Part 1, Note 18

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Winkler, ed., Manuscript Letters and Documents of Early Texians 1821-1845, pp. 16-17, 23-25; "Reminiscences of Capt. Jesse Burnam" The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 5, no. 1, July 1901, pp. 15-16; Kuykendall, "Reminiscences of Early Texans," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 6, no. 3, January 1903, pp. 247-248, vol. 7, no. 1, July 1903, pp. 30-31, 47-48; Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 37-40; The Reminiscences of T. J. Williams, The Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin. Dan Kilgore, in his excellent little book, A Ranger Legacy (Austin: Madrona Press, 1973), contended that Brotherton was on his way to the settlement from San Antonio with the rifle that had been taken from the suspects in the Thomas Rogers murder case when confronted by the Indians, and concluded that it was Rogers' rifle that he turned over to the Indians. Certainly the timing is correct, for Brotherton did bring the rifle to the settlement some time between January 31 and March 5, 1823. However, to get to the mouth of Skull Creek, where the conflict with the Indians occurred, Brotherton would have had to go several miles past where the settlements on the Colorado are presumed to have been. Secondly, it is quite clear that the Indians had taken the rifle from Brotherton when he first encountered them. If the rifle was indeed Rogers', then it was state's evidence in a murder case, and the fact that the Indians had seized it would have been some justification for the attack that retrieved it. Yet none of the accounts of the battle mention the rifle.
    On May 29, 1878, the Daily Democratic Statesman published a brief article about Jesse Burnam. The article stated that "He says the best sport he ever had was shooting Indians, men, women and children, while they were crossing a stream which was waist deep. A camp of them had been routed, and he had taken a favorable position, armed with a double-barrel gun and two pistols, to shoot them as they crossed the stream; and, to use his own words, 'he shot Indians until he was tired of it.' When asked how many of them he killed, he replied 'God Almighty only knows.'" Likely, Burnam was recalling the incident at Skull Creek in 1823.