Like the Trinity, Fort Worth's Past Often Turbulent

The following is an excerpt from the book Fort Worth: The Civilized West by Caleb Pirtle III. It was featured in the December 26, 1980 edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The river with no name never quite knew what to do with the land that sprawled away from its minnows and mud, whether to punish it or baptize it. So the river did a little of both, depending entirely on its mood, the particular curse of the season and how hard the last rainfall had been. if there had been any rain at all.

The river damned the land - and nourished it.

The river was cantankerous, a tyrant whose angry floodwaters never knew their own strength or when they might strike out next. Yet, during the thirsty days of summer, it could be docile, even indolent, hardly moving and in no hurry ever to leave those oak thickets that crowded down around its troubled shoreline. It had no temper at all.

The river with no name tempted. It taught, and its lessons were hard. It always beckoned, praised for the life it gave, blasphemed for the life it took away. The land, for better or for worse found itself relying on a waterway it could never trust. It had no choice.

The river was boss.

It clawed its way for 600 hard rock miles across the backbone of Texas, sometimes clear and sparkling, sometimes thick with the color and texture of mud and blood, until it emptied, at last, into the Gulf of Mexico.

And its banks would be scarred by great herds of buffalo, the solitary footsteps of man, wagon wheels searching for a road west and making one, the wooden stakes of villages that became the settlements that, in time, became the rawhide and log-notched foundation for cities.

One, on a high bluff overlooking the twin forks of the river with no name, would be called Fort Worth.

Its eastern shoulder was the Grand Prairie, flat and rich and ideal for anyone who might want to plant his roots in an unknown land with a plow - and had oxen strong enough to pull it.

Its western arm reached past the broad expanse of Cross Timbers on toward the breaks, the rolling caliche hills, the burden of mesquite trees and creek beds that promised nothing and, too often, kept its promise.

The man who journeyed first to drink from the river with no name left behind neither tradition nor identity nor even his bones.

He came stalking out of the final days of the Pleistocene epoch, walking upright and carrying primitive tools for survival, the conqueror who explored new lands simply because he was hungry. He had no desire to own the ground beneath him. He did not need it. As far as he was concerned, the whole world - or at least as far as he could see - belonged to him anyway. Its only boundaries were hunger and thirst.

He left his footprints on the prairie for a time, while closely pursuing those of the elephant and mastodon and camel. He would leave, but not before his belly was full. This was perhaps the only law, the only commitment, his instincts fully understood.

His traces are few.

The buffalo came for water. The Indian, the savage hunter, was never very far behind. To the Indian, the buffalo was a gift from the weeds themselves, sent to the tall grass of the prairie solely for the preservation of the tribal way of life.

From the great shaggy-necked bison came food, bones and horns for weapons and tools, glue and even cosmetics - and a tough hide that could be worn for clothes, stretched for shelter and woven for ropes.

Buffalo died beside the river.

But old frontiersmen swore they were not slaughtered until the white hunters brought their repeating rifles and indulged themselves in a sport that was as easy as shooting fish in a rain barrel and just about as dangerous.

Indians built their camps and villages beside the river with no name, harvesting crops from the grand eastern prairie and hunting the dry arroyos, the endless western sweep of the plains, always aware that, sooner or later, the buffalo, the nomadic symbol of survival, would be returning to the water that flowed at their feet.

They waited beside the place of two forks.

They never waited long.

In 1542, the buffalo did not come alone. A village of Caddo Indians watched as a ragged remnant of Hernando de Soto's expedition, led by Moscoso de Alvarado, splashed into the unpredictable river, promptly chalking up another major discovery for Spain. They ignored altogether that the Caddos were already feeling very much at home when the Spanish ponies stumbled into the water. The Indians did not count.

The Indians never counted, not until they grew tired of losing the land that nobody owned to settlers who were dead set on claiming it. Then they were feared but never respected. And the river with no name washed over a trail of toil and trouble soaked with greed and blood and more determination than good sense. The land would never be quite so peaceful again.

Too many wanted it.

The land would hold their cabins, hear their prayers, soak their sweat and be their graves.

Frontiersman fought the Indian for the right to live beside the place of two forks. Soldiers added firepower behind the protection of a camp called Worth. Farmers battled the cattlemen. Cities feuded, politicians squared off against each other with words and weapons, gunmen stalked the shadows, hell raisers found a half acre all their own and preachers dueled the devil in his own den of iniquity.

It all began because once there was a river.

And the Spanish, at last, gave it a name.

In 1690, Alfonso de Leon was making his way diligently toward east Texas for the righteous duty of founding a Spanish mission. He rode to the mud spackled banks of the river and - perhaps feeling the religious weight of his errand - christened it on his map as "Rio de la Santisima Trinidad" - the sacred Trinity.

