Page 168 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHAPTER FOUR

T e xas Indians were so troublesome that whites went to nearby La
r
Grange to "fort up." 64
Other T e xas women came to hate Comanches, a determined and
well-mounted hunting people who needed a vast area to support them­
selves.Whites who took land and killed buffalo and other game seemed
to expect Comanches to disappear rather than to resist. Martha Simmons
never fo rgot an 1 8 39 conflict with Comanches, which resulted in her
f a ther's death and the captivity of her and her mother. Simmons claimed
that the "devils" tortured her and her mother until they escaped in
1 8 40. 16 5 Similarly, Elizabeth Owens indicted Comanches' actions of the
1 8 4os.And Mary Locklin referred to T e xas Indians as "red fiends" who
interfered with what she, being a white woman, naturally called the emi­
grants "'work of improvement." T o her, Indians hatched " deviltry" and
attacked "without warning, burning houses, killing stock, destroying
r
property, and murdering defenseless women and children." 66 Another
woman, Rosalie Priour, stated that attacks and "atrocities" perpetrated
by Texas Indians against settlers in the Corpus Christi area continued
well into the 1 8 50s.167
Nor did white-Indian conflict diminish. Throughout the 1 8 50s,
additional T e xas women-Julia Sinks, Martha Gray , Eugenie Lavender,
and Mary Baylor-reported that raids by T o nkawa, Caddo, and
Comanche Indians kept them in an "upset state."168 During the 1 8 60s,
difficulties continued. Susan Newcomb declared that Indians were
"thick and plenty and trying to brake our country." Newcomb had no
conception that, in reality, whites tried to "brake" Indian country. 169
Jonaphrene Faulkner, who wanted all Indians exterminated, also offered
a stock white interpretation: that troubles occurred because Native
Americans "resisted all advances of the white man looking to their sub­
jugation or control and roamed fr ee and vindictive still, and blood thirsty,
upon the f a r western plains." 170 T o Indians, of course, the explanation
would have been that whites kept coming into T e xas, interfering with
Indian lives and lands.
Such struggles in T e xas continued well into the 1 8 7 0s. One woman
explained that "Indians would often come down on raids during moon­
1
light nights." In 8 7 2, another said that her f a mily moved into town to
escape altercations with Jack County natives. And May T a nsill reacted

1 6 0