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"The Black Fox" is a pure work of fiction but actually stays more firmly planted in fact than many "historical novels".

It was the basis for "The Searchers" movie but resembles it not much at all.

There actually was a "Nigra Brit" who ransomed captured children from the indians.I found his name on a marker at the "Salt Creek Massacre " site as a kid.[but it ain't spelled "nigra"]

"The Life of Billy Dixon" buffalo hunter (Adobe Walls) (Buffalo Wallow Incident) etc. Interesting read.

"Comanches: The Destruction of a People" is a fine read, but as I said to SteveNO, reads more like a cartoon "Graphic Novel" in its depiction of events. Fehrenbach gets some stuff apparently willfully out of sequence, sacrificing facts for effect, sorta like he was writing historical fiction.

Unforgivably, one place where he does this are the episodes where Colt's revolvers were first employed on horseback against Comanches. If that ain't sacriledge, I dunno what is.

Mostly Fehrenbach just channels Walter Prescott Webb, the 1930's author of "The Texas Rangers". Has to be said too, there were other folks out on the Plains what whacked more Comanches than the Rangers ever did, Fehrenbach omits mention of these almost entirely.

I thumbed through "Empire of the Summer Moon" in a bookstore maybe a year back, I was disappointed, maybe I hit the revisionist section I dunno.

Two books I ALWAYS recommend highly were both dictated by people who were actually there.

First off, Noah Smithwick:

Arrived as a before independence, a gunsmith by trade, built the first rifled gun made in the colonies. Knew Jim Bowie and fought under him against Mexico at San Antonio prior to the Alamo. Missed the Alamo on account of malaria but met Davy Crockett in transit. Pariticipated as a scout in the "runaway scrape", arriving on the field of San Jacinto shortly after the fact. Rode with the first "ranging companies. Drew blood in combat with Comanches, later LIVED with Comanches for some months. Rode with Lipan Apaches and Texas Rangers against the Comanches on the San Saba.

Best of all his first-person account is free online...

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd.htm


The other guy is Texas Ranger Captain and Confederate General John Salmon "RIP" Ford. His collected memoirs are available even at the big chain bookstores in Texas for about $15: see...
RIP Ford's Texas.

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/forri2.html

Doctor, lawyer, newspaper editor, State Senator. Ford likely survived more plains combat against Comanches than any other White man of his era, and best of all lived to tell about it. Fans of "Lonesome Dove" will recognize that much of that story was inspired by events in RIP Ford's life. He went on to lead Confederate Forces in the last pitched battle of that war, and won.

Both of these guys, Smithwick and Ford, and the adventures they relate would be too good to be true if they weren't real. But they were. Must-reads for anyone interested in Texas.

Birdwatcher

"Evolution of a State" by Smithwick

Mike I live here in Smithwick's back yard on the Wilbarger trace! He lived with ol' Placedo the Tokawa chief too, for a while.

BN

Maybe thats where he partnered with John Webber, the Vermont War of 1812 verteran who came to Texas in the '20's and actually bought the freedom of the slave woman he married.

When the Webber's eventually got ran out in the 1850's being one of those occasions where Smithwick rails against "the better sort" who showed up in their thousands only after all danger was passed.

Birdwatcher

Should finish it up tonight.....good read.

I'll ditto DocRocket's first post. Read the "Commanche Moon..." book about a month ago and rated it superb. Well researched, and the man can write, as well as look up facts and show their impact in the big picture across time and geography. Well written at the sentence level all the way to the organization of the whole book.

I knew quite a bit of it but not all by any means, especially the ascendency of the Commanches expanding east and south till they ran into US westward espansion, and astoundingly rolled it back for awhile.

The sections about Hays, the Texas Rangers and development of Colt's pistol are worth the book.

"Maybe thats where he partnered with John Webber, the Vermont War of 1812 verteran who came to Texas in the '20's and actually bought the freedom of the slave woman he married."

Yes! John was married to "Puss" Webber. She was a mulatto. Puss supplied the wash pot to the Local Tonkawas to us to cook the Comanche captive they executed and later ate!!!! I believe Smithwick was not all that impressed with this act of cannibalism.... Nor was he impressed with the Tonkawa method for thrashing pecans for the local whities. That is cut the whole tree down! LOL! I think they Webber's went to Mexico in the late 1850's and Smithwick went out to Morman's Mill by Marble Falls.

