The early history of Texas was written in blood and fire. Her counties preserve the names of her martyrs. Parker, Coleman, Crockett, Fannin, Travis, Bowie and a hundred others have the map for their monument; their names are given daily utterance by those for whom their deeds have little meaning.
In the beginning, after the Indian tribes—friendly at first—became hostile, the warfare was almost solely with the savages. For a full half century every settler who built his campfire on the frontier did so at the risk of his property and his scalp. Those who established homes and settlements must have been a daring race indeed, for raids upon horses and herds were always imminent and massacres were as regular as the seasons.
We have already mentioned in these chapters the name of Chief Quanah Parker (still living) for whom the town of Quanah, Texas, was named. Quanah Parker's mother was Cynthia Ann Parker, a little white girl captured by the Tehaucano Indians, during a raid on what was known as the Austin Colony, in 1836. A brief story of that raid will serve as an example of a thousand others of a similar sort. The Austin Colony settled in what is now Grimes County,[3] and consisted of something more than a score of persons, including women and children. The Indians who dwelt in the neighborhood seemed friendly enough until a small party of unknown settlers came along and attempted to steal their horses. Immediate trouble was the result and the loss of Tehaucano friendship for the entire settlement. When the reader considers what follows, I believe I shall be forgiven for hoping that those newcomers who stirred up the first trouble received the sort of a reward which only an Indian would know how to confer.
As the Austin Colony consisted chiefly of the Parker family, a rude fortification which they erected was called Fort Parker, a name that to-day still suggests something of shuddering horror to those who have heard its history.
It was a fair May morning when that history was made. The early risers noticed that a body of restless Indians had collected within about four hundred yards of the fort. A white flag was hoisted by the savages to signify their peaceable intentions, and a warrior approached as if for conference. Benjamin Parker, commander of the fort, went out to meet him. He came back presently with the word that he believed the Indians intended to fight. He returned, however, to the hostile camp, where he was at once set upon and literally chopped to pieces by the savages, who then with wild yells and bloodcurdling war-whoops charged on the fort. Some of the inmates had already left the stockade. Others were trying to escape. John Parker and wife and a Mrs. Kellogg were overtaken a mile away. Parker was killed and scalped, his wife was speared and Mrs. Kellogg was made captive. Other members of the colony were butchered right and left, and mutilated in the barbarous fashion which seems to give an Indian joy. Silas Parker was brutally killed and his two children, one of whom was the little girl, Cynthia Ann, were carried away. A Mrs. Plummer—daughter of Rev. James W. Parker—attempted to escape, carrying her little son in her arms. A huge painted savage, begrimed with dust and blood overtook her, felled her with a hoe, and seizing her by the hair dragged her, still clinging to her child, back amid the butchery and torture of her friends. She and the others who were living were beaten with clubs and lashed with rawhide thongs. That night such of the captives as remained alive, and these included three children, were flung face down in the dust, their hands bound behind their backs while the Indians, waving bloody scalps and shrieking, danced about them and beat them with their bows until the prisoners were strangling with their own blood. Later, they took the infant child of Mrs. Plummer and slowly choked it before her eyes. When it was not quite dead they flung it again and again into the air and let it fall on the stones and earth. Then they tied a rope around its neck and threw its naked body into the hedges of prickly pear, from which they would jerk it fiercely with demoniacal yells. Finally they fastened the rope attached to its neck to the pommel of a saddle and rode round and round in a circle until the body of the child was literally in shreds. The poor fragments were then thrown into the mother's lap. For some reason, the little girl, Cynthia Ann Parker, received better treatment, and lived. She grew up an Indian, forgot her own race and tongue, married a chief and became the mother of another chief, Quanah, surnamed Parker, to-day a friend of the white race.
It was the massacre of Fort Parker and events of a similar nature that resulted in the organization of the Texas Rangers. The Rangers were at first a semi-official body, locally enlisted and commanded, with regulations and duties not very clearly defined. Their purpose, however, was not in doubt. It was to defend life and property, and their chief qualifications were to be able to ride and shoot and stand up against the warfare of bloodthirsty savages.
"Exterminate the Indians" became a watchword in those days, and the warfare that ensued and continued for forty years, can be compared with nothing in history unless it be with the fierce feuds of the ancient Scottish clans.
Early in 1836 Texas fought for and gained her independence, the only State in the Union to achieve such a triumph. On the following year the Texas congress recognized the Ranger movement and authorized several persons to raise Ranger companies to scour the country and annihilate marauding bands. Indians and low class Mexicans ("greasers") often consorted, and the work, desperate and bloody, continued along the ever widening and westering frontier up to within a period easily remembered to-day by men not beyond middle age. Many names of those early Rangers have been preserved in Texas annals and in local song and traditions, and it would take many volumes to recount their deeds. Jack Hays, James and Resin Bowie, "Big-foot" Wallace, Kit Ackland, Tom Green "Mustang" Grey, of whom the song says:
"At the age of sixteen
He joined that jolly band
And marched from San Antonio
Out to the Rio Grand,"——
these and a hundred others are names that thrilled the Texan of that elder day and they are still repeated and linked with tales of wild warfare and endurance that are hardly surpassed in the world's history of battle. A.J. Sowell, himself a Ranger in the early seventies, when Indian outbreaks were still frequent and disastrous, speaking of the Ranger equipment says: