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Topin Tone-oneo, daughter of Kicking Bird. The only one of the great Kiowa chief's children to survive him, she was with the first group of students sent to Carlisle Indian School in 1879. Courtesy of the Center for American History (#CN 01362), University of Texas at Austin
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Flag of the Texas Navy |
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the Mexicans had controlled the Gulf of Mexico and completely blockaded the Texas coast, it is very unlikely that the move for independence would have been successful. Even before independence was officially declared, several ships were at sea, authorized by the General Council of Texas that preceded the First Congress of the Republic. In November of 1835 the General Council formed the Texas Navy, purchasing the first ships: the Independence, Brutus, Liberty and Invincible. Evidently these ships flew both the flag of the 1824 Constitution and a new design created by Charles Hawkins, who was later appointed as the first Senior Captain and as Commodore of the Texas Navy. Hawkins' design was approved by President Burnet in April of 1836 and ratified by the First Congress of the Republic that December. In addition to protecting the Texas coast, the navy also seized Mexican ships and sent their cargoes to the aid of the Texas volunteers. |
Butterfield Overland Mail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Butterfield Overland Mail, also known as the Oxbow Route, the Butterfield Overland Stage, or the Butterfield Stage, was a stagecoach route in the United States, operating from 1857 to 1861. It was a conduit for the United States mail from St. Louis, Missouri through Arkansas, Indian Territory, New Mexico, and Arizona, ending in San Francisco, California,
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Origins and history
The stage was an early operation of American Express and Wells Fargo.
The Butterfield Overland Mail Company had the government mail contract from September 15, 1857. Originally all of the Overland Stage owners had submitted routes with relay stations and frontier forts that were north of Albuquerque, New Mexico territory; they had no knowledge of what was called the ox bow route.
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John Warren Butterfield (who was in a partnership with the principals of Wells Fargo for the American Express company) was paid $600,000 (USD) to get the mail between St. Louis and San Francisco in 25 days.
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At that time it was the largest land-mail contract ever awarded in the US.
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It was required by contract to go through El Paso, Texas and through Fort Yuma near present day Yuma, Arizona—the so-called "Oxbow Route". The western fare one way was $200 with most stages arriving 22 days later at its final destination.
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This route was an extra 600 miles further than the central and northern routes through Denver, Colorado and Salt Lake City, Utah. However the southern route was free of snow.
With the American Civil War looming the competing Pony Express was formed in 1860 to deliver mail faster and on a central/northern route away from the volatile southern route. The Pony Express was to succeed in delivering the mail in 10 days. But the Pony Express failed to get the mail contract.
Butterfield's assets as well as those of the Pony Express were to wind up with the Wells Fargo partners.
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A correspondent for the New York Herald, Waterman Ormsby, remarked after his 2,812 mile trek through the western US to San Francisco on a Butterfield Stagecoach thus: "Had I not just come out over the route, I would be perfectly willing to go back, but I now know what Hell is like. I've just had 24 days of it."
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Employing over 800 at its peak, it used 250 Concord Stagecoaches and 1800 head of stock, horses and mules and 139 relay stations or frontier forts in its heyday. The last Oxbow Route run was made March 21, 1861 at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War.
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Route discontinued
An Act of Congress, approved March 2, 1861, discontinued this route and service ceased June 30, 1861. On the same date the central route from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Placerville, California, went into effect. This new route was called the Central Overland California Route.
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Under the Confederate States of America, the Butterfield route operated with limited success from 1861 until early 1862 using former Butterfield employees.
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Wells Fargo continued its stagecoach runs to mining camps in more northern locations until the coming of the US Transcontinental Railroad in 1869.
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Route
Map of Butterfield Mail Stage Route. To test the system, a mailbag was transferred from Tipton, Missouri to San Francisco, California in 24 days. ![]()
Texas history is as varied, tempestuous, and vast as the state itself. Texas yesterday is unbelievable, but no more incredible than Texas today. Today's Texas is exhilarating, exasperating, violent, charming, horrible, delightful, alive."
