Part 2, Note 3

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Texas Gazette, March 27, 1830; Gulick, Elliott, Allen, and Smither, eds., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 1, p. 216; Davis, ed., The Diary of William Barret Travis, p. 71. A news article reported that Kuykendall had been trepanned by Dr. Peebles, meaning that small circular sections of corneal tissue or of bone, presumably from his skull, were cut away. The economic state to which this former public servant had been reduced might be judged by his pursuit, a few months after the surgery, of a claim against the United States government for depredations committed against him by Indians in 1816. His signature, present in full on earlier documents, had diminished to an unsteady "X" (see Austin County Colonial Records 1810 [1824]-1832. For an earlier signature, see, for example, his July 13, 1823 letter to the governor of Texas, which is reproduced on pages 28-29 of Ernest William Winkler, ed., Manuscript Letters and Documents of Early Texians 1821-1845 (Austin: The Steck Company, 1937)).