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A
syndicated column in over 40 East Texas newspapers
CUSTER
IN EAST TEXAS
by
Bob Bowman | |
When General George
Armstrong Custer and his men were massacred at Little Big Horn in 1876, they may
have gone to their graves with a piece of East Texas.
In 1865, 11 years
before the massacre, General Custer was assigned to Texas as a part of the reconstruction
of Texas following the Civil War. Custerıs mounted cavalry, totaling 3,000 men,
left Alexandria, Louisiana, in August in 1865. Crossing the Sabine River at Bevil's
Ferry in the northeast corner of Newton County, the troops were headed for Austin
where Custer would become the federal military commander of a cavalry division.
Passing through the small Newton County community of Survey, Custer's men
saw eleven pair of hand-knitted socks hanging on a line to dry. Needing socks,
they proceeded to take them.
We know that Custer and his men died with
their boots on at Little Big Horn, but history doesnıt tell us if they died with
Newton Countyıs socks on.
However, thanks to some research by Wanda Bobinger,
curator of the Polk County Memorial Museum at Livingston, we do know what Custer
and his men felt about East Texas as they passed through on their way to Austin.
A member of Custerıs staff, known as Browne, kept a journal during the march
from Alexandria to Austin. He wrote: "We've seen no good country in Texas as yet.
Pines and deer, bugs and snakes inhabit the whole face of this place. This country
today looks as if it is uninhabited by man, and if even God himself has abandoned
it."
On August 20, eight days after entering Texas, Custer and his men
reached Swartwout Ferry on the Trinity River in Polk County. They forded the river
and camped on the west bank.
Encountering dozens of rattlesnakes on the
bluff, they dubbed the site "Camp Rattlesnake." Browne reported: "One could hardly
put their foot down without walking on a snake. We killed one with 14 rattles
on his tail and more than six feet in length. We remained in camp...and dreamed
of snakes." In their saddles at 4 a.m. the next morning, the cavalry marched 27
miles without water before coming to "two beautiful villages of Cold Spring and
Waverly." Browne said they were "the only towns that I have seen yet in Texas
worth mentioning after traveling some 150 miles in the state."
During
the march through East Texas, Browne apparently had an aversion to pine trees.
He wrote: "There are pines before us, pines behind us, pines on each side of us,
nothing but pines."
Browne also commented on East Texası heat. "Most
of the men are broken out with heat as thick as one with measles. It felt like
I was being pricked with a million pins, or being sprinkled on bare skin with
hot ashes."
Browne also complained: "If you lay down in the pine woods,
an army of vermin will come in a moment to bite, scratch, sting and gnaw you all
at the same time."
Maybe Browne and the rest of Custer's men should
have stayed in Texas. Even the East Texas vermin would have been a lot less painful
than what they encountered at the Little Big Horn.
July 28 - August 3, 2002 column
Published with permission
(Bob Bowman
is author of Pioneers, Poke Sallet and Politics with Archie McDonald. It is available
through the East Texas Historical Association, Nacogdoches)
See also:
Custer City,
Texas (Named after General Custer. A ghost town today.) |
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