A historian in the late 19th century, Judge C. C. Cummings, felt called upon to interpret Alfonso's reasoning behind his choice of names. He wrote: "Fort Worth sits on the high bluff at the junction of the first two prongs of the Trinity River, known as the Clear Fork and the West Fork of the Trinity River. The third prong, the Elm Fork, flows thirty miles below just above the city of Dallas. These make the trine of the Trinity ... The Spaniards saw the clear pure waters of the Clear Fork and idealized it as the spirit, the red waters of the West Fork the impurities, representing the soul; thus they thought that the river is a symbol of the body, soul, and spirit."

Perhaps so.

But when Father Juan Augustin de Morfi came along almost a century after Alfonso, he scribbled in his diary that the Rio de la Santisima Trinidad "is subject to terrible floods in the rainy season, or when the snow melts."

It would forever be called Trinity.

It would never really be considered sacred again.

The explorers found what the Indians already knew. The land was rich, though untamed and virtually untapped. Wild flax, rye and hemp spread across the fields, edging back into the shelter of the woodlands where, in season, vines hung thick and heavy with grapes, where the thickets themselves offered protection, a hiding place for both beast and man.

The beast got there first.

Wild chickens and turkeys ran rampant. At times, the sky could be dark with the arrowhead flight of geese. Partridges scampered in the tightly woven grasses. Great herds of deer and antelope dotted the prairie.

But the buffalo - massive and clumsy and slow-footed - was king. He was food. He was life. He was the easy victim. On the great plains, herds were seen that covered 50 square miles; numbering as many as 12 million animals. The buffalo, it seemed, would last forever. No one need ever to worry about hunger.

No one did.

Indians never counted, not until they grew tired of losing the land that nobody owned to settlers...

Men merely came west, to the banks of the Trinity, expecting to live off whatever the land and its beasts could offer them. They were as stubborn as they were foolish.

By 1756, a Spanish mission - Nuestra Senora de la Luz - and the presidio San Augustin had been nailed down near the mouth of the river, bringing faith and Christianity to Indians while making sure French traders had no luck trespassing on Spain's untrodden soil.

Almost two decades later, a Spanish cattle baron, Ybaro, established a second settlement on the Trinity. He proclaimed it Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Bucareli in honor of the viceroy of New Spain. He should have saved himself the trouble.

Indian raids ripped the village apart. Floods took what was left, which was not much. The cursed Trinity had made it a habit of beating down anyone who tried to hitch his homes to its restless water. But still men came, still they hoped.

Raw, fertile land was awaiting them.

So were the Indians.

A great wall of woods - the Cross Timbers - cut directly past the western shores of the Trinity and headed north toward the Red River. It was a tangled, knotted landmark of hardwood and bramblebush that rose up unexpectedly from the prairie. This series of forests is a curiosity, so remarkably straight in appearance that some swear it is a work of art, fashioned by that unknown race of men who built the mounds and fortifications of the Mississippi Valley, then vanished without a trace.

One old-timer swore he was told that the Cross Timbers did not exist until after the flight of the pigeons. It was a day the sky was blotted out by huge flocks of passenger pigeons, moving across a broad expanse that held no trees in its soil. The droppings of the birds contained seeds. The seeds took root, and from them came the oak, elm, hickory and holly wall of Cross Timbers.

They provided shelter upon a prairie that had little. They became the one eye-catching landmark for Indians and hunters alike. And - said Colonel Randolph B. Marcy who helped calm (if not tame) the country - Cross Timbers for years roughly marked the dividing line that separated civilized man from savage.

For a time, the entire span of North Central Texas was ruled by the empire of the Wichita Confederacy. They were agricultural and industrious Indians, content to hunt while their women harvested maize, watermelons, beans and pumpkins; made tents and clothes of buffalo hides; and hauled saline chunks from the salt flats to preserve their deer meat. The Wichita men were well-dressed - even dignified - carrying leather shields and wearing helmets adorned with buffalo horns and tails, all dyed resplendent colors. And they made sure they always had a good supply of tallow, lard and hides (bear, deer and buffalo) on hand when the white traders came riding by.

The traders were not much of a threat.

The Comanches were.

They took what they wanted, and what they wanted most were horses. Col. Dodge, a veteran of the plains wars, once noted about the Indians:

All are such magnificent thieves, it is difficult to decide which of the plains tribes deserves the palm for stealing. The Indians themselves give it to the Comanches, whose designation in sign language of the plains is a forward, wriggling motion of the forefinger, signifying a snake, and indicating the silent stealth of that tribe. This is true of the Comanches, who for crawling into a camp, cutting hobbles and lariat ropes, and getting off with animals undiscovered, are unsurpassed and unsurpassable ... I have known a Comanche to crawl into a bivouac where a dozen men were sleeping, each with his horse tied to his wrist by the lariat, cut a rope within six feet of a sleeper's person, and get off with the horse without waking a soul."

