Indian Depredations in Texas

"This volume is the most thorough compilation of accounts of Indian warfare in the Texas 19th century." — John Holmes Jenkins, Basic Texas Books

Tensions between white settlers and Native American tribes were at their height in the mid-nineteenth century.

Frequently the two groups resorted to violence assert their rights to the lands.

J. W. Wilbarger’s remarkable book Indian Depredations in Texas contains more than 250 separate narratives of attacks and counterattacks that occurred from the 1820s to the 1870s.

Wilbarger, a pioneer who had emigrated to Texas in 1837, was fully aware of the dangers that he faced by living on the frontier of the American West as his own brother had miraculously survived being scalped and left for dead in 1833.

Over the course of the next fifty years Wilbarger compiled accounts of Native American attacks that formed the basis of his book. Yet, rather than simply relying on hearsay and rumors of attacks, he sought out the victims and as he states in his Preface, many of the articles had been “written by others, who were either cognizant of the facts themselves or had obtained them from reliable sources."

This book is fascinating work that remains an importance source covering the early settlement of the region by Americans, based on stories told by surviving pioneers.

"unique among pioneer chronicles." — J. Frank Dobie

J. B. Wilbarger was a Methodist minister, author and pioneer. He first moved West to Texas in 1837 at the urging of his brother Josiah Pugh Wilbarger. His book Indian Depredations in Texas was first published in 1889 and he passed away in 1892.