Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Salt Creek Massacre... The Real One

That would be cool to get to go to the actual site. My understanding is that it's on private property.

There were two different Battles at Adobe Walls...a number of years apart. Kit Carson was at the first one.

No small part of that was due to their acquisition of horses after the Puebloan Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico Territory.

Speaking of actual sites..... .

This evenin' I made a little circle south of the house and took this picture which fits into the story of Britt Johnson AND the Butterfield Trail.

The Live Oak Trees in the foreground mark the Turtle Hole, a spring in a small creek bed.

The horizon is Flat Top Mountain, where Indians camped to watch for travelers on the Butterfield Trail which lies between the two. The distance is about 3 miles.



There's no shortage of internet material about Britt, but I selected the following as probably more factual. There are some accounts of his family having his body removed to Weatherford and re buried there.


Cemetery notes and/or description:
Burial site is located one half mile east of Young County Texas State Historical Marker on FM 1769, six miles northwest of Graham. The exact location of the final remains of these three men is a secret due to past excavations by visitors to the gravesite. The site is on private property. No trespassing signs are posted.

Negro Britt Johnson and his colorful career, during the early days, always commanded the respect and esteem of those acquainted with his activities. Britt had been reared on the frontier among the white citizens, and although he was a negro in fact, in many respects, was not in ways.

During the latter part of January, 1871, J. B. Terrell, who still lives at Newcastle, was in Fort Worth and met Britt Johnson, who was there to try to sell his cattle to Dave Terrell. Negro Britt told Mr. J. B. Terrell that he was going to leave the following day, which was Sunday, for Fort Griffin. Britt, as a consequence, returned to Parker County, where he prepared to make his last journey.

Negro Britt was then living near old Veale Station. After loading his provisions in a bois-d'arc wagon, he started for Ft. Griffin, and was accompanied by Dennis Cureton, who was the slave of Wm. Cureton Sr. at the time of his death in 1859. Britt was also accompanied by Paint Crawford, who was a former slave of Simpson Crawford, one of the first settlers of Palo Pinto County. The three negroes had been living on the frontier for approximately fifteen years.

About the second night out, Negro Brit Johnson, Dennis Cureton, and Paint Crawford, camped at the Turtle Hole, at the head of Flint Creek, about nine miles north of Graham, and on the north side of the road. The next morning, Indians slipped over the hill from the east, and charged the three frontier colored men. According to reports, the Indians had previously told Negro Britt they would kill him if he were ever found out alone. Negro Britt's companions ran, but Britt stood his ground and sold his life as dearly as possible. All three were killed and seventy-two empty shells found around Negro Britt's body, told the story of his bitter fight. No doubt, he made several feathered savages bite the dirt. Britt and his companions were buried near where they were killed, and on the north side of the old Fort Worth-Fort Belknap military road.

And here in an unmarked grave, at the end of his long winding trail, that led to many ranches and cow camps in western Texas, and Indian villages in Oklahoma, lie buried the bones of Negro Britt Johnson. He was a faithful friend to the whites, was highly esteemed and respected by frontier citizens, and helped write much of the early history of Young and adjoining counties.

Note: Author personally interviewed: J. B. (Blue) Terrell, who conversed with Negro Britt in Fort Worth the day before he started on his last journey, and who passed Negro Britt's grave, about the second day after he was killed; Mann Johnson; Henry Williams; F. M. (Babe) Williams; F. M. Peveler; John Marlin; Uncle Pink Brooks; Jeff (Cureton) Eddleman, who was also a slave of Wm. Cureton, mentioned above; A. M. Lasater; Walker K. Baylor, son of General John Baylor; James Wood; and many others who lived in this section of the time.

The above story is from the book, The West Texas Frontier, by Joseph Carroll McConnell.

A wooden cross at the site of the burial and was still visible by land owners as late as 1931.

Here is my mug at the site of the Battle of Adobe Walls back in the 1980's. Yes, the site is on private property, a few miles off the highway by ranch roads passing through a few ranch gates. We were given permission and directions how to find it.

In this picture I am standing at the site of the compound at Adobe Walls. The hill-top in the distance to the right of my head is the spot where the Indian leaders were on horseback conferring about their next plan of attack when Billie Dixon took one off his horse with one shot from his Big-50 buffalo rifle at a distance of 7/8s of a mile. That action convinced the Indians that the Gods were not on their side in this battle and they left the area before the Cavalry arrived to aid the white defenders.

If you ever drive to Del Rio you'll pass about three miles from it. Brackettville/Ft Clark lies maybe thirty miles west of Del Rio on Hwy 90, basically a wide spot in the road. Climbing the hill out of Brackettville going west you'll see the sign at the top, directing you to turn left to find the cemetery.




