OLD-TIMER RECALLS
THRILLS OF EARLY DAYS
Fort Worth Deserted
Village in '51 When George Harris Came
When George L. Harris, 80,
came to Fort Worth in the Spring of 1851 as a boy 7
years old, there were two deserted Indian villages
within what are now the city limits. One of the old
villages was strung out in a thin line from the
Trinity River through that section of the present
city now occupied by negro quarters. The other
village was where the packing plants are located on
the North Side.
The frames of the wigwams
built by the Caddos had been left when the remnant
of the tribe was moved to a New Mexico reservation a
year or two before. The portions of the wigwams that
were standing when Harris moved here were the willow
frames constructed of light poles stuck in a trench
in the ground in a circle several feet across and
bound together at the top with grapevines, and
portions of the mud and twig covering that the
weather had not brought to the ground. In each frame
was a small aperture serving as a door about two
feet wide and three or four feet high.
On Rabbit Hunt.
The winter following his
arrival, he and some other small boys were out
hunting rabbits with their dogs in the deserted
village located in the place where most of Fort
Worth's negroes now live. The dogs ran some kind of
animal into one of the old wigwams and then were
afraid to go in after it. The boys thought they
would drive out the animal by setting fire to the
long grass.
The grass was waist high in
most places over the county. It was of most
luxuriant growth. Harris related, and was
sufficiently dry to burn readily. As soon as the
grass started to burn the flames leaped beyond
control of the small boys and burned the entire
village. It spread over the hills that Fort Worth is
built upon and burned nearly to where Lake Worth is
before the men in the little frontier village and
army post were able to put it out.
The Indians who had lived in
the wigwams were a peaceable tribe. They never went
on the war path. The whites often made use of them
as trailers, according to Harris. "They were similar
in disposition to the Tonkaways," he said. "In that
they were far different from the Comanches, the
tribe that dealt out misery on the frontier.
Lived Near Courthouse.
Harris lives at 2004 Clinton
Avenue. The first place he lived here was one-half
mile from the courthouse near the former location of
Bewley's mills.
In 1852 his father, Arno L.
Harris, and an uncle, John Farrar, bought a house on
a section of land on Village Creek. Their interest
in the land and the house was sold five years later
to Col. M. T. Johnson, who was connected with his
son in Fort Worth. No money passed in the sale as
cattle and mules were taken in trade. It was this
same Johnson, according to Harris, who established
Johnson Station. The land belonged to Porter King at
the time of his death, Harris said.
George L. Harris was born
Aug. 3, 1844, seven miles southwest of
Duval's Bluff in Monroe County, Ark. In 1849 he came
with his father, mother and family to Shelby County,
Texas en route to join a wagon train going to
California, which had started from a point several
hundred miles to the north. When word was received
that everyone in the train had been massacred by
Indians west of Fort Scott, Kan., the Harris family
decided to remain in Texas.
Moves to Ranch.
From Shelby County the
family moved to Ellis County, and later to Tarrant
County.
When the Village Creek home
was sold Harris moved with the cattle and mules to a
ranch 11 miles southwest of Fort Belknap. The mother
and small children were left here as the senior
Harris did not wish to expose them to danger at the
hands of the Indians. G. L. Harris stayed on the
ranch until the Winter of 1860 when he returned to
Fort Worth. At the time his mother lived where the
Chevrolet plant stands now. The house they lived in
had been built by a man named McClelland.
Harris joined a regiment
commanded by Pete Ross, a brother of Sol Ross, and
did not return to his old haunts until June 25,
1865, when the war had ended. He is a member of R.
E. Lee Camp, United Confederate Veterans.
Was With Pete Ross.
"I joined the outfit of Pete
Ross, who came from Waco with some men at the
beginning of the Civil War." Harris related. "Ross
was collecting men at Dallas from Denton, Kaufman,
Ellis, Tarrant and other counties to form the Sixth
Texas Cavalry. I joined in time to vote for him as
colonel. It was June 6, 1861, that I joined.
"I got to Arkansas and was
turned back at Little Rock on account of my youth.
Several of us who were just boys were given passes
to go back. We didn't want to and turned up in
Cabell's Brigade in time to get into the Jenkin's
Ferry fight. Then I got into Dick Gano's Brigade. He
was a Kentucky man a nephew of John Morgan, and died
10 or 12 years ago. I was in the fight at Pine
Bluff, Duval's Bluff and was up in Kansas a while.
At Lone Jack, Mo., I had a horse killed under me
while I was in Captain Moffett's company.
"At the close of the war I
was in Houston with Baylor, the man who killed
General Wharton in his own office. Wharton had drawn
a sword on Baylor and got shot for it. A bunch was
sent to arrest Baylor. When they started off with
him about 500 of us turned out and announced that
Baylor wasn't going to be arrested. We were too
strong for argument and Baylor went West. He was
never tried, and never could have been as long as
his own men were around him.
"I was always a buck private
in the front rank and never held an office in my
life. The nearest I ever came to having an office
was one time when I almost got to be overseer of a
road. I didn't want that job.
