Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas Page: 10 of 894

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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.

kind recollections of the early pioneers on our s
coast, and yet retaining a warm interest in the wel
t
fare of Texas.] Among those arriving on the i
Only Son were Abram M. Clare, from Kentucky,
who, till his death about forty years later, was a 1
worthy citizen; Maj. George Helm, of Kentucky, ]
who died on the eve of leaving to bring out his
family, one of whose sons, John L. Helm, was i
afterwards Governor of Kentucky, while another is
the venerable Rev. Dr. Samuel Larne Helm, of the
Baptist Church, still of that State; Charles Whitson
and family, James Morgan and family; Greenup
Hayes, a grandson of Daniel Boone, who did not
remain in the country; Mr. Bray, who settled at the
mouth of Bray's bayou, now Harrisburg, and his
son-in-law. While in Galveston Bay a number of
the colonists died of yellow fever, before reaching
Matagorda Bay. Among those who arrived by the
other vessel were Samuel M. Williams, afterwards
so long Secretary of Austin's Colony, and Jonathan
C. Peyton and wife, Angelina B.. a sister of Bailie
Peyton of Tennessee, afterwards the wife of Jacob
Eberly, by which name she was widely known and
esteemed throughout Texas, till her death about
1860. These personal facts are mentionedin justice
to those who were the first of our countrymen to
cross the gulf and seek homes in the wilderness of
Texas-the first, in that mode, to vindicate the
grand conception of the already deceased Moses
Austin, at the very moment that his son and successor,
Stephen F. Austin, was encountering in San
Antonio de Bexar the first of a long series of
obstacles to the prosecution of the enterprise
an
enterprise in the fruition of which, as time has
already shown, was directly involved the welfare of
two and a half millions of people now on the soil of
Texas, besides indirectly affecting other vast multitudes
now resident in California, Nevada, Utah,
Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The politicoeconomical
aspect of this question would fill a
volume in following the march of our race
from Jamestown, Plymouth and Beaufort to the
present time, both interesting and edifying to the
highest order of political philosophers; but its
discussion does not fall within the scope of this
work.
These immigrants, leaving a small guard with
their effects, somewhat aided by a few persons who
had settled on and near the Colorado, within the
present bounds of the counties of Colorado and
Fayette, moved up in that portion of the wilderness.
James Cummins, Jesse Burnham, and a few others
constituted the infant settlements referred to at
that time.
Before leaving their supplies under guard those

ravages of the coast, the Carancahuas,* had visited
;he immigrants, professed friendship, and entered
into a verbal treaty of good will. But, in keeping
with their instincts, as soon as the families and
main strength of the party had been gone sufficiently
long, they clandestinely assailed the camp
the
guard escaping more or less wounded
and seized
its contents. On learning this a party marched
down and chastised a small encampment of the
Indians, giving them a foretaste of what they realized,
when too late, that they must either in good
faith be at peace with the Americans or suffer annihilation.
Thirty years later their once powerful
tribe
long the scourge of wrecked vessels 'and
their crews -was practically, if not absolutely,
extinct. This was the first blood shed between the
settlers and the Indians.
The Carancahuas were both treacherous and
troublesome, often stealing from the settlers and
often firing upon them from ambush. The earlier
colonists living in proximity to the coast were
greatly annoyed by them. But there is no reliable
account of many of their earlier depredations.
About 1851 a small volume was published, purporting
to consist of letters by an early settler in the
section mentioned to a friend in Kentucky, giving
current accounts of events from 1822 to about 1845,
when in fact they were written by another, and a
stranger in the country, from the verbal recitals
from memory of the assumed author. The gross
inaccuracies in regard to events occurring much
later, especially in 1832 and 1840, necessarily
weaken confidence in his statements in regard to
earlier occurrences. We must, therefore, be content
with more or less imperfect summaries of the
conflicts with the Carancahuas for the first few years
of the colony.
Among the first of which any account has been
preserved was an attack from ambush by these
savages upon three young men in a canoe in the
Colorado river, in the spring of 1823. The locality
is now in Colorado County. Loy and Alley (the latter
one of several brothers) were killed. Clark, their
companion, escaped to the opposite bank, severely
but not mortally wounded. On the same day another
young man named Robert Brotherton was fired upon
and wounded by them, but escaped on horseback to
convey the news to the settlers above, these two
attacks being near the mouth of Skull creek.
* I follow the correct Spanish spelling of the names
of the Texas Indian tribes, giving also the correct pronunciation.
Thus, Car-an-ca-hua, pronounced Kar-anka-wah.
There has been no uniformity in the orthography
of these names among American writers. All, however,
will agree that there should be.