In the Eighteenth Century the Frontier was relatively stable in the Southeast, hence there was a great deal of intermarriage/cultural exchange between White and Indian, no accident this is where the "Five Civilized Tribes" came from. We like to draw neat borders around things but tribal boundaries and culture were all indistinct. Hence among the Creeks you had everything from slave owners with large plantations breeding fine race horses to Indians still living an approximation of the old ways and people living everything in between.

Cant really separate them out entirely by blood quotient either, there were near fullbloods owning plantations and some of the traditional faction were mostly White or Black or mixtures of all three (Osceola himself being a prime example).

Across the board what they all had was a Frontiersman's familiarity with and competency with firearms.

The Seminoles were those Creeks living in then-remote Florida, mostly on the traditional end of the spectrum. Florida became a haven for runaway slaves from Alabama and Georgia. Slavery among the Creeks ran the spectrum; acculturated plantation owners practised chattel slavery typical of the South. Traditionals practised a sort of "soft" slavery more akin to feudalism, "slave" villages gave tribute in the form of crops and such. But there was a great deal of intermarriage and association.

This gave rise to one of the great unsung partnerships in history; the Seminole Wildcat (AKA Coacoochie) and the Black Seminole Juan Caballo (in English John Horse).

Runaways of expensive slaves to Seminole country was frequent. It was entirely unacceptable to the South to have such a state of affairs on their immediate border, the Seminole Wars to remove them lasted from 1837 to 1842. An exceedingly costly war that has been termed "our first Vietnam". It devolved into a series of bloody guerrilla actions on the one hand, but on the other hand Seminole riflemen were making some of the longest shots with patched round-ball muzzleloaders ever recorded on our Frontier, picking off sentries at 400 yards.

A major faction of the Seminoles were the Black Seminoles, runaway slaves and their offspring actively bearing arms against United States troops.

Eventually Osceola, Wildcat and John Horse were all captured by treachery under a flag of truce and imprisoned in the old Spanish Fort at St Augustine. Their common cell had a single impossibly small window IIRC 30 feet above the outside ground (still there today IIRC). While imprisoned Wildcat and John Horse starved themselves skinny over a period of weeks in order to fit through it. Osceola himself was by that time to ill to accompany them.

Free again, they resumed hostilities while ironically gaining the respect and even friendship of certain Army officers and even the general in charge, General Jessup. The military "Hoooagh!" is said to be derived from a toast Wildcat gave during a formal Army occasion.

Long story short, because the war was so costly it came down to negotiations. Jessup sent Wildcat and John Horse to Washington, in return they went out and convinced their people to move. THe remarkable thing being that the US Government actually allowed 500 free Black Seminoles, lately bearing arms against the US, to remove to present day Oklahoma while bearing arms. The technicality that permitted this was that they were listed as slaves of the Seminoles.

Things were chaotic in the Indian Territory, ironically one of the main enemies of the Widcat/John Horse traditionalist faction were the more acculturated Creeks. For the Black Seminoles things became unlivable when a Federal Law in the 1850's forbade slaves from bearing arms. John Horse himself lost his wife and daughter to Creek slave raiders.

In those years Wildcat turns up all over Texas, fighting skirmishes with Whites and Indians both as far east as Bandera TX and all along the Border. IN fact he gained some notoriety among Whites, the fear being that he was trying to unite the tribes. Other Seminoles, late of the swamps of Florida, likewise turn up all over West Texas and the Border.

Along with the Kickapoos, Wildcat and John Horse accepted a deal with Mexico to accept land (and refuge) in Mexico south of the Rio Grande in return for intercepting Comanche, Kiowa and Apache raiders. In this role they were very active and effective as hostilities between them and these tribes had already broken out since their arrival in the '40's anyway. Well fer one thing, unlike most Texans, they didn't have to employ Indian scouts as guides either.

Wildcat dies of smallpox in 1857, subsequent to which most of his band returned to Oklahoma to the main body of the tribe. The Black Seminoles, being technically runaway slaves, didn't have that option.

Sometime after 1870 the US Cavalry, lacking Indian Scouts in Texas, made a deal with John Horse for a number of Black Seminoles to relocate to Texas and take up employment with the Army.

Short version. Among the funniest parts of the whole story is when Wildcat during his Texas period, deep in his cups in a Fredericksburg bar, sold his buddy John for money to buy more booze, this being a scam they had apparently perpetrated more than once.

On this occasion John Horse and a couple of others hustled the passed-out Wildcat out of town before the other party came to collect.

And a measure of how things were in Texas as late as the 1850's. After removing from Oklahoma and negotiating with Mexico, the Seminoles and Black Seminoles actually took up residence in Texas for the better part of a year, long enough to put in corn crop IIRC somewhere around present Hamilton Texas, one of them events skipped over entirely in pop history.

