Bird's Fort Before Bird's Fort: The Sloan-Journey Expedition

To stand at the site of Bird's Fort today and squint through the trees across the stagnant, placid waters of Calloway Lake, one must imagine what the place looked like in its natural state some two centuries before. After making that observation, one would be hard-pressed not to assume that the place was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years before the first Anglo Settlers arrived.

The three articles that follow serve to reinforce that assumption with their mutual account of the Sloan-Journey Expedition of 1848. Included in all three articles are accounts of the militiamen's skirmish with Indians at the site that would later become Bird's Fort.

I: From the book Indian Depredations in Texas by J. W. Wilbarger, 1889

The following [account was] written a few years ago, by the late Judge J.P. Simpson (an old pioneer of Fannin county), for publication in a little book entitled, "History of Fannin county," by W.A. Carter. Having been written by one who was personally familiar with the different incidents related, and whose reputation for veracity was so well recognized by those who knew him, we have no hesitancy in giving them to the reader with no other endorsement, and feel perfectly safe in saying that they will all be found substantially correct.

In 1838, the first volunteer companies for the defense of Fannin county were raised and organized by Captain Robert Sloan and N.L. Journey. These two companies consisted of forty men each. Captain Journey's company met at Jonathan Anthony's, eight miles south of Fort English [sic], all in high glee under the influence of strong drink. That night the Captain's charger and two others were stolen by the Indians. Next day was spent in getting other horses to supply the vacancies; and that night two companies met at what was then called Linsey's Springs, on Bois d' Arc, where Mr. Sears now lives. Beef was slaughtered for rations and everything made ready for an early start for the Indian village on the west forks of Trinity. Guards were stationed around the encampment for the night, and each went to spinning yarns. In the midst of all this amusement one of the guards fired his gun, in an instant the pickets fled for camp, men ran for their guns; some guns were misplaced, shot pouches and ammunition missing, all hurry and confusion; the captain dispatched to ascertain the cause of alarm; no guard at his post; one of the guards (my mess fellow) dashed into camp, saying he had seen and shot at an Indian trying to steal horses; his heart beating so hard he declared it was the sound of Indians' feet fleeing from the fire of his gun. The officer returned, made his report to headquarters, stated that he found no dead or wounded Indian; he supposed he had found an Indian's blanket, but on examination found he was mistaken; the blanket turned out to be the paunch of the beef slaughtered for rations for the men; no more yarns that night.

Next morning we mounted our horses and started for the Indian village, our pilot in front. Marched three days and camped for the last night until the Indian village would be desolated by the heroes of Fannin. An alarm by the pickets during the night, but no one killed or wounded. Next morning a council of war was held, scouts were sent ahead to spy out the village. The scouts returned and reported the village near at hand. Now we must try our bravery or run—three hundred Native American warriors fortified in their huts, to defend themselves, squaws and children, and only ninety whites to attack and enter into deadly conflict with them. Columns of attack were formed and the charge ordered. Many a pale face was to be seen in the ranks. Away we went, but lo! when we got to the scene of action, only a camp of Indians was there. The Indians were soon dispatched by the men and the scalps taken from their heads by Captain John Hart. One white man was wounded and one horse was killed. There we found Captain Journey's stolen horse and others. After the battle one wounded Indian lay concealed in the grass with a tomahawk in his hand. A man by the name of Pangborn (usually called "Brandy," from the quantity of that article he drank) was on the lookout for the wounded Indian and came up on him so close he couldn't shoot. The Indian rose with tomahawk in hand, striking at Pangborn's head. The latter wheeled and ran, shouting for help at every jump. One gun was fired from our ranks, the Indian fell, and Captain Hart was on him in an instant and took his scalp. The place some years since was occupied and settled by Major Bird, and called Bird's Fort, not far from where Fort Worth now stands. We started for home, and the third night camped on Bois d' Arc near where Orangeville now stands, and found that Indians had been in the settlement and killed and scalped one of our best citizens, William Washburn. Thus ended our first scout for Indians in Fannin, until a more formidable force could be raised to protect the frontier, which was done that winter under the command of General John H. Dyer, of Red River county.

II: The Weekly Herald (Weatherford, TX), May 1, 1913

In 1838 the first company of volunteers was raised for the defense of Fannin county by Captain Robt. Sloan. About the same time another company was organized and commanded by Captain N. L. Journey. Indians were reported in large force on the west fork of the Trinity river and both companies started to make an attack upon them, intending to form a junction before reaching the objective point. On the first night out after Captain Sloan's men started, the Indians stole three of their horses, one of which was a fine charger belonging to the captain.

