#OTD in 1800 Texas Ranger Lt. Thomas I. Smith was born in Virginia. Along with Ranger Captain Samuel Highsmith, Smith attacked and killed a number of peaceful Caddo and Wichita people in spring 1848, including children and young adults.
By 1848 US land surveyors and settlers were entering the Brazos River area in increasing numbers, often protected by Rangers. But this land was the ancestral territory of Indigenous peoples, including the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. Map by Margaret Pearce:
Other nations, like the Caddo, had retreated to this area as white settlers forced them out of their homelands. The TX Legislature had also recognized the land as Indian Country, or land legally reserved for Indigenous use.
The surveyors and settlers—and Capt. Highsmith—didn’t care. In April Highsmith and his men found a Caddo and Wichita hunting party camping for the night. They attacked without provocation, killed 25 men & boys, and made off with meat, horses, & hides.
The lone survivor reported the attack to the local Indian Agent, who called it a “massacre.” The hunters came from chief Keckikaroqua’s village, which had pursued peace with Texas since 1843. It seems Keckikaroqua himself was killed in the attack.
The murder of most of the community’s men broke up the village, but sometime later others from it ambushed and killed three surveyors. Lt. Thomas Smith’s company set off to kill these attackers. Instead they found an unrelated band of Wichita and Caddo hunters. Smith and his Rangers fired on the camp and killed 24 people in a few minutes. Not a single Ranger was hurt. On their way back to camp, Smith’s Rangers spotted a 16-year-old Caddo boy. They chased him down and fired on him, shooting him repeatedly and shattering his skull. Then they recognized him as someone who’d hunted for them the previous winter.
Like the hunters Highsmith had killed, the young man came from a peaceful town. Neighbors offered the town’s leader, the powerful and widely respected Caddo chief José María $500 in gifts and promised to get the Rangers tried in court. The trial likely never happened but the War Department investigated and concluded that Highsmith, Smith, and their Rangers’ actions “would seem too severe if not unauthorized.”
As of March 2023, @TxStHistAssoc’s entry on Smith doesn’t mention these attacks. Instead it trumpets his work negotiating the Treaty of Tehuacana Creek in 1845 and defending against “Indian raids” during the Mexican-American War.
Highsmith’s entry mentions a “victory over the Wacos” in 1848 in which Highsmith “is said to have personally killed Chief Big Water.” The Waco are part of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.
This account echoes the facts of Highsmith’s massacre and likely describes the same event—but in a way that legitimizes it. The tone and framing of these entries demonstrate how Ranger violence against Native peoples can get written out of historical accounts.
The map in tweet two is by Margaret Pearce in the @TexasObserver. Read the full article here: https://www.texasobserver.org/mapping-indigenous-communities-of-texas-wichita-and-affiliated-tribes-kirikiris/
The quotes and text images in this thread come from Gary Anderson’s The Conquest of Texas. https://www.oupress.com/9780806136981/the-conquest-of-texas/
This thread is a part of the #OTD in Ranger history campaign that @Refusing2Forget is running this year. Follow this twitter handle or https://refusingtoforget.org/ranger-bicentennial-project/…, and visit our website https://refusingtoforget.org to learn more.
Refusing to Forget members are @ccarmonawriter @carmona2208 @acerift @soniahistoria @BenjaminHJohns1 @LeahLochoa @MonicaMnzMtz and @Alacranita, another co-founder is @GonzalesT956
@emmpask @sdcroll @HistoryBrian @LorienTinuviel @hangryhistorian, @ddsanchez432!, @elprofeml, and @littlejohnjeff are other scholars working on this project.
