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Hendrick Arnold interests me, partly on account of he was one of those unsung guys that provide so many back stories behind the main event, but also because I've seen the remains of the old mill near Mission San Juan for years, not knowing whose it was. Interesting to note that that particular terrain was also home to the likes of a Smith and a Hendrick.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/far15


Hendrick Arnold, guide and spy during the Texas Revolution, emigrated from Mississippi with his parents, Daniel Arnold, apparently a white man, and Rachel Arnold, who was apparently black, in the winter of 1826.

The family settled in Stephen F. Austin's colony on the Brazos river. Hendrick is referred to as a Negro, although his brother Holly was regarded as white; both were apparently considered free, although there is no evidence that they were ever formally freed by their father. In July or August of 1827 Hendrick and an Arnold slave named Dolly had a daughter, Harriet. Hendrick held Harriet as a slave.

There are any number of legal practicalities as to why Arnold would formally own his own daughter, perhaps if nothing else to keep his kin from claiming her.

By the fall of 1835 Arnold had settled in San Antonio and married a woman named Martina (Mar�a), a stepdaughter of Erastus (Deaf) Smithq. Arnold had a second daughter, Juanita, who may have been Martina's child.

While Arnold and Smith were hunting buffalo in the Little River country north of the site of present Austin, Mexican forces under Gen. Mart�n Perfecto de Cos occupied San Antonio.

On their trip home Arnold and Smith came upon Stephen F. Austin's encampment at Salado Creek. Arnold, and soon thereafter Smith, who considered remaining neutral because of his Mexican wife, offered their services as guides to the Texans. In October Arnold took part in the battle of Concepci�n.

Just how competent Arnold was percieved to be can be inferred from the following. The Battle of Bexar developed into prolonged and vicious hand-to-hand fighting through Old Town San Antonio, both Smith and Hendrick serving under another old Texas hand Ben Milam, Milan being felled during the action by a sniper bullet to the head, Smith, standing alongside, seriously wounded in that same exchange of fire....

When Edward Burleson, who had replaced Austin as commander, called a council of officers on December 3, 1835, the council decided to postpone an attack on San Antonio, explaining that Arnold was absent and that the officers of one of the divisions refused to march without him. Arnold's whereabouts during his absence are now unknown.

When he returned, Benjamin R. Milam called for an attack, which was subsequently called the siege of Bexar. Arnold served as the guide for Milam's division. Francis W. Johnson, leader of the other division, wrote the official report of the battle for himself and Milam, who was killed during the siege.

Johnson acknowledged the bravery of all the Texan forces and cited Arnold specifically for his "important service."

Likewise the trust between Arnold and Smith....

On January 3, 1836, Arnold arrived in San Felipe de Austin with his family and that of Erastus Smith. On January 4 he successfully petitioned the General Council of the provisional government of Texas for relief for their families and noted Smith's service for Texas and his wounds suffered in battle. Arnold continued to support the revolution and served in Smith's spy company in the battle of San Jacinto.

Arnold is listed alongside Hays in at least one major 1838 rangering expedition north of San Antonio, and both men likely served together on the earlier Laredo Expedition.

In the end, germs proved to be no respecter of courage. Smith passed away, quite suddenly it seems, in 1837, age fifty.

Cholera was always the scourge of San Antonio, most of the population drawing water from the fifty miles of old Spanish Mission irrigation ditches (AKA acequias) that hade made the town a doable concern in the first place.

An 1833 episode may have been the one that killed Jim Bowie's wife, reportedly leaving him heartbroken, this episode did kill Deaf and Guadelupe's young son Travis.

Cholera came again in '49, the same epidemic that decimated the Comanches, also carrying off in San Antonio Guadelupe, her and Smith's daughter Susan, and Hendrick Arnold.

One has to wonder if the devastating epidemic that year may have been instrumental in Jack Hays' decision to hang up his Ranger badge and head for California.

Birdwatcher

Still following along, Texian friend.

Why thanks for the mention Poboy

Continuing...

One wishes we had more on Deaf Smith and the at least fifteen years he spent in Texas operating out of San Antonio BEFORE the Texian War broke out.

We know that he was proficient with stock, practised the droving horse/cattle trade, and fit in easily with the Texano culture. We also know that he was proficient and mobile enough that, even at age forty-eight, he quickly became all but indispensible as a set of eyes and ears for the Texians.

