Texas Rising

by Stephen L. Moore

  Thirty-eight settlers resided at the dual-blockhouse fortress but most of the adult men were in the field tending to crops at that moment. Sarah Parker Nixon quickly ran for her thirty-eight-year-old father, Captain James Parker, on his nearby farm to spread the warning. Captain Parker was still on the payroll of the regional ranging system that was presided over by superintendent Silas Parker. Most of the other women of Fort Parker departed with their children to seek hiding places in the woods.

  Four men were left in the fort to defend the women and children who remained. They were Silas Parker, his younger brother Ben Parker, Samuel Frost, and his son Robert B. Frost—all of whom had been involved in the ranging service during the previous months. The vast Indian party halted about two hundred yards from Parker’s Fort and two Comanches were sent forward displaying a white flag of truce. Ben Parker volunteered to meet with them. He returned, saying that the Indians intended to fight and that everyone should prepare themselves.3

  Ben then said he would try to make a compromise with the Indians while the others prepared, although his brother begged him not to go. As he approached, the Comanches and Kichais erupted into dreadful war whoops and drove long spears through the body of the ranger. “Their united voice seemed to reach the very skies whilst they were dealing death,” recalled Rachel Parker Plummer, the seventeen-year-old auburn-haired daughter of Captain James Parker. Rachel snatched up her sixteen-month-old son, James Pratt Plummer, and raced out of the fort’s back gate.4

  A large Indian knocked her unconscious with a wooden hoe and snatched her infant from her arms. When she awoke, she was being dragged by her hair back into the fort past the mutilated body of her uncle Ben. Silas Parker and the two Frost men died trying to defend the other women and children from the Comanches and Kichais swarming into the fort. Young Comanches proved themselves as being brave in combat by physically striking an opponent versus shooting them from long distance. An even greater feat involved using a sharp knife to remove an opponent’s scalp and ears while he was still alive. Among the bloody scalps young captive Rachel would see that morning was at least one she could identify by its gray hair as being that of her grandfather, Elder John Parker.

  The Indians overtook another party of settlers who tried to flee the fort. John Parker and his wife, Sallie White “Granny” Parker, were stripped and then the reverend was run through with an arrow and scalped. Granny and another woman were physically assaulted, speared, stabbed, and left for dead on the prairie. Only the youngest female of the party, Elizabeth Kellogg, was taken hostage and dragged back into Fort Parker. There the scene was utter chaos as the whooping Indians looted and ransacked the pioneer fort. Other Indians overtook Lucy Parker, wife of murdered ranger superintendent Silas Parker, as she fled with her four children. Several of the men from the fields arrived in time to help defend her but two of Lucy’s children—Cynthia Ann and John Parker—were overtaken by the Indians before they moved on.

  The Parker’s Fort survivors fled into the wilderness and sent for help from Fort Houston. James Parker returned to his family’s settlement one month after the massacre and buried the bones of those who had fallen. The Anglo captives were hauled away by the raiding party. Elizabeth Kellogg was eventually ransomed and delivered to Nacogdoches six months later. Rachel Plummer’s father, James, would make three perilous trips into Indian territory before he was able to finally help secure her ransom via Mexican traders in Santa Fe on June 19, 1837—exactly twenty-two months after her capture. During that period, Rachel had given birth to a child but it was brutally murdered in her presence. She died at age twenty, one year after being returned to her father, not living long enough to see the ransom of her son James Pratt Plummer, who was taken to Fort Gibson in 1842.5

  The most famous of the Parker family hostages were siblings Cynthia Ann and John Parker. John became a famous Indian warrior who later quit his tribe to fight for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Cynthia Ann, nine at the time of her abduction, lived with the Comanches for twenty-five years and gave birth to two sons—one of whom became the famous chief Quanah Parker. She did return to Anglo civilization, where her uncle Isaac Parker helped her to remember her childhood name before she passed away in Anderson County in 1864.

  Ben and Silas Parker were later approved for payment for their services as rangers until the date of their murders. Their brother James Parker was officially paid as a Texas Ranger for the period of November 17, 1835, through May 19, 1836. The Parker’s Fort Massacre effectively terminated the existence of any regional ranging system in East Texas for the time being.

