TEXAS INDIAN PAPERS, 1860-1916
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that you are doing and have been doing all you can for us, but before you can give us relief If we lay still our county will be depopilated, we are trying now to organise companies for our protection till the state can come to our relief, do hasten it Gen. Before we are entirely ruined. It is generally believed tbat Gainsville will be the next point of attack,-_and you are aware how hard it is to organise troops without state or national au- thority; Influential and welthy citizens express backwardness in this matter and poor young men who have no interest here do not feel inclined to defend men and their property who will not defend themselvs, therefore we would ernestly solicit you to hasten us state protection before we are entirely broken up and ruined. I now wish to bring before you, and to your immediate con- sideration facts poten[t] with meaning to us as a people, and for confermation of which you can find ample testimony, Rob- ert Wolsey, a respectable citizen of our county has just reached home from Fort Arbuckle, while there the Comanche Cheif reached home for a visit to the camps of Those Indians who are now depredating upon us, they are camped some 3 or 4 hundred miles N.W. of Arbuckle on the Arkansas River, he says that the stock they have round them is immence stolen from this frontier, they have a depot of trade established with Kansas, they furnish them with arms and amunition etc getting their stock for little or nothing and still no doubt incouraging them to depradate upon us. Could not this thing be broken up by the President of the U.S. can you not bring these matters be- fore him immediately for unless this trafic is broken up with Kansas we will always be troubled on this frontier. Mr Wolsey further States that the rade which carried off Boxs family had reached their camps and were proffering to return them to Texas or to a half way point some where, for their equivalent in Specie, for further proof of the locality of these savages and their carrying on trade with Kansas is veryfied in the case of a citizen of Jacksboro in Jack County who has just returned from their camp with a half dozen or more purchased captivs, he penetrated to their camp from the state of Kansas, he says that they are well prepared for war and are very numerous, that no less than 15 hundred or 2 thousand men well armed would have any business of undertaking campeign in to their country for the purpos of putting an end to them, this ought to be done if it could be, for while they are allowed to remain in their
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