Native American History

Newburg, TX

Under a brush arbor in 1857, the Rev. Richard Howard and eight charter members organized the first Baptist church in Comanche County, meeting first in a log schoolhouse. Frontier danger forced the congregation to dissolve in 1859 amid Indian troubles, but it reorganized in 1872 and finally built its lasting home in 1906.

San Antonio, TX

This land carries some of the deepest layers of Texas history: home first to the Coahuiltecan peoples, then granted in the 1720s and 1730s to the Spanish missions of San José and Espada, and crisscrossed by branches of the El Camino Real. From these ranch lands, vaqueros drove cattle east to help supply Bernardo de Gálvez's campaigns against the British during the American Revolution. Over the following decades, Spanish and Mexican land grants passed to soldiers and prominent Béxar families like the Pérez and Navarro clans.

Gainesville, FL

In the 1600s, the region around present-day Gainesville lay at the heart of Spanish Florida's cattle-ranching frontier, worked largely through the coerced labor of the Timucua people who had lived in the area for generations. The largest of these operations was the La Chua ranch, whose name — itself a Spanish reshaping of an Indigenous word — echoes the layered histories of the place. These ranches supplied beef and hides to St. Augustine and beyond until raids and the collapse of the mission system swept them away in the early 1700s.

Devine, TX

Long before Anglo settlers arrived, this stretch of South Texas was crossed again and again by Spanish expeditions pushing north from the Rio Grande. Cabeza de Vaca wandered through the region in the 1520s–30s, and over the next two centuries soldiers, missionaries, and settlers — among them Alonso de León and Domingo Terán de los Ríos — followed, founding missions and presidios. At least twenty such expeditions passed through what is now Medina County before 1844, leaving Spanish names on its rivers and landmarks.

Pecos, TX

Long before permanent settlement, Spanish explorers probed the country along the Pecos. In 1583 Antonio de Espejo, returning from the New Mexico pueblos, reached the river and named it Río de las Vacas for the great buffalo herds; guided by Jumano Indians to their camp on Toyah Lake, he followed the waters down toward the Big Bend. Seven years later, Castaño de Sosa became the first European to travel the Pecos its full length on his own march into New Mexico.

Wilson, TX

This ancient road across the Llano Estacado was first traced by Native peoples and later followed by Spaniards, U.S. Army units, and cattle drovers, running from Gholson Spring past Tahoka Lake toward Big Spring and the North Concho. In the 17th century it carried Spanish visitors including Father Salas, who came from New Mexico in 1629 at the pleas of the Jumano Indians, and treasure- and pearl-seeking expeditions in 1650 and 1654. The trail knit together centuries of movement across the high plains.

Spanish Fort, TX

Long before it was a town, this site on the Red River was home to a fortified village of the Taovayas, an agricultural Wichita-affiliated people. In the mid-18th century it was the scene of a stinging defeat of a Spanish military expedition by allied Indians, and in 1778 the Spanish officer De Mézières named a post here Fort Teodoro in honor of Teodoro de Croix, commander of the northern provinces. Permanent Anglo settlement came only after 1850, and the place kept the name Spanish Fort.

London vicinity, TX

In 1808, in the last years of Spanish Texas, Capt. Francisco Amangual led some 200 soldiers from San Antonio to chart the most direct road to Santa Fe—a response to American explorer Zebulon Pike's recent trek into New Mexico. Leaving on March 30, Amangual's party pushed through this valley along the East James Creek, hunting buffalo and bear and battling stampedes, reaching Santa Fe on June 19 before returning months later; traces of the route are still visible today.

Louisville, KY

In the early 1780s, pioneers pushing into the Kentucky frontier clustered along Beargrass Creek in a ring of small stockaded stations that grew up alongside the newly founded town of Louisville. Spring Fort, anchored at a rock spring, was one of these vulnerable outposts in a country still contested by Native nations resisting the flood of settlers. The marker preserves a vivid episode of that danger: when the fort's commander Richard Steele was wounded during an attack at Floyd's Station, his wife snatched up their baby and rode through the dark under fire to reach him. It is exactly the kind of harrowing, human moment that defined life on the Revolutionary-era Ohio Valley frontier.

