[From J. Marvin Hunter’s Frontier Times Magazine, January, 1932]

CAPTAIN J. P. WYLIE, of Dallas, former Indian fighter, remembers as though it occurred yesterday the disastrous Dove Creek Indian fight in what is now Tom Green county in 1865, one of the thrilling chapters in West Texas history. The soldiers and settlers were badly defeated in this fight.

"My parents moved from Van Buren, county, Arkansas, to Texas in 1845, the year Texas was annexed to the United States," Capt. Wylie said in describing, his early life in the Lone Star state and the events leading up to the battle of Dove Creek. "Mother often told me about the trip and the experiences of the family on the way. We came through Indian territory and crossed the Red River near Paris, then called Pin Hook, and settled in Navarro county, near the future site of Corsicana. That part of the country still was full of Indians, who were friendly and who, mother, said, took a delight in playing with me, a white papoose being a novelty to them.

"At that time all of this part of the country as as wild as it had ever been. The villages were a day's journey or farther apart, with only a settler or two between, and only here and there a bunch of horses or cattle, as wild as the herds of deer that kept them company, to animate the landscape. Dallas county had not yet been carved out of Nacogdoches county, which extended from the Trinity river far into the woods of East Texas, with Nacogdoches as the county seat. After a sojourn of a few months of the winter in 1845 in Navarro county we moved to Cherokee county and there pitched a crop, but how the crop turned out I have forgotten, if I ever knew. Whatever the success of the venture, by early fall we again took to the road, this time doubling back to Arkansas, in the same ox wagons we had come out in the year before.

"It was said in those days that every family moved from one of the old states to Texas got the blues and returned to the old home several times before they could make up their minds to stay in Texas. I do not know why father came to Texas in the first place, or why, after getting safely back to the old home, he took it into his head to return to Texas in 1856. I questioned if he had any clear idea about what he was doing himself, most of our deeper motives being peremptory orders from the unconscious. I remember many of the incidents of our second journey from Arkansas to Texas. This time we settled in Anderson county, then an old settled community, as communities went in Texas.

"We lived, I supposed, very much as the common people of Europe lived in the Middle Ages; that is, very much at home. We raised or killed everything we ate, and made our own clothes. The spinning wheel and the loom were parts of the equipment of every home, just as the victrola and radio set are of the modern household, and almost every head of a family was a shoemaker. Father made the shoes for us, and taught me the trade, or, rather, art. Since that day all the sciences have been worked out, all the machinery invented, and industry and commerce developed, and it doesn't seem so long ago either.

"When the Civil War started I was rearing to go, but father put his foot down on it. He said that if I wished to forward the Southern cause I could be of more service in making shoes for the soldiers than by rushing to the front. The upshot of it was that I took seat on the shoemaker's bench in Anderson county and pegged away on coarse footwear for the soldiers for two years. Many a man died with boots on that were my handiwork. Mr. Thane ran the government tanyard that made the leather for us.

"In 1863 father gave his consent for me to enlist in the frontier service. When the Indians found that the men had all gone to the war they began to raid, murder and steal all along the border, and it became necessary to throw out a line of defence. I joined Company A, under Captain Cook, and went to Camp San Saba, whence we were before long transferred to Camp Colorado, in Coleman county, where with Company B, we formed a battalion, under Captain Fossett and Captain Tolton. On New Year's Day, 1865, word came down the line that a large body of Indians had crossed Red River into Texas, at a point some distance west of Gainesville, and were ravaging the country as they came.

"With a band of Tonkawa Indians to help us find the invaders, our battalion of 168 men was soon on the move. The Tonkawas could ride at full speed along a trail, not a vestige of which was apparent to the highly civilized white man. The Indians were following an old Spanish route across the state, but I do not know what it was called. When we reached this highway a few days later we found that the Indians had already passed, and were heading south or southwest. They appeared to be moving in two bodies, that is, they would camp on the trail every night and separate in the morning, one taking one side of the trail and the other the other, no doubt for hunting purposes. Lieutenant Mulkey and Private Mart Chilters, who had the best horses in the battalion, were detailed to go ahead as scouts. Just as we had halted for our noon rest on the fourth day our scouts came in with the report that the Indians were encamped on Dove Creek, a tributary of the Concha River, about 35 miles lower down the trail, in territory afterward placed in Tom Green county. At the same time a courier from the other direction arrived with the information that a body of 300 settlers, called militia, in pursuit of the Indians, were coming down the trail fifteen miles behind us.

"In the afternoon we broke camp and marched until daylight, and called a halt on Spring Creek to wait for the military to come up. In the meantime, our spies had reported that the Indians had hoisted their tepees between a mountain and the creek, on the opposite side from us, that there was a wood with a dense undergrowth on our side and that the horses of the Indians were grazing on a prairie which extended back from the creek at the end of the mountain.

"The Indian village was quiet as Sunday. Save for a few bucks who kept a lazy half an eye on the horses, the entire population seemed to be sleeping. It seemed, and afterward was demonstrated, that they were not expecting trouble. The plan of battle was simple. The militia appointed every fifth man to hold five horses, while the rest crept into the thicket across the creek from the camp. The business of our battalion was to rush between the camp and the grazing horses of the Indians and having cut off and secured the horses, to attack the village from that quarter. We thought we were getting on like a house afire. The first part of our task was easy. We took the Indians herding the horses completely by surprise, shooting them down as we charged. At this juncture an old Indian bearing a white flag, and accompanied by two young Indians, was seen coming from the village. In as good English as any of us could speak, he asked for our commander. He explained that the Indians had killed no white people and had not stolen or destroyed any property, but that they had against their will been armed and equipped by the Federal government to fight against the South, and that they had taken advantage of a permit to leave the reservation to hunt buffaloes in the Panhandle, to make their way into Mexico, and thus keep out of a war that did not concern them. And added that if our commander would grant a parley, the chief would explain to his entire satisfaction.

