soon enlisted in the service of the Republic of Texas around 1836. Chisholm had learned more than a dozen languages during his years as a plains trader and was a valuable interpreter at treaty councils in Texas, Indian Territory, and Kansas. He earned the respect many Comanche leaders and was sent by Houston in 1842 to persuade those headmen to come to council. The Comanches refused until some of their captives were returned. So Houston wrote to Lamar’s scourge, John H. Moore demanding that the colonel send any Comanche prisoners taken during his raids. Tragically, the young women had already been sold by the Rangers into slavery among Anglo-Texans. To Continue diplomatic efforts among the Comanche, Chisholm was invited to add his cabin to the Bosque River grant.

Jim Shaw was especially distinguished in Indian-Anglo relations, before arriving in Texas in 1841, he spent time along the Red River learning Native languages. He was well known in Indian Territory by government officials as a useful diplomat, successful trader, and a man of superior intelligence. The U.S. Indian Agent recommended him to Houston who employed him to help carry out his peace policy. Shaw was able to win the trust and friendship of several Penateka Comanche leaders, including Buffalo Hump. In 1846-1847 he was able to use his Comanche contacts to guide German colonists under John O. Meusebach to a suitable site, and helped them establish friendly relations with the Comanches. In 1854 the Shaw brothers and Colonel Robert E. Lee surveyed the site of the Upper Brazos Indian Reservations. Jim Shaw died in 1858 from a fall from the roof of his log cabin as he made repairs.