The horse changed the Comanche's way of life. It gave him speed and mobility and the power to strike quickly, then be gone just as quickly. The tribe no longer had to chase down buffalo herds on foot, living off the meat of stragglers they could run down in desperation. The horse gave them strength and dignity. The buffalo - and almost every other living creature - was now at the tribe's mercy. The mustang - tough and swift and durable - and the Comanche formed the perfect union to govern the prairies. As the frontiersmen pointed out: "A white man will ride the mustang until he is played out. A Mexican will take him and ride him another day until he thinks he is played out. A Comanche will mount him, and ride him to where he is going."

The Comanche could not be trusted. Even the Wichita did not particularly like him, but the Wichita needed him - the tribal confederacy had gone to war and was ready to depend on any ally it could get, even unscrupulous horse thieves.

By 1837, the Wichita tribes - the Keechi, Tawakoni, Waco and Pawnee - had looked around and witnessed too many cabins being hammered down upon their hunting lands, too many wagon wheel ruts scarring the prairie. They struck back with anger and with vengeance. After all, the settlements had all sorts of good supplies that seemed to be theirs for the taking.

That year, the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs reported that the Indians of the prairie "hunt altogether for a living, travel altogether on horse back armed mostly with the Bow and Lance, what fire arms they have are smooth bores or traders' guns of little value and seldom used. They run from place to place, move with great celerity, and are but little dependent on civilized man for necessary articles. They are now at war with this Republic. Their number is about 500 warriors, despicable soldiers but formidable rogues, and for five years past have greatly annoyed our frontier during which time they have occasionally found opportunities to commit most horrible outrages and to carry off children and females as prisoners. The latter of whom your Committee are justified in saying are forced to subserve to purpouses [sic] that any beings other than fiends would blush to think of. These Indians reside mostly on the Headwaters of the Trinity..."

These Wichita did cause trouble. But it was the Comanches - the Panatekas or Honey-Eaters - who caused alarm. They were 8,000 strong, and the mustang had changed them from a poor, weak bunch of scavengers to a mighty military force, one with which to be reckoned.

The Comanche dress was drab, but war made the braves dashing, colorful and deadly. Warriors dabbed red paint on their faces and wore headdresses of buffalo horns or deer antlers. Long lances also bore splashes of red, and their tanned buffalo-hide shields carried bright, even gaudy, colors, as well as a circle of feathers that fluttered wildly in the wind to ruin an enemy's aim. At times, they tied red ribbons in their horses' tails and bedecked themselves with the spoils from a past raid. John Jenkins, at the Battle of Plum Creek of 1840, watched one warrior who wore "stovepipe hat" and another who had dressed himself royally in a "fine pigeon-tailed cloth coat, but toned up behind."

They would never give up their land until the buffalo were gone. But the buffalo were passing.

The Comanche's life blood, too, would soak into the sunblistered earth along the Trinity before he ran. The plains Indian had a strange creed for battle - retreat or fight but die before falling into an enemy's hands. Noah Smithwick, an Indian fighter, wrote that he never knew a warrior to submit to capture. "They fought to the death," he said. And twice, Smithwick would watch as a wounded brave would lie "flat on his back and fight till dead."

Such was the threat facing the settler who drove his wagons across the Trinity River and left behind the long, weary tracks for civilization to follow. Men believed it was a chance worth taking. They believed they were as stubborn and as tough as the land that dared them to stay. They feared the Indian, but they came anyway. The strong held onto their farms and kept them or were buried in them. The weak never bothered to come. It was just as well; the land had no use for them. The survivors inherited it all.

Many - like Louis and Cristena Finger - made the long journey to the grand prairie region near the Trinity after reading newspaper advertisments offering free land in Texas to any and all who would establish headright and cultivate the property.

Those same newspapers carried stories of Indian atrocities. But Louis Finger, like most, was too eager to get his hands on free land to worry much about being scalped. After all, by 1845 Texas was a state and could not be too dangerous and uncivilized.

That kind of thinking got a lot of men killed.

Louis and Cristena Finger, joining 40 other families, left the home fires of Indiana and headed for Texas, hauling their hopes, dreams and furniture in a horse-drawn wagon. Six weeks later, Finger had reached Johnson's Station and staked his 640 acres. The section was his as long as he built a shelter, tilled the land and raised enough crops and livestock to support his family.

A year later, Louis Finger was on the frontier fighting Indians. It was sometimes difficult to be a farmer during the 1840s in Texas. Cristena had it all to herself. She grabbed an axe and cut down trees, then split the wood. She looked after four children and took in washing, earning enough money to hire someone to do the heavy plowing. But Cristena nailed the fence herself - putting up enough posts and wire to keep in the hogs and cattle.

