If you’re headed to/from Arlington today, BE CAREFUL but I-35 looks okay this morning barring further precipitation. A lot of OBs driving through Temple probably don't realize one of the big Indian fights in Texas history took place around the creek just west of the highway, behind what is now the Best Western and Texas Roadhouse restaurant. The battle was fought 186 years ago on May 26, 1839 between about 45 rangers commanded by Capt. John Bird and a couple of hundred Kickapoos and Comaches led by a chief named Buffalo Hump. Both Bird and the chief were killed in the battle and the creek was later named Bird Creek in the commander's honor.
My mom used to take me and some friends to the site to hunt for arrowheads when we were kids. It's all built up now and hardly anyone knows what happened there. I found this account of the battle in John Henry Brown's ~1895 book Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas that reads right out of something like Lonesome Dove and I think OBs so inclined will enjoy reading it. This picks up with Bird and his men chasing a small group of Indians across the prairie, then suddenly realizing they'd ridden into a trap, à la Custer:
My mom used to take me and some friends to the site to hunt for arrowheads when we were kids. It's all built up now and hardly anyone knows what happened there. I found this account of the battle in John Henry Brown's ~1895 book Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas that reads right out of something like Lonesome Dove and I think OBs so inclined will enjoy reading it. This picks up with Bird and his men chasing a small group of Indians across the prairie, then suddenly realizing they'd ridden into a trap, à la Custer:
The intrepid Weaver directed Capt. Bird's attention to a ravine two hundred yards distant and at the base of the hill, as an advantageous position. Bird, preserving the utmost composure amid the shower of bullets and arrows, ordered his men to dismount, and leading their horses in solid column, to cut their way down to the position named.
Cutting their way as best they could, they reached the head of the little ravine and made a lodgment for both men and horses, but a man named H.M.C. Hall, who had persisted in remaining on his horse, was mortally wounded in dismounting on the bank. This ravine was in the open prairie with a ridge gradually ascending from its head and on either side, reaching the principal elevations at from two hundred and fifty to three hundred yards. For about eighty yards the ravine had washed out into a channel, and then expanded into a flat surface. Such localities are common in the rolling prairies of Texas. The party having thus secured this, the only defensible point within their reach, the enemy collected to the number of about six hundred on the ridge, stripped for battle and hoisted a beautiful flag of blue and red, perhaps the trophy of some precious victory.
Sounding a whistle they mounted and at a gentle and beautifully regular gallop in single file, they commenced encircling Bird and his little band, using their shields with great dexterity. Passing round the head of the ravine then turning in front of the Texian line, at about thirty yards — a trial always the most critical to men attacked by superior numbers, and one, too, that created among Bird's men a death-like silence and doubtless tested every nerve — the leading chief saluted them with: "How do you do? How do you do?" repeated by a number of his followers. At that moment, says one of the party, my heart rose to my throat and I felt like I could outrun a race-horse and I thought all the rest felt just as I did. But, just as the chief had repeated the salutation the third time, William Winkler, a Dutchman, presented his rifle with as much self-composure as if he had been shooting a beef, at the same time responding: " I dosh tolerably well; how dosh you do, God tarn you! " He fired, and as the chief fell, he continued: "Now, how dosh you do, you tam red rascal ! " Not another word had been uttered up to that moment, but the daredevil impromptu of the iron-nerved Winkler operated as an electric battery, and our men opened on the enemy with loud and defiant hurrahs — the spell was broken, and not a man among them but felt himself a hero. Their first fire, however, from the intensity of the ordeal, did little execution, and in the charge, Thomas Gay fell dead in the ditch, from a rifle ball.
Recoiling under the fire, the Indians again formed on the hill and remained about twenty minutes, when a second charge was made in the same order, but in which they made a complete circuit around the Texians dealing a heavy fire among them. But the nerves of the inspirited defenders had now become steady and their aim was unerring — they brought a goodly number of their assailants to the ground. They paid bitterly for it, however, in the loss of the fearless Weaver, who received a death ball in the head, and of Jesse E. Nash, who was killed by an arrow, while Lieut. Allen and George W. Hensell were severely wounded and disabled; and as the enemy fell back a second time, Capt. Bird jumped on to the bank to encourage his men; but only to close his career on earth. He was shot through the heart with an arrow by an Indian at the extraordinary distance of two hundred yards — the best arrow shot known in the annals of Indian warfare, and one that would seem incredible to those who are not familiar with their skill in shooting by elevation.