"Before Captain Fossett, who was slow of speech, could frame a reply, a buck private named Bedford, whose gift of ventriloquism had made him conspicuous among us, said: "Captain you are not taking any prisoners, are you?" and without waiting for an answer he, in defiance of all the rules of civilized warfare, ups with his musket and shoots the Indian through the chest. We held the two young Indians, who appeared to be 18 or 20 years old. By that time the militia had opened up on the village and the battle was on in full swing.

"Having accomplished our mission, our men did not see why they should not be in the fight and about half of our command, including myself,throwing all discipline to the dogs, turned back to join the militia. At that moment men began to fall off their horses all around me, among them and Indian fighter and crack shot named Brown.; my cousin, Louis Wylie, and two other privates, Bailey and Tarver. As we crossed the creek under a withering fire we saw the militia following back to a ridge beyond the thicket, the thicket having grown too hot for them. We ran, too, to keep from being cut off. But before the militia could form they found it this time panic-stricken. Captain Fossett rode among them pleading and threatening, and telling them what a disgrace it was to run from Indians. In the midst of his wild harangue, the captain's horse was shot from under him. He then commanded some of his best mounted men to ride ahead, draw a line and shoot any and every man who attempted to cross it. By this means he rallied the men and ordered a charge on the Indians. The Indians retreated to the thicket from which they had so lately ousted the militia.

"Then we slowly withdrew, the Indians making no attempt to follow us. We fell back to Spring Creek, where we had camped the preceding night, and where we had left our supplies, to find that the militia had eaten everything we had. We left many dead and a number of wounded on the field and saved between forty and fifty wounded, whom we placed on litter. Captain Fossett dispatched a detail of men to the settlements to ask for beeves and the militia and soldiers all mixed up set out on the retreat. A fierce norther began to whistle and the snow began to fall. It turned so cold that we made for a clump of timber and began to build fires, and there began to build fires, and there, hungry, half frozen and momentarily expecting the war whoop, we passed a horrible night.

"In the night a soldier who had got cut off from us during the fight, straggled into camp. He said he secreted himself in the thicket near the Indian village, and that he saw the Indians go over the field and kill all the wounded men we had been unable to bring away and he saw and heard the chief make a spirited harangue to the tribe. He waited until after dark and then stole out. The two young Indians we had captured took advantage of our confusion to make their escape and to recover most of the horses we had taken from them. But the Tonkawas we had with us who took no hand in the fight, managed to get away with about forty head of horses while we were fighting and running. And these came in very handy, as many of our horses had been killed, captured or crippled.

"We resumed the retreat early next morning. The snow was ten inches deep on a level, and in many places where it had drifted, we for miles waded through it up to our saddle skirts, and it was still snowing and bitterly cold. We spread out over a wide front, every man for himself, but in general looking to an old frontiersman named Sharp, by whose side I rode, and the Tonkawas, who went in front, to lead the way. Our men fled in wild rout, constantly looking back to see if the Indians were coming. It was a reproduction in the small of Napoleon 's classic skedaddle out of Russia.

"We had bread enough to issue each man a thin slice once a day for two days. Then we waded through the snow for three days without anything to eat, some of our wounded men dying every day. On the sixth day we came across the carcass of an old buffalo frozen in the snow. Without considering whether he had been killed or had died a natural death, each man as he came up carved him out a slice of meat and carried it along for his evening meal. Being in front I got a choice cut. But before night fell we were thrown into greater panic than ever, by the report that the Indians had fallen on our rear. Captain Tolton, whose mount had been killed, asked Sharp for his horse while he made an effort to rally the men for fight. At first Sharp refused to give up his horse, but the captain demanded it, and Sharp at last yielded.

"Tolton rode everywhere, entreating, commanding and shaming, but his eloquence had no other effect than to make the men run the faster. Finally, he asked for volunteers. Probably one-fourth of the men followed him.

"But instead of meeting Indians, our brave band encountered the detail we had sent to the settlements, following us with a herd of beeves. Then there was rejoicing. We threw to the wolves the buffalo meat we meant to have for our evening meal, and ate fresh beef in place of it.

"On the seventh day we reached the Colorado river. We made a detail of soldiers, who, provided with spades and grubbing hoes, went back to bury the dead. The burials were on the fourteenth day after the fight. The Indians had taken no scalps. The detail reported that the indications were that the Indians broke camp the night following the battle.

"I heard afterward that the Indians were Kickapoos, and that after the Federal government had armed them to fight against the South, it gave them a permit to go to the Panhandle of Texas to lay in a winter's supply of buffalo meat so that the government would not have to feed them, and that the Indians, not wishing to take part in the war, had availed themselves of the situation to make their escape into Mexico. They killed no settlers and stole no property on the way, and only fought us because they were obliged to do so. In the fight we had 468 men . The Indians had between 1,000 and 1,200 warriors. They were better armed than we were and individually much more effective fighters. If they had been so minded the Indians could easily have given chase and secured the scalp of the last one of us."