Odd then that his brief rangering career should have been so anticlimactic. That began the year following independence early in 1837. Around twenty Rangers under Smith gathering on the San Antonio River south of town. The author Stephen Moore (Savage Frontier Volume 1: 1835-1837) having it that they "trained in frontier warfare and took on provisions".

Included among this group was the nineteen year-old Jack Hays, recently arrived from Tennessee, personally assigned to Smith's care by Sam Houston hisself.

Then comes a distinct misstep (from Moore)...

By mid February 1837 Captain Smith was forced to move his company to the Medina River [about six miles south]due to the scarcity of good grazing for their horses. At the Medina River, Smith's rangers lost their entire stock of horses to either outlaws or Indians on February 21st.

It does seem like 1837 was a bad year for horse raids, at least two other Ranger companies elsewhere along the frontier also being set afoot such attacks (and narrowly recovering their horses in the case of Noah Smithwick's group out of present-day Austin) but still, for an experienced drover and and old Texas hand like Deaf Smith this seems like an odd mishap.

Possibly an ulterior motive; Rangers entering service were expected to use their own horses and weapons and were paid $30 a month but apparently could be reimbursed for loss. One of Smith's men put in a claim of $75 for his horse which sounds like a lot by the standards of the day. Twenty years later Olmstead would be pronouncing $30 as being on the high side.

Also interesting that the grazing was apparently insufficient around San Antonio in February of 1837, possibly indicating large herds of cattle or sheep in the area at that time.

Birdwatcher

Stands to reason. Most all of that area had been mission ranchero land for over 150 years. My dad was raised on land that had one belonged to the San Jose mission. Approx. 10 miles west of Poteet in Atascosa county. Hard to imagine but much of that land had been overgrazed for years.

I was looking at my uncles genealogy papers and it was Mathew Hunter who married Sarah Tumilson, that came to Texas with Steven F Austin. not the rogers side of my dads family.

One thing I've learned from this thread is the enormous volume of regular trade with Mexico all through the periods of hostilities, to the point that reg'lar folks going about their business likely far outnumered the folks involved in dramatics.

For example, in the 1850's when the Feds failed to act effectively act against Comanches; turns out only about 5% of the Texas population lived on the Frontier, the other 95% protecting themselves from threats (most often miscreant White folk) quite well. Add to that the enormous volume of Comanche trade in horses, and later cattle, going north, including to Americans, and ya start to wonder.

Meanwhile, in those same years, Mexicans were routinely driving large herds of horses to San Antonio, and points east while numerous Mexican ox carts crawling across the plains from the Gulf Coast ports and from Mexico were the life blood of San Antonio commerce.

How many Mexican carts I dunno. IIRCC, Olmstead in 1857 estimated that 5,000 Mexicans were living in San Antonio, almost exclusively engaged in the carting trade. Using the usual 5 to 1 estimate for males of active age, that gives about 1,000 able-bodied men and youths. How many ox teams and carts 1,000 men and youths could operate I dunno, but I'm gonna float a WAG of two to three hundred. Whatever, it was a lot of ox carts, quietly and routinely crossing terrain where, as the late Russel Means put it "White Men Fear to Tread".

More on Deaf Smith, and sme insight as to the character of the man...

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/erastus-deaf-smith.htm

Although all of Smith�s major missions are recorded, along with all his reports, we rarely get a glimpse of what an average day in Deaf Smith�s position would have been like. One report that he gave to Houston, however, gives us some insight.

It is said that Smith, being a man of few words that usually never complained, came to Houston greatly fatigued after one of his missions and asked to have a word with him. The spy stated "General, you are very kind to these Mexicans; I like kindness, but you are too kind�you won't allow me to kill any of them. If a man meets two of the enemy, and is not allowed to kill either, by the time he takes one and ties him, the other gets off so far, that it is very fatiguing on a horse to catch him; and I wish you would let me manage things in my own way."

Houston politely told him to avoid cruelness, but in the future, to do what he believed necessary.

Gus and Woodrow would have approved Or more likely, they woulda learned their trade from the likes of a Deaf Smith in the first place.

More on Smith here...

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/scri...port=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0026083

Including an explantion of his abrupt and vindictive abandonment of neutrality...