Edna Ferber
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In 1845, Isaac Spence and a partner obtained the rights to open a trading house on the Trinity. A.G. Kimbell and partner had previously established a post somewhere between Fort Worth's hospital district and the Botanical Gardens, which was operated for about a year by Edward Terrell and John P. Lusk until they were temporarily captured by hostile Indians. In September, Spence reported to officials in Austin that Ranger Colonel Smith and two Indian chiefs helped him select the site called Marrow Bone Spring.
Texans were divided on the issue of statehood. Pioneers wanted all the border protection they could get but generally were against surrendering control to any government, much less one as distant as Washington on the Potomac. Many Texans believed if there was to be an alliance with a distant power, it should be Britain, who coveted San Francisco and offered expansion of Texas territory to the Pacific.
Acquiring Texas had long been one of Andrew Jackson's dreams. He sent his protégé, Sam Houston, there in 1832 to cool the Indians in the name of the United States. The hero of the Battle of New Orleans could hardly sit still for a British Texas. He spurred another protégé, James Polk, into the presidency on the platform of immediate Texas annexation. Liberal conditions included the U.S. delivery of cash, soldiers and forts while Texas retained all its public land, the right to fly its flag at the same height as the stars and stripes and divide itself into six states. That is, assuming of course, there could ever be an agreement on which state would get the Alamo.
It was the public land issue that caused the United States trouble in its negotiations with the Indians. It promised but couldn't deliver Texas soil to the Comanches, nor could anything do much to curb western expansion. Following the treaty at Bird's Fort when Houston was confronted with Comanche complaints about the absence of a permanent border, he sadly shook his head and said, "If I could build a wall from the Red River to the Rio Grande, so high that no Indian could scale it, the white people would go crazy trying to devise a means to get beyond it." On December 29, 1845, Texas became a state, sparking a war with Mexico. As the armies moved to the south, the frontier was left unprotected and the governor ordered new Ranger companies to protect the settlements. Companies were sent to Bryant's Station, about eighteen miles south of today's Temple, Torrey's Trading House near today's Waco and stationed at the trading house at Marrow Bone Springs. Captain Andrew Stapp's company from Collin County took charge of the Marrow Bone Station. He subsequently split his force, ordering William Fitzhugh to establish an outpost on the Elm Fork of the Trinity, about ten miles south of the Red River. (An 1852 Peters Colony map indicates the outpost to be about three miles southeast of Gainesville off of Farm Road 372.) Stapp's men were ordered to maintain contact with Fort Washita, located near Durant, Oklahoma about forty-five miles northeast of Fitzhugh Station. Enlistments ran out in February of 1847 and the reorganized company was given to Fitzhugh, along with a promotion. He sent part of his men thirty miles south to Hickory Creek where they built a post on the edge of Denton. (The Peters Colony map shows the Hickory Creek Station about one mile northeast of Pilot Knob or about two hundred yards southwest of where I-35W crosses Hickory Creek.)
In the summer of 1847, Lieutenant Colonel Peter H. Bell was overall commander of the Ranger companies on the frontier including Middleton Tate Johnson's. They were stationed near Torrey's on the Brazos and Captain Shapley Ross' was ordered to establish a post on the North Bosque, fifteen miles above Torrey's. In January of 1848, Johnson was ordered to move his company to Marrow Bone Springs which they renamed Kaufman Station but was widely known as Johnson Station. Indian agent Neighbors argued against these moves because along with a lax policy, they encouraged white settlement far to the west. (Dillingham Prairie in southern Jack County was first cultivated in 1847.) In May of 1848, Captain John Conner led his company to Smith Station on Richland Creek, about four miles west of today's Milford. Early in 1849, most of the companies were mustered out and the army was to station dragoons in their place. Colonel Johnson claimed Marrow Bone Springs, as the last of the Peter Colony contract had expired. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that the army was only manning Torrey's and Conner's Station, which left him and countless other settlers on the northwestern frontier unprotected. The army responded by establishing Fort Worth.
