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TEXAS INDIAN PAPERS, 1825-1843
No. 105 STATEMENT OF J. G. JOWETT IN RELATION TO THE DIFFICULTIES BETWEEN THE INDIANS OF THE UNITED STATES, AND THE CITIZENS OF TEXAS.- [May 7, 1842] "The party of Texians who crossed Red River, above the mouth of the Washita alluded to by Jas. Wolf, Commissioner of foe Chickasaw, in his communication to A. M. M. Upshaw, Chickasaw agent, did not number more than twenty eight, or thirty men according to the Best of my information headed by Col Wm. G. Cooke, the object of that expedition, was to inter- cept a party of Cherokee Indians, reported to be headed by a white Citizen of the United States, who was said to be a trading party carrying forty packs of ammunition to the hostile Indians upon the Brazos in this Republic. The Texians went up Red River a hundred and fifty miles above the mouth of the Washita upon the north side of said River, with the intention of inter- cepting and preventing said Indians from crossing into Texas and had no other intention. The second party spoken of in the com- munication, above alluded to, consisted of about eight Texians, who did cross, Red River in pursuit of a party of Coushatta In- dians who had been stealing, plundering, and killing upon the Texas side of Red River. The party was under the Command of Capt Joseph Sowell, and coming upon an encampment, of said Indians whose equipments showed them to be a stealing party, they did fire upon them and returned home without in- terrupting any other Indians. The said Capt Sowell, who had the last mentioned party, had since been killed by a party of Inrlhns in his horse lot. The Indians who killed him were steal- ing horses from his lot when he came up, and was by them killed and they have since been tracked to where they crossed over Red River into the United States. Depredations are continually being made by Indians upon the property of our citizens, and not unfrequently are the citizens themselves murdered, and in almost every ·instance have these marauding parties, been tracked across Red River, among the United States Indians, and in one instance we have followed them as far as the Cherokee nation upon the Arkansas River, and found horses that had
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