In 1835, when the war between Mexico and her American colonies began, commencing with the fight at Gonzales over the little cannon, General Stephen F. Austin raised a force and marched upon San Antonio, then garrisoned by, Mexican troops under General Prefecto Cos.

The Texans encamped on the Sallado Creek, four miles east of San Antonio, and while there Deaf Smith and a man named Arnold (who was his brother-in-law) came to Austin's camp on their way to San Antonio. They had geen gone for several weeks in the Little River country north of where the city of Austin now is, hunting buffalo, and Smith had not seen his wife and children for some time.

He told General Austin who he was and that his wife was a Mexican woman, and she and his children were in the town now commanded by General Cos, that he had heard of the war just commencing, but did not wish to take sides in the fight between the colonists and the military. He then asked permission of Austin to pass his pickets (who were in the prairie west of the creek toward the town), so that he could have a talk with the Mexican officers in command of the enemy's pickets who were beyond the Texans in the edge of the town.

Arnold preferred to remain with the Texans, but Smith was furnished with a pass and went on his way, getting through Austin's pickets all right, not anticipating any trouble in passing the Mexicans.....

Next day Mr. Smith came back to General Austin's tent without his hat, and he himself considerably ex-cited, and said: "General, I told you yesterday that I would not take sides in this war, but I now tender you my services, as the Mexicans acted rascally with me. The officer I talked with yesterday said I would have to consult General Cos as to whether or not I would be allowed to go into San Antonio to see my family, and told me to come tomorrow and he would let me know.

When I went awhile ago and was talking to the officer I saw cavalry coming toward me in a gallop, and being satisfied they intended to capture me, I wheeled my horse around and put spurs and whip to him, and finally had to resort to my gun. The officer I was talking to went for me and the cavalry commenced firing at me, and but for the timely arrival of some of the Texans who fired on the Mexicans, I expect I would have been captured."

Some Texan picket guards afterwards stated that the Mexican officer struck Smith over the head with his saber, knocking his hat off and wounding him so that he bled profusely, and that he fired his rifle and a brace of pistols while the cavalry were pursuing and firing at him.

Clearly, General Cos picked the wrong guy to oppress. Smith went to work with a will, plaing a prominent role in driving Cos back into the Alamo such that he agreed to terms and left.

The following winter and spring, Smith was all over the place, wearing out horses and riding with a will. Didn't forget the affront Cos had dealt him either, here he is at the capture of Cos after San Jacinto...

Captain Henry Karnes now, with Deaf Smith, Wash Secrest, Fielding Secrest and James Wells, went in pursuit of the fugitives, passing around the head of Vince's Bayou toward the Brazos River. Wells being the best mounted kept in the lead and came upon General Cos, Captain Iberri, Captain Bachiler and two or three others near the Brazos timber, where the fugitives seeing Karnes and the others rapidly approaching, halted and surrendered.

Cos, whose identity at that time was not known, inquired of Deaf Smith if General Cos had been killed or captured; Smith replied: "He has neither been killed or captured. I am hunting for him now, for he is one scoundrel I wish to kill in person."

Having fairly surrendered, however, Cos was safe even in the hands of Deaf Smith. They did not reach the Texan camp with their prisoners and others they picked up until the 23rd

As stated earlier in the thread, Smith's rangering career (actually his group in 1837 were mustered in as 'cavalry'; Rangers in all but name) was brief. Fifty years old at the time, it may indeed have been failing eyesight that caused him to quit, or poor health, or else maybe military pay was lean for a man with a family to support.

In any event he quit the service and, at the time of his apparently quite sudden death, had been planning to speculate in real estate. With what must have been an exact knowledge of Texas, likely he could have become a wealthy man.

In the fall of this same year, after his men were disbanded, Deaf Smith left his family in San Antonio and came to Richmond, Fort Bend County, and in company with John P. Borden established a land agency.

Soon after, however, a fatal sickness attacked him, and he died November the 30th, 1837, at the home of Captain Randall Jones, about one mile north of the present business center of Richmond.

Birdwatcher

Excellent as always.

Thank you Poboy, just learning as I go.

Continuing...

Smith's one and only expedition as Captain that we know about seems a sort of FUBAR endeavor of the sort that a young and chaotic government might order: Republic of Texas Secretary of War William Fisher ordered Smith to travel to Laredo on the Rio Grande and assert Texas' claim to that community by attaching a Texas flag to tallest point in town; the spire of a Catholic church there.