Major Arnold and his dragoons built the original post at Cold Springs and then reestablished it on the bluff of the Trinity where Tarrant County Courthouse now stands. Major Starr arrived on Christmas Day, 1849 with badly needed reinforcements. They had come up the Trinity as far as the port at Buffalo on the steamboat, Jack Hays. Together the soldiers completed the newly designated "Fort" Worth the next year. During the next few years, Arnold and Starr organized and conducted vigorous patrols and occasionally punitive strikes between the fort and the Red River. Starr went on to earn a heroic record and the loss of an arm during the Civil War, after which he returned to the North Texas frontier and established the post at Jacksboro in 1866. It's always gratifying to find dedicated people involved with our pioneer history. Lea Ann and I were on a field trip to the reenactment at Fort Richardson the Fall of 2001 where we spotted Willard Thomas being assisted in adorning a sash which topped off his Dragoon General's uniform. Unfortunately, we are having trouble getting the pictures on the web at this time but just the same, meeting Willard was a fortunate occurrence. He gave us a tour of the Heritage Room in the courthouse as well as Heritage Park, just to the northwest, which overlooks the Trinity where the traildrivers used to bed down their herds. We then visited the Pioneer Rest Cemetery and admired the new memorials installed honoring the unknown soldiers who are now known thanks to Willard's dedicated efforts. I also include Willard's short history of the fort in Fort Worth. Click here for Julia Kathryn Garrett's description of Fort Worth history from her book, Fort Worth, A Frontier Triumph. She was a legendary history teacher at Arlington Heights High School and an invaluable figure in the preservation of Texas History. |
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Ruts on the Chisholm Trail
Here’s a picture of some still-existing Chisholm Trail wagon ruts along Brushy Creek in Texas.
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John Glanton's Gang
S. Chamberlain
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J. Glanton
According to Chamberlain, John Glanton was born in South Carolina and migrated to Stephen Austin's settlement in Texas. There he fell in love with an orphan girl and was prepared to marry her. One day while he was gone, Lipan warriors raided the area scalping the elderly and the children and kidnapping the women- including Glanton's fiancee. Glanton and the other settlers pursued and slaughtered the natives, but during the battle the women were tomahawked and scalped. Legend has it, Glanton began a series of retaliatory raids which always yielded "fresh scalps." When Texas fought for its independence from Mexico, Glanton fought with Col. Fannin, and was one of the few to escape the slaughter of that regiment at the hands of the Mexican Gen. Urrea- the man who would eventually employ Glanton as a scalp hunter. During the Range Wars, Glanton took no side but simply assassinated individuals who had crossed him. He was banished, to no avail, by Gen. Sam Houston and fought as a "free Ranger" in the war against Mexico. Following the war he took up the Urrea's offer of $50 per Apache scalp (with a bonus of $1000 for the scalp of the Chief Santana). Local rumor had it that Glanton always "raised the hair" of the Indians he killed and that he had a "mule load of these barbarous trophies, smoke-dried" in his hut even before he turned professional.
When Chamberlain first encountered "Crying Tom" Hitchcock (one of Glanton's scalp hunters) near Tucson, the former supposedly had been tied up in the sun as punishment by a commanding officer for defying orders and sketching the Mission of San Xavier del Bac. Hitchcock cut him down and for his efforts was similarly punished. From Hitchcock, Chamberlain learned that Glanton and his army of Indian hunters had been employed by the Governor of Sonora Don D. José Urrea and decided to run away and join Hitchcock and Glanton. The pair set off towards Frontreras, and on the way Chamberlain got his first taste of his new life. They encountered an Apache war party which began to charge; according to Chamberlain he "drew a bead on a big chap and fired." The wounded soldier "gave a wild startling yell, and by his hands alone, dragged himself to the brink of the deep barranca, then singing his death chant and waving his hand in defiance towards us he plunged into the awful abyss"- saving his scalp from the Anglos. Apparently, Chamberlain's shot had also dispersed the rest of the party since he makes no other mention of them; at any rate the pair soon reached the rest of the hunting party.