Birdwatcher

Yes. Most others were reviewed by congressional committee. I think it was done in 1917.

Great pics, thanks

'tis true that the militant faction of the tribe had, out of desperation, just held the first-ever Comanche sun dance in an attempt to gain spirtitual mojo, and that Isa-tai hisself claimed to have made them all bullet-proof.

But generally overlooked is the fact that the main business of the Comanches as a whole had long been the livestock trade, to the extent that they had moved more than 30,000 head of cattle for trade to Army posts in New Mexico just the year before, in 1873.

Billy Dixon was a remarkable guy who made a remarkable shot, which he himself always ascribed to luck. But ultimately there were only 27 buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls. The Whites lost four killed, the Indians less than twenty of the hundreds at the scene.

Not usually talked about is the fact that those hundreds of Indians then fanned out across the Frontier, wreaking what havoc they could.

Adobe Walls was remarkable, but in the greater flow of events it was a skirmish.

Quanah Parker himself had wanted to take out the Tonkawas rather than the Whites, which that many Comanches and Kiowas all at once might have finally accomplished, believing them the greater threat.

Actually he was right, it was Tonkawa scouts later that same year that led the implacable Ranald McKenzie down on them, finally driving them off the Texas Plains as a major power.

And no one at all recalls gentle old "Doc" Sturm, the German Texas Hill Country agriculturalist who had that time been living with the Comanches since the the Brazos Reservation in the 1850's.

Doc Sturm was the guy chosen by Ranald MacKenzie to go out and negotiate with the holdouts under Quanah Parker to give themselves up at Fort Sill. Sturm was about the only White guy who could have pulled that off, and he did. Not too much of a stretch to say the Comanches loved this benevolent and kindly man.

Forgotten too are the subsequent travels all over the Panhandle of Doc Sturm in Company with the Comanche War Leader MowWay, seeking out the last fugitives to bring them back to the tribe.

Birdwatcher

Yep, ten years before the second altercation, and that was the one that really mattered, the first time an outside force penetrated the very heart of Comancheria (even tho IIRC they was up against mostly Kiowas on that occasion).

Kit Carson was justly famous in his day, but perhaps not famous enough today. Among his many other accomplishments, when faced with the overwhelming force of Indians, succeeded admirably in extricating his men and getting them home.

Birdwatcher

That is a fantastic story, the Black Seminoles. They were some tough guys.
Somebody ought to make a movie about the Black Seminoles.

Flat Top Mountain, pictured in my previous post, was the scene of a great injustice brought about by a Medicine Man known as Owl or The Prophet.

When Satank, Santana, and Big Tree were making plans to leave the Rez at Ft Sill and conduct a raid on Butterfield Trail travelers, Owl prophesied - correctly, as it turns out - that from their lookout point on Flat Top, they would see a small group of travelers. They were to let this small group pass un-molested, because there would be a large group passing later in the day.

The "small group", which was allowed to pass was none other than General Sherman with a small escort which would have been no match for the Indians.

His "March through Georgia" could have been avenged right here four miles South of my house! Damn ignorant savages .

The second group was the Warren Wagon Train.

At the trial of the Chiefs, one of the defense lawyers was trying to get mercy for his client by blaming the raid on The Owl. The Chief, I think it was Big Tree, objected loudly saying it was HIS idea and he didn't want Owl stealing his glory.

"Actually he was right, it was Tonkawa scouts later that same year that led the implacable Ranald McKenzie down on them, finally driving them off the Texas Plains as a major power."

The Tonkawas were one of the tribes most victimized by the Army when they were driven from their reservation on the Brazos and herded to the Territory and were not even allowed to take their belongings.

Impoverishing them may have been a tactic to get them to serve as Scouts, aside from their enmity toward the Comanche.

Just a thought on that Butterfield deal. They were moving those maybe 3,000 pound wagons more'n 100 miles a day, all weathers, 24/7.

To put that in perspective, a Comanche war party in their prime, travelling light and moving at a horse-killing pace and trailing two or three remounts per man would have to push hard to sustain that same pace. I would expect as professional Plains travellers, some of them prob'ly tried it just to see exactly how fast and how far those strange apparitions were really moving.

Early in the reservation period a group of Kiowas were shown one of those early stereoscopic slide displays, with photos of New York and other cities back East.

One of the Kiowas, a veteran warrior is said to have exclaimed words to the effect of "All this out there yet we have been as ignorant as wolves living on the prairie!".

If I was a Comanche back then, I would hope I'd have the good sense to read the writing on the wall and hang up my raiding moccassins when I seen those Butterfield stage coaches, twice a week, both directions, running like clockwork.