  THE PARKER FAMILY’S TRAGEDY became the strongest incentive to maintain a proper ranging service to protect against such frontier violence. Daniel Parker Sr. demanded of Sam Houston that summer that his area be afforded proper armed units. Houston thus sent orders for Parker to oversee the construction of a blockhouse and ferry on the Trinity River above Comanche Crossing and near Fort Houston.6

  General Rusk, the new commander in chief of the Texas Army, was in agreement that a proper ranging system should remain in place. He commissioned former ranger captain Sterling Robertson to travel through the major settlements to drum up volunteers for the service, even though he was as yet unaware of the Parker’s Fort Massacre.7

  Rusk kept the ranging companies under Lieutenant Colonel Bayne in operation with or near his army as it pushed the remnants of Santa Anna’s soldiers back toward their home country. On May 29, he sent Captain Isaac Burton’s unit to patrol the flat coastal plains from the Guadalupe River to Mission Bay near Refugio to watch for Mexican incursions. Burton’s men received word of a suspicious vessel in the Bay of Copano on June 2, and he decided to set an ambush.8

  That night, they spied on the schooner Watchman from a bluff overlooking the bay. At 8 A.M. on June 3, two of Burton’s rangers sent a distress signal to the Mexican vessel. The schooner’s skipper ran up the U.S. stars and stripes on the mainmast but received no response from the men ashore. His crew then hoisted the red, green, and white Mexican flag. The two men on the beach excitedly beckoned for the Mexican crew to come ashore. The Watchman’s skipper and four other sailors rowed ashore in a small boat and were thoroughly surprised to be arrested by Captain Burton’s rangers.

  Burton left four rangers to guard the five Mexican sailors and took a sixteen-man party in the boat back out to the Watchman. They seized the remaining crew and the cargo of the ship, which was found to be loaded with supplies intended for the Mexican Army. General Rusk received word of Burton’s seizure and was alarmed that the action might trigger negative repercussions that could violate the recent Velasco peace treaty. Captain Burton either failed to receive Rusk’s orders in a timely fashion or chose to ignore them. He remained with his captured schooner for another two weeks.9

  The rangers of the Texas Gulf Coast were far from finished with their naval adventures. Two other Mexican sailing vessels, the Comanche and Fanny Butler, approached Copano Bay on June 17 and both were loaded with supplies for the Mexican Army. Burton ordered the Watchman’s skipper to invite the other two captains via signals to join him on his ship for a glass of grog. The unsuspecting skippers came aboard with thoughts of partaking in fine spirits and ended up under the guns of Texas Rangers.10

  Burton split several of his rangers between the three schooners and forced the Mexican crews to sail on June 19 from Copano Bay to the northeast for Velasco. The Watchman, Fanny Butler, and Comanche were then ordered to Galveston, where their cargoes were forfeited to the Republic of Texas. Auditors assessed the freight—food, muskets, gunpowder, ammunition, and bayonets—to be worth twenty-five thousand dollars. It would go a long way to support the Texas Army. If General Rusk was less than pleased with Isaac Burton’s actions, Lieutenant Colonel Bayne was ecstatic. He promoted Burton to major commanding his ranger battalion on June 24. President David Burnet allowed Burton to be paid $2,848.90 from the captured spoils and divvied up healthy payments to those of his men who had helped board and sai
l the Mexican vessels.

  The peaceful seizure of three enemy vessels by mounted frontiersmen—in which not a single shot was fired—was drama better than any novelist might pen. Major Burton’s crafty rangers were soon dubbed “Horse Marines” as word of their adventure spread through the republic and into the United States.11

  STERLING ROBERTSON WAS DISGUSTED.

  The land empresario of his namesake colony returned from his ranger recruiting trip in mid-June. He had recruited only fifty-odd men, and during his time stumping through Nacogdoches and San Augustine, Caddo Indians had carried out more atrocities against his colonists. The “rangers” Robertson had been able to enlist were a sorry lot at best.