On the next night the two companies met and camped together, ready for an early start on the following morning for the Indian camp. Guards were stationed around the camp and before any of the men retired and while some were interesting others with anecdotes and yarns, one of the guards fired his gun. In a few seconds the guards commenced coming in and men were running here and there trying to find guns and shot pouches, many of which had been misplaced.

The commander now sent a man to the spot whence the shot had come, but the guard at the post was gone. He soon appeared and stated that he had shot an Indian. An officer was now sent with a squad to hunt for a dead Indian. He returned and reported that he could find no dead or wounded Indian, but supposed that he had found an Indian's blanket. On investigation, however, by the light of the camp fire, it proved to be the paunch of the beef killed for that day for rations.

Next morning the combined force of 92 men took up the line of march for the Indian camp. Three days more they marched and camped and the enemy was near. The captains held a council and sent a scout to locate and ascertain the strength of the hostile camp. The scout returned and reported the camp close by numbering about 300 warriors. A silent advance was now made and when concealment could no longer be made the whites burst like a thunderbolt in a wild charge upon the unsuspecting savages.

A short fight ensued and the Fannin county men were surprised to find only a small group of Indians. The red men soon scattered to the four winds. The scout evidently failed to come near enough to determine the exact nature of the camp. One white man was wounded and one horse killed. In this fight was Captain John Hart and as soon as he would see an Indian he would take his scalp. After the fight was over one wounded Indian was lying in the grass with a tomahawk in hand, waiting for some one to find him. Among the searchers for this particular Indian was a man named Pangborn, usually called "Brandy," and he found him, but so close was he that the Indian jumped up and struck at Pangborn's head and kept striking so fast and furiously that he could not use his gun, but could only run and dodge, and finally called for help. One rifle cracked and the Indian fell. In an instant Captain Hart was upon him, taking his scalp.

This fight took place where Bird's Fort was afterwards built, in Tarrant county.

In the same winter a successful campaign was made against the Indians by Gen. John H. Dyer of Red River county.

One of the first settlers of Fannin county was John F. Hunter, who came there in 1836. In 1843 the Indians killed his mother and carried off his sister, Lovicia. She was carried to the Keechi mountains and kept forty-six days. A friendly Delaware Indian named Frank, who was allowed by the hostile Indians to come among them to trade, found Miss Hunter and closed a trade for her ransom, which was $750. He paid this and brought her safely back to her people in Fannin county.

Mr. Hunter was an Indian-hater and hunted and trailed and fought them for thirteen years. He wore moccasins, leather pants, hunting shirt and carried a flint-lock rifle. He was one of the seventy-two men under the command of General Tarrant, who defeated a thousand warriors on Village creek. Part of this scouting was where Palo Pinto now is. The summit of the hill was a point for the Indian fighters of those days in their raids into and back from the strongholds of the savages in this then far-away frontier region.

In Comal county, on Saturday July [illegible], 1855, Jesse Lawhon, who lived on the ranch of Judge William E. Jones and was in the employ as a manager and overseer, went out, accompanied by a negro man, to drive up some oxen. About 11 o'clock the negro ran to the ranch on foot, barefooted and wet to the hips, and told Judge Jones that he feared Lawhon had been killed by Indians. He said that he and Lawhon had been riding together in search of cattle and while descending a hill into the valley of one of the branches of Curry creek, near the foot of the mountains, they were attacked by five Indians who came from the bed of the creek and rushed upon them at full speed. They did not discover the Indians until within fifty yards of them. Mr. Lawhon wheeled and ran in the opposite direction, while the negro dashed towards home. A large Indian mounted on an American horse pursued the negro. The negro's horse, when he reached the creek, plunged into it and fell. The negro jumped off and ran up the bank and the Indian fired at him, the ball striking the ground beyond him. He then saw the other four pursuing Lawhon over closely on the hill. He then ran, making his escape, and saw no more of them,

The negro stated that one of the party was a white man and the other four Indians, naked and armed with guns. The white man was dressed in dark clothes with a white hat. He saw most distinctly the one that pursued him after he had shot at him, being not more than twenty steps from him. The man, he declared, was an Indian and not a Mexican as some suggested. The negro had often seen Indians in Texas and had mixed a good deal with Mexicans, and his statement was all the evidence that Judge Jones had of the character of the party question. Some of the settlers in that country supposed that bad white men and Mexicans did a good deal of the killing and robbing in those days, commonly laid to Indians.

