CHAPTER XLII.

Incidents of Indian Alarms and Depredations Attributed to Indians-Attack on the Rozell Family and Killing of Two Women.

There were many depredations practiced within our borders by white men in the disguise of Indians, and this continued some years after the affair at the Ravine. Possibly, too, Indians may have been the occasion of some of the alarms, or participated with white men in some of these depredations.

In 1866 a number of cow-ponies were stolen out of the wheat field on the Peveler farm, just on the eve of the Peveler boys' departure with them for their western ranche [sic]. This was supposed to have been done by Indians, but may have been by whites. In 1869, too, the Peveler's returning home from a fox hun [sic] late at night, their dogs beyed [sic] something near F.M. Peveler's farm and soon the noise of running horses was heard going toward Thorp Spring; thinking it loose horses, they called the dogs off, but returning to the spot on the following morning, they found several articles of Indian apparel, including a piece of buffalo skin.

Again, the year 1872 was one especially replete with alarms and depredations, attributable to Indians, but circumstances rendered the character of the perpetrators questionable. During this year Rev. B.D. Austin, on his way from a Sunday appointment, was alarmed between Thorp Spring and Robinson creek, about dark, and hid in a thicket near by, where he suffered the greater part of the night in trying to extricate himself, and finally reached Thorp Spring about daylight, where he reported the affair, and a party at once went to the place, but struck no trace of the Indians, who, if there, succeeded in eluding observation, and were not elsewhere seen or heard from.

Again during the early part of the same year rumors for several days were afloat that Indian signs had been seen in the vicinity of Comanche Peak and Granbury. And while few believed they were in the county, yet the talk occasioned no little stir when Dr. Hanna returned to Granbury in full speed about dark from a professional visit up the river, reporting that as he was coming through the timber belt between Stockton and Granbury, three men rode across the road several hundred yards in his front and upon discovering him they all lowered themselves to the opposite sides of their horses and passed out of sight into the woods in a full run. This was so much after the Indian style, that alarm was at once spread, and many of the new comers especially, supposed that the woods in the vicinity of the town was swarming with savages ready to fall upon the town and massacre its inhabitants; and for about half an hour active preparations for battle, consisting of the gathering up of fire-arms and discharging the rusty loads and re-loading, gave to the village a war-like aspect; but soon a party riding out in the direction whence the alarm originated, met three jolly cow-boys, who acknowledged themselves the authors of the practical joke.

A serious affair occurred in the fall of this year of fitful alarms on Robinson creek. On one Saturday G.B. Rozel moved to a new place on a branch of Robinson creek, where C.W. Baker now lives, and went into camp, expecting to put up a cabin the following Monday. His family, besides a number of small children, consisted of his son, George, and two widowed daughters, Mrs. Bowen and Mrs. McGee, whose husbands, it seems, had separated from them. On the Sunday following George went to meeting on Kickapoo, when the elder Rozel with his gun went out upon the range, leaving the camp in possession of the women and children. George Rozel returning about sundown, and securing his horse to a tree, was there but a few moments till a party of some nine or ten warriors made their appearance, and as he had no arms, he seized a stick which he presented for a gun, but they soon discovered the ruse and charged upon the camp, when George hastily mounted his pony and loosing him after mounting, sped away pursued by several of the warriors, others attacking the women at the camp. They fired a pistol up into the air, then leveling it at Mrs. McGee, shot her dead, and shot Mrs. Bowen with arrows, leaving her for dead. They punched some of the children, but made no attempt to kill them, and as for Mrs. John Rozel, she at the first alarm ensconsed herself in a brush pile, where the Indians passing almost in touch of her, seemed not to notice her presence. Those who went in pursuit of George Royel pressed him so closely that, running into the nook of a ravine, there seemed no chance for his escape, and the burly worrior [sic] at his heels, as he prepared to use his spear, gave a grunt of satisfaction, when Rozel reaching the margin of the gulch, said to have been near twenty feet wide, (?) spurred his pony and with his rider the agile little Spaniard cleared it with a bound and was soon carrying his rider safe beyond the reach of his pursuers, who dared not attempt the same leap. Rozel soon met one of the Helms boys returning home, and told him of the affair. Young Helms reported it at once to his father, T.P. Helms, whose family had already witnessed from their house not far away, the Indians in pursuit of Rozel. Soon the Kickapoo and Robinson creek settlements were apprised of the matter and a party got upon the trail of the departing savages, who, circling towards Redbanks, crossed the Kickapoo and went out westward without doing other injury than to shoot arrows into some horses as they passed them. It being night, they got too far in advance to render further pursuit on the following day reasonably hopeful of overtaking them. On the Sunday evening just prior to this attack, Mrs. Helmes was at Rozel's camp, spending the greater part of the evening and left with her little children just before the Indians came up, narrowly escaping them. Dr. A.E. Hanna extracted the arrow from the breast of Mrs. Bowen, who died some ten days afterward from the wound. It is generally believed that the perpetrators of this crime were white men painted and disguised as Indians, though moccasin tracks had been seen at the same time on Crockery creek not far from the scene of this killing.

We will close the account of our Indian troubles by a reference to that conspicuous affair in the history of the counrty [sic], resulting in the novel trial and conviction of Santata and Big Tree, arrested with Satank by order of Gen. Sherman at Fort Sill for their cruel murder of seven out of twelve teamsters, and men accompanying the wagon train of Henry Warren, which atrocity occurred on the border of Jack county on the 18th day of May 1871, and fortunately for the border settlements generally, at a time when Gen. W.T. Sherman was near the scene of action. The general history of this matter is too well known and too much beyond the scope of our work to justify repetition here, our object in refering [sic] to it being to show the final stroke that brought an end to all the trouble of our frontier from the wildest and most brutal of all the savage tribes, the Kiowas and Comanches, as effectively along all the Texas frontier as did that slaughter at the Ravine, their raids within our immediate territory. One of our own citizens, too, Charles Brady, was one of that party of teamsters on that day of dreadful calamity. He relates that they withstood the attack made by the overwhelming number of savages on the open prairie for several hours. Several of the mules being killed, they used their bodies for breastworks, but the skillful archers let fly their arrows high in the air, so that they descended upon their defenseless heads with deadly effect, when at last, seven of his fellows were dead and the eighth severely wounded, they fled to a point of timber, and succeeded in finally making their escape; the Indians not seeming disposed to follow them very far into the timber. Upon returning afterward with the soldiers to the scene, Charley witnessed all the evidences of horrid brutality to which his dead comrades had been subjected, including the body of Samuel Elliott chained from the wheel of one wagon to another at full length on the ground, while fires had been kindled about his body, and not as has been pictured, chained upright to a wheel and consumed with the burning wagon. In this famous trial, where the civil law was allowed to assert its supremacy, Hon. S.W.T. Lanham, as District Attorney in the prosecution, inspired by the novel occasion and great importance of the case, delivered to the court and jury an oration of such choice and fitting words as to be well worthy a place in the forensic literature of America.

2000 HOOD COUNTY TEXAS HISTORICAL DOCUMENT TRANSCRIPTION TEAM