Fort Worth: A Frontier Triumph

2. The Barrier on the Prairies

CHAPTER 2 The Barrier on the Prairies THEnewly-born Republic of Texas was generally spoken of as the "Land of Promise" by citizens of the United States and Europe. Some exuberant optimists spoke of it as the "land of milk and honey." But as one wit said, "Although Texas was the land of milk and of honey, it was necessary to milk the cows and gather the honey." Pioneers came to escape the poverty in the United States brought by the fmancial panic of 1837, and to find opportunity as citizens of the Lone Star Republic. The removal of the Indian barrier from the upper valleys of the Trinity and Brazos was the beginning of the history of Fort Worth and Tarrant County. The north to which Texans referred in the late 1830s and 1840s was the sections which present-day Texans know as North Central Texas. In this area are located the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, the prosperous municipalities of Denison, Sherman, Waco, Wichita Falls, Vernon, Gainesville, Hillsboro, Jacksboro, Mineral Wells, and Weatherford, as well as other vigorous towns. The frontier line of settlement was a very thin string of a few cabins daringly erected along the Red River to Fannin and Grayson counties. Westward, beyond this sparse line was the gathering ground of Indian nations in the last period of glory as rulers of Texas wilderness. 8 BOOKl Here they took their last stand. These nations were the Comanche; the Wichita, Taovayas, Tawakoni, Kichai, and Iscani tribes of the Wichita Confederacy; the Caddo, lonie, and Anadarko tribes of the former Caddo and Hasinai Confederacies; and the Deadose and the Bidai who, at the dawn of Texas history lived in the lower middle valleys of the Trinity and Brazos rivers. Disease had reduced the number of these ancient Texas tribes, and the civilization of Spanish and Anglo-American settlements had driven the tribal remnants into this northern section. Into this area had come also many tribes from the United States, whose expanding frontier line had pushed them into Texas. The great trek from the United States began in the early 1800s. Since 1831, the policy of the United States government had been to remove Indians from the states to the Indian Territory, which they had set aside for this purpose between the Arkansas and Red rivers. Such a policy had plagued Texas by augmenting the numbers already on the northern prairies. These tribes from the United States were the Coushatta, Kickapoo, Delaware , Shawnee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Kiowa. About 1690, with the beginning of the formal settlement by Spain, North Central Texas had been the empire of the Wichita Confederacy. These were the aborigines of present Tarrant County. As stated earlier, de Mezieres in 1772 and 1778, on his expeditions through the Trinity and Brazos river valleys across Tarrant County to the Red River, left a voluminous record of the Wichita tribes. He visited the Yscani and Kichai Indians living in villages near the east bank of the Trinity in present Anderson County. On the west bank of the Trinity, he discovered two villages-one of the Kichai and the other a Tawakoni-which he named La Tortuga, meaning The Turtle. It was in present Freestone County. And over on the Brazos, he sojourned to two villages of the Tawakoni. One was near present Waco, which became the chief village of the Wacos. The other village was north of it. Far to the north on Red River, where Ringgold now stands, de Mezieres found two Taovayas villages. The Taovayas irrigated their fields, raised good crops of tobacco, and grazed fine herds of cattle along the banks of Red River. Wichita tribes were a semi-agricultural people. The women were most industrious. They planted fields of maize, beans, watermelons, pumpkins ; and the Kichais and Iscanis cultivated the sweet potato. They gathered luscious wild grapes, each bunch weighing one to two pounds. The women also harvested the crops and saved the seeds for the next year's planting. They cared for an astounding number of children; tanned, sewed, and painted skins; made clothes and tents of deerskin and buffalo CHAPTER 2 9 hides; preserved the deer meat with salt obtained from the salt flats near present Grand Saline; and cut buffalo meat into strips, hanging it up to dry. They provided for tribal welfare while men limited their activities to warfare and hunting on the northern...