Exactly what difference this act was intended to make in the greater course of events is unclear, especially given the fact that Smith commanded only twenty men at that time. Furthermore the whole mission was apparently both ordered and undertaken without anyone informing the President of the Republic, Sam Houston.

Stealth was apparently of the essence; leaving on March 6th Smith's force took ten days to cover some 150 miles, travelling off of the road "through bleak country", arriving at Arroyo Seco some five miles east of Laredo. Surprise was lost almost immediately however, they were sighted by a part of five well-mounted Mexicans, who fled towards Laredo to raise the alarm.

The hour was drawing late and Smith made camp for the night, expecting to be attacked in the morning.

Birdwatcher

Merry Christmas, Birdy. Pardon me for interrupting your story on Deaf Smith....I'm anxious as the next to hear about it.

But........ I know I've missed a page or two of this thread, so this feller may have been mentioned already:

Texas Ranger John B. Jones and the Frontier Battalion, 1874-1881

That's a book out this year that I haven't read, but intend to.I learned of him because of a skirmish that happened close by my huntin' pasture where he had two men killed.

Now..................... back to Deaf Smith.First, though, a funny story:

A fella I know established an aircraft repair facility near Hereford and called it "Deaf Smith Aero".Our Spare Parts sales guy wasn't all that p on Texas History, or County names for that matter, ans always called his customer, "Ol Deef"!

My friend never corrected him.

Thanks for the heads up on the book. On this thread I've been sorta meandering chronologically with frequent jumps out of sequence, just now I'm in the late 1830's, gonna follow Jack Hays' career as best anyone can (turns out a whole lot never made it to print) up to the Mexican War.

After that comes the 1850's and 60's etc, might take a couple of years.

Anyways, March 1837, one year after the Alamo, Mexico taking Texas back still a distinct possibilit., Deaf Smith had snuck his twenty men, many new to Texas and rangering, within a short distance of Laredo, wherein he was supposed to hang a Republic of Texas flag on the church steeple and then, one supposes, hightail it out of there as fast as possible.

History apparently does not record what Deaf Smith thought of this arrangement, certainly he would have been familiar with Laredo and the Mexican forces possible in the vicinity, which likely accounts for why he snuck in instead of parading along the main highway across South Texas between there and San Antonio.

The five Mexicans getting away to sound the alarm, Smith makes camp, in Smith's words, via Moore (Savage Frontier Vol. I).

Early the next morning, taking one man with me, I went out to view the road and, if possible, to take a prisoner in order to ascertain the force of the enemy station in town.

I then found the trail of the cavalry sent out to intercept us and returned to camp and prepared thier reception.

The attack was slow in coming, seems like four or five hours waiting, so slow that by one o'clock Smith got tired of waiting and thought to move the horses some miles back to where they could graze.

All of this caution paid off, two miles along their way they sighted the enemy, twice their number of Mexican cavalry, perhaps lancers, from the Laredo garrison.

Smith's response was textbook Plains warfare; if ya had rifles you hightailed it to cover and prepared to deploy accurate fire, inflicting casuaties on a mounted enemy with little to yourselves. Besides which Smith's horses were played-out.

The twenty-one men took cover in a dense mesquite thicket, tied off their horses under cover. Smith's own words again...

We had scarcely prepared for battle when the enemy commenced firing on my right and left, at about 150 yards distant - a portion of their force advancing with great rapidity upon my rear - keeping up a brisk firing on my right, left and rear.

When they were about fifty yards distant, I returned their fire, giving strict orders that not a piece should be discharged until every man was sure of his aim. The engagement had continued for about forty-five minutes when the enemy retreated, leaving ten dead and taking off about as many wounded.

Jack Hays later reported that the Mexican force, perhaps on seeing the smaller Texian force precipitately retreating to the mesquite thicket had come on in the first rush shouting insults. As it turns out they wouldn't be the only mounted force ever underestimating the power of well-aimed rifles on the Plains,it seems probable that most of those twenty casualities, half the Mexican force, would have been incurred during that first, devastating volley.

The Texians did succeed in capturing twenty badly-needed horses from the enemy. Again Smith chose discretion over foolish valor, and chose to withdraw and return to San Antonio, doubtless watching his back trail.

Twenty down among the enemy, three of his own men slightly wounded, twenty horses captured, all in all at least as effective as a flag on a steeple, tho' Sam Houston would not pronounce it so. Houston's censure possibly prompting Smith to quit the service that fall.

