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No. 200 LETTER FROM JAMES BOURLAND TOH. R. RUNNELS
Cook County Texas 18th Oct 1858.
To His
Excellency
HR Runnels Govr &c.
Sir Your letter of the 4th & 6th Inst together with a Commis- sion to raise a Company of Mounted Men to serve on the Fron- tier of Texas &c was recd. on yesterday morning, and I make no delay in my answer, except such as is necessary, in order to give full and reliable information, so far as could be gathered in such a short time. From what I know of my own knowledge and from reliable information, I cannot conceive of a much more pressing cause or emergency upon Your Excellency than now exists immediately upon our frontier for protection by the State, the counties of Cook, Montague, Jack, Young, Wise, Palo Pinto and other fron- tier counties have suffered from the incursions of Hostile Indians for some time and very recently their forays have been alarming in the very extreme, from the fact that they have come into the settlements in Wise County attacked a company of persons, mostly women and children, but the men being seven in number, all unarmed-the Indians succeeded in killing two men, wounding two others and much abused the helpless females, after which they, the Indians robed the waggon and houses & took their horses, they then with all the audacity imaginable rode and drove their stolen property, in the night and probably in the day time through the settlements into Cook County within twenty miles of my own residence and within twelve miles North of Gains- ville, and there took the horses belonging to the neighborhood of J & E Peerys Stock farm, killed a beef-cooked a part, and then made good their escape, they were pursued, but oweing to the delay in getting up a sufficient number of men, they were too far ahead to be overtaken, so after trailing a distance of nearly two hundred miles pursuit was abandoned. The foregoing, together with the threats made by the Co- manches, "that until the last Comanche was killed that Texas should have no peace" and they verifying their threats, as you will see by the battle fought between them and Mjr Van Dorn
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