Sloan-Journey Expedition of 1838

The fullest account is a pioneer's recollection, written by Judge J. P. Simpson of Fannin County and reprinted in Wilbarger's Indian Depredations in Texas. Simpson describes two companies of forty men setting out after horses were stolen, a night alarm that turned out to be a slaughtered steer's paunch, and a three-day march toward a village on the Trinity. He says they braced for hundreds of warriors but found only a camp, killed the Native people there, took scalps and recovered the stolen horses. On their return they learned that Indians had killed a neighbor, William Washburn.

What the plaque says

Sloan-Journey Expedition of 1838 In the spring of 1838, Captains Robert Sloan and Nathaniel T. Journey led a group of about 90 northeast Texas frontiersmen on a punitive expedition against the Indians who had raided their homes in present-day Fannin County. The trail led them to the vicinity of present-day Euless and Arlington, where they attacked a small Indian village, killed several Indians, and recovered a few horses. The Sloan-Journey expedition is among the first known Anglo-American activities in what is now Tarrant County that helped to open north Texas to white settlement. Supplemental: This marker was relocated to River Legacy Parks in 2003. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 13 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 14 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 14 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 16 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.

More markers nearby

• Site of Bird's Fort — steps away
• Site of Mosier Valley School — 1.9 mi
• Saint John Missionary Baptist Church — 2.0 mi
• Cable Tool Rig — 2.7 mi