Judge Holden
Glanton's gang consisted of "Sonorans, Cherokee and Delaware Indians, French Canadians, Texans, Irishmen, a Negro and a full-blooded Comanche," and when Chamberlain joined them they had gathered thirty-seven scalps and considerable losses from two recent raids (Chamberlain implies that they had just begun their careers as scalp hunters but other sources suggest that they had been engaged in the trade for sometime- regardless there is little specific documentation of their prior activities). Second in command to Glanton was a Texan- Judge Holden. In describing him, Chamberlain claimed, "a cooler blooded villain never went unhung;" Holden was well over six feet, "had a fleshy frame, [and] a dull tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression" and was well educated in geology and mineralogy, fluent in native dialects, a good musician, and "plum centre" with a firearm. Chamberlain saw him also as a coward who would avoid equal combat if possible but would not hesitate to kill Indians or Mexicans if he had the advantage. Rumors also abounded about atrocities committed in Texas and the Cherokee nation by him under a different name. Before the gang left Frontreras, Chamberlain claims that a ten year old girl was found "foully violated and murdered" with "the mark of a large hand on her throat," but no one ever directly accused Holden.
Indian Warfare
The day after Chamberlain arrived, Glanton and several others left Frontreras to cash in the scalps; on the way they encountered a camp of Sonorans. The desperadoes disguised themselves as Apaches and raided the camp for supplies. Three Mexicans were killed and scalped (to be redeemed by their government); five women were "collected"- three of whom were scalped (for the same purpose) because they were old and ugly. The Sonorans returned to battle the "Indians," interrupting their orgy, and the remaining women were killed and scalped. The Sonorans were driven off, but several of Glanton's party were injured too. After this the gang decided to follow rumors of gold and El Dorado and began north towards New Mexico. On their way, they terrorized Arizona, impersonating Apaches, killing and scalping farmers (presumably to maintain their contract with the government), and cashed in their scalps too. From this point on Chamberlain narrates the events leading to the end of Glanton and his group. In New Mexico (after finding no El Dorado), they were attacked by an Apache war party; they lost fourteen of their party (out of about forty). The scalpers fought and then ran and secured a small wooded position around the only source of water in the area; from there they were able to drive off their attackers.
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| Chamberlain with an Apache in his Sights |
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The Yumas
From there the headed north, losing two more of the party from injuries sustained in the previous battle. By this time they had reached the Colorado River and decided to follow it to the Gila River- path that would take them through the Grand Canyon. Eventually they wound their way to the Gila and a new plan. The Yuma Indians there had set up a ferry about four miles south of the junction of the two rivers to take settlers into California. Glanton and Holden came upon their new El Dorado; the gang would "seize [the ferry], kill the Indians if they objected, capture the young girls for wives etc." The gang seized the ferry and nine girls and drove off the unarmed natives; they then began constructing a rock fort to defend their new possession. When a party of Indians came demanding the return of their possession and women, Glanton proposed that he would keep all he had taken and that the natives should provide him with food or he would raze their village and kill all of them. The Indians attacked, but Glanton and his men killed four with concealed pistols- they were subsequently scalped "by force of habit." Glanton left briefly to get provisions; he ran afoul of the law and returned empty-handed but with an interesting piece of information. A group of Sonorans were traveling home from the gold mines with plenty of gold; Glanton's plan to ambush them was struck down, but Chamberlain had had enough. He and three others plotted to desert.
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| Chamberlain Rescues Holden from the Yumas |
The party had abandoned Holden by that point, and the fate of the other three fugitives remains unknown. Chamberlain stayed in California for a while, then returned to Boston and married. He joined a volunteer regiment during the Civil War and was named a brevet brigadier general of volunteers in 1865. Samuel Chamberlain died in Massachusetts in 1908.
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