TX BIOS:  Mrs. M. E. Quisenberry
   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
   
   Major, Lettie, PW; Wichita Falls, Texas
   
   Words 680
   
   Page 1 [?]
   
   INDIAN ATROCITIES AND WILD FRONTIER OF 1861-65 RECALLED BY WICHITAN,
   Copied from Wichita Daily Times, Sept. 18, 1938.
   
   Tales of Indian atrocities, tales to stiffen the nape of your neck,
   are rarely told of Wichita County, but just such wild frontier
   experiences are the earliest childhood memories of Mrs. M. E.
   Quisenberry, 1009 Eighth.
   
   Wichita, Clay and Montague counties from 1861 to 1865 were strategic
   outpost against Indian attacks on the unprotected
   settlements--unprotected because the fighting men were enlisted in the
   great civil struggle.
   
   "There were seven families of us in Wichita County at the close of the
   Civil War at a camp called Red River Station, "Mrs. Quisenberry said.
   "The station, about half a mile from the river, was immediately
   abandoned, and the whole settlement moved into the more civilized
   territory of Collin county.
   
   "My father, William Gabriel, and six other soldiers formed the river
   camp. Then there were other small companies in Montague and Clay," she
   continued. "The names of the others are kind of vague. There were Mr.
   Sparks, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Roberts and Mack Bowen."
   
   Mack Bowen's name comes easily to her, because the horror of his death
   has never left her.
   
   "Mr. Bowen was riding back to the station after scouting around when a
   part of Indians sighted him," she said. "They spread out and headed
   him off. He whipped up his horse to a gallop, but 00022they knew what
   they were doing. They crowded him, horse and all, off a 30-foot bluff.
   
   "The fall didn't kill him, so the savages shot him with 27 arrows and
   musket balls," she continued. "They slid off their horses and down the
   banks to scalp him. When my father and the others found him, they been
   alive even after he'd been scalped, by the bloody grass he clutched in
   his hands he'd pulled up the grass in his agony and rubbed it across
   his head."
   
   After that, the soldiers tried another treaty with the Inians. During
   a peace Pow-wow, one of the soldiers spotted the new suit of clothes
   Bowen's wife had made for him and he'd worn on the day of his death.
   The brave who wore Bowen's clothes completed the costume with Bowen's
   scalp.
   
   "The Indians would promise to be good, but come first full moon when
   it was light, and they'd sneak into camp and steal the soldier's
   horses and cattle," she said.
   
   "Shortly after Bowen's death, a soldier named Snodgrass was killed by
   the Indians.
   
   "I never will forget that because his wife rolled around in the yard
   and yelled and tore her hair out, " Mrs. Quisenberry said. "She was
   real young and couldn't stand this country."
   
   That is hardly surprising when you hear Mrs. Quisenberry's
   description. "There was plenty of wild game. The soldiers' families
   had their cows, and that meant plenty of milk and butter. But bread
   was a luxury. The nearest flour mill was in Collin county. 00033"And
   when you went from here to Collin county by ox team, you had a right
   smart trip on your hands, "she declared.
   
   She remembers distinctly that there were all kinds of wild "Varmints,"
   turkeys, buffalo and wild cattle. Often the soldiers would catch the
   wild calves and turn them into pens with their own stock.
   
   Several times the soldiers tried to build an earthen rampart behind
   which the women could barricade themselves when the men were out
   scouting. The project was never completed.
   
   "Some farmer probably came across that short earth wall about 10 years
   later and wondered if some Indian had tried to build a dirt house."
   she said.
   
   Mrs. Quisenberry returned to Wichita county last year making her home
   with her daughter, Mrs. Katherine Saving, 1009 Eighth. Since 1865 she
   had lived in Collin and Cook counties.
   
   "It was funny, but as long as we lived in this county with the
   excitement and all I wasn't afraid," she smiled. "But after we moved
   to the safety of Collin county, the sight of a man in a spotted
   beef-hide shirt the Indians used spotted beef hides for shields used
   to send me screaming to the farm house."

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