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.