As it was, the final disposition of Laredo would remain very much in play for at least another four years, when Jack Hays, this time at the head of his own men, would fight his first action as a Captain of Rangers.

Birdwatcher

Hey birdy! Still no computer, but I got an iPhone for Christmas!!!
Concerning cattle, the trade was extensive between the Spanish and French in colonial Louisiana, albeit illegal, from the 1720's on. Especially when Louis Juchreau de St. Denis ran things in Natchitoches. Only 15 miles from the colonial capital of TexAs at Presidio Los Adaes.
St. Denis' "royal corral" where all cattle and horses were gathered for shipment down the Red River was a natural depression of land now located on the southern end of the campus of Norhwestern State Univ. there in present Natchitoches. Trade between St. Denis and the Spanish continued until his death in 1745. He died owing the crown of France over 15,000 Francs, but was considered the richest man in all of Louisianne!!!!!! All assets tied up in land and cattle
The Spanish also drove vast herds of mission cattle to New Orleans and Pensacola to feed Spanish troops fighting the British during our revolution!!! Spanish troops under Gen. Bernado Galvan did capture both Baton Rouge and Pensacola from the Brits!!!! As a side note Gen. George Rogers Clark troops were supplied by the Spanish in St. Louis for their campaigns against Cascaskia and Vinncennes.

Thanks K for that info; Texas cattle drives from the 1720's, so many untold stories implied in all of that, and an interesting aside that the livestock trading Texano family Deaf Smith married into had roots going back to Los Adaes.

Anyhoo... moving the narrative along.... two 1860's quotes from George Armstrong Custer, during that war....
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_armstrong_custer.html


I was looking for a quote of his I recall reading to the effect of the joys of running down fleeing Confederate cavalrymen and shooting them out of the saddle, but could not find it.

The point being that George Armstrong Custer and John Coffee Hays likely would have understood each other perfectly. I have already noted how small a minority of the Texian population gravitated towards rangering as an avocation as opposed to an occasional necessity.

In the case of Jack Hays we have a youth immediately entering the service upon arrival while still a teenager and then keeping company by choice with the most violent of men, Indian, Mexican and White, until his abrupt and permanent departure from Texas twelve years later.

Some men it seems love mortal combat. By the time of his famously audacious revolver victories against much larger groups of Comanches, Hays had already been taking to the field on and off for seven years of his life.

Yet no taint of outlawry during this violent period popularly attaches to him: By Texian lights at least, one supposes that all the men Hays killed (and there was probably many) "needed killing".

Certainly Hays seems to have successfully walked a fine line, commanding the respect and obedience of the likes of the violent psychopath and future infamous scalphunter John Glanton, while at the same time earning the grateful adulation of the law-abdiding mainstream.

The closest thing to a taint of savagery we have attached to Hays comes from the Mexican War, where recent scholarship has revealed that Hays and his men cut a bloody swathe through the civilian population in actions that would today be termed "atrocities". Worth noting too that his second-in-command at the beginning of this period was the same notoriously bloody-handed Glanton.

How many of Hays earlier kills would be considered crimes by modern standards is hard to figure. Certainly Texas Hispanic tradition paints a very different picture of the "Rinches" than the Ranger of legend, but IIRC most of that infamy comes from post Civil War actions along the Border at a time when Hays had been gone for decades.

Continuing along author Stephen Moore's narrative ("Savage Frontier") Hays remained in service out of San Antonio after the departure and untimely death of Deaf Smith in 1837 and, at nineteen, displayed such an aptitude for the work that he was prmoted to sergeant, aggressively leading his own patrols, presumably seeking combat.

Although the [Texian] Army was mustered out [beginning in May of 1837] several companies of cavalry remained in service under Colonel Karnes on the southwestern frontier. Captain Dawson's cavalry spy company remained on duty in the San Antonio area. Jack Hays was promoted to sergeant, and as such he often commanded a patrol party of several men who ranged out distances of up to fifty miles from their base camp.

How all this sudden rangering and patrolling on the part of the but-recently-arrived Texian population complemented/coexisted with the considerable volume of routine trade and traffic we know was already going on across those same plains I dunno.

