General Edward H. Tarrant
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In this vicinity May 24, 1841 General Edward H. Tarrant with 70 men attacked several indian villages situated along a creek (now called Village Creek) and recovered many horses and much stolen plunder. 12 Indians were killed and many wounded. Of the Texans Captain John B. Denton was killed. Captains Henry Stout and Griffin were wounded.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On May 24, 1841, General Edward H. Tarrant led about seventy men in an attack on several Indian villages along what became known as Village Creek, seizing horses and recovered plunder. Twelve Native people were reported killed and many wounded; on the Texan side, Captain John B. Denton was killed and Captains Henry Stout and Griffin wounded. The clash was one of the sharpest frontier engagements of the Republic of Texas era.
Why it matters
The Battle of Village Creek marks the violent displacement of Native peoples from north central Texas, a frontier conflict that opened the region to Anglo settlement and left its name on the county and its towns.
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Related people
- · Edward H. Tarrant
- · John B. Denton
- · Henry Stout
Related events
- · Battle of Village Creek
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Village Creek
Arlington, TX
The banks of this Trinity River tributary hold an extraordinarily deep human record—artifacts left by hunter-gatherers stretch back nearly 9,000 years. In the 1830s and 1840s the creek sheltered Native peoples resisting the advance of Anglo settlement, and on May 24, 1841, Gen. Edward H. Tarrant's Republic of Texas militia struck the villages here in the Battle of Village Creek. Reportedly a dozen Native people and one soldier, Capt. John B. Denton, died; many tribes soon moved west, and the 1843 Treaty of Bird's Fort opened the land to colonization. Much of the site now lies beneath Lake Arlington.
Sloan-Journey Expedition of 1838
Arlington, TX
In the spring of 1838, Captains Robert Sloan and Nathaniel T. Journey led some ninety northeast Texas frontiersmen on a punitive raid against Indians who had struck their homes in present-day Fannin County. The trail carried them into what is now Tarrant County, where they attacked a small Native village. The episode was among the earliest recorded Anglo-American incursions into north Texas, part of the violent process that opened the region to white settlement.
General William Jenkins Worth (1794-1849)
Fort Worth, TX
William Jenkins Worth of Hudson, New York, made a soldier's career that spanned the early republic's wars: badly wounded at Lundy's Lane in the War of 1812, he later commanded cadets at West Point, campaigned against the Sac and Fox and the Florida Seminoles, took part in Cherokee removal, and won a Sword of Honor from Congress for his conduct in the Mexican War. He died of cholera at San Antonio in 1849 while commanding the Texas and New Mexico military districts. Though he never saw this ground, the frontier post of Fort Worth was named in his memory.
General Edward H. Tarrant
Fort Worth, TX
Edward H. Tarrant fought under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 before moving west, serving in the Republic of Texas Congress and rising to brigadier general in its militia. He led Texas Rangers at the 1841 Battle of Village Creek, helped negotiate treaties with Texas Indian tribes at Bird's Fort in 1843, and later sat in the state legislature and defended the frontier from Fort Belknap. Reinterred here in 1928 by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, he gave his name to Tarrant County.