Hampstead, MD

Long before Hampstead had a name, a footpath threaded these hills, linking the Patapsco country around Baltimore to Letort's Spring near Carlisle. The frontier scout Christopher Gist charted that Indian trail, and by 1738 it had been widened into a public road carrying settlers and goods across the Maryland backcountry. In 1786, on a tract poetically called Spring Garden, Christopher Vaughn platted the town of Hampstead astride that very route — a young community taking root in the first decade of American independence.

Dawson, TX

The oldest community in Navarro County grew up around springs that had watered Native peoples for centuries. Dr. George Washington Hill built a trading post here in 1838 — the year a surveying party skirmished with Kickapoo Indians nearby — and after serving as Republic of Texas Secretary of War he returned to practice medicine. Spring Hill flourished into the 1870s with mills, stores, and saloons, hosted a Confederate training camp during the Civil War, then declined after the railroad bypassed it in 1881.

Earth, TX

Long before fences crossed the High Plains, this spring on the Llano Estacado drew Native hunters who camped and watered here while pursuing the great buffalo herds. In 1882 Tom Lynch trailed cattle up from New Mexico and the surrounding country turned to open range, and after the Capitol Syndicate acquired the land the site became headquarters of the largest division of the sprawling XIT Ranch. The State of Texas raised this marker in 1936 during the Texas Centennial to fix that layered history in place.

Union Township, PA · est. 1948

In the bitter winter of 1778, with the Revolution raging on the frontier, General Edward Hand marched some 800 militia out of Fort Pitt intending to strike a British supply depot near present-day Cleveland. Weather and poor roads doomed the expedition before it reached its target, and the frustrated force instead fell upon a small Native settlement in the river fork below this spot, killing a man and an elderly woman before turning home. The dismal, aimless outcome earned the venture a mocking name that has clung to it ever since.

Glen Rose, TX

In early 1864 a raiding party of about twenty Native Americans crossed from Indian Territory into Texas, descending the high ground between Prairie and Squaw Creeks near present Glen Rose. They killed stockman Rigman Bryant and a captive young man, gathered a large stolen horse herd from area ranches, and were finally overtaken by the local home guard in a running skirmish that forced them to abandon the horses. The clash reflects the violent frontier warfare that gripped North Central Texas during the Civil War years, when frontier defense fell to home guards.

Jacksboro, TX

Legend traces the name of Squaw Mountain to an 1875 skirmish between Native Americans and Texas Rangers, when a woman was accidentally killed and buried on the mountain. Pioneers settled here beginning in 1877, and by 1892 a post office and stagecoach relay station had appeared; at its height the community boasted cotton gins, a store, a blacksmith, a school, and a church. By 1997 little remained but the church and a few scattered buildings.

Shelby County, KY

In 1779 Squire Boone — younger brother of the famed Daniel Boone — planted a fortified station he called "Painted Stone" on Clear Creek in the Kentucky wilderness. For nearly two years it stood as the only large station on the Wilderness Road between Harrodstown and the Falls of the Ohio, a lifeline of shelter for settlers pushing into the trans-Appalachian frontier during the Revolutionary War. A devastating Indian attack in 1781 forced its abandonment, though whites soon reoccupied the ground; its very layout survives because a ground plan was preserved among the papers of General George Rogers Clark.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1986

Catholic worship took root in Carlisle in 1779, when a Jesuit priest acquired this lot on the eve of American independence. A humble log chapel of 1784 gave way to brick in 1806 and finally to the present church in 1893. Nearby stands St. Katherine's Hall, built in 1901 by Mother Katharine Drexel to serve Catholic students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

Stevens County, WA

Saint Paul's Mission sits near Kettle Falls on the upper Columbia River, where Catholic missionaries established an outpost among the region's Native peoples in the 1840s. The falls were one of the great Indigenous fishing and trading gathering places of the interior Northwest before the coming of missions, forts, and later dams. The log mission church became a lasting landmark of the encounter between Catholic evangelism and Native life on the Columbia.

Waller County, TX

Stacye Ann Marlin was a young woman when, on January 1, 1839, a raid in Falls County killed and scalped several members of the Morgan and Marlin families. Her younger brother Isaac ran seven miles for help while Stacye Ann, gravely wounded, was left for dead — yet she survived, married William J. Morgan, and raised a large family before dying in Waller County in 1894. Her long life stood as a living memorial to one of the Republic of Texas's frontier tragedies.

