By Mrs. Harriet Phenix Pharr, Reagan, Texas.

[From Hunter’s Frontier Times Magazine, January, 1931]

I CHANCED TO pick up a copy of Frontier Times, and thought I would write a chapter of things I witnessed in the '50s, during the administration of James Buchanan, the fifteenth president of the United States. President Buchanan was an uncle of my father, P. K. Phenix, who was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1815, and came to Texas in 1849, settling at Bookston, Lamar county, where he accumulated a nice little fortune in eight years. The spirit of that age moved him to go farther West, so he picked up his possessions and took the newly blazed road to (now) Jack county. We found it difficult to go down the steep hills, but locked the wagon wheels with a chain going down, and a boy walked behind with a chunk to put under the wheel going up, when the horses or oxen stopped to rest. We made slow progress, bringing up the herds of horses and cattle in the rear; in fact we were a week going over the road while an automobile can now go in a day. We found the country unorganized and inhabited by the Reserve Indians. They were friendly and we apprehended no danger. My father bought a home on the bank of Keechi Creek from Daniel Tucker, who was going to California. It was the best improved place in that neighborhood , a beautiful valley surrounded by lofty mountains, threaded by a beautiful clear stream which was full of fish. That was the delight of my father. He set traps and we feasted on fish every day. My father was a devout Christian and opened his doors to all preachers. N. T. Byers, a Baptist missionary preached once a month; the Methodist had services once a month, and Elder Gormley, a Christian minister, preached once a month and taught a school nearby.

My mother, when she found she must go to a new country, insisted on taking along for the benefit of her family a well filled medicine chest, which proved to be very needful, for there was chills and fever, and no doctors there. Father had prepared himsel for the practice of medicine, but said there was too much else to do in a thinly settled country, so kept it quiet. Father brought with him a large steel mill which was operated by hand, but so many came to grind their corn that he attached horse-power to it to accommodate all of his neighbors who came for meal.

The Indians camped near our house and often came in and sat by the fire. One old man named John came almost every day, to sit by the fire and eat his dinner. Some would come to the door and hold up two fingers of one hand and one finger of the other hand, and my mother would give him two biscuits and a glass of milk.

We were happy and enjoyed peace and plenty for a year. Mother's two brothers, William and Newton Nix came to enjoy it with us, and John Chisholm of Lamar county sent his step-son John Curry, with a herd of cattle to keep, and he boarded with us.

The first court was held in our home. The county was organized and the county seat was located and called Jacksboro. About that time our friendly neighbors, the Indians, disappeared, and we never saw old John anymore. One morning my brother, John, went out to the valley to bring in the horses and they were all gone. We heard of other horses being stolen by the Indians. From then on horses were missing regularly. The Indians hid on the high mountains, from which they could look down and see what the people were doing, and where the horses were, and they would come down at night and get them . But they did not stop at that . One day we received the shocking news that our neighbors, the Campbell and Mason families, had been murdered, at noon. Mrs. Campbell had dinner ready and sent her little eight-year-old girl to tell her father to come. She went through the field and found her father dead. She pulled the arrow from his body and returned to the house and found it full of Indians eating the food mother had prepared for her family. Then they took everything in the house they could use, even emptied the featherbeds and taking the ticks. They made the mother and her children walk ahead of them as they went west until Mrs. Campbell refused to go any further. Then two Indians, one in front and one behind her, thrust spears through her body, and left her dead. The children were not molested. and returned to the house where they stayed three days until found by Mr. Mason, who was on his way to his son's home, a mile away. Mr. Mason found Campbell and his wife dead, and went on to his son's and found he, too, had been murdered. A short distance from the house he found the body of his son's wife, and her little child yet alive and clinging to its dead mother's breast.

After this the people had reason to be alarmed and began to fort up. My father's place was centrally located and had the largest house, so all the neighbors came about dark, tied their horses in the front yard to the trees, the women and children slept in the house, and the men stayed in the yard, taking turns at standing guard. My father liked the country, but he did not like these conditions. The Indians often surrounded the house, giving signals to each other like night birds.

Father then built a rock house at the southeast corner of the square in Jacksboro. It was two stories high. He moved his family there and opened, a fort, a church, and a court house . Sometimes there would be a false alarm that Indians were coming, and somebody would yell, "Run to the rock house," and people would rush there for safety. In these times of danger the women and children slept upstairs and the men downstairs, some standing guard. But father was always hopeful, for he thought the Indians could be driven back and we could live in peace.

The rangers made regular scouts, and mother prepared the food for them. She filled two bushel meal sacks full of bread, tea cakes, and roast beef, to put on this pack horses to last for a long skirmish. On one of these scouts they came upon a band of Indians, all of whom got away except one old Indian. They were on the point of letting him go when they discovered a lot of scalps, some of them little children's scalps. This was too much for the rangers. They shot the old Indian and left him dead.

In revenge for the killing of the old Indian a band of about three hundred of the redskins came into the neighborhood, threatening to burn the town. There were no guns and but three or four men in the town, and the situation was desperate. Father sent Tom to inform the rangers of the presence of the Indians. Soon they surrounded the hotel, and I think some of them must have been white men, for they read the hotel sign and cursed Phenix in plain English. Suspicioning that the rangers had been sent for, the Indians soon left, and we felt greatly relieved.

After spending all of his means in trying to drive the Indians out of the country, father became discouraged Mother and the three eldest girls, Sophronia, Columbia and Mary, were worn out with cooking for rangers and people who stopped with us and mother had nervous prostration. Father sold his house for $500 and moved his family to safety in 1859. And that ended our experience with Indians on the frontier.

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