In the meantime the alarm had been given in the settlement and a party of men repaired to the scene taking the negro along with them. When they arrived there the Indians were gone and Lawhon could not be seen, but the statement of the negro being confirmed by the horse tracks and other signs on the ground, they proceeded to search for the missing man. His hat was found near the starting point and his saddle, with the stirrups and skirts cut off, was found on the retreating trail of the savages about one mile off. Then they found the trail of his horse from the place where he had been attacked and followed it until they found his dead body in a thicket. He had been shot through the heart with a large ball and his body and face otherwise bruised and cut. A blunt arrow was found by his side. He was not armed and had to trust to his horse for safety. The horse he rode, although large and strong was not fleet. He had evidently made a desperate struggle to save his life.

From the point at which he had first discovered the Indians he had turned westward in the direction opposite to that which they had come; but soon being overtaken by his pursuers, he wheeled by a short circuit and, leaping a large ravine, passed the place from which he had started, crossed the creek at the point from which the Indians had first issued, and ran up the hill on that side in the direction of home. Being overtaken again by his savage pursuers, he dashed back again into the creek valley lower down and here among the small thickets and brush he seems to have been surrounded and hemmed in an angle made by the creek where a perpendicular bluff made passage impossible. Wheeling again, he burst through the Indians and regained the elevated ground, followed by the whole pack and once more he faced home. After running four or five hundred yards across the heads of ravines he appeared to have been again overtaken, when in desperation he plunged down a bluff thirty feet high and nearly perpendicular part of the distance, his horse tearing up the rocks and crushing the brush in his downward course. At the foot of this bluff he landed in one end of a long thicket and possibly might have escaped had he abandoned his horse. None of the Indians followed him down the bluff, but the horse tracks indicated that a portion of them turned the point of the bluff and met him as he emerged from the point of the thicket and shot him.

Mr. Lawhon was an industrious and most worthy citizen, sober, moral, of unimpeachable integrity and esteemed by all of his acquaintances. He was about 25 years of age, of manly person and gave the highest promise of usefulness to his country and honor to his family. He left a wife and two small children.

III: From the book Savage Frontier Volume II: Rangers, Riflemen, and Indian Wars in Texas, 1838-1839 by Stephen L. Moore, 2002

The Caddo village attacked on September 18 did not turn out to be as heavily populated as expected, however. William Stout, one of the men with General Dyer who had just joined Montague's expedition, found it to be only a small encampment of the Caddos on the Clear Fork of the Trinity. This village was located in present Arlington in Tarrant County. Major Jonathan Bird would build Bird's Fort on this location in 1841.

In the resulting Caddo village attack, Stout reported that the Texans killed three of them. Simpson recorded that Montague's rangers suffered one man wounded and one of their horses killed. One of the volunteers, John Hart, took the opportunity to remove scalps from the slain Caddos. Among the camp goods seized by the Texans were the stolen horses of Captain Journey and the two others.

After the battle, one wounded Indian still lay in the tall grass, concealed with a tomahawk in his hand. One of Captain Journey's men, Garrett Pangburn, was surprised by the Indian, as J. P. Simpson later recalled.

A man by the name of Pangburn (usually called "Brandy," from the quantity of that article he drank) was on the lookout for the wounded Indian and came up on him so close he couldn't shoot. The Indian rose with tomahawk in hand, striking at Pangburn's head. The latter wheeled and ran, shouting for help at every jump. One gun was fired from our ranks, the Indian fell, and Captain Hart was on him in an instant and took his scalp.

Hart was elected captain of another ranger company under Lieutenant Colonel Montague several weeks after the Sloan-Journey Expedition returned to Fannin County. Following this Tarrant County Indian village raid, General Dyer concluded it was time to turn his men back toward home. According to volunteer William Stout, the men were out of provisions and half starved by the time they reached home.

On the third night after the battle, the men under captains Sloan and Journey camped on Bois d'Arc Creek near where Orangeville now stands. They found that Indians had been into this settlement in recent days and killed one of the area's more prominent citizens, William Washburn.

Following Montague's brief campaign, his original Fannin County ranger companies remained on duty throughout the year and into 1839. General Dyer returned to the Clarksville area to begin making plans for another extended Indian campaign.