  Most were newcomers to Texas who had neither horses nor guns. They had the notion to press the same from private citizens, sometimes relieving pioneer families of the only weapons they had to use for hunting or for defense against Indians. Robertson informed Rusk that his people were more angered and afraid of the new frontier guardians than they were cheered by their sight. Some families hid in the woods as soldiers marched past. The citizens of his colony were greatly alarmed by news of the Parker’s Fort Massacre and of fresh assaults that other Indians had carried out against settlers on the Little River. A new frontier ranging system was sorely needed.12

  There was less concern about the strength of the Texas Army, which continued to swell during the summer of 1836 as more opportunists poured into the republic. By early August, the army sported fifty-three companies and more than 2,500 men—almost three times the strength Sam Houston had at his disposal on April 21 at San Jacinto. Only fourteen of these companies were composed of men who had fought in the Texas Revolution or had previously lived in the republic.13

  Indian violence continued to escalate during the summer of 1836. Tom Rusk commissioned Colonel Ed Burleson to raise and command another six ranger companies to serve between the upper Colorado and Brazos rivers to keep the Indians in check. Unlike the ill-mannered volunteers Robertson had rounded up on his recruiting mission, the men recruited for the Burleson battalion were largely Texas settlers with good reason to help protect their fellow citizens. Many of them, in fact, had previously served in revolutionary ranger companies and had also taken part in the summer 1835 ranger expedition through East Texas.

  Colonel Burleson’s First Division of Rangers took on provisions from local residents, who were issued vouchers for their goods. These were often unpaid for years during the early republic era. Horses, corn, potatoes, beef, pork, clothing, tobacco, and other goods were obtained to sustain these rangers as they patrolled the frontiers between the Colorado and Brazos rivers. Captain William Hill’s company had a brush with Indians during August while scouting on the San Gabriel River near the mouth of Brushy Creek. His rangers overtook a group of twenty or more Caddos in thick post oaks in the Yegua River bottomlands close to sundown.

  “Dismounting, we prepared to attack them in camp, but a straggling warrior hastened the issue by coming out and meeting us accidentally and unexpectedly,” thirteen-year-old ranger Cicero Rufus Perry recalled. The Indian was killed but not before he had raised a war whoop to alert his comrades. Captain Hill’s company rushed into the campground and engaged in a brief firefight. Three Caddos were killed and several others were wounded. Andy Houston was the only Texan injured when he was hit in the wrist by an unspiked arrow. The rangers seized the camp equipment abandoned by the fleeing Indians. Perry, who turned fourteen while on this expedition, was shocked to see “a large number of human scalps, taken from white people of both sexes and all ages.”14

  By mid-September, the corps of Texas Rangers was at an all-time high in terms of companies and men enrolled in the service. There were thirteen companies, comprising approximately 450 men in four battalions—a number the ranger service would not surpass until 1839. Colonel Burleson’s rangers saw little other action during their three-month tenure. Major Isaac Burton’s three-company battalion helped provide for itself by rounding up loose cattle and horses on the plains of the Nueces and about San Antonio during the summer of 1836. Many of the herds had been owned by Mexican citizens who had lived between the Nueces and the Rio Grande rivers. The Texas Army even erected its first cattle pens at Goliad, and the first sweep by these “cowboys” netted 327 head of cattle for use in sustaining the troops.15

  Still, Major Burton struggled to keep his rangers properly provisioned with horses, equipment, and food due to the destitution of the revolution-ravaged republic. Several of his companies continued to operate into the fall of 1836, by which time their services were negated by the creation of a more properly equipped ranger battalion formed under the command of Colonel Robert Coleman—one of Sam Houston’s former staff members during the San Jacinto campaign. Coleman’s promptings to Texas leaders in 1835 had helped formally create the Texas Rangers, so it was little surprise that he was given the nod in mid-August 1836 to take another ranger command.