Sidenote.... I went thru all three of my degrees at "Colorado Lodge #96, AF & AM" in Webberville in 1986. Chartered in 1852. Currently the City of Austin is building an immense solar power project just north of the little hamlet....

I'll have to give "Empire" a second look.

Just now I'm reading a book given to me by a frequent poster (and apparent closeted Liberal ) here....

According to the book he gave me the Texans in Mexico during the Mexican War murdered HUNDREDS of non-combatants throughout, about like Nazi death squads, appalling the regulars and folks from other parts of the US who were on the scene.

Birdwatcher

I wouldn't say hundreds...... That's a bit of a stretch....

BN

Interesting how Smithwick downplays a bunch of stuff, including his own exploits. Reading between the lines, he kept company with Indians a bunch. I've posted here before the part about him and a Lipan Scout locating the San Saba Comanche camp the evening before that fight.

Turns out too the Lipan Apaches that rode with Jack Hayes hung out at Smithwick's gunsmith shop. Another time, so brief ya can miss it in the marrative, he offhandledly mentions pursuing Comanche horse thieves for TWO WEEKS across the Plains in company with thirty Cherokees.

My own favorite understated quick passage though is when his last two horses get stolen by Comanches. Exasperated, he checks the priming on his rifle and takes out alone on foot on the trail of the thieves "because there were only two of them".


Birdwatcher

Another thing to remember is Smithwick is narrating all these accounts to his daughter when he was 98 years old and living by this time in California, with her....

BN

Had a gift card for B&N unused since Christmas, so I did pick it up today.

Hope it's as good as touted.........thanks for the tip.

MM

Yepper, Britton Johnson, a good man by all accounts....

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fjo07

JOHNSON, BRITTON (ca. 1840�1871). Britton (Britt) Johnson was born about 1840, probably in Tennessee. He became a legend on the West Texas frontier after the summer of 1865, when he went out onto the Llano Estacado in pursuit of Indians who had kidnapped his wife and two children in the Elm Creek Raid of October 1864. Johnson was a slave of Moses Johnson, a landholder in the Peters colony. Since he ran freight and his own wagon team after the Civil War, he probably had at least a minimum of reading, writing, and math skills. Although he was legally a slave, he served Moses Johnson as a sort of foreman of the Johnson ranch, with unlimited freedom to perform his duties. He was also allowed to raise his own horses and cattle. After the Elm Creek Raid, Johnson returned to find his son Jim dead and his wife and children taken, along with other captives. He spent until the summer of 1865 looking for Mary Johnson and his two daughters at reservations in Oklahoma and at scattered forts throughout the Texas frontier.....

After his adventures among the Comanches and Kiowas, Johnson moved his family to Parker County, where he served as a freighter and teamster hauling goods between Weatherford and Fort Griffin. On January 24, 1871, about twenty-five Kiowas attacked a wagontrain manned by Johnson and two black teamsters four miles east of Salt Creek in Young County. A group of nearby teamsters from a larger train of wagons reported that Johnson died last in a desperate defense behind the body of his horse. Teamsters who buried the mutilated bodies of Johnson and his men counted 173 rifle and pistol shells in the area where Johnson made his stand. He was buried with his men in a common grave beside the wagon road.

Surely he weren't the only guy to ride out alone into Comancheria looking for kidnapped kin. But thus far he's the closest I've come across to being an inspiration to "The Searchers".

Birdwatcher

I read it recently and quite enjoyed it. I do not know if it is perfectly accurate or revised. I don't really care. I did come away with support for several ideas I have been pondering for quite a while.

1. You have to fight your enemy in an appropriate manner. Figure how he fights and them beat him at his own game. I suppose it is the old "do unto others before they do it to you" type of fighting.

2. There really is no such thing as a fair fight when someone is trying to kill you.

3. Whites were not the first people to whup up on the Indians and destroy whole cultures. The Indians had been doing it to each other for a long time and tried to do it to us.

4. Groups who adopt superior technology have been dominating those without that technology for a long time.

5. The Mexicans who want to claim some of the USA in that area have no real good claim because they were run out by the Indians before the whites conquered the Indians.

edit: 6. Slavery was alive and well in places other than the plantations of the South.

The rifle-armed members of displaced Eastern Tribes had been wandering all over the West decades before our guys showed up, and whupping on the Comanches and other Plains Tribes pretty regular. A process redoubled in the 1840's and 1850's subsequent to the big Removals to Indian Territory.

