10/02/2026
Susan Turnham McCown was seven years old when she moved with her family to what's now Cameron, Texas in 1842. Her family was one of five families who, together, were the first settlers in Milam county. In 1913, she wrote of her early experiences along the Little River. Here's an excerpt ... and it's pretty wild:
"We could play in our yard and watch the buffalo and bear come down to the river to drink. The woods were full of wild turkeys and various small game; so as long as we had am******on the old flintlock furnished us abundant meat, and sometimes this was all we had to eat. Dried buffalo steak would then be our bread and fresh bear our meat.
Besides wild game the woods were often full of Indians, some peaceable, some hostile. We had no shutters at first to our doors, and often a shadow would fall across the doorsill, and we would see an Indian curiously peeping into the room. One night the children, white and black, were picking the seed from the cotton so that it could be carded, spun, and woven into cloth for our wardrobe, when an Indian hand was thrust through a wide crack in the wall and a handful of our cotton disappeared. That ended the ginning process; the children scuttled under the beds while the men reached for the ever handy r***e. But there was no fight then. The Indian had been prowling around in search of something to steal when he saw us picking out the seed, and as he had never before seen any cotton, he just reached in to get some for closer inspection.
About this time a party of Comanche Indians stole the horses of Shapley Ross and Daniel Monroe, and these two with some two or three others pursued. The white men came on the Indians unexpectedly on the k***s in Bell County, a place near Rogers. It was raining, and the white men could not use their flintlock guns, and the bows and arrows of the Indians were useless; so they fought with knives. Ross in a hand-to-hand conflict killed the chief, "Big Foot," and scalped him. All the horses were recovered.
A few weeks after this occurrence Ross was sick and lay under the shade of a tree in his yard in the park when a body of twenty-five Comanche warriors rode up and wanted to smoke. Ross thought they knew he had killed their chief and had come to seek revenge. Ross told his wife to take the girls and go to Captain Monroe's, but the spartan mother replied, "No, we will all go or die together," and she stayed by her sick husband. The Indians, by signs, told Ross they wanted corn and watermelons; so Mrs. Ross kissed her oldest son, Peter, a lad of six, and sent him to show the Indians where to find what they wanted. After an hour of speechless agony for the mother, the boy came back to her side unharmed.
Ross had a horse of great value of which he was very proud. He built a stable near the old spring at the park for the safe keeping of his horse. There was a loft, and in this slept one of the negro men, Armstead. One night, Armstead heard a noise and looking out of his little window, which was just above the door, saw an Indian trying to get into the stable. Forgetting the r***e with which he was armed, the negro reached down, seized the Indian by his long hair, and lifting him clear of the ground, began yelling with all his might for "Massa Shap." The Indian was not wanting to see "Massa Shap" as his coming would probably mean a good Indian, which meant a dead one; so he got out his hunting knife and cut close to his head the mass of hair held by the negro, and when Ross got to the stable, the Indian was gone and Armstead, in proof of his story, had his hands full of long black hair."
---- Susan Turnham McCown, 1913. Susan's account was reprinted in the The Southwestern Historical Quarterly in 1947, and that's where I found it. She was born in 1835, died in 1919, and is buried in the family cemetery in Milam County. Here's a photo of Susan, far right. toward the end of her life. It's the only photo of her that I could find.
