After the Battle of Village Creek, the Republic of Texas signed the Fort Bird Treaty of 1842.
In 1841, the Republic of Texas allowed a group of investors, under the W.S. Peters Land Grant Company, to market northern Texas as a colony of "free land" to white American settlers, with "Northern Texas" encompassing the lands between the Red River and the headwaters of the Trinity (Clear Fork, Elm Fork, and East Fork). The Peters Colony Land Grant Company, and the settlers who came, recognized that this bucolic area was verdant and fertile and ripe for agricultural pursuits. Their problem that the beautiful and well-watered hills of North Texas was also home to Wichita people, who wintered here and became nomadic in the summertime. Because Americans of the time didn't understand the habits of the Wichitas (the Keechies, Tehucanas,Tawakonis, Wacos, etc), an assumption lingers to this day that North Texas was essentially "uninhabited" and the Indians who came to the Trinity River headwaters were invaders.
Naturally, the Wichita people, who by 1841 had adopted the dispossessed Caddos and Cherokees into their villages along the Trinity River, viewed the white settlers as invading their homelands. They commenced raids on the homesteads. At the same time, the Comanches saw an opportunity to raid the Wichitas AND the white settlers. An uneasy state of semi-warfare existed along the northern Trinity River, which discouraged white settlement.
Between 1838 and 1841, Mirabeau Lamar served as President of the Republic of Texas. An avowed "Indian hater," Lamar echoed the sentiments of many American Texans of the period: they wanted all native people to be removed out of Texas, by violence if necessary. His policies led to the Battle of Village Creek in May of 1841, when Texas trips led by General Edward Tarrant and Captains John Denton and James Bourland raided native settlements along a tributary of the Trinity River in today's northeastern Tarrant County. Denton and several unnamed Indian men died in the battle.
A few months after the battle, the Republic of Texas established Fort Bird near the Village Creek settlement inside the Peters Colony Land Grant. This fort's purpose was very much like that of federal forts of the same period: to corral native tribes into an area that could be "safely" overseen. However, the similarity ended there: while the federal forts like Fort Washita viewed their mission as protecting Indians from white attempts at settlement and tribal raids, the forts built by the Republic of Texas were erected to encourage white settlement and push the native people away.
By 1842, enough settlers had moved into the Peters Colony Land Grant that forced a resolution to the land issue. By this time, Sam Houston had been re-elected as President of the Republic of Texas. He viewed his role not has an Indian fighter, but as a peacemaker.... kind of. He and an entourage ventured into northern Texas in 1843 to negotiate a treaty. Houston was supposed to meet nine principal chiefs at Waco, but the meeting took place near today's Grapevine instead. The official treaty was then signed "between the Republic of Texas (represented by George Terrell) and the Delaware, Chickasaw, Waco, Tah-woc-cany, Keechi, Caddo, Ana-dah-kah, Ionie, Biloxi, and Cherokee tribes of Indians" at Fort Bird. This was the first and only treaty between non-native and native people signed in Texas.
The stipulations were... interesting. First, the treaty placed a line of settlement between the whites and the Indian tribes (this may be the reason how the town of White Settlement in Tarrant County got its name). Here are some other articles from the treaty:
Article 7. No liquor or spirit sales. [This part wasn't enforced, considering that Indian Agents, like Holland Coffee, participated in selling moonshine.]
Article 9. All stolen property returns to the rightful owners, whether Indian or white.
Article 13. White man kills an Indian – open to indictment and punishment by a jury.
Article 14. Indian kills white man – punishable by death. Indian steals from white man – punishable by lashes.
Article 22. If Indians act peacefully, they can have their weapons back but only for hunting.
But when it comes to the US government and treaties with native people, they were NEVER upheld. The next post will elaborate on what happened to the nine tribes when the Republic of Texas ceased to exist.