"The infantry and walking in
general never did appeal to me." Harris said. "I had
rather bo on a horse and have to curry him a week
than to walk in the mud with the infantry. I never
did walk when I could get out of it."
"I Never was shot but once
in my life, although I was shot at a plenty," Harris
said. "It was about 30 miles the other side of San
Angelo when I was a Ranger under Captain Ratliff.
"I was riding along when all
of a sudden a Mexican rose up and shot me in the
right leg. I was up and on my horse in a few days
and rode with my coat under the leg until it got
well.
"I was in a hurry to get
into some fighting that was on the docket and didn't
want the rest of the outfit to kill all the Mexicans
before I got there. It happened about 1868.
"I joined Captain Ratliff's
outfit at San Angelo. The first 10 months took me up
and down the border close to El Paso, to Deming and
Silver City and on the Brazos, Wichita and Colorado
Rivers. I was transferred to Captain Baylor's outfit
and then back to Ratliff's. I joined in 1865 and was
discharged finally in 1869 at San Angelo.
Plenty of Ammunition.
"When we were nearly off the
map on some trip and an army wagon train came by we
took off of it whatever we wanted in the way of food
and ammunition. The trains couldn't get anywhere
unless the Indians were kept off and as that was our
job then, we could get whatever we wanted. We were
furnished all the ammunition we wanted to shoot.
"At Big Springs, about 1869,
some Indians came down and drove off 300 or 400 head
of big-footed Northern horses that a colonel and his
outfit had there. He sent a man to Sweetwater to get
word to San Antonio that he needed some help and
some horses. About that time Captain Ratliff with 28
Rangers came along and we got back all the horses.
"Ratliff went to the colonel
and told him that if he couldn't take care of
himself he had better go back to the white
settlements. He called the colonel an old fool.
"Some of the army outfits
were too slow in getting started to do any good
against Indians. You had to be quick and alive to
get them. Most of the army commands were splendid
against the Indians and the Rangers and the army
officers got along well together in co-operating in
fighting the Indians.
Some Officers Green.
"Some of the officers were
green at fighting and didn't know any more about
frontier life than a hog does about a side saddle.
Old General Miles lost a couple of dozen wagons once
at Abilene when some of his men took off and left
him. Some soldiers had to go out and get wagons and
take them to Colorado Post."
"I never knew of but two
Comanches being captured alive during the long years
they were raiding." Harris said. "One of them was a
child and the other was one whose easy capture I
witnessed. On the other hand I have seen them fight
with the utmost heroism to the last ditch when odds
were against them and die rather than suffer
capture. The Comanches were as brave a race as ever
trod the soil or straddled a horse. They would rise
from the death agony of a mortal wound to take one
last shot or pass with a knife.
"It was in 1858 while I was
on my father's ranch 12 miles southwest of old Fort
Belknap on the Clear Fork of the Brazos that I
witnessed the capture of a grown Indian. I was
spending the night at the Harmason ranch a few miles
away. During the early part of the evening the dogs
bayed something in a little tree a short distance
from the house. We took lights and went to
investigate, thinking the dogs had a coon. We didn't
know it was an Indian until the light spotted him
crouched on a limb a few feet higher than our heads.
"He had become separated in
some manner from his party, had lost his horse, and
nearly starved to death. He saw the light at the
Harmason ranch and was making for the house when the
dogs, who never did have much use for an Indian when
their master was white, ran him into the tree. I
don't guess we would ever have made his acquaintance
if he hadn't been so hungry.
"We took him into the house,
fed him, and then tied him so he couldn't get away.
We didn't give him much to eat because we were
afraid of killing him, he was so poor. Every once in
a while he would make a noise and indicate he wanted
more to eat by smacking his lips.
"The next day we turned him
over to the soldiers. They let him eat his fill and
he died.
"At the ranch house that
same night was a man named F. M. Peveler. Peveler
now lives near Granbury. He came to Fort Worth in
1852. He was 80 years old last April. I haven't seen
him in about 40 years, but he promised to visit me
during the Diamond Jubilee."
Healthy Town.
"Fort Worth always was a
healthy town," Harris related.
"In 1860, the year the
county seat was moved from Birdville to Fort Worth.
A. B. Norton moved here from Dallas and established
a newspaper called the Fort Worth Sheaf.
"There was hard feeling
between the two villages on account of the articles
Norton published in his paper. He played on the fact
that Fort Worth was a healthy spot. He sang of the
charm of frontier village and induced many of the
Dallas people to move here.
Here's how Fort Worth looked
in the 50's, according to Harris.
"Grass waist high, grew all
over the countryside where Fort Worth now stands
when I first saw the settlement in 1851.
"At the fort, where the
soldiers were stationed, there were two buildings
200 feet long that were used as barracks. Two
buildings about 20x30 feet were used as
commissaries. The larger buildings were located
where the old jail stood. The commissaries were
where the present jail is located.