Such were the survivors. Sturdy stock. No one left, because there was never time to quit.

Not far down the road there lived and preached the good Reverend John Allen Freeman. He had trekked to the twin forks of the Trinity in 1841, coming because the entire congregation of his small Baptist Church in Missouri had up and voted to head for Texas. In time, he and a dozen of his faithful members established the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church. It was aptly named. It was lonely, indeed, being known for years as the only Baptist Church between Tarrant County and the Pacific Ocean. In April of 1850, Reverend Freeman was asked by a major to have Sunday services within a new fort. It was the first sermon ever heard in Fort Worth.

When George (Press) Farmer and his wife arrived on the Grand Prairie, they found - Jane Farmer later recalled - "no sign of life anywhere and nature was undisturbed." It was a hard land but a good land. "At the time we settled here, game of all kinds and honey and wild grapes were plentiful. Grapes, however, were the only fruit we had, and there were no vegetables whatever. Ten years elapsed before I had a mess of Irish potatoes. Groceries and provisions of all kinds had to be hauled from Houston, and sometimes during the rainy season it took two or three months to make the trip."

The Farmers built a home.

The Indians burned it down.

The northern frontier of Texas (as Sam Houston said) was bleeding "at every pore with Indian depredations and treachery." Its population was also growing. As early as 1840, Capt. Jonathan Bird put together a company of Rangers to stand guard along the Trinity. He established a military post to encourage settlers looking for homesteads and discourage the Comanches who were hell-bent on discouraging any kind of settlement.

The Rangers rode about 21 miles south of the Clear and West Fork junction of the river, then traded their rifles for axes and chopped enough logs to construct Bird's Fort on the edge of a lake. Beyond the clearing, they were shielded by a growing wall of oaks. The fortress was quite safe.

The frontier was not. Families looking for land came, all right, just as the Rangers knew they would. They cast their lot beside the river that counted on Bird's Fort for refuge and protection during times of calamity, times as certain as the sunrise. The Indians were not far behind. The prairie was just too immense, the Ranger company far too small, for the Comanches to be whipped on their own chosen land. Besides, the Comanches were not alone in spreading death and havoc.

On a May 24 mid-morning in 1841, Gen. Edward H. Tarrant had done his best to take all the glory out of dying for the Indian braves. He waited beside the mud of Village Creek while Henry Stout and the six scouts told him of the sprawling Indian camp that lay three miles beyond the thickets.

Gen. Edward H. Tarrant had done his best to take all the glory out of dying for the Indian braves.

Their search was at an end. Quietly, patiently, Tarrant moved his 69 militiamen into the thickets only 400 yards from the warriors, who would have no warning that death was upon them. The general's voice was muffled as he calmly told his troops: "There is great confusion ahead. Never will all of us meet again on this earth. I shall expect every man to fill his place and do his duty. Are you ready?"

It was an unnecessary question.

Tarrant glanced back toward the thickets. The memory of burning cabins, of fallen men and women, lay heavy on his mind. Revenge was at hand. The general watched as the men threw aside their blankets and packs then remounted.

The time had come. Tarrant turned to his bugler. His words were grim but steady. "Sound Charge." The thicket echoed with wild yells and gunfire. The Fourth Brigade of the Texas Militia stormed down upon the village, thundering across those 400 yards with speed and rage. Bullets ripped through the camp. Warriors died in their single moment of surprise. Some tried to fight. Others ran. The village fell swiftly, lying in a curious silence as the clamor of battle marched madly down the creek bank. A second village was captured, then a third, with huts stretching for a mile and a half along a shoreline now smudged with the agony of dying.

Tarrant regrouped his men, their faces streaked with sweat and dust and gunpowder. They drank from the creek and filled their empty bellies with dried buffalo meat found in the abandoned huts. Only ten were wounded. None would die until Stout and John B. Denton turned their backs on caution and chased the fleeing warriors, riding fast into an ambush from which Denton would not return. Those Indians who escaped did so because Tarrant had no desire to be burdened with prisoners.

The militia left the carnage of Village Creek, carrying with them the spoils of battle - six cattle, 37 horses, 300 pounds of lead, 30 pounds of powder, 20 brass kettles, 21 axes, 73 buffalo robes, fifteen guns and three swords and shovels.

Houston hoped that Tarrant's swift victory would crush the Indian threat on the prairie. He was heartened when tribal delegates told him, "We are willing to make a line with you, beyond which our people will not hunt. Then, in red man's land beyond the treaty line unmolested by white men, the hunter can kill the buffalo and the squaws can make corn."

