PACKSADDLE MOUNTAIN FIGHT. The Packsaddle Mountain fight occurred on Packsaddle Mountain in Llano County on August 5, 1873. A band of more than twenty-one Indians, reputedly Apaches, had come down the South Llano River raiding and stealing horses along Beaver Creek and Legion Valley. On August 4, James R. Moss collected his two brothers (Stephen B. and W. B. Moss), as well as E. D. Harrington, Eli Loyd, Arch Martin, Pink Ayres, and Robert Brown, and followed the Indians for twenty-five miles. The group overtook them on top of the mountain, where they had 300 or 400 pounds of beef laid out on the rocks. In the fight three Indians were killed and four whites were wounded. After the Indians retreated, the whites rode to the John B. Duncan ranch, where Dr. C. C. Smith from Llano gave them medical attention. This was the last Indian fight in the county, which had been the scene of Indian raids for at least a decade. Two markers commemorate the fight: a granite plaque placed at the battle site on August 5, 1938, by descendants of the participants, and a roadside marker ten miles from Llano, placed by the Llano County Historical Committee during the Texas Centennial activities of 1936.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Austin American-Statesman, July 1, 1936. Hazel Oatman Bowman, "Indian Battle of Packsaddle Mountain," Cattleman, January 1944. J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas (Austin: Hutchings, 1889; rpt., Austin: State House, 1985).
