Volume 005 Number 1.

“A short time before the fight with the Carankawaes, three men came over the raft from Matagorda, having their boat there in waiting to carry their purchases up the river. Their names were Alley, Loy, and Clark. They were attacked not far from the mouth of Skull creek. Alley and Loy were killed, but Clark, having concealed himself in the cane brake, escaped. The evening previous to the fight a man by the name of Robert Brotherton had been wounded in the back by the Indians, which was the immediate cause of pursuit. A man by the name of Strickland and I went out as scouts to find their whereabouts. My ear first caught a sound that was rather unusual. `Stop Strickland,' said I after listening, but he remarked that it was only the thumping of wild turkeys. `No,' said I, `it is the beating of bamboo root for bread.' Still Strickland adhered to his first opinion; but when a child cried he believed me then.

“At once we returned to our company, which was commanded by Mr. Kuykendall and numbered about twenty-two men. We made our way to the bottom, got between the creek and the Indians, and surprised them, driving them out into the prairie. Twenty-three were left dead, without the loss of any of the whites. Clark heard the firing and afterwards, wounded as he was, made his way to our camp. [Yoakum and John Henry Brown both write the name Brotherton as given above; but the carefully ascertained list of the Old Three Hundred as given by Professor Bugbee, Quarterly, I, 110 ff., contains the name Robert Brotherington, who was no doubt the same person. The form given by Professor Bugbee must be correct, since it was copied from the signature of the man himself.—Editor Quarterly.]

“The Carankawaes were a tribe of large, sluggish Indians, who fed mostly on fish and alligators, and occasionally, by way of feast, on human flesh. They went always without moccasins, striding through briars unharmed, making such tracks as would hardly be attributable to a human being. Each man was required to have a bow the length of himself. The fight was an entire surprise. We all felt it was an act of justice and of self-preservation. We were too weak to furnish food for Carankawaes, and had to be let alone to get bread for ourselves. Ungainly and repugnant, their cannibalism being beyond question, they were obnoxious to the whites, whose patience resisted with difficulty their frequent attacks upon the scanty population of the colonies, and when it passed endurance they went to their chastisement with alacrity.

“This was the first fight with the Indians in Austin's colony.”