A treaty was to be agreed on at Bird's Fort. The Delaware, Chickasaw, Waco, Tiwocano, Keechi, Caddo, Anadahkah, Ionie, Biloxi and Cherokee tribes were all on hand for the signing. As Ke-chi-ka-roqua, the Tawakoni Chief, said, "I am strong for making a firm peace. War is like an arrow sticking in the side; I have plucked it out and now I am for peace. Such are my thoughts and they are like Houston's. I want to make a big white path so that no man can be lost... when we make a white path we do not want it to get bloody, yet by stealing and killing it will be so."

It was. Peace was at hand inside Bird's Fort.

But the Comanches did not come. They were not yet ready to pluck out that arrow of war. They had watched surveyors and locators (sent out by the land office of the Texas Republic) mark trees far beyond the settlements of the Brazos and Trinity valleys. And they had listened intently as Mexican agents told them, "The buffalo and deer are the Indian's cattle, the turkey and geese his poultry. When white men come to the prairie, they not only will take the Indian's cattle and poultry, but also will drive him from his prairie hunting ground."

The Comanches saw that it was so. They struck back with a frenzy. The treaty was soon ignored by white man and Indian alike, trounced in the dust of violence. For a time the hope of peace was shattered. Men such as Edward Terrell and William Lusk shouldered the consequences.

Terrell and Lusk had become intoxicated by the get-rich-in a hurry prospect of out-trading the Indians. So they loaded down a couple of burros and ambled out of Fort Smith, Ark., striking out for those promising grasslands that lay beyond the Red River. A buffalo stampede hurried them along; the banks of the Trinity reached out and stopped them. Terrell remembered: "In those days, this country was infested with Indians and herds of buffalo were all around us. There were more panthers in these parts than I have ever seen before or since, antelopes without number, wild turkeys in every tree - in fact, in those days this was God's own country."

Along the river, the traders found the well-worn tracks of mankind heading west. That was all right. They saw signs of Comanches, and that was better. That was what they were looking for. Terrell and Lusk were ready to start trading.

What they did not know was that hanging on to their lives would be the best deal they made.

It was not easy.

Beside a cold spring, beneath a grove of trees on the West Fork of the Trinity, Terrell and Lusk became the first known civilians to camp upon the exact spot that one day would be Fort Worth.

They did not tarry long. They should have. On the south bank of the river, the two Arkansas traders stumbled across a small Comanche camp. They hauled their trinkets out of the packsaddles and quickly dazzled the women and old men who sat around tanning buffalo hides. But Terrell and Lusk made their mistake by not leaving before the chief and his warriors returned from a hunt.

They were striken with greed.

The chief was not dazzled. He promptly ordered the traders placed in custody and refused to let them out of his sight. At last, Terrell saw his chance to escape, and he hit the prairie running, scrambling back to the shelter of Bird's Fort. The Rangers wasted no time. They mounted up, rode down hard on the scattered Comanche tepees and freed Lusk from the grasp of the suspicious chieftain.

Terrell, just before his death in 1905, recalled: "We then lost no time in leaving this section, and I did not return until 1849, when the troops were stationed here ... It was either a case of leaving Tarrant County - or what is now Tarrant County - or losing our scalps, and when a man lost his hair in those days he generally lost something else."

It would take troops - many of them - finally to bring some fashion of order to the Trinity and that northern piece of Texas, badly scarred by the wounds of the long lance. The vanguard was led by Brevet Maj. Ripley A. Arnold, U.S.A. He had fought under the command of William Jenkins Worth and distinguished himself at the battles of both Monterrey and Buena Vista and when Mexico again went to war against an old foe that had achieved statehood - Texas.

And now he rode north through Texas, carrying Gen. Worth's orders in his pocket - orders that would forever change the face and the future of the Trinity. They read: "Company F and I, 2nd Dragoons... will be near Towash Village on the Brazos River." Worth had decided to establish a whole series of forts in the state, stretching from San Antonio to Dallas. Arnold would build them.

He quickly laid the foundation for Fort Graham at Towash just west of Waco Village, then turned his men toward the Trinity. The column of 41 tired, blue jacketed men halted finally at Johnson's Station on a hot June day in 1849. Colonel Middleton Tate Johnson, commander of the Mounted Texas Volunteers, was waiting for them, along with a couple of tobacco-chewing Texas Rangers who knew the land as well as an old friend, who distrusted it as though that old friend had betrayed them.

Two years earlier, the colonel had built a home and a mill beside the Ranger headquarters. He was delighted to see the prospects of reinforcements riding his way.

Johnson met Arnold and wasted no words "Major," he said, "we have been in need of you. Our homes have been burned: our women and children kidnapped and held for ransom, and our livestock stolen by the Indians from reservations north of the Red River. We have sent protest upon protest to Governor George T. Wood but to no avail. Thank heaven the President has heard and answered our plea."