  On August 12, Coleman was authorized to recruit three companies of rangers to protect the frontier inhabitants of the upper Brazos, Colorado, Little, and Guadalupe rivers. He had raised his third company by September 21, and he moved his men to the Colorado River area on Walnut Creek, about six miles below present Austin. There his rangers built a blockhouse and a cluster of log cabins surrounded by a stockade fence. The new ranger headquarters became alternately known over the next two years as Fort Colorado, Coleman’s Fort, and Fort Houston.16

  George Erath, a veteran of ranger service in 1835 and the Battle of San Jacinto, had just completed three months of service in one of Colonel Burleson’s ranger units. He now jumped at the chance to join Coleman’s new ranger battalion. “We were promised twenty-five dollars a month and 1,280 acres of land for every twelve months’ service,” he said. “The government furnished ammunition and rations, but we furnished our own horses and arms. We lived for the most part on game out of the woods.” Erath witnessed several men enlist who exchanged their claims to money and land for horses, saddles, and bridles with which to serve. Coleman’s ranger battalion was productive in establishing new frontier outposts during its early months of service.17

  President Houston authorized the enrollment of three ranger companies in East Texas during September but he would find some of them to be far less productive than those under Coleman. Major James Smith of Nacogdoches supervised the first two East Texas ranger companies, commanded by Captain Michael Costley and Elisha Clapp—whose men vigilantly patrolled to pursue small Indian bands when they were not working on new blockhouses on the Trinity River.18

  Major Smith’s third company proved to be nothing but trouble. It was led by businessman George Washington Jewell, who had raised his men in Tennessee in August and marched to Texas. Captain Jewell’s men were ordered to complete the construction work on Fort Houston, a project that had been abandoned when Captain William Sadler’s rangers had answered the call to join the San Jacinto campaign. By late fall, James Smith left his position to attend to other business. The Fort Houston rangers under Captains Jewell and Costley then promoted Major Jewell into command. Sam Houston ordered these men to construct two additional blockhouses and a ferryboat at the upper crossing of the Trinity River. Captain Squire Haggard, the new commander of Jewell’s company, sent a defiant reply to President Houston: “By God, we came to fight, and we’ll be damned if we are going to work for anybody, or obey any such orders to build blockhouses.”19

  Costley’s company completed its three-month service period on December 11 and was mustered out of service. Major Jewell maintained his position, although Houston flatly refused to acknowledge his promotion. Jewell and Captain Haggard were left in command of forty-odd rangers for another three months as they worked on Fort Houston and patrolled the immediate vicinity. The recalcitrant rangers were troubled by Indian depredations in early 1837 and three of Haggard’s men were killed on the Trinity in late January. President Houston blamed their deaths on the rangers’ own failure to build the fort and ferryboat he
had directed them to do, and he ordered Texas auditors not to pay anyone who had served under Jewell, Haggard, and Costley. Major Jewell’s last rangers were mustered out of service on March 19. The defiant Captain Costley was shot through the heart months later during an altercation with another man. One of Houston’s allies wrote to the president that because of his character, Costley “well deserved his fate.”20

  THE NEWLY CONVENED FIRST Congress of the Republic of Texas took care of the need for such rowdy East Texas rangers.

  Sterling Robertson, a member of the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs, introduced a bill on October 21 calling for further protection of the Indian frontier. President Houston signed the bill into law on December 5. It provided for a battalion of “mounted riflemen,” consisting of five companies of fifty-six men each. These men would furnish their own horse, a good rifle, and a brace of pistols. The president was authorized to use these men to build blockhouses, forts, and trading posts, and to prevent Indian depredations.21

  Congress further refined the role of the frontier battalion on December 10. These Mounted Riflemen, “now and hereafter in the ranging service on the frontier,” were to be paid twenty-five dollars per month, plus the same bounty of land as other volunteers in the field. In terms of officers’ pay, the captain was to receive seventy-five dollars per month, a first lieutenant sixty dollars per month, a second lieutenant fifty dollars per month, and the orderly sergeant forty dollars per month. The Texas Congress acknowledged all officers and men who had been engaged “in the ranging service since July 1835” as eligible for pay. Less formalized ranger companies had operated within Texas since 1823, but the First Congress recognized Robert Coleman and his 1835 unit as the driving force behind the service’s true organization.22