In August 1866, families on the Texas frontier faced violence from multiple directions. Two attacks on the same day, hundreds of miles apart, illustrate the dangers settlers encountered in the months after the Civil War.
The better-known episode is the massacre of the Box family in Montague County, in northern Texas. James J. Box lived at the head of Elm, near the present city of Saint Jo. He was returning from a trip to eastern Texas with his wife, Mary, and their children.
The family had stopped for a week in Gainesville because of Mrs. Box's illness. A new baby was born there. When the infant was one week old, the family resumed its journey home.
James J. Box, his wife Mary, and daughters Margaret, Marzie, Ida, and the seven-day-old baby left Gainesville on August 6, 1866. That was the same day William McDougall was killed far to the southwest.
About three miles east of their home, the Box family was attacked. Accounts state that approximately 32 Indians murdered Mr. Box and took his wife and children captive.
Charlie and William Grants, along with John Loren and Zeke Hoffman, rode upon a hill to look over the country. They saw seven or eight Indians moving toward a wagon, and soon more appeared. The boys counted 32 Indians in all.
The four young men were armed only with cap-and-ball pistols, which they had already discharged at young turkeys. Loren and Hoffman were riding young ponies. They decided they were in no condition to charge such a large party and returned home to spread the news.
Cherry, accompanied by a Black man named Jack Loren and perhaps one or two others, hurried to the scene. They found where the Indians had opened the feather beds for the ticking. They also saw considerable leather on the ground that Mr. Box was bringing from eastern Texas for frontier citizens to make shoes.
The body of Mr. Box had not yet been found. After riding around the wagon three times, the citizens located him lying in the broom weeds, which were white with feathers.
When the Indians killed Mr. Box, his wife Mary and her 18-year-old daughter Margaret, 11-year-old Marzy, and 7-year-old daughter Ida fled the wagon in hysterical fright. Mrs. Box was hardly able to be out of bed, with her infant at her breast. She was tied on a wild horse, and she and her daughter started on a long journey toward northern Oklahoma or Kansas.
Mrs. Box reported that 19 Indians carried them away. Charlie Grant stated that 32 Indians were counted around the wagon. It is possible the other Indians went in a different direction.
After they had gone some distance, Mrs. Box's horse appeared fatigued and slowed down. An Indian punched the animal in the side with a spear, causing the pony to jump. Mrs. Box dropped her one-week-old baby.
She whirled her horse to pick up the child, but the Indians prevented her. They murdered the infant in a brutal manner before the eyes of its mother, who was already suffering inconceivable agony.
An account from the History of Montague County by Mrs. W. R. Porter describes more of the captives' experience. Mrs. Box, who later became the wife of Captain Brunson, told of being tied on a wild horse that was speared to make it plunge. The plunging caused her to drop her baby, and the Indians killed the child before her eyes.
The party was taken across the Red River. There were 19 Indians in the band. They refused to give Mrs. Box water, though she was so thirsty that her tongue was swollen from her mouth.
One of her daughters took off her slipper and filled it with water as they crossed a stream. She gave it to her mother, who managed to drink it before the Indians could dash it from her lips. The Indians beat the daughter almost to death with a leather cord for this act of kindness.
The Indians separated the family, putting them in different camps. The little girl, 8 years old, would cry and run after the other members of the family when she saw them. The Indians held her feet to the fire until they were blistered, so she could not follow her mother and sister.
Through the efforts of F. M. Williams, Governor J. W. Throckmorton, and others who worked through Indian agents and military authorities, plans were made to ransom Mrs. Box and her daughters. They were ransomed a few months after their capture. They had been in the hands of the Kiowas, who roamed over the Texas Panhandle, western Oklahoma, Kansas, and elsewhere.
General George Armstrong Custer also wrote about the Box family in his 1872 book, My Life on the Plains. He interviewed the mother and eldest daughter after they were ransomed from captivity.
Custer identified Satanta, Lone Wolf, and Kicking Bird of the Kiowas, and Little Raven and Yellow Bear of the Arapahos, as prominent chiefs in a council. During the council, the chiefs made extravagant promises of future good conduct.
Satanta's oratory was so effective that at the end of his address, the department commander and staff presented him with a uniform coat, sash, and hat of a major general. Within a few weeks, Satanta attacked the post where the council was held, arrayed in his new uniform. Custer wrote that Satanta had recently headed an expedition to the frontier of Texas, where among other murders was the Box massacre.
Custer wrote that the Box family consisted of a father, mother, and five children. The eldest was a girl about 18, and the youngest was a babe. The family had been visiting a neighbor's house and were returning home in the evening when Satanta and his warriors dashed upon them and surrounded the wagon.
At the first fire, the father and one of the children were killed. The horses were hastily taken from the wagon, and the mother was informed by signs that she and her four surviving children must accompany their captors. The Indians mounted their prisoners on lead horses, many of which had been stolen from settlers, and prepared to return to their village hundreds of miles north.
Before leaving the scene, the Indians scalped the father and the child who had fallen as the first victims. Custer wrote that it would have been far better had the remaining members of the family met their death in the first attack.
Custer gathered details of the family's suffering from the mother, whom he met after her release from captivity. She had lived as a prisoner in the hands of the Indians for more than a year.