"A log house stood on what
is now Commerce and Belknap Street. There was
another house on Samuels Avenue where the old
cemetery called Pioneer Rest is located. It belonged
to Henry Daggett, a brother of E. M. Daggett. It was
in that house that Charles Biggers Daggett was born.
"The county seat was at
Birdville.
"About two dozen families
lived within a five-mile radius of the fort. None
lived north of the river.
Worth Sold Land.
"A squatter named Worth sold
the land on which the fort was established. Worth
had a claim to the land and sold it to Col. M. T.
Johnson. Worth then lived on what is now Weatherford
Street. When he sold the land he moved to a place on
the Clear Fork and built a pole house in a thicket
near a spring that is now dry. A doctor named Fields
settled across from the Worth place. Field's family
still retains the original homestead land.
"M. G. Ellis lived where the
Fort Worth Packing Company's plant is now located.
"A man named Oldham had the
first store here. It was a log building located two
or three doors down the square from the present
Exchange State Bank.
"Old man Louckx, the father
of Charley Louckx, lived where the Carnegie Library
is built.
"A few years later a family
named Robinson settled on land where the big packing
plants are built.
"I was in a number of Indian
fights," Harris declared. "One of the first ones I
got into was while I was on the ranch southwest of
Fort Belknap in the Spring of 1860, the year I went
back to Fort Worth.
Indians Steal Horses.
"A bunch of Comanches who
had been raiding down in Palo Pinto County, came
across the Clear Fork of the Brazos near the ranch
and seeing our horses, made off with them. All the
ranch hands including myself, shut themselves up in
the corral and watched the Indians. They circled
around us several times at a distance of about 300
yards and then departed.
"I set out to get help from
the neighboring ranches. The Harmason ranch had
about 15 men and the Duff ranch, where Oil City is
now, had 10 or 12 men. Captain Buck Berry of the
Rangers, who later lived near Graham, was camped not
far from the ranch with 30 Rangers under his
command.
"We took in after the
Indians and after a chase of one and a half days
caught them at the head of the North Prong of Big
Elm, between 75 and 80 miles from the ranch. We tied
into them like they were a bunch of prairie
chickens. Jack Harmason and Frances Peveler were in
the gang with us. The Indians numbered about 150 and
there were 123 of us. We got our horses back.
"Captain Harris, a very
small man, was out in that part of Texas most of the
time then. It didn't take a big man to make a good
one.
"I was signed up with Capt.
Arch Ratliff, but I didn't care what outfit I went
with. One was about as good as another. When the
Rangers started off anywhere there they picked up as
many men around as could go. We made it mighty hard
for the Indians to stay in any one place very long.
It was every white man's business when it was the
business of one.
"The Indians were as thick
as grasshoppers and were all over the country in the
light of the moon. They were about the only
neighbors we had except the buffaloes.
"All the men within a
50-mile radius were signed up with the Rangers as
"minute men" and were ready to drop whatever they
were doing when the call for aid came. There were
not enough men on any one ranch to fight raiders and
it was only by co-operation that the forays of the
Comanches could be dealt with.
Charley Reeves Killed.
"In the Fall of the same
year I witnessed another fight on Rock Creek in
Young County in which Charley Reeves was killed. In
the Fall of 1859 I was at old Fort Davis in
Shackelford County when two men were killed.
"In the winter of 1860 a
good fight came off at the head of Cedar Creek. Two
Rangers and seven cowboys killed one Indian and
recovered 30 head of horses which had been stolen
from the Chester ranch at Carter's Crossing and from
the Duff ranch where my father's was."
"It was a sight to see an
old-time stage leave one of the stations." Harris
smilingly remarked. "As often as not part of the
mules that were hitched were as wild as a prairie
flower and about as gentle as a wildcat with the
toothache. The wild mules would be thrown in with
several gentle ones to make two or three spans.
"Then the lines would be
slipped and the stage with the passengers inside
holding on for dear life would leave in a cloud of
dust with the wild mules kicking, pitching and
running like the devil. Speed was what they wanted
and they sure got it at times," Harris said.
Wild Ride.
"The stage would roll out
pitching like a log in a whirlpool during a rise,
the drivers would be throwing the whip to the mules
and pouring it on.
"Mules were used on the West
Texas stage lines because no selfrespecting Comanch
would ride one of the darn things and the teams
could be turned loose during the night without fear
of the Indians running off with them. The mules were
bought in bunches of 100 or more at $8 and $10 a
head.
"In those days the mail came
from Dallas to Fort Worth. A man named Frank Adams
had the contract. The mail was brought over by two
men in a hack. Mail going west connected with the
California stage line at Fort Belknap. The mail came
from Shreveport to California through Fort Worth. It
took four weeks for a letter to get to the Pacific
coast.
"West of Fort Belknap the
stage line was guarded by detachments working to the
Colorado River and to the Pecos River. It took about
100 men to guard the line."
[A photo of George L.
Harris accompanied this article, however it did
not reproduce well.]
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