By Aileen Fenley Baldwin

[From J. Marvin Hunter’s Frontier Times Magazine, November, 1934]

SARAH Ware Kincheloe! Her name is yet upon the lips of old settlers who linger to tell of the pioneer days of Southwest Texas, for Sarah Kincheloe was a frontier heroine, whose scarred body bore as long as she lived the evidence of 11 ugly wounds from the Indian's arrow.

Sons of the men who pioneered Uvalde County and Southwest Texas, sucking the flavor from old cob pipes or whittling away at cypress sticks in front of the tiny Utopia post office tell the story of Sarah Ware Kincheloe with a glowing glamour that passing years have thrown over the sorrows and hardships of frontier existence. And the grandchildren and great grandchildren of these pioneers listened with wide-eyed interest to the "Indian Days" of Uvalde County, when the canyon of the peaceful Sabinal River resounded to the whoop of the Apache, the Kickapoo and the Comanche.

Sarah Ware was the eldest daughter of Capt. William Ware, who founded the Waresvilie settlement in Uvalde County in 1852, the remnants of which stand today a mile below the little village of Utopia in the northeastern corner of Uvalde County. Little Sarah was a child of 11 years in 1849, when she sat with her mother in a covered wagon that journeyed from Kaufman County seeking a new home on the Nueces frontier of Texas. Sarah was born April 1, 1838, a few years after the war of the Texas Revolution, in which her father served as a captain. Capt. Ware came to Texas in 1828, in the first tide of immigration to Texas, and settled on Ware's Creek, Montgomery County, where Sarah was born.

On the journey, which ended ultimately in her father's settlement of Uvalde County, little Sarah's mother died from the hardships of the journey; so Sarah and her sister, Eliza Ann, became the little mothers of the orphaned Ware children.

In the new home on the banks of the clear, swift-sparkling stream, the Sabinal, the little Ware children played beneath the giant oaks and the shadowy cypresses, until the death of their father, Capt. William Ware, March 9, 1853, left alone in the frontier wilderness Sarah Ware with five younger sisters and a 13-year-old brother, John Ware.

But the children were not entirely isolated in this new and dangerous country, for in the months following that August day in 1852, when Capt. Ware pitched tent on the banks of the Sabinal in Uvalde County, a number of families had migrated to the Sabinal valley. With Capt. William had come in his employ a young cowboy—Robert "Bob" Kincheloe, answering the call of adventure which had led him all the way from Illinois. Bob was a member of Capt. Henry McCollough's rangers before coming to the Sabinal canyon.

Capt. Ware need not have been fearful of the fate of his motherless daughters, for the girls quickly solved the problem by marriage—for the life of a frontier settlement decreed that for every woman there must be a hunter and protector.

Too, dashing Bob Kincheloe was a gay young ranger-cowboy, and Sarah fell in love with him. On her marriage day in the summer of 1853, Sarah was but a girl of 15, but she was happy—with sparkling, steel-gray eyes and tall as the Wares were tall. Brother John, a young gentleman of 14 and head of the family, gave Sarah in marriage. A pink calico dress was imported for the occasion from San Antonio, a two-day journey away in an ox wagon.

What a gay wedding it was! Sarah shone in her fine calico dress in the midst of the common home-spun of the other women. Sarah was the second bride of the new country, and the collected settlement from the four ends of the county came for an all-day-all-night celebration.

No preacher could be obtained in this young country, so Justice White, from New Foundland, Medina County, the nearest point, came to perform the marriage ceremony.

The bride, trembling but demure in her new pink calico, sat with her newly acquired husband where the wedding feast was spread under the towering, ancient live oaks. There were wild meats—bear, deer, turkey—in savory abundance, and a real bride's cake, the first cake the little Ware children had seen since they had left Kaufman County and civilization, a time fast increasing in remoteness in a new and different land where sugar was at a premium and only a stubbed toe demanding binding in sugar and turpentine would call the cherished sack of sugar forth from its hiding place in a locked chest.

All night long the crowd danced the Virginia Reel, and when morning came the young bride and groom departed to their new home, a tiny cabin, for a honeymoon, where the logs of the cabin were invigoratingly fresh with the odor of newly chopped cypress logs and the tangy spice of the cypress sap. Showered with the good wishes of the collected settlement of Uvalde County, the bride and groom began their married life.

Life moved with the interest it has when danger makes each day interesting. Sarah Ware Kincheloe soon knew the agony of sitting alone in a frontier cabin when the cries of the screech owl and the coyote might be the birds and beasts of the field and still again might be the haunting terror of every frontier woman's life—the Indian!

