The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953 Page: 26
641 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
colonel was killed and his party scattered by a group of Indians.4
Notwithstanding his experiences in the spring, Henderson
organized another land-locating and surveying party at Old
Franklin and left in late September or early October, 1838, for
what is now the southeastern part of Navarro County.5 There is
some question as to whether or not the party originally had a
commander. General Walter P. Lane says that Captain J. Neal
(or Neill) was in command of the party from the beginning.
On the other hand, Henderson, also a participant in the fight,
says that when the surveying party left Old Franklin, there was
no commander, but that all persons served either as chain bearers
or locators. He further states that after the Indians attacked,
Neal was elected commander.6
On the second day after leaving Fort Franklin, the party
camped at the site of Parker's Fort, where two years before had
occurred the Comanche attack which resulted in the capture of
Cynthia Ann Parker and the massacre of her family. The party
passed Tehuacana Springs on the way to Richland Creek, crossed
through a dense thicket to the other side of Richland Creek, and
camped on another stream about a mile farther away.
On the way the men passed many Indians in small groups,
sometimes a half-dozen, sometimes twenty or thirty, with their
squaws and papooses. These Indians professed to be friendly,
but they betrayed by look and gesture their dissatisfaction over
the surveying of their favorite haunts. Lane says that in the
immediate area there were about three hundred Kickapoo In-
dians, who had come down from their reservation in Arkansas
to lay in a supply of dried buffalo meat. John Henry Brown says
4Annie Carpenter Love, History of Navarro County (Dallas, 1933), 29-34.
5William F. Henderson's account of the expedition and battle in Love, Navarro
County, 37-41; Walter P. Lane, The Adventures and Recollections of General
Walter P. Lane: A San Jacinto Veteran (Marshall, 1887), 25-34. For other accounts
based on General Lane's information see Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 352-359,
and James T. De Shields, Border Wars of Texas (Tioga, 1912), 247-354 (excerpts
reprinted in the Dawson Herald, September 14, 1934, and the Frontier Times,
Vol. 12, No. 2 [November, 1934], 78-87). De Shields' chapter on the fight also
contains a compilation of data by T. H. Dixon, who obtained his information
from John P. Cox of Hillsboro, whose father, Euclid M. Cox, was fatally wounded
in the fight.
6Love, Navarro County, 38, 40; De Shields, Border Wars, 247; Lane, Adventures,
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953, periodical, 1953; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101145/m1/44/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.