TX BIOS:  Mrs. George W. Jones
   Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.
   
   Washington, 1994.
   
   Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
   
   This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
   
   For more information about this text and this American Memory
   collection, refer to accompanying matter.
   
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.
   
   00011
   
   FOLKLORE
   
   Wm. V. Ervin, P. W.
   
   McLennan County,
   
   District 8.
   
   No. of words, [DEL: 1170 :DEL] [8?]
   
   File 240.
   
   Page 1. Reference
   
   Consultant - Mrs. George W. Jones, 1801 Colcord Avenue, Waco, Texas.
   [???]
   
   "I was born in McLennan county in 1860, and have lived in the county
   all my life. My father was born in Missouri. He came to Texas in 1846,
   when he was a boy about fifteen years old. It was under peculiar
   circumstances that my father came to Texas. His mother, my
   grandmother, had died, and grandfather married again. My father, whose
   name was David McFadden, was plowing in the field when his older
   brother, my Uncle John McFadden, came to my father and told him that
   grandfather had married again. My father didn't want grandfather to
   marry again, he didn't like the woman; so he just took the mule from
   the plow and got on it and started for Texas without even going back
   to the house. He fell in with a family, or group of people who were
   coming to Texas, and they brought him along with him. They could see
   that he was just a boy, and I guess that is why they took him along
   with them.
   
   "When they got to Texas an army was being raised to fight Mexico, and
   my father joined it. He was large for his age, and so they let him
   join. He got down to Austin and San Antonio, but didn't get into
   Mexico.
   
   "After that war was over he finally became a Texas ranger and Indian
   fighter. He was with Bigfoot Wallace in the Indian fighting. He and
   Wallace and the men they were with were following a band of Indians in
   which was one with big feet. At least the white men often footprints
   in the trail of the Indians which were much bigger than the other
   footprints, and they thought it must be a big Indian which was making
   them. At last they caught up with the Indians and had a fight with
   them, and defeated them. During the fight my father heard Wallace
   yelling, "I've got the bigfoot Indian!" When the fight was over the
   men went and looked at Wallace's Indian, which Wallace
   
   00022had killed, and it was a big Indian with big feet. From that time
   on the men called Wallace 'Bigfoot". That is how Wallace came to be
   called Bigfoot, and not because his own feet were big, as lots of
   people think.
   
   "While we were living about twenty miles from Waco, on Hog Creek, my
   father captured the last Indian in this part of the country. It was
   long after the Indians had quit making raids down this far, although
   they still raided and stole horses and killed settlers in Comanche,
   Hamilton and Brown counties, and I always had a horror then when I was
   a little girl of those counties because of the stories of Indian
   depreciations we would hear then, and I still don't feel any desire to
   go to those counties. It was about 1865 when my father caught the
   Indian. One cold, moonlight night my father went out to the corral to
   turn loose some horses, and when he opened the gate they all ran out
   but one horse, and it stood near the barn, with its head and neck in
   the shadow of the barn. He thought it was one of his horses, and
   wondered why it didn't run out with the others. He went up to it and
   put his hand on its neck and ran his hand up along the neck toward the
   head, and felt a rope around the pony's neck. He ran his hand along
   the rope and touched the Indian, and the Indian yelled, "Indian!
   Comanche?" My father saw him then, as the Indian was standing in the
   shadow of the barn. My father grabbed him, but the Indian didn't make
   any resistance. My father searched him, and didn't find anything on
   him in the way of a weapon, not even a pocket knife. Father brought
   the Indian into the house. He was a young Indian, and he was cold and
   about half-starved. My father tried to talk to him in some Indian
   language he knew, but the Indian couldn't understand. All he could do
   was point to the west and indicate he came from that way. My father
   wanted to go and get the neighbors and all take council and see what
   ought to be done as my father thought there might be other Indians
   
   00033around who would attack the settlement. But my mother and my
   older sister and myself were scared to death, and we wouldn't let him
   stick his nose out of the house. I was just a little thing, about five
   years old, but I was sure scared. We made father wait until morning to
   go to the neighbors'. We gave the Indian something to eat, and he ate
   plenty. My father spread some quilts and blankets down before the
   fireplace, and let the Indian sleep there, and my father slept on a
   bed in the same room, and he said he didn't think the Indian moved
   from the time we went to sleep until he woke up the next morning.
   
   "The next morning father called the neighbors in, and they were afraid
   there were other Indians around, but they hadn't seen any, and the
   Indian father had caught said he was the only one. They couldn't, [?]
   much out of him but that and that he came from the west. They had no
   idea what he was doing there except that he had got lost from a
   raiding party in the country further west and had wandered down into
   our part of the country. We never did know for sure where he came
   from, and he was always a mystery to us. One of the men who came to
   our home that morning said he would take the Indian to his place and
   take care of him to work for him, and the Indian went with him, but he
   left the man after two or three years because the man wasn't kind to
   him. That was the last wild Indian ever seen or heard of in this
   country.
   
   "My father was in the Dove Creek fight, and marched from Waco with
   some of the Indian fighters. One night they marched all night. It was
   very cold weather and there was snow on the ground, and the men
   suffered a lot from the cold, especially the wounded.
   
   "My father settled here when there was hardly any Waco here, and lived
   in this county the rest of his life. I knew Neil McLennan, the man for
   whom the county was named. He was one of the finest men I ever knew.

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