TX BIOS:  J C. McCracken
   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
   
   Wm. V. Ervin, PW; Wichita Falls, Texas
   
   Words 465
   
   Page 1 INTERVIEW WITH J. C. McCRACKEN, EARLY SETTLER, ELECTRA, TEXAS
   (Wichita County)
   
   "I was born in North Carolina. We came to Texas in [1830?]. We started
   early in October, and got to Texas the first day of January, 1860. We
   were about three months on the road. I am now ninety-one years old.
   
   "When I first saw the Wichita country, there wasn't anything here but
   buffalo, which I [hunted?].
   
   "One day my brother and I were out back of our place feeding some
   stock when a neighbor boy came riding by and told us that Indians had
   just killed his brother, John, over beyond a hill and some trees. This
   was in Montague county, where we lived then. We asked him how many
   Indians there were, and he said four or five. We hurried and got our
   horses, and my brother rode three or four miles down the creek to our
   neighbors. When he got back a bunch of people had gathered at the edge
   of some brush and trees. We went over the hill and saw the Indians and
   it looked like the whole valley was full of them. It turned out that
   there was about a hundred and fifty of them. There were not many of
   the white people, about forty, I think. The Indians came riding by
   where we were, and they were led by a renegade white man. I knew who
   he was. He had a place in that part of the country. They went on by,
   and didn't bother us because we were in the brush and it would have
   been hard for them to get at us. They captured a girl and took her
   with them. Her brother rode into them twice trying to get her, but he
   didn't. They didn't kill him, but it's a wonder they didn't. They went
   on [?], and captured a white woman and her baby. They took her baby
   from her and took it off, and one of the Indians told her, "Papoose go
   up," meaning that they had killed it. They cut her hair off close to
   her head. They turned her and the girl loose, and hadn't hurt them. It
   was supposed this band of Indians went clear into the town of
   Gainesville as the day after 00022they made their raid moccasins were
   found on the street.
   
   "The Indians were more troublesome in this part of the country after
   the Civil War than they were during the war. We formed minute men
   companies--ready to go in a minute's notice--and we would patrol about
   forty miles and meet another bunch that patrolled another forty miles
   and so on, from Red River to the Rio Grande. The company I was with
   ran on to some Comanches and had a running fight with them, and killed
   four of them, which they left and didn't get to carry off. We left the
   bodies as they were, didn't take time [to?] bury them. I passed by
   there a good while later and saw the skeletons still there.
   
   "We run down horse thieves, and brought back the horses, but not the
   men. We hung them."

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