I suppose you could write a book on tbe social dynamics of master and slave in the United States, and all the variants thereof....
Slaves as family members. Slaves that their masters had known forever, grown up with, blurring the distinction between slave and master. And the inevitable dalliances, perhaps not always rape, and the mixed offspring thereof, some of these after a couple of generations of this even predominantly of White blood, but still owned.
Always with the possibility of being sold off, for money or in repayment of debt. Interesting to speculate; toxic family members and bad blood are still common phenomena today, if it were legal for some family members to actually sell others for remunerative gain, how often would that happen?
Anyhoo... Blacks on the Texas Frontier? Might as well jump to 1864 and the most famous slave of them all..... N$gger Britt Johnson, AKA Britton Johnson.
As best as can be determined, technically a slave by choice, as in staying legally a slave made survival easier, even if you were funtionally close to being a free man.
This is a somewhat cheesy-looking fiction site, but it gives a concise synopsis of the man and events....
http://sweetheartsofthewest.blogspot.com/2012/09/mixing-fact-and-fiction.html �The Searchers� is the John Ford movie starring John Wayne and based on the novel by Allen LeMay, whose story in turn was inspired by actual events detailed in Gregory Michno's "The Search for the Captives of Elm Creek." In �The Searchers,� a white man searches for his niece captured by Indians.
Western Writers of America voted �The Searchers� the No. 1 Western of all time. In Weider History Group special issue of 100 Greatest Westerns, the movie ranks No. 7. Many people believe the movie is based on the search for Cynthia Ann Parker, but it's about another captured girl, and the movie doesn�t begin to tell the exciting real story.
The actual Elm Creek Raid �searcher� on whom the movie was based is Brit Johnson, a black man who hunted for his wife and children. His quest and recovery of his family as well as other victims kidnapped in that raid is the stuff of legends. As a result, there are at least three or four versions of the story. Here is my compilation of what I consider the most likely way the story happened.
Brit was born about 1840 in Tennessee or Kentucky. He was a slave of Moses Johnson, who came to Texas as part of Stephen F. Austin�s 300. Moses Johnson had intended to free Brit, but both agreed that the hassle incurred by freedmen of color in the south and southwest was too great. Instead, Brit worked as Moses� ranch foreman and could come and go as he wished. On October 13, 1864, Brit had gone into Weatherford for winter supplies along with Allen Johnson and other ranchers and farmers.
Little Buffalo and seven hundred braves were also riding. Usually waiting for a full moon to raid, this time in broad daylight they swept down both banks of Elm Creek, killing and raping, burning houses and barns full of the summer's crops. They stole most of the horses and some of the cattle, killing or stampeding the rest. Among the first houses surrounded by the Comanche was that of Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzpatrick. She was there with her son, Joseph, 12, and her adult daughter, Susan Durgan, along with Susan's children, 3 year old Charlote "Lottie," and 18 month old Millie Jane.
Britt's wife, Mary, and their three children were also there. Susan, who had run outside with a gun, was stripped, raped, and mutilated in the yard. Britt's son was killed and the others kidnapped.
Many wanted to ride after their loved ones, but chasing 700 Comanche was not the wisest option. They spent the winter rebuilding homes and sewing crops. Then, Brit Johnson went after his wife and daughters. He trailed Comanche and found a campsite. Here being a black man helped. On this trip he first traded for horses, recognizing two as those taken from near his home, one from Thomas Hamby and the favorite mare of Elizabeth Fitzpatrick. When he saw Mrs. Fitzpatrick, he pretended disinterest until he could ask the ally he'd made, Chief Milky Way, to trade for her on his behalf. He returned Mrs. Fitzpatrick to her home, with her riding her own mare.
Brit would not rest until he had recovered his wife, Mary, and their two children. In return for being rescued, Elizabeth Fitzpatrick committed part of her wealth to helping recover other kidnap victims from the Indians. She hoped to recover Lottie and Millie Jane. Financed by Elizabeth Fitzpatrick and Allen Johnson, Brit made three more trips into Indian Territory that summer as he slowly tracked down and purchased surviving captives from the Elm Creek Raid of October, 1864.
On his fourth trip, Britt again enlisted the aid of Chief Milky Way aka Chief Asa-Havie. The chief sent with Brit two trusted braves to bargain with the Kiowa, who were rumored to have some black captives. At the time Brit did not know if they were the ones he was seeking, but it turned out they were. Britt Johnson eventually recovered every other captive except Millie Durgan, who was supposedly sold and adopted into the tribe....
Britt Johnson died as heroically as he lived. On January 24, 1871, while he led a wagon train through Young County delivering supplies from Weatherford to Fort Griffin, a group of either five or twenty-five Kiowas, depending on the account, attacked the wagon train four miles to the east of Salt Creek. Johnson and the two other teamsters with him tried to defend the wagons, but there was little cover. Outnumbered, the teamsters put up a desperate fight. They killed their own horses and mules to make breastworks, bravely resisting to the end....
When others, either soldiers from Fort Griffin or another set of teamsters depending on the account, found the site of this attack, they counted 173 rifle and pistol shells around the area where Johnson made his last stand. The Elm Creek Raid is one of those events in Texas history that puzzle me, not the event per se but how it has been interpreted in popular Texas lore.
If not actually seven hundred then "several hundred" Comanches and Kiowas descend upon this area in North Texas, maybe eighty miles west of present-day Dallas. "Several hundred" warriors would have been a huge war party in any era, rivalling the Great Linnville Raid (where casualties inflicted were similarly light). In 1864 this must have been an enormous undertaking for the surviving Comanches and Kiowas.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bte01Not a tremendously long distance to travel from Indian Country, and considering the huge numbers of warriors involved, casualties were actually way light on the American side; perhaps ten settlers and soldiers surpised and killed, just a handful of captives taken, a number of settlers actually being able to drive off their attackers with determined gunfire, despite the huge disparity in numbers.
Besides not speaking well of the vaunted Comanche ability in war, one gets the imnpression that the majority on this raid can't have been all that bloody-minded. At least one White settler was run pretty much for sport, the Indians chasing him letting him live, calling out his name, apparently having seen him around the agency delivering cattle.
They did drive off quantities of horses and cattle, which was likely the real object all along, especially given the big way the Comanches were entering into the cattle business, driving herds for trade to the US military in New Mexico.
Birdwatcher