Benchley, TX

Staggers Point was the earliest large community in Robertson's colony, settled by Irish immigrants who reached America in 1821, moved through the Carolinas and Alabama, and sent an emissary west before their ox-wagon train arrived in 1833. They built log cabins and a fort against Indian raids, and their men fought in the Texas Revolution, including the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. The village grew a church, stores, a cotton gin, and a race track that drew gamblers, until the railroad bypassed it in 1868 and its fortunes faded.

Temple, TX

Stampede Creek draws its name from a horse stampede that struck Captain John Bird's Ranger force in June 1839, days after they had fought more than 200 Caddo, Kickapoo, and Comanche warriors at the nearby Battle of Bird's Creek. The Rangers had returned to bury their dead before pushing west in pursuit, only to have their mounts bolt while camped along this stream. Decades later, on July 4, 1876, a cattle drive from South Texas stampeded at the same spot, cementing the creek's name.

Town of East Hampton, NY

These scattered foundation stones are believed to mark the home of Stephen "Talkhouse" Pharoah, a Montaukett man who became one of the most storied figures in nineteenth-century East Hampton. Known as a tireless walker who covered great distances on foot, he lived at a time when the Montaukett people were fighting to hold onto their land and identity on eastern Long Island. History remembers him vividly yet incompletely, part legend and part enigma.

Sterling City, TX

The prairie split by the north Concho River was long the hunting ground of the Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Lipan, and Wichita peoples, and may have been crossed by Spanish expeditions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the 1860s and 70s came commercial buffalo hunters, one of whom, Capt. W. S. Sterling, gave his name to the creek; the outlaws Frank and Jesse James reputedly kept horse herds nearby, and the Army held Camp Elizabeth as a Fort Concho outpost. As big cattle outfits and then family homesteaders moved in, the county was created in 1891 and named for its first regular resident.

Carson City, NV

Founded as the Carson Indian Training School, the Stewart Indian School was run by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs for nearly a century to give vocational and academic instruction to Native American students gathered from across the West. First superintendent W.D.C. Gibson renamed it for Senator William Morris Stewart, who secured its federal funding, and in the 1920s Superintendent Frederick Snyder launched a building program in which students worked alongside stone masons — some from the Hopi Tribe — to raise the distinctive stone buildings still standing on the National Register–listed campus.

Galveston, TX

This ridge on the west end of Galveston Island holds one of the area's oldest known histories of human use — once a campsite for the seagoing Karankawa people — before it passed through a striking succession of nineteenth- and twentieth-century owners. Texas Revolution veteran Col. Warren D. C. Hall bought it in 1856; later owners named it "Mottexas" and "Isla Ranch," and in 1933 it took the name of Galvestonian Maco Stewart, founder of the Stewart Title Company. The land was eventually deeded to the University of Texas for its Galveston medical branch, layering Indigenous, frontier, and modern uses on a single stretch of shore.

Stillman Valley, IL

In May 1832, during the Black Hawk War, a body of Illinois militia clashed with Black Hawk's Sauk and Fox warriors here in a rout that became known as Stillman's Run. The dead were buried on this ground, and tradition holds that a young volunteer named Abraham Lincoln helped lay them to rest. The monument marks both a frontier battle and the future president's brush with it.

Aspermont, TX

The rolling country of Stonewall County holds a deep frontier history: Spanish explorer Francisco de Coronado passed through in 1541, and U.S. Army mapmakers followed in 1849. Its salt springs supplied settlers, and from 1876 to 1879 the rough buffalo-hunters' town of Rath City reigned as a hide-trade capital. The county, created in 1876 and organized in 1888, honors Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and its seat shifted from Rayner to higher-set Aspermont in 1898.

McMullen County, TX

On September 28, 1870, the Thomas Stringfield family was overtaken in their wagon by raiders striking north from Mexico. Thomas and his wife Sarah Jane were killed, as was young Adolphus, while four-year-old Thomas vanished without a trace. Eight-year-old Ida Alice fought her captors, was speared and trampled and left for dead — yet she survived, rescued and living on until 1937.

