Sloan-Journey Expedition of 1838
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the spring of 1838, Captains Robert Sloan and Nathaniel T. Journey led a group of about 90 northeast Texas frontiersmen on a punitive expedition against the Indians who had raided their homes in present-day Fannin County. The trail led them to the vicinity of present-day Euless and Arlington, where they attacked a small Indian village, killed several Indians, and recovered a few horses. The Sloan-Journey expedition is among the first known Anglo-American activities in what is now Tarrant County that helped to open north Texas to white settlement. Supplemental: This marker was relocated to River Legacy Parks in 2003.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The expedition is a stark record of the frontier warfare between settlers and Native peoples that accompanied—and enabled—the westward expansion of Anglo Texas.
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Related people
- · Robert Sloan
- · Nathaniel T. Journey
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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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.
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