John C. Duvall - The Adventures of Big-Foot Wallace: The Texas Ranger and Hunter

BIG FOOT WALLACE.Frontispiece.

First published 1871
F IRST S KYHORSE PUBLISHING EDITION 2015

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Rain Saukas

Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-734-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-852-6

Printed in the United States of America

T HE writer of this little book is well aware that it will not stand the test of criticism as a literary production. A frontiersman himself, his opportunities for acquiring information, and for supplying the deficiencies of a rather limited education, have of course been few and far between; and therefore it cannot be reasonably expected that he could make a book under such circumstances which would not be sadly defective as to style and composition. However, it can justly lay claim to at least one merit , not often found in similar publicationsit is not a compilation of imaginary scenes and incidents, concocted in the brain of one who never was beyond the sound of a dinner-bell in his life, but a plain, unvarnished story of the scapes and scrapes of Big-Foot Wallace, the Texas Ranger and Hunter, written out from notes furnished by himself, and told, as well as my memory serves me, in his own language.

Big-Foot Wallace is better known throughout Texas, as an Indian-fighter, hunter, and ranger, than any one, perhaps, now living in the State; which is saying a good deal, when the great number who have acquired more or less notoriety in that way is taken into consideration. Few men now living, I am confident, have witnessed as many stirring incidents, had more hair-breadth escapes, or gone through more of the hardships and perils of a border life. He has been a participant in almost every fight, foray, and scrimmage with the Mexicans and Indians that has taken place in Texas since he first landed on her shores in 1836.

Pioneers, or frontiersmen, are a class of men peculiar to our country, and seem to have been designed especially to meet the exigencies of the occasion. With their iron nerves, great powers of endurance, and indomitable go-a-headativeness, they have been essentially useful in clearing the way through the wilderness from such obstacles as would have been perhaps insurmountable to those coming after them. Their mission has been very nearly accomplished. Like the flatboat-men of the Mississippi, who have entirely disappeared as a class since the introduction of steamboats on that river and its tributaries, their numbers are steadily decreasing before the extension of railroads and the area of civilization. Only here and there one is still found in our midst, whom disease, wounds, or old age have rendered incapable of further contests with the Indians and other denizens of the forests and plains, and of enduring the hardships and exposure of a life in the wilderness. As a class, frontiersmen are observant and knowing in all that pertains to their peculiar mode of life, and as deeply versed in all the mysteries of woodcraft as the wily savage himself; but they are guileless and unsuspicious as a child, and whenever they come in conflict with the shrewd, calculating man of business, they are as helpless as a stranded whale. For this reason, they seldom accumulate property, and those who follow after them generally reap the reward of all their perils, toils, and hardships

Wallace is no exception to this rule. The best days of his life have been freely given to the service of his country; and now that years have dimmed the fire of his eye, and lessened the vigor of his limbsnow that he is no longer able to follow the buffalo to their distant grazing-grounds, he calls upon a generous public to aid him by patronizing his little book.

T HE A UTHOR .

W ILLIAM A. WALLACE was born in Lexington, Rockbridge, County, Virginia, in the year 1816. He went to Texas in 1836, a few months after the battle of San Jacinto, for the purpose, he says of taking pay out of the Mexicans for the murder of his brother and his cousin, Major Wallace, who both fell at Fannins Massacre. He says he believes accounts with them are now about square.

He landed first at Galveston, which consisted then of six groceries and an old stranded hulk of a steamboat, used as a hotel, and for a berth in which he paid at the rate of three dollars per day. From Galveston, Wallace went on to La Grange, then a frontier village, where he resided until the spring of 1839, when he moved up to Austin, just before the seat of government was established at that place. He remained at Austin until the spring of 1840, when finding that the country was settling up around him too fast to suit his notions, he went over to San Antonio, where he resided until he entered the service.

He was at the battle of the Salado, in the fall of 1842, when General Woll came in and captured San Antonio. The fight began about eleven oclock in the day, and lasted until night. General Woll had fourteen hundred men, and the Texans one hundred and ninety-seven, under Caldwell, (commonly known as Old Paint.) Between eighty and one hundred Mexicans were killed, while the Texans lost only one man, (Jett.) Forty men, however, from La Grange, under Captain Dawson, who were endeavoring to form a junction with them, were surrounded and captured by the Mexicans, who massacred them all as soon as they had surrendered their arms.

In the fall of 1842, he volunteered in the Mier Expedition, an account of which appears in this volume. After his return from Mexico, he joined Colonel Jack Hayss Ranging Company, the first ever regularly enlisted in the service of the old Republic, and was with it in many of those desperate encounters with the Comanches and other Indians, in which Hays, Walker, McCulloch, and Chevalier gained their reputation as successful Indian-fighters.

When the Mexican war broke out in 1846, Wallace joined Colonel Hayss regiment of mounted volunteers, and was with it at the storming of Monterey, where he says he took full toll out of the Mexicans for killing his brother and cousin at Goliad in 1836.