Tolar, TX

The Stroud Creek community grew up in western Hood County during the late 1870s and early 1880s, drawn by land grants, a nearby stagecoach line, and the end of Native American raids that had long deterred settlement. Burials began on Benjamin Irby's land in 1883 and the ground later served the town of Tolar, gathering community leaders, merchants, educators, farmers, and veterans beneath curbed plots, fraternal emblems, and upright stones.

Marble Falls, TX

Amand von Struve came to Texas in 1848 with his father, a former Imperial Russian officer, and set about building a vast ranch that eventually spread over 8,000 acres of horses, cattle, and sheep. In 1869 he added this stone spring house and kitchen to his wooden dwelling, its thick walls meant to guard food and water from raids and wild animals alike. He married in 1871 and raised eight children; long after the main house was razed, this stone annex was restored to survive.

Sugarloaf Township, PA · est. 1947

In the autumn of 1780 a party of Native warriors and Loyalist Tories, turned back from an attempt on Fort Augusta, fell upon a detachment of Northumberland County militia near here. The surprise attack on September 11 left the small company overwhelmed, one of many such bloody clashes that made the Pennsylvania frontier a war zone long after the fighting had shifted elsewhere.

Conyngham, PA · est. 1933

In September 1780, as the Revolutionary War flared along the Pennsylvania frontier, a detachment of Northampton County militia paused to rest at a spring near Sugarloaf Mountain. They were ambushed by a party of Native warriors and Loyalists led by the Seneca chief Roland Montour, and more than a dozen men were killed. The marker preserves the names of the fallen, a roster of ordinary frontier soldiers caught in the war's brutal borderland fighting.

Gause, TX

Rising red-capped near where the Little and Brazos Rivers meet, Sugarloaf Mountain overlooked Rancheria Grande de los Ervipiame, a village that gathered the remnants of some twenty-two Native nations under the dominant Ervipiame. The landmark guided travelers along ancient Indian trails that became part of El Camino Real, the King's Highway, and it remains bound up with the Tonkawa, many of whom regard the mountain as the place of their people's origin — even as an 1866 promise of land here came only after the Tonkawa had already been forced toward Oklahoma.

Forks Township, PA · est. 1947

In the summer of 1779, Easton became the staging ground for one of the Revolution's largest offensives against the Native and Loyalist alliance harrying the New York and Pennsylvania frontier. Under General John Sullivan, the army spent more than a month gathering men and supplies before beginning its march on June 18, 1779. The campaign that followed would drive deep into Iroquois country to the north.

Wind Gap, PA · est. 1929

On June 18, 1779, Sullivan's troops set out on the first day of their long march toward Iroquois country, covering twelve miles before halting at Heller's Tavern. Wayside taverns like this were the natural waypoints of the era, offering the only fixed shelter along frontier roads. The plaque marks where the campaign's opening day came to a close.

Sheshequin Township, PA · est. 1929

In August 1779 General John Sullivan marched his Continental army up the Susquehanna Valley on a campaign to break the power of the Iroquois Confederacy, which had raided frontier settlements as Britain's allies. On the night of August 10 the army made its seventh and final encampment before reaching Teaoga on these river lowlands at Sheshecunnunck. The march was one leg of a systematic expedition that would destroy dozens of Iroquois towns and cornfields.

Forks Township, PA · est. 1929

This plaque marks the road over which Sullivan's army began its advance on June 18, 1779. Cutting and following such roads was itself a feat, as thousands of men, horses, and wagons of supplies moved through country with few improved routes. The path set the direction of a campaign that would carry deep into the lands of the Six Nations.

Athens, PA · est. 1929

Teaoga was a key Iroquois village at the forks of the rivers, and in August 1779 it became the staging ground for General John Sullivan's army during its campaign against the Six Nations. From roughly August 11 to 26 the Continental force encamped near here before pressing deeper into Iroquois country. This marker fixes the village's site relative to that fateful summer of the Sullivan Expedition.

Tunkhannock, PA · est. 1929

In the summer of 1779, at the height of the American Revolution, General John Sullivan led a punishing campaign up the Susquehanna Valley against the Iroquois nations allied with the British. This plaque marks a waypoint on that march from Wyoming to Teaoga, where on August 3 the army camped on the lowlands between here and the river. The relentless expedition burned Iroquois towns and crops, breaking the military power of the Six Nations in the region.