It was Johnson and the Rangers who escorted Maj. Arnold and his troops through eastern Cross Timbers and into the Trinity River Valley. Simon Farrar, one of the Rangers, later wrote: "We passed through and across timbers, crossing the different creeks as best we could, through a wild, beautiful country inhabited only by Indians, wild mustang horses, innumerable deer, wolves and wild turkey.

"About three o'clock in the evening we halted in the valley east of where Fort Worth now stands and killed a deer for supper. We could have killed many more but did not wish to be encumbered with them. We passed our first night under Terry Springs... later to be known as Cold Springs, where we enjoyed ourselves with jokes, etc., indifferent to Indians, wolves, and all the wild enemies of white men."

The next morning, Arnold, Johnson and the Rangers climbed the bluff that overlooked the valley to choose the site for the fort. They decided on a stretch of flat land in a bend of the river, one that offered a plentiful supply of good water. Farrar remembered: "I thought it the most beautiful and grand country that the sun ever shone on and while we were at that place in view of all advantages of a natural point of defense, and our late experience in Monterrey, wherein the strategic action of General Worth had so terribly defeated the Mexicans, we there, in honor of that grand old hero, named the point Fort Worth."

The property already had an owner - Col. Johnson himself and his partner Archibald Robinson, but Johnson made the government a deal. He gave them the land, taking it back only after the fort had been abandoned.

Maj. Arnold rode back to Fort Graham, where he received word that Worth had died of cholera, never learning of the outpost that bore his name. Arnold left behind half of his command - Company I - and returned to Camp Worth, bringing with him a horse-powered saw mill that would turn the cottonwoods on the river bank into the buildings of the fort.

Arnold faced a lonely, isolated life, and he knew it. He even left the message for his mail to be forwarded to Dallas, Dallas County, Texas, "a town about thirty-five miles east of me."

Log buildings were patched together beneath the bluff, all neatly whitewashed. The quadrangle was enclosed by a rope fence that also served as a cattle guard. The officers (as was to be expected) had the finest view of the countryside, looking out across Blue Mound, so named (the soldiers said) because those cold blue northers of winter always seemed to bunch up behind it before blasting out across the prairie.

The order had been issued in San Antonio to fortify Camp Worth with "one mountain howitzer, proper equipment, and wellbroken mules," But what Arnold needed most was men - good ones. When he looked around him, he realized just how risky his position really was. His duty was to protect the frontier. He was not even sure he could protect himself.

Keeping the peace on the frontier was going to be tougher than Brevet Maj. Arnold had imagined.

He had few men.

He had fewer rations.

So two weeks later, Arnold sat down and wrote the adjutant general again. He was not bashful. "Now permit me to say, that this being a Frontier Post, near sixty miles from any other Post; and a considerable distance from settlements that all entertainment necessarily falls upon the officers of the Post.

"Many Citizen Gentlemen are traveling through this Country, who can not always provide themselves with all that they need, and whose gentility and necessities call loudly for our Hospitality. I think that I may safely assert that the Comdt. Officer of this Post will be obliged to entertain more Persons, than the Comdt. Officer of any Atlantic Station."

Arnold had a point. Double rations were immediately granted Camp Worth by the War Department - eight dollars worth.

The good major had his problems, but none took a heavy toll. In late July, the Trinity - forever the menace - flooded and sent the soldiers scrambling for higher ground. And before the long, hot days of summer ended, mosquitoes and an outbreak of malaria chased the troops out of the river bottom and up onto the clear air of the bluff.

By mid-winter, the new outpost - with three sets of officers quarters, an earthen floor log barracks to house 120 men, a hospital and dispensary, a commissary store, guard house, quartermaster storehouse and stables - had been officially nailed into place.

Maj. Arnold was satisfied. Lt. William H.C. Whiting, an engineer, was appalled. He visited the fort and hastily sent off a critical report, pointing out, "The fort has been laid out on a scale rather contracted - probably as designed but for one company. And the arrangement of the stables I cannot commend: they are much too near the quarters of both officers and men, and, however thorough the police may be, cannot but be offensive in summer." He found that "fever and ague prevailed through the whole year," a sickness blamed on the "heavy growth of trees and underwood" in the valley, and on "the great mass of half-rotted vegetable matter and half-dried mud" left untended on the riverbanks. On the bluff, the outpost exposed the men "all winter to the northers and sleets of the country and in summer to the scorching heat."

It was not ideal. It took a tough, perhaps unordinary, breed of man to survive it all. Whiting may have been critical during his inspection tour, but Texas was well pleased with the protection provided by the small band of untrained, undrilled soldiers.

An editorial in the Marshall Texas Republican applauded the work of Maj. Arnold and his troops:

"We are gratified to learn that the Dragoons stationed between the Brazos and Trinity, under the command of Captain (sic) Arnold, have proven themselves to be fully as efficient as the Rangers that proceeded them. During the period that they have been stationed on the Brazos, the settlers have enjoyed a complete immunity from Indian depredations.