At least two of Hays' larger expeditions out of San Antonio two years later would include a large Bexareno contingent, so presumably many of the miscreants Hays and his men targeted in these early years were also considered ne'r do wells by the Hispanic population as well. So at worst, the interdictions practised by Hays and his men did not apparently incite popular discontent in San Antonio.

Still, Moore's accout of one of Hays 1837 actions does raise questions...

On one occasion Sergeant Hays reportedly led his men to capture Mexican bandits in a sundown surprise roundup. In the ensuing fight, one Texan was wounded and three Mexicans were killed. Taking up the chase of five fleeing bandits, Hays used his pistol to shoot one Mexican from his horse.

In the end another bandit was thrown from his horse, while Hays and a fellow ranger reportedly trailed and captured the remaining three outlaws.

So, perhaps eight outlaws on this occasion, a pity we are not told the size of Hays' party or the transgressions of this particular group of outlaws.

At least three and perhaps four or five of those Mexican outlaws that survived the intial surprise attack do appear to have been poorly armed for folks involved in the criminal trade, such that no return fire is recorded during the shooting/apprehension of the final four, by just two rangers.

Birdwatcher

A moment on the Texas Plains further back in time....

1757,1758 and 1831 to be exact....

A kind invite last month brung me to a lease near Menard TX, and while out there I found the San Saba Mission site....

Back in the 1750's while the French, Indians and English were contesting up in their neck of the woods, the Spanish were looking to pacify the wild Indians on the Tejas Frontier by expanding upon their mission system, looking to plant one way out there on the San Saba, 150 miles WNW of San Antonio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Santa_Cruz_de_San_Sab%C3%A1

Generally trivialized as a footnote of history, this was no mean undertaking, with a total of 300 people taking up residence on-site. Established in April of '57, within the year a stone mission compound had been built, and a wooden fort some distance away to house a garrison. Less heralded; a lengthy acequia system for irrigation was also being dug.

The Indian response was also extraordinary, in March of '58 TWO THOUSAND Comanches, Tonkawas and Hasinai's showed up to torch the place. Casualties were actually light, just eight dead, but the mission was accomplished, the post was abandoned. The real extraordinary fact to my mind is two thousand Indian warriors in Texas at one time in one place. Many French-supplied weapons in the mix, surely there's a missing backstory here.

The mission was subject to a singularly poor reconstruction in the CCC era, hence the medieval-tooking tower, but this is how it looks today...



...back then...



...and the adjacent San Saba...



Now the Jim Bowie part, in 1831 Bowie (AKA "BOUIE") or somebody in his party carved his name in the gateway. Most of the original stones are long gone, a great many hauled off for use in the walls of the Menard Pioneer Cemetery, but the carved gateway stone remains...







[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/frontierfolk/sansaba5.jpg[/img]

Birdwatcher

I wondered why the heck you were so eager to go to Menard

Well I coulda looked it up if I was looking for it I guess but actually when I turned right going out the gate instead of left to I 10 I had no idea that a) Menard was on the San Saba and b) the mission would be there.

Plain ol' noseyness pays off on occasion

Actually I was looking for a local greasy spoon to rub shoulders over morning coffee with the locals but ended up at a somewhat upscale, effete "bakery" instead, where I spent easy three times the price of a typical migas or chilaquile plate for decidedly less food in an establishment where guys who looked like they just slept out in the dirt in their street clothes got looked at askance.

The coffee was OK tho' so it weren't all bad.

Birdwatcher

Actually I ain't forgot about this thread, but I'm wondering what happens after it passes a two-year limit

Hookey... the topic was Jack Hayes, the cooly efficient and deadly 21 year-old last seen as a Sergeant of Rangers operating out of San Antonio in the year 1838.

After that things get a bit muddy. Did he run (literally) with a bunch of Shawnee/Delawares for two days down around present-day Del Rio to wreak vengeance on a much larger number of Comanches?

No other record of Hays as an exceptional runner but the association with Indians AND the reckless attack against long odds certainly sounds in character.

In the meantime, before we move on, I would be remiss if I failed to return to Capt Bird's famous 1839 fight against Comanches up be resent-day Waco.

This has long been dismissed as a failed attack, showing how badly off the Rangers were until they got the revolver. That completely ignoring the fact that the 34 Texians on the scene, facing long odds, inflicted at least 30 casualties for a loss of maybe five of their own.