Fearing pursuit by the Texans, the Indians prepared for a night march. Mrs. Box and each of the three elder children were placed on separate horses and securely bound to prevent escape in the darkness.
The mother was at first permitted to carry the youngest child, a babe of a few months, in her arms. When the baby became fretful during the night ride and began to cry, the Indians, fearing the sound might be heard by pursuers, snatched it from her arms and dashed its brains out against a tree. They threw the remains to the ground and continued their flight.
No halt was made for 24 hours, after which the march was conducted more deliberately. Each night the mother and three children were permitted to occupy one shelter, closely guarded. After several days, the war party arrived at the point where they rejoined their lodges, still a long distance from the main village near the Arkansas.
Each night the scalp of the father was hung up in the lodge occupied by the mother and children. A long and weary march over wild and desolate country brought them to the main village, where the captives found their most serious troubles were to begin.
In accordance with Indian custom, a grand assembly of the tribe took place upon the return of a successful war party. The captured horses and scalps were brought forth, followed by the usual ceremonies and a scalp dance. Then the spoils were divided.
The captives were apportioned among the various bands. One chief received the mother, another the eldest daughter, another the second daughter, a little girl of about 10, and a fourth the youngest child, a child of 3. No two members of the family were permitted to remain in the same band. Each was carried to a separate village, distant from the others by several days' march, partly to prevent escape.
Custer wrote that no pen could describe the tortures of mind and body endured by the family. They remained captives for more than a year. During that time, the eldest daughter, a beautiful girl just ripening into womanhood, was exposed to a fate infinitely more dreadful than death.
She first fell to one of the principal chiefs, who forced her to become the victim of his brutal lust. He then bartered her to another chief in return for two horses. That chief, after wearying of her, traded her to a chief of a neighboring band. In that way, the girl was passed from one captor to another, undergoing a life so brutal that Custer wondered how a young girl nurtured in civilization could have survived such degrading treatment.
The mother and second daughter fared somewhat better. The youngest, separated from her mother and sisters and thrown among people devoid of kind feeling, spent her time shedding bitter tears. This enraged the Indians. As punishment and prevention, the child was seized and the soles of her naked feet were exposed to the flames of the lodge fire until the cuticle was burned away.
When Custer saw the little girl a year afterward, her feet were still in a painful condition. The captives were reclaimed through the efforts of officers of the army and by the payment of a ransom amounting to many hundreds of dollars. Custer obtained the facts about their treatment directly from the mother and eldest daughter immediately after their release, a few months before the council with Satanta and the other chiefs.
Custer said the family was held captive for a year, but other accounts state they were rescued in October 1866. It is possible they stayed at military forts to recover after their rescue, and that was when Custer met the mother and eldest daughter and noticed the unhealed wounds on the youngest daughter Ida's feet.
Joseph Carroll McConnell wrote that Mrs. Box later married a Mr. Brunson. However, this appears to have been the oldest daughter, Margaret, who married a Mr. Brunson. They lived in Terry, Montana, for many years until she died in 1920.
The mother, Mrs. Mary Box, appears to have died in 1867. The second oldest daughter, Marsey Box, died in 1875 in Decatur, Texas, at just 22 years of age. There is little information on Ida Box, the youngest girl whose feet were burned by the Kiowas. She may have died at a young age as well, leaving only the oldest daughter, Margaret, to survive to old age from the Box family.
On the same day as the Box attack, another tragedy occurred far to the southwest in Menard County, along the San Saba River. Cattlemen in Menard County and elsewhere had rounded up about 5,000 head of cattle, herded about 10 miles east of old Fort McKavett.
When the day's work was done, William McDougal rode to his home about a mile and a half east of the post and spent the night. The next morning, he saddled his pony and started out alone toward the herd. He had gone only about a mile when several Indians charged upon him.
McDougal ran about a mile and swam the San Saba River, but was finally overtaken and killed. The Indians shortly afterward came upon Clara Schulenberg, a stepdaughter of William McDougal. Clara was returning from the garden about a quarter mile from the house.
Miss Schulenberg was almost home when the Indians reached her, her arms full of cantaloupes. She could not see very well and at first thought the Indians were cowmen. Finally she said, "Oh mother, they will get me." She ran and fell over the fence into the yard, and the Indians lanced her just as she went over the fence.
Mrs. McDougal, who had not realized her husband was slain and who was unprotected at the home, made all the disturbance possible to make the Indians think several men were in the house. She succeeded in frightening the Indians away and saved her wounded daughter from further injury.
The Indians on this raid drove away approximately 5,000 head of cattle. During this invasion, as well as others, there is reason to believe that white cattle thieves from New Mexico and elsewhere were cooperating with the Indians who stole so many cattle.
The Indians had no particular incentive to steal so much stock. John Hitson of Palo Pinto County and others sent west during the Reconstruction era discovered many Texas cattle in New Mexico. These cattle had been driven away by Indians who were no doubt hired by cattle thieves. On major raids when immense herds were captured on the San Saba, Pecos, and elsewhere, the cattle were often later found on the great western ranches of New Mexico.
It was likely the Comanches or Kickapoo Indians who killed William McDougal on the same day, August 6, 1866, far to the southwest on the San Saba River. The Texas settlers were being attacked by multiple tribes all along the western frontier during this time.