"...These treacherous savages have their haunts in the Wichita Mountains of Arkansas, and have been in the habit of making forays into the settlements between the Trinity and the Brazos. Nothing but the fear that the Dragoons would carry fire and sword through the villages could have induced them to sue for peace."

Arnold had been known as a fighter. He was tough, yet compassionate. And he was decisive. No one misinterpreted his actions. He made sure of it. The Indians learned quickly that Maj. Arnold was not the kind to back down, and he paid little attention to the odds, especially if they were against him.

He and his men stood within the fort and watched as a mounted band of 300 Comanches and Caddos, led by Chief Towash, attacked a ragged group of Tonkawahs in a live oak grove. Hunger had turned the Indians against each other. A drought had chased the animals away.

The battle was swift. The Tonks fell back, fled to the fort and begged for a sanctuary. They were doomed and they knew it. Arnold let them in. And an angry Towash demanded that the Army return them. Sgt. Abe Harris remembered:

"They were yelling out there like red devils. The Major ordered us into line and said if fight was what they wanted fight it was. Sergeant Dan McCauly, who had charge of the big gun, our only howitzer, brought it out and unlimbered it (at the northwest corner of the square at the head of Houston Street). The major told the rag messenger (an Indian who rode up waving a flag of truce) that be was not in the habit of serving up his guests for breakfast, at least to strangers, and they might as well be prepared for a fight.

"The Indians were about 300 strong, and let me tell you we fellows in blue were but a squad in comparison to them but we had the gun and were sure they had never heard her bellow, so while the Indians were scattered around over the bottom there over the bluff, looking northwest, the major said to McCauly, 'Sergeant, touch her off and graze the heads of the big bucks over there in the valley if you can with out hitting them, but if you should hit one, mind you, there will be no love lost, even if you take his head smooth smack off.' So the sergeant he pulled the lanyard, and shrapnel rang over the heads of the bucks and the Indians clattered hither and thither, scared out of their wits.

"...their beligerent attitude vanished, and Indian like, the next instant they were begging for something to eat. Major Arnold told them he would just as soon fight them as feed them, but nevertheless had three beeves driven out to them. Those savages were certainly more hungry than hostile, for the next morning there was neither hide, nor hair not hoof of those devoted cattle to be seen. And this was the peaceful outcome of the only hostilities Fort Worth ever experienced."

The Indians were not foolish. They rode clear of the fort. Isolated homesteads were easier prey. Finally, 44 men petitioned the governor of Texas, asking that the officers at Fort Graham and Fort Worth remove the Caddo, Ioni, Anadarko and Delaware tribes from the area and prevent their return for any reason. The petition pointed out that "freequent and greevious Complaints are made by our Citizens against said Indians on account of their steeling our horses Killing our Cattle and hogs burning the prairies woods and etc."

Arnold did what he could. He really had little choice. From the north, Comanche Chief Jim Ned, backed by 100 warriors, was moving quietly toward the fort. He had one aim - destroy it. The military outpost, he had decided, was much too close to his hunting grounds. Besides, an army scout had gotten away with one of the Comanche's stolen horses. Chief Jim Ned would take no more humiliation from the white men. They must die.

Not far a way, Chief Feathertail, with another 100 warriors, was also slowly descending on the fort. Together, the two Indian armies planned to squeeze Arnold and his Dragoons between them, crush the soldiers and wipe them from the prairie. And perhaps they would have.

But fate had another idea. A fur trader, returning from his trap lines, stumbled across the camping warriors of Jim Ned in the darkness when he overheard muffled voices down in the valley below him. The trader grabbed his horse and raced madly to the fort. Within an hour, Maj. Arnold with 40 men and that deadly six-pound howitzer were riding cautiously toward the bluff that overlooked the sleeping Indians.

The Comanches - wearing trinkets carved from human bones and carrying the blood-dried scalps of fallen settlers - had no warning, no chance at all.

The troops attacked from three directions, galloping down on the dazed, bewildered Indians who lay in the draw, illuminated by moonlight. The soldiers could not miss. Chief Jim Ned, with as many men as he could rally, fled to fight another day, meeting up with Chief Feathertail and retreating back into the timbered hills of Palo Pinto.

In the brief clash, the Comanches lost 37 braves, with another 15 wounded too badly to escape. Not a soldier was scratched. The warriors had run into the night. But Arnold was not satisfied. He refused let them go.

The troops caught up with the Comanches two days later in the canyons and wind-carved grottos of Palo Pinto (Spanish for painted wood). Jim Ned and Feathertail chose to make their stand on the ground they knew best.