Birdwatcher

I believe it was 1875, Ranald MacKenzie led a troop of cavalry from Ft. Clark against an Apache band raiding into Texas from sanctuary in Mexico.

This punitive attack was done without first asking permission from Mexico, so it was imperative to get in fast, strike hard and get out.

They crossed the river after dark, guided by Black Seminoles and rode all night.

The attack was timed perfectly, by first light they had deployed around the Apache camp undetected and commenced shooting as soon as they could see.

Tony Wilson was one of the Scouts, on his first such operation. In the half-light he saw an Apache figure running, shrouded by a blanket. Just as he pulled the trigger and the hammer fell, the figure turned and looked at him and he saw it was a terrified teenage girl.

According to the Seminoles Tony Wilson never could get over it, and they said the memory of the events of that morning drove him insane shortly before his death.



Birdwatcher

"Flat Top Mountain, pictured in my previous post, was the scene of a great injustice brought about by a Medicine Man known as Owl or The Prophet.

When Satank, Santana, and Big Tree were making plans to leave the Rez at Ft Sill and conduct a raid on Butterfield Trail travelers, Owl prophesied - correctly, as it turns out - that from their lookout point on Flat Top, they would see a small group of travelers. They were to let this small group pass un-molested, because there would be a large group passing later in the day.

The "small group", which was allowed to pass was none other than General Sherman with a small escort which would have been no match for the Indians.

His "March through Georgia" could have been avenged right here four miles South of my house! Damn ignorant savages"

Yes! What an injustice!
"Uncle Billy" would have been staked out, one stake at each wrist, and ankle.
Squaws would have piled burning coals onto his left hand.
Until it burned off.
Then, they would have burned up his right hand. Then, they would have moved on to the ankles.

I grew up in Atlanta. These Savages had the chance to avenge the March Through Georgia, and they blew it. Dammit!

I might guess it was their unapologetic cannibalism that was to blame but there was lots of more regular tribes that got equally well screwed over. But it must be said, LOTS of folks of all races and mixtures thereof got screwed over at different points in our history.

Individuals of all the tribes believed in and dabbled to varying extent in witchcraft, but from this White guy's distant perspective (me) one gets the impression the Tonkawas trended heavily towards the dark end of that spectrum.

Certainly from accounts the Comanches seem to have regarded them with an almost hysterical hatred, yet were never able to get their act together enough to wipe them out, although there were never very many Tonks and for the entireity of our Texas period they lived within reach of Comanche war parties.

RIP Ford on the other had praised them highly when he brung 100 Tonkawas and Caddos along as allies on his 1860 expedition against Buffalo HUmp's camp in the Wichita Mts., calling them "superior men, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the West" or words to that effect.

Cant say they really went extinct although IIRC they disappeared as a tribal entity before 1890. Lots of 'em it seemed married into the Caddos, and after the Frontier closed doesn't seem like there'd be too much benefit in bragging on being a Tonk.

If nothing else, lots of other Indians around with old scores to settle. When ya ate someone's relative I expect that might leave a mark

Birdwatcher

Well, they oughtta be prime candidates for "Black History Month" at the very least. Not real politically correct tho, after the Seminole Wars were over mostly who they fought were Indians (also true of pretty much every tribe). 19th Century Indian slave raiders practicing American-style chattel slavery doesn't fit in very well with pop history either.

In the Seminole War some of their toughest opponents were Creeks and Cherokees fighting on the US side, the motivation of these particular Indians being in a large part an effort to forestall their own eventual removal by proving loyalty to the US, didn't work.

Then there's the dress of the Seminoles themselves, also to a large extent followed by the Black Seminoles. Whatever he might look like, this Texas Seminole, late of Florida, roaming freely all over West and South Texas and adjacent Mexico was, as you observed, a tough individual.



Sketched here along the Border in 1857. Not remembered today but in the late '40's and '50's the Seminoles earned a reputation among Whites, Mexican and Indians alike in Texas as being a rough lot to tangle with.

After more'n ten years in the West this guy sure didn't dress like yer stereotypical Texas Indian tho'.

His name was Noco-Shimatt-Tash-Tanaki, in English "Grizzly Bear".

Dunno where he got that name, I'd guess he'd previously been to California or the Rocky Mountains, individual from displaced Eastern Tribes showed up literally all over the Continent during the first half of the Nineteenth Century, associated with or in advance of the White Fronter.

Birdwatcher

Birdy, tonkawas were made wards of the Caddo nation after their removal. Reasoning wa the Caddo were closest other texas tribe in the nations. Sorry I'm typing with nitrile gloves on.

However there was one family that survived in Bastrop county up to the 20th century. They lived just north of Smithville over by Buescher state park

Thanks Bob,

And I'm recalling reading that into the reservation period a LOT of the other Indians in Oklahoma still despised them, fer obvious reasons.