The Texians had chased a small party of Indians, which ran back to a huge party of Indians, which chased the Rangers to the cover of a ravine, from which cover they used their rifles to decimate their mounted opponents.

If ya really wanted to attribute EVERYTHING on the Frontier to prior Indian examples (as often applies), except maybe for the falling-into-a-trap part, them Texians were essentially duplicating the tactics already used by rifle-Armed Eastern Tribesmen on the Plains for at least twenty years by that point, with similar results.

Perhaps it is called a defeat because Bird himself was killed, while standing in plain view on the edge of the ravine to encourage his men. But here's the remarkable part, why I came back to it, well told by one Clay Coppedge....

http://www.texasescapes.com/ClayCoppedge/Birds-Creek.htm

After the Indians had dropped back a second time, Captain Bird mounted the creek bank to encourage his men, only to be struck in the heart by an arrow that Brown said was fired from 200 yards away.

Brown, quoted in George Tyler's "History of Bell County," said of the shot that it was "the best shot known in the annals of Indian warfare, and one that would seem incredible to those who are not familiar with their skill in shooting by elevation."

The Indians lost somewhere between 30 and 100 Indians in the battle. Bird and four of his men were killed.

[Referring to Adobe Walls] ......Willie Dixon went on to write his memoirs, where he claimed, as he always had, that his shot at Adobe Walls was just as lucky as it was long.

No one knows what the Indian who killed Captain Bird had to say about his shot. We don't even know if he survived the battle, but the memory of the shot he made certainly has.



200 yards and a hit in the heart, DRT, from what was likely about a 40lb draw bow with a homemade arrow, most likely from an expert archer who may have been firing from horseback, not looking down the arrow but probably firing as Plains Indians ordinarily did; from a bow held flat and chest height, firing by "instinct" or "feel".

However it was done it was an incredible shot.

Birdwatcher

Birdy,

Archaeologist son did his masters thesis on his 3 field schools at presidio San Liis de las Amarillas (presidio San Saba). They practically dug up that entire a era you walked there at the site. I was with him the morning a kid nailed him in the thigh with a golf ball from the course!!!!! Hurt like all he**!

Read of commandant parillas punitive expedition against the Nortenos at the Taovaya village on the Red River by present day "Spanish Fort" Tx. Very interesting read!!!!

Gotta go. Wifey back in hospital!!!!!
Bob

PS Dr. Hall from Texas Tech is pretty convinced that this Bouie carving in door is totally legit!!!!

Hope the wife is OK Sir, prayers offered.

Birdy, my wife & I had a similar experience last spring coming back from our bass-fishing expotition on the Llano River... we decided to mosey back on 2-lane roads rather than hit the I-10 stock car races on a Sunday morning, and our meandering path took us through Menard. We stumbled across the San Saba Mission west of town, and spent over an hour poking around there, watching the turtle sunning themselves on a log in the river, and eating a leisurely picnic brunch.

It's a fascinating story, as you pointed out in your post.

Up until we stumbled across the Mission, Menard was not my favorite Texas town... I'd been pulled over for "speeding" both times I'd passed through the town previously. (Literally ONE mile per hour over the 35-mph speed limit, on TWO separate occasions!) Just a word of caution to other 24HCF members who may feel compelled to travel there to see the old Presidio...

The athletic ability of plains Indians on horseback--and their bowmanship as well--seems incredible today, but I've seen some demonstrations first-hand that make me a believer.

In the early 1970's I worked parts of each summer for a YMCA summer camp near Seebe, Alberta, which was located on the western verge of the Morley Reservation (Stoney Indians). As part of the Y's lease arrangement, in the summer of '73 the tribe was offered a free camp experience for 7-8 of their boys, and I was selected by the camp administration to take time off my mountain hiking and riding to serve as their counselor. Long story short, what I had thought was gonna be miserable babysitting job turned into one of the most fascinating experiences of my life. I got to know my young charges very well, and learned details of Stoney culture that quite literally changed the course of my life.

One of the things that my young Stoney friends showed me was how good they were on horseback. I was no tyro in the saddle myself, but compared to them I was nothing. They could ride backwards, frontwards, upside-down and sideways, pick up stones off the ground at a full gallop and whip them at each other with phenomenal accuracy, and so forth. I have never in my life seen such riding, and these were 12- and 13-year-old boys. Imagine what they'd have become if they'd kept riding like that into adulthood!