Indian Raid on Elm Creek, CSA

The Handbook of Texas counts several hundred Kiowa and Comanche (Numunuu) raiders in the Elm Creek valley northwest of Fort Belknap. At Elizabeth Ann FitzPatrick's household they killed her daughter, Mildred Susanna Carter Durkin, and took Mrs. FitzPatrick, her son and two granddaughters captive. Upstream, Dr. Thomas Wilson, Thomas Hamby and his son Thornton, a Confederate soldier, warned neighbors, then defended families in George Bragg's cabin; Wilson was killed and Bragg and the elder Hamby were wounded. The raiders withdrew on hearing a company of Col. James G. Bourland's Border Regiment, whose pursuit rode into an ambush.

What the plaque says

Indian troubles continually plagued the Texas frontier in the Civil War, with great loss in lives and property. One of the most serious raids occurred near here on Oct. 13, 1864, at Fitzpatrick Ranch. Comanches killed seven ranch people and five Confederate soldiers. Six women and children were kidnapped. 10,000 cattle were stolen. Brit Johnson, Negro slave who that day lost his whole family, later "joined" the Comanches, got their confidence, and freed his people . Later Indians punished him with mutilation and death. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Belknap — 7.0 mi
  The 1851 northern anchor of the first Texas frontier forts, on the Brazos below Newcastle, a Butterfield stop and the post beside the Brazos Reservation until its people were driven out in 1859.
• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — 16 mi
  Graham's 1936 Art Moderne post office, with a New Deal mural by Alexandre Hogue inside, now the free museum of Young County in the town where the Texas cattle raisers first organized.
• Fort Griffin State Historic Site — 28 mi
  The ruins of an 1867 cavalry post on a plateau above the Clear Fork of the Brazos, judged unfit for habitation and used nine more years, now home to the official state longhorn herd.

More markers nearby

• Proffitt Cemetery — 0.5 mi
• Joseph Alfred Woolfolk — 5.2 mi
• Two Miles Southwest to Fort Belknap — 6.7 mi
• Tonkawa Scouts, C.S.A. — 7.0 mi