We crossed the Medina in returning from a trip to the Rio Grande, last Saturday morning, and hesitated whether we should not turn from our road and follow it up to the ranch of an Irish gentleman, who has one of the largest flocks [295] of sheep in Texas, which he had invited us to look at. Preferring, however, to spend Sunday in town, we fortunately concluded to postpone our visit.

The next morning (yesterday) a messenger came into the city with the information that during the night the ranch had been visited and plundered by Indians, who had also killed two of the shepherds. In the course of the day a party was formed to go in pursuit of the Indians.

This morning a woman came into the city with the information that yesterday a party of Indians came to her house, which is about sixteen miles from here, and called for meat and drink, and as soon as they had obtained it, shot her husband, killing him at once, and knocked her down by a blow upon her head with the butt of a rifle, and left her for dead, while they caught the children, of which there were four, the oldest a girl of fourteen. She recovered sufficiently to run from the house and escape through some thick bushes which grew near it. She heard for a long time the shrieks of the children, but whether they were killed or taken into slavery by the savages she cannot tell.

On the Rio Grande, and at other exposed points on this frontier, there have lately been a number of Indian outrages, but none perhaps so bold and frightful as this.

The absurd inefficiency of our national system of managing the Indian tribes is horribly apparent in these occurrences. Theoretically, there are no Indians allowed to come within some hundred miles of where these tragedies were enacted, except a few tribes, small in numbers and peaceable and friendly in disposition, with whom an agent of the Government, to make sure of their good behavior, is constantly living.

To keep the savage Indians at a distance from the settlement, there is a cordon of military posts which are greatly valued by the people on the frontier on account of the excellent market they offer for corn, beef, and so on. What the pioneers would do without the soldiers to provide for, Heaven knows. These posts are all called forts, though they are generally mere camps, with a log hospital, magazine and quartermaster’s store-houses—the soldiers living in tents. At one of them which we visited last week, there are two hundred men, admirably dressed, drilled and disciplined. There are some settlers immediately around this fort. Within a month these settlers have had their cattle killed and their horses stolen by the Indians. The Indians have even ventured into the stable of the post, and succeeded—though one of them was supposed to have been shot by the sentry—in taking off three of the Government’s horses.

At Fort Duncan there are four hundred men—infantry and artillery. They are in admirable condition for marching upon Mexico, but within a fortnight the Indians have stolen the beef from under their guns, and attacking a forage party, killed the beast the commanding sergeant was upon with an arrow, cut four mules from the wagon and escaped unharmed.

On the Mexican side of the Rio Grande we saw a mule which was worth about $60, but which the rider said he had bought of an Indian for $5, [296]

[297] and which our guide recognized as being one that had been stolen from an American settler a few weeks ago.

The last murder by the Indians was committed sixteen miles from here yesterday evening. I do not know what time it was that the woman who escaped arrived here. It was about 9 o’clock when I saw two Germans very hastily saddling their horses, strapping on each a blanket, and filling their pockets with bread. They told me what had occurred, and I asked where they were going.

“To hunt the Indians. There is a company making up; will you join us?”

“No,”

“Lend me your Colt, then?”

“Yes; here it is.”

“Loaded?”

“Yes,”

“All right. We shall start as soon as a company gets together on the plaza.”

I walked into the plaza an hour afterwards, and found my German friend very impatiently waiting, with two or three others, who were all talking of the business as if it were a frolic they were anxious should begin. There, too, was a Government Indian agent, guessing what Indians it had been, and very patiently waiting for certain preparations to be made for pursuing them. At noon, the German came home to dinner in extreme vexation. Some soldiers had been ordered to join them, and they had not got ready yet. There are four companies of infantry in camp near the city. I walked to the plaza again after dinner. There were still the small crowd of Indian agents, volunteers and idlers, smoking and talking, waiting, and making preparations.

About 3 o’clock this afternoon a squad of soldiers rode by my window, and I followed them to the plaza. Here they joined a number of citizens, and waited half an hour, everybody inquiring of everybody else what they were waiting for now. Finally, the Indian agent remarked that he did not see that there was anything else to wait for, and they had better go. A Mexican led off as a guide, and they trotted calmly out of town.

The soldiers were not exactly in parade equipment. Most of them wore flannel shirts, without coats. The only part of their uniform they retained, was the pantaloons and the fatigue cap. They were infantry soldiers, but had been for this occasion mounted. They each carried a blanket, a haversack of provisions, and a canteen. I asked the corporal why they did not take muskets or rifles like the volunteers? “They’d be too lumbersome, Sir; we have all got Colts.” A couple of pickayune Spanish mules, led by a Mexican mounted on another, followed the detachment with rations roped on to their backs, and a buffalo robe, and apparently a tent for the Indian agent to sleep in.

It was 3½ o’clock when the pursuit commenced. When the prisoners are brought in, I will tell you.

My German friend, who had been ready on the parade-ground at half past 9, fully armed, equipped and rationed for a forced march of several days, [298]

had left the plaza before the soldiers came. Whether he had given it up in despair, or had in his impatience ordered himself to advance before the company, as a scouting party, I do not know.

It is my private opinion that if there had been ten New-York firemen scattered over the ten miles square around San Antonio, when that poor woman came in this morning, they would in some way or other have heard of it, and got together and been twenty miles on their way to rescue the children before the detachment had drawn its rations.

April 18.—They found the dead bodies of three of the children in the house. The Indians are supposed to be Comanches, the most formidable of American savages. Could it have been the mere gratification of the love of cruelty and bloodshed that they had in view in these murders? It seems hardly possible. How else can their conduct be explained?

A month ago we were about making a trip through the Bandera Pass, which is at the head of the Medina valley, near which these occurrences have taken place, but were deterred by accounts of Indian disturbances. According to the account sent to the newspapers by some people who belong to a faction of the Mormons, and who are squatting in the Pass this Summer, they had been annoyed by the Indians killing their cattle, and formed a company to attack them. They stole upon the Indians, surprising them in camp, fired a volley upon them, killing several as they believed, though they found no dead bodies. The Indians fled, and they took as booty what they left behind. We [299] afterwards learned from a German who lives in that vicinity, that there was in the Pass an old Indian burying ground, and he believed that the Indians had come to visit it, and had found that the graves had been opened and the bones of their fathers scattered by the whites, and that if they really committed any depredations at all, at that time, it was in revenge for this outrage on their feelings. The most they had done was to shoot some oxen.

It seems to me probable that the present massacres have been made by the Indians in retaliation of the attack then made upon them by the whites.