As a frontier mother she bore children uncomplainingly in a sparsely settled and doctorless land, and was proud to bear them. Her first born, John, arrived in 1854, the first year of her marriage, and the little girl mother named him for her brother, John C. Ware. Holding little Johnnie in her arms on the cabin porch, she and her husband dreamed of the future, for Bob Kincheloe had visions of a future Uvalde County, free of Indians, with Robert Kincheloe its leader.

At the time of Indian raids, Sarah took her babies into the Sabinal Valley Fort above the present village of Utopia, and prayed while her husband and the men of the community trailed the marauding Indians through the Sabinal, Bandera, Nueces and Frio canyons.

In 1866, the Kincheloe's were living in a small picket house on Little Creek, a tiny tributary of the Sabinal River. Bob worked hard making the rich black soil yield produce and wealth. The children chased frogs on the Little Creek, and the baby, eight months old, tossed his legs and crawled on a patchwork quilt on the floor. Sarah's days were always full. There was much company; there were babies, always, to be tended; washing and ironing to be done; food to be cooked and served; meat to be dried and preserved; thread to be spun; cloth to be woven; socks to be knit; but still she had time to listen to the dreams of her husband. She was an attractive woman still, although her body had filled out into a buxom fullness. Sarah Ware Kincheloe was a strong and capable woman.

Sarah's nearest neighbors were the Bowlins, a family also living on Little Creek. Bowlin and Bob Kincheloe purchased a corn crop from a man at the head of the Sabinal Valley, twelve miles away. While the two men were gathering this crop, Mrs. Bowlin and her two little daughters, Anna and Ella, came to spend the night with Sarah.

All night long the dogs barked, and Sarah Kincheloe lay still in her bed with fear, with one hand clutching a long rifle, which, true frontier’s woman that she was, she knew how to use. Toward morning, the sleepless woman heard someone creep in the back door. Thinking it was perhaps the Mexican sheepherder in her husband's employ, she commanded him to leave or she would shoot to kill. The figure ran out, followed so closely by the barking hounds that he had perforce to take refuge on top of the smoke house.

Mrs. Bowlin awakened and became hysterical.

"It's Indians; it is Indians. I know, and they will kill us. My poor mother told Mr. Bowlin in her very last words to us that he was bringing her daughter out in these wilds to be killed by Indians."

Sarah calmed the hysterical woman, and day came presently.

It was Sunday, a lovely, clear Sabbath with the reds and golds of autumn reflected on the surrounding mountains that day—October 11, 1866. Mrs. Bowlin, fears quieted at last, set out for her house to tend her chores, but soon she came running madly back to Sarah, telling her that the Mexican herder was tearing up her house and that he looked not like a Mexican now, but a mad white man.

Sarah seized her gun, and set out to investigate Mrs. Bowlin's cabin. Indeed, the herder proved to be a white man, but would say nothing to Mrs. Kincheloe's commands and inquiries. Finally, thinking of her helpless children alone, she returned home. From the window of her picket house, she saw two men riding horse bareback, chasing one of her husband's best horses.

"See, mother," said little Johnnie, "they are not white men. See how they throw their legs about as they run."

Sarah watched silently as the Indians roped her husband's horse, and bided her time. To fire at a distance would be only a waste of ammunition, and chances were that the Indians would leave the family unmolested save for the thievery of the horse, which she must sacrifice, since the children's lives were at stake.

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Soon the two Indians rode towards the house evidently quite aware that only women and children were there, for they opened the yard gate and rode bravely in. Sarah blockaded the doors with her gun. Little Johnnie begged to take the gun from his mother, but she shook him away. Mrs. Bowlin was helpless with fear, but her two daughters hit upon a plan.

Clothing themselves in men's clothes, they began to curse the Indians in gruff voices. But Sarah was a Christian woman and commanded the girls to stop the cursing at once, since they stood on the very eve of death itself.

An Indian appeared in front of the house again, and Sarah determined to shoot to kill. She aimed the gun, pulled the trigger—but the gun snapped. The Indian gave a hideous scream and shouted, "No Buena!" Then the two Indians dismounted and approached the house.

Sarah commanded the children to get under the bed, placing herself between the children and the approaching Indians. There were two large doors to the house, and one was partly nailed and boarded, leaving a large opening. One of the Indian's arrows pierced Sarah's side from this opening, another lanced her arm, entering by way of a crack in the picket of the wall.