Meshoppen Township, PA · est. 1929

As General Sullivan's army pushed north against the Iroquois in August 1779, it made its fourth encampment on the fertile bottomland here, remembered locally as Black Walnut Flats. The soldiers rested on the nights of August 4 and 5 before continuing the march from Wyoming toward Teaoga. The campaign systematically destroyed the towns and food stores of the Six Nations across this valley.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1929

Wyalusing had been the site of Friedenshütten, a Moravian mission town where Christian Delaware Indians lived before being pushed westward in the early 1770s. A few years later, in August 1779, General Sullivan's army made its fifth encampment here on the march from Wyoming toward Teaoga. The marker stands near the monument to that vanished Moravian Indian community.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1929

In the spring of 1779, General George Washington ordered a punishing campaign into the heart of Iroquois country to end frontier raids allied with the British. Here at Fort Penn, the fortified home of Col. Jacob Stroud served as a rendezvous where companies gathered before joining the main army. From this staging ground in the Pocono foothills, men and supplies funneled westward toward the march that would follow.

Pocono Township, PA · est. 1929

As Sullivan's army pushed into the wilderness in June 1779, it left the settled country behind. This spot, remembered as "the last house on the frontier," marked the end of the second day's march — a sixteen-mile push into thinning settlement. Beyond here lay forest and the long road to Iroquois territory.

Pocono Township, PA · est. 1929

On June 20, 1779, the third day's march ended at a spot the soldiers dubbed Chowder Camp, where General Sullivan is remembered as dining on trout chowder pulled from the mountain streams. The short five-mile advance hints at the rough terrain slowing an army hauling artillery and supplies into the Poconos. Small human details like a general's stream-caught supper survive alongside the grand campaign.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1947

In the summer of 1779, at the height of the Revolution, General John Sullivan led a Continental army up the Susquehanna Valley, camping near here on August 5-7 as it pushed north. The expedition, ordered by George Washington, aimed to break the power of the Iroquois nations allied with the British and to end the devastating raids along the frontier. Over the campaign Sullivan's troops burned dozens of Haudenosaunee towns and their harvests.

Standing Stone Township, PA · est. 1947

As General John Sullivan's Continental army marched north against the Six Nations in August 1779, it made its sixth camp on the river lowlands near here on the nights of August 8-9. The stopping places along the Susquehanna traced the slow, deliberate advance of a major Revolutionary War expedition ordered by Washington. From Wyoming to Fort Sullivan, each riverside campsite marked another day's push into Iroquois country.

Hamilton Township, PA · est. 1947

Brinker's Mill served as the storehouse and forward supply post for the Sullivan Expedition, the 1779 Continental Army campaign that marched out of Easton on June 18 to strike the Iroquois nations allied with Britain. Ordered by George Washington in response to frontier raids, the expedition aimed to break Iroquois power in the region. This mill helped provision an army bound for one of the Revolution's harshest campaigns.

Pocono Township, PA · est. 1947

On June 19, 1779, the army of the Sullivan Expedition camped near Learned's Tavern at the close of its second day out of Easton, having covered sixteen miles from Heller's Tavern on the long road toward Fort Wyoming at Wilkes-Barre. The tavern marked a waypoint on the campaign George Washington launched against the British-allied Iroquois. These recorded halts trace the grueling overland route of one of the Revolution's most consequential frontier operations.

Wind Gap, PA · est. 1947

On June 18, 1779, the first day's march of General Sullivan's expedition ended at Heller's Tavern near Wind Gap, where his weary army camped for the night. Stirring at four the next morning, the troops pressed on to cross the Blue Mountains through the natural pass at Wind Gap. Their route traced old paths through the ridges as they moved north toward the Iroquois heartland.

Tunkhannock, PA · est. 1947

In the summer of 1779, General John Sullivan led thousands of Continental soldiers up the Susquehanna Valley in a scorched-earth campaign ordered by George Washington against the Iroquois Confederacy, allies of the British. On August 3, that army made its third camp above Fort Wyoming here by the river as it pushed north toward Tioga. The march devastated Iroquois towns and croplands, breaking the power of the Six Nations on the New York–Pennsylvania frontier.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1947

During the Revolution's Sullivan Expedition of 1779, General John Sullivan's Continental army moved north up the Susquehanna from Fort Wyoming at Wilkes-Barre toward Tioga. On August 1–2 the troops encamped on the lowland across the river here — the second stop on a grueling march through frontier country. The campaign was Washington's answer to raids on the frontier, aimed at the Iroquois Confederacy allied with the British.

