Texas Indian Troubles

You are having a picnic with friends on Walnut Creek in Austin.

You hear a siren wailing and suddenly find an arrow sticking out of your right calf and a bullet in your hip.

You try to pull one of your friends to safety and get another arrow in your thigh. You make a run for your horse and a bullet passes through your neck. You are on the ground, conscious but paralyzed. Your attackers are upon you.

They strip you bare, except for one sock. One of them begins twisting your hair around his fingers and, with his hunting knife, removes your scalp from your skull with a sickening pop.

Your attackers leave you covered in blood and baking under the Texas sun.

That's exactly what happened to Josiah Wilbarger in 1833. He lived eleven more years. His wife made him skullcaps from her wedding dress to protect his exposed skull.

Real Events - Eye-witnesses

That is one of the forty-three true stories of Indian troubles on the Texas frontier that Hilory Bedford compiled and published in 1905.  At that time he had lived fifty-four years in Texas, most of them on the frontier. He was an eye-witness and participant in many of them. The rest he got straight from the mouths of those who were there or from their surviving kin.

The original is a truly rare book. There are only twenty-eight copies in library collections worldwide. Most collectors have never heard of it. When a copy comes to market you can expect to shell out between and $1000 and $2000 for it.

What Else is Inside?

The events in this book are almost incomprehensible to modern people. The stories are so vivid and detailed that a list of them here would not be very informative, so here is one more example:

After the raid on Parker's Fort, the survivors, eighteen men, women and children, walked barefooted and almost unclothed through briars and brambles to reach Fort Houston. It took a week and all they had to eat were two skunks and a couple turtles caught by a creek.

James Parker walked the last thirty-five miles alone to bring back help because the rest of the party was too weak to go on. He himself had not eaten in five days, as he divided his own small portion between the nursing mothers and children. He covered that thirty-five miles in eight hours and all were rescued. How in the world was he able to do it?

Here are his words:

"It is often said, 'Where there is a will there is a way.' Such is not always the case, for Napoleon had a will at Waterloo, but there was no way. Love finds a way. Those I loved were there and I found a way."

You Have to Know Yourself

This book might not be for you. It's not your typical history book. The stories are horrifying, heartbreaking, infuriating and the examples above are not the worst. Frankly, they are too much for some people.

So I want to stress that we will gladly buy it back if you decide you can't handle it. There is no time limit on that.

If you can live with that, now is the time to order.