Nevertheless, Sarah Ware Kincheloe stood before that door, before her babies, attempting to fire the useless rifle, while arrow after arrow hit her shoulders and breasts, all by miracle escaping a fatal portion. Finally, weakened by the loss of blood, and with 11 arrows piercing her body, she called feebly to the trembling Mrs. Bowlin to take her rifle and fight for the babies to her last breath. Believing she was dying, Sarah sank unconscious to the floor.

When the Indians saw Sarah fall they rushed towards the room. Mrs. Bowlin stood with the gun limp in her arms in the center of the room, and the two Indians one at each door, raised their bows and simultaneously, two arrows pierced Mrs. Bowlin's heart. She sank to the floor and her daughters, Ella and Anna, crept from under the bed to their dying mother, for the prophesy of Mrs. Bowlin's mother was horribly fulfilled to the letter—the daughter was cold and dead at the hands of unmerciful savages.

The Indians, evidently fearful of the return of the men, did not tarry long. Making no attempt to kill any of the children, they pillaged the house and then swiftly rode away.

Young Johnnie crept from under the bed to his mother lying in a great pool of blood, while the little Bowlin girls wept beside their dead mother. Sarah raised her head and said:

"O, my God, the time has come for me to die."

Little Johnnie pulled the arrows one by one from his mother's body and bathed her face in camphor. Then, despite her pleadings lest he, too, be killed by Indians, he set out for help accompanied by little Anna Bowlin.

Little Betty, four years old, and her brother, Charley, crept out from under the bed to their mother, asking Sarah if she was going to die.

"I don't know, but there is little hope," replied the calm Sarah in the face of death.

Betty began to cry, and asked:

"Will you go to the Good Man if you die, mamma?"

"I hope so," answered Sarah.

"I know you will go to the Good Man if you die, mamma," comforted the weeping Betty.

The nearest neighbors lived almost three miles distant on the Sabinal River, and little Johnnie ran all the way. The neighbors were sitting at the Sunday dinner table with several other families of the canyon as their guests when the children arrived with their tale of tragedy. A messenger departed to Sarah's brother, John C. Ware, where the Rev. John L Harper, frontier Methodist evangelist, had preached that day.

"Gentlemen, I am ready," said John Ware, when he heard of his sister's trouble, and mounting his horse, he set out for Sarah's house, followed by the preacher and the congregation.

When the neighbors arrived, Mrs. Kincheloe was cold and still, and they wrapped her in a blanket, and placed her on the bed. John Ware came galloping up, and ran to his sister's bedside.

"Oh, John," she whispered, "I am all shot to pieces."

"Would to God I might have been here to save you," replied her weeping brother.

"Do not weep, John. I think I'll get well," Sarah comforted him.

The sparsely settled canyon became a chaos of excitement. Messengers sped to inform Bob Kincheloe and Bowlin of the tragedy. A posse was organized to trail the Indians and the Mexican herder, but they were never found.

Eliza Ware Fenley, Sarah's sister, arrived to nurse her sister, and Sarah looked at her and said:

"I wanted to die before you came, but now that I have seen you, I want to live."

Dressing the wounds on Sarah's body, Eliza said: "Sarah is bound to die."

"No," another woman replied, "no, she won't die. She is a Ware, and you can't kill a Ware."

In the meantime the messenger reached Bob Kincheloe and Bowlin. Bowlin was paralyzed with the news, but Bob Kincheloe mounted a horse, and rode desperately to his dying wife. When he reached the door of his house after his furious ride, He fainted on the steps. He revived and reached the bedside of his blood-covered wife, he fainted again.

When be revived, he knelt by Sarah's bed and prayed:

"Get well, Sarah, and we'll leave this cursed frontier."

But Sarah Ware Kincheloe was a frontier heroine, and she smiled through her pain.

"No, Bob," she said. "This is our place, our home. We shall not leave."

Stark death did not daunt the brave Sarah. She rose from the tragedy with the scars of 11 Indian arrows on her arms, shoulders and breasts. Cheering her husband on, she lived through the days of the Indian terror in Uvalde County. She saw the scalped head and bloody body of John Davenport, killed by Indians on the spot where the railway station now stands at Sabinal. She prayed while her husband followed Indian trails. She continued to bear children and live the life of sacrifice and labor of the frontier wife and mother. In the little town of Utopia the two-story rock store built by her husband over 50 years ago still stands, and the ruined stone walls of her home stand nearby.

Sarah's husband died Feb. 28, 1894, but she lived on to support her family as the hotel keeper of the little town of Utopia until pneumonia, not an Indian arrow, took her life after a staunch battle on Dec. 31, 1917, just as the church bells in the wooden cupolas in the churches were chiming in the new year.

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