Meshoppen Township, PA · est. 1947

On August 4, 1779, General John Sullivan's Continental army made its fourth encampment on the lowland here as it marched from Fort Wyoming toward Tioga Point. The column was part of a coordinated Revolutionary War campaign against the Iroquois Confederacy, whose warriors had raided settlements along the frontier. The soldiers' northward advance up the Susquehanna would culminate in the destruction of dozens of Native towns.

Ulster Township, PA · est. 1949

In August 1779, General John Sullivan led a Continental Army expedition up the Susquehanna Valley, camping on the Sheshequin Flats below this point on the ninth and tenth before pressing on to Tioga Point. This was the seventh and final overnight stop of a hard march into Iroquois country. Sullivan's campaign, ordered by George Washington, aimed to break the power of the Six Nations who had allied with the British on the frontier.

Village of Horseheads, NY

In the autumn of 1779, General John Sullivan led a punishing military expedition through the lands of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, part of a scorched-earth campaign ordered by George Washington during the Revolutionary War. As the weary army withdrew through what is now the Chemung Valley, Sullivan's exhausted pack horses—broken down after weeks of hard marching—were put down near this spot. The bleached skulls left behind so struck later travelers and settlers that the place came to be called Horseheads, a name the village still carries today.

Sunbury, PA · est. 1947

Laid out in 1772 as the seat of newly formed Northumberland County, Sunbury rose on the site of Shamokin, a major Native town at the forks of the Susquehanna. Surveyors John Lukens and William Maclay platted the town where Fort Augusta had stood since 1756, guarding the frontier, and the community grew into a hub of travel, trade, and industry before its incorporation as a borough in 1797.

Shamokin Dam, PA · est. 1948

Sunbury was laid out in 1772 as the seat of newly formed Northumberland County, planted on the site of Shamokin, an important Native American town at the forks of the Susquehanna. Sixteen years earlier, during the French and Indian War, colonial authorities had built Fort Augusta here to guard the frontier. The spot's command of the river made it a lasting hub of travel, trade, and industry.

Kerrville, TX

The oldest marked graves in Sunset Cemetery belong to four Dowdy children killed in an 1878 Indian raid soon after their family reached the Texas Hill Country from Goliad. Nearby lie four Byas children lost to an 1880s typhoid epidemic and pioneers like H. L. Nelson, who founded the Mountain Home post office. Assembled over decades from several landowners, the cemetery preserves the hardships of frontier Kerr County.

Lemoyne, PA · est. 2021

Excavations near Lemoyne in the early 2000s revealed a palisaded Susquehannock village from the early 1600s, its ground scattered with iron, brass, and glass trade beads. Those artifacts trace early contact with Dutch traders and the fledgling English colony at Jamestown between 1610 and 1624, when goods moved along Native networks long before Europeans settled the region. The findings deepened understanding of how the Susquehannock organized their villages and their world on the eve of sustained colonial pressure.

Sutherland Spring, TX

Founded in 1848 by Dr. John Sutherland — the Alamo courier whom William B. Travis sent out for reinforcements in 1836 — Sutherland Springs became one of southwest Texas's premier health resorts, drawing visitors to more than 100 hot and cold mineral springs long used for their curative waters. A stagecoach stop on the Old San Antonio Road, it served as the first seat of Wilson County in 1860 before politics moved the county seat away. A later resort boom at "New Sutherland Springs" collapsed after devastating floods in 1913 left it a ghost town.

Sonora, TX

The land that became Sutton County holds signs of human presence stretching back many thousands of years and was home to Apache people up to the founding of Fort Terrett in 1852. Anglo-Texan settlement began at Sonora in 1879 around a trading post on the San Antonio–El Paso road, and the county was created in 1887 and organized in 1890. It honors John S. Sutton, a Santa Fe Expedition member, Texas Ranger, and soldier who died of wounds from the Battle of Val Verde.