Feathertail died there. Howard Peak, the first Anglo born in Fort Worth, heard his father's tales of the battle, and he wrote:

"The battle call sounded and the three columns moved forward, dismounted, horses tethered, guns in hand, eyes alert. For a brief moment silence reigned supreme, and then there burst on the air of that spring morning the tumultous roar of savage war whoops that echoed through the canyon as though a thousand devils of hell were loose. From every boulder poured a shower of swift arrows..."

The fight lasted for hours. When Feathertail fell, so did the hopes of the Comanches. Beaten and dying, the warriors melted away in the confusion, withdrawing into a secret cut in the canyon that hid them.

Never again would the Grand Prairie of Texas confront the serious threat of an Indian war. Horses would be stolen and petty raids were always annoying. But the blood shed would dry up in the rich soil and wash away. The time for dying was behind the settlers. The time for building had begun.

The fight lasted for hours. When Feathertail fell, so did the hopes of the Comanches.

An editorial in the Texas Republic forecast a prediction for the Trinity River Valley, now patrolled by the guns of Fort Worth. "The country around the spring is exceedingly fertile and abounds in excellent pasturage. It will doubtless become the seat of extensive and flourishing settlements."

Such the prophecy. It would not take long.

Dallas - to the far east - numbered 350 residents. John A. Hurst - only a dozen miles away from the outpost - worried more about panthers prowling in his front yard than he did about Indians. He raised the first wheat grown in that part of the country, cutting it by hand and thrashing it with sticks. Twenty-three other families scattered their homestead over the prairie. About 50 hardy souls took over the ruins of Bird's Fort, renaming it Birdville^* and developing the first thriving community in the area.

Even Fort Worth had its first civilian.

Press Farmer, his wife and daughter had the good fortune of living in a tent on the land where Major Arnold chose to construct his new fort. Since the army had no reason to kick the Farmers off the property, the major allowed him to open the Sutler's Store and stay on. Press Farmer traded away 22 acres of dirt that one day would become downtown Fort Worth. All he received in return was a powerful team of mules. It was (they all said) a helluva good deal for Farmer. It was to be his last one.

Growth and prosperity, it seemed, were just around around the corner. Fort Worth had not even been completed and already people were clamoring for self-imposed (perhaps self-inflicted) government. During the midst of a cholera epidemic, a few of them rounded up 100 electors who signed a petition calling for the creation of a new county.

Gen. Edward Tarrant, a crusty-voiced attorney and Indian fighter who had claimed victory at Village Creek back in '41, led the fight. He constantly debated his cause during the Third Legislature, predicting a massive wave of immigration and urging the establishment of Texas' 80th county.

His argument did not fall on deaf ears. On December 20, 1848, the Legislature gave him the county, taking the necessary land from a portion of the old Peters Land Grant. The county was appropriately named Tarrant.

In an election held within the log cabin of Ed Terrell, the trader who almost lost it all to the Comanches in '45, Birdville was easily chosen as county seat. It obviously had the largest and only bloc vote in the area.

Times were hard but bearable.

All the settlers had to fear now was themselves, and the hard-talking, hard-drinking, hard-nosed business of bringing civilization to a primitive, sometimes barbaric, place. That was a two-fisted challenge if there ever was one. That would be the roughtest fight of all.

^*Factual Error: All of the twenty or so families who attempted to settle at Bird's Fort had abandoned the place altogether by the end of spring, 1842. Some moved eastward to John Neely Bryan's settlement which would become Dallas; others moved northeast to a new settlement in what would become Collin County, and the remainder moved farther north to existing settlements along the Red River. None of the Bird's Fort settlers, however, moved westward to Birdville.

A town by the name of "Birdville", in fact, did not even exist until after the county of Tarrant was created in 1849...

In December of 1849, a legislative act was introduced in Austin to create the County of Tarrant, theretofore part of Navarro County. Regarding this new county, the legislature specified "That should there be more than two places put in nomination ... the place receiving the highest number of votes shall be the place established as the county seat of said county of Tarrant, and shall be called Birdville." Here, the legislature had decided to honor Jonathan Bird.

The two contenders for County Seat became Fort Worth, and a larger, unnamed civilian settlement five miles northeast of Fort Worth. In a heated election, the larger settlement to the northeast of Fort Worth prevailed, became Tarrant's first county seat, and was thereby named Birdville.

For some reason, the notions sprang up that the town of Birdville (1). evolved from Bird's Fort, and/or (2). was the actual site of Bird's Fort. Assertion 1 is true only in the sense that ALL cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex evolved from Bird's Fort. Assertion 2 is patently false—the two locations are some 12 miles apart as the crow flies.

Thus, Bird's Fort and Birdville share the sole commonality that both were named in honor of Brevet Major Jonathan Bird. That is the only direct historical connection. No physical connection exists, and no settlers were common to both settlements.

Many otherwise outstanding writings on the early history of the DFW area have been tainted by this indomitable Bird's Fort/Birdville myth.