Compared to the actions of these folk, the body count caused by actual White guys pulling the trigger could be pretty minor. Even as late as 1874 Mackenzie needed Seminoles and Delawares to show him exactly where Palo Duro Canyon was.

Those would be the exact same Seminoles who, thirty years earler were causing the Govt all kinds of grief in Florida. Didn't take 'em long to find their way around. Just twelve years after Florida, they were already intercepting Comanche, Kiowa and Apache raiders on the Rio Grande in return for land in Mexico.

Birdwatcher

There was a meat hunter from the buffalo range whose actual adventure appears to be a very close to the story line of the Searchers. I'll dig it up later on and see if anyone recognizes it.

Birdwatcher;This account is wrong.Somebody made a mistake in confusing the "Salt Creek Massacre" and a completely different battle which occurred at a different time and at least twenty miles apart.

I posted on here years ago about how four of us boys were horseback in the mid-fifties and found a marker placed in 1898 to mark the Salt Creek Massacre.It is in North Young County,roughly halfway between OLNEY and Jean and on the N side of SH 114.There is a historical marker there now [thanks to our find].

Artemus Nash , an old neighbor who was born in the mid-'eighties IIRC told us the details of the fight.It was a party of civilians from Ft.Belknap who had gone up Salt Creek to get salt.When attacked by Indians[don't know which tribe] they made a dash for the little rise where we found the marker.One young man on a small mare got so excited he kicked the wind out of her and one of the others came back and got him.

Two or three were killed but they kept that fact hidden from the Indians who eventually gave up.

The marker-about 40 inches high I estimate from memory- had not much information but it did have the names of all the party,about 20 in number.

One of the names was"[bleep] Brit".As far as I know, the small marker is still there , on private land.

The teamsters were traveling from Ft.Richardson in Jack County [not Weatherford] hauling fodder to Ft.Griffin , by way of Ft.Belknap.Again, a couple of us who were quail hunting found the monument [actually, I had a real good young pointer gyp who "honored" it, it being more or less white in color]which was placed at the actual site.

The monument gives the info I related and says the teamsters were "killed by Indians led by Satank,Santana, and Big Tree.I do not believe the teamsters were buried at the site.

This spot is South of Loving Tx about six miles.You could say it is four miles East of FLINT CREEK [not Salt Creek as your account says].There is a historical marker beside SH 16 but the actual monument is about 2 miles East of that on private property.

The three chiefs mentioned were captured and taken to Jacksboro for trial.

Now, to add to the mystery: In the novel I mentioned earlier,The Black Fox,Brit is killed in the manner and place laid out in YOUR account!But he is freighting from Weatherford to Ft Belknap , not Ft.Griffin.

If you look at the Frontier Forts stretching from Ft Worth to Ft Davis,it would not make sense to freight from Weatherford to Ft Griffin.That would require at least two , and maybe three days.Richardson to Belknap is a day's travel by wagon.Then Griffin one more day.Then Ft Phantom Hill one more day.

That was the reason the Forts were spaced as they were.

I'm sure there are correct accounts of all this that would agree with what I've posted, but I've seen magazine articles that obviously used your source and makes the same mistakes.

I wish someone would straighten it out.

All interesting history .i'll have to buy some books

I figured I would beat some of you to the punch and google up some info.This is what I find:

My fifty-seven year old memories are wrong in one place.The black man's name on the monument for the "Salt Creek Massacre" must be "Nigra Dick"-not Bret.All the accounts are consistent on THAT.

There are actually FOUR different events muddled up in the account Birdwatcher posted:

There were TWO different massacres which occurred near Salt Creek in North Young County.One involved a group of cattlemen gathering cattle who were attacked by Kiowa.I believe these are the names on the small monument we found , but it is obviously at the wrong site.Salt Creek has two forks , and that in part probably led to the confusion.

It is placed at the site of a battle between Indians and a group of settlers gathering salt.This is what is known locally as the "Salt Creek Massacre".

A third event which involved the teamsters and Kiowas is properly called the "Warren Wagon Train Massacre".It seems the flat plain just west of Cox Mountain used to be called the "Salt Grass Prarie" by the Army.Some of the Army reports mix up Flint Creek with Salt Creek.Brit Johnson was NOT killed in this battle.He wasn't present.

Brit and two other negroes were killed just South of Flat Top Mountain in a separate attack.This is about five miles west on the Butterfield Road from where the Warren group was killed.

Several of the Army reports of the time claim that this Young County area was the "most dangerous place on the whole western frontier in 1871".