"Treasure of the Wichita"

Treasure Of The Wichita

by

Bob Balch

AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

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Phone: 08001974150

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

© 2010 Bob Balch. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/24/2010

ISBN: 978-1-4259-1092-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-9632-4 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006900451

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

"ACKNOWLEDGMENT

"DEDICATION

I. "THE TAOVAYAS (WICHITAS)

II. SAN TEODORO   

III. WACO BAPTISTE  

IV. "HISTORY OF FAMILY

V. LIFE ON THE RIVER  

VI. LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS  

VII. THE MOVE TO ST. FRANCISVILLE, WEST FLORIDA

VIII. THE RUMBLINGS OF WAR  

IX. THE BRITISH PROTAGANISTS  

X. THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS  

XI. JULIAN’S SECRET  

XII. THE LA PORTE TREASURE  

XIII. THE WEDDING  

XIV. THE PLANTATION  

XV. MOON SONG RETURNS HOME  

XVI. SAN ANTONIO DE BEXAR  

XVII. THE QUEST  

XVIII. THE TEXICANS  

XIX. NORTH TO SAN ANTONIO  

XX. THE FALLS OF THE WICHITA  

XXI. BURIED TREASURE  

XXII. THE LAST DAYS OF WACO BAPTISTE  

XXIII. THE LETTER  

XXIV. "THE STUDENT

XXV. THE PROJECT  

XXVI. THE PROFESSOR  

XXVII. THE INTERPRETATION  

XXVIII. THE ARCHAEOLOGIST  

XXIX. THE LOCATION  

XXX. THE FRENCH INTERVENTION  

XXXI. THE DECEPTION  

XXXII. THE INTRIGUE  

XXXIII. THE DISCOVERY  

XXXIV. D’UN BEAU VIOLET  

XXXV. THE INDENTIFICATION  

XXXVI. THE CONFUSION  

XXXVII. THE DECISION  

XXXVIII. SARA’S GOOD FORTUNE  

XXXIX. THE AGREEMENT  

XL. THE WINNER  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  

"ACKNOW LEDGMENT

The cover for my book Treasure of the Wichita is an original oil painting created by two talented artists working together, and they are Helen Lee Portwood and Carrolyn Barfield. Since the falls on the Wichita River were destroyed by a flood in 1886, this is a beautiful rendition of what those falls may have looked like during the times of the fictitious character, Waco Baptiste, who buried a great treasure near these falls in the spring of 1838. Helen Lee and I asked our friend, Smitty Browning, to do some research on this site and its location. His information and photographs helped the artists in their graphic rendition of the old falls site and showed it to be a landmark for Indians, Soldiers, Buffalo Hunters, Surveyors and Pioneers alike, and that it was a very desirable location for a campsite and was known as the Wichita falls. It became the name of a town established at the site and citizens of that early town often referred to the incessant roar of the falls. The Wichita, Comanche and other tribes had encampments at the site. Today, Wichita Falls is a thriving city of over 100,000 folks, and I’m proud to call it home. I want to thank Helen Lee and Carrolyn for this beautiful depiction of the Falls of the Wichita. Helen Lee also created the painting for the cover of my second book entitled Bridgetown on the Red, and she was most generous to offer her time again with the help of Carrolyn Barfield to create this work. I am most appreciative of their efforts and very proud of the results.

Bob Balch

10/20/05

"DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my scout leaders and all of my teachers in Seymour, Texas, from kindergarten thru elementary, then junior and senior high school, and finally at Baylor University, who instilled in me the desire to learn about the history of our great country and then to write and speak about our great heritage. To all of them I say thanks. This book is also meant to be a tribute to this great community in which Debbie and I have made our home for over thirty years and where our boys were born, raised, and educated. I thank you Wichita Falls. Your history is rich and no better people can be found anywhere on this earth. From its history of the falls where the Wichita tribe camped in their beehive huts to the urban center it is today, I dedicate this book.

Bob Balch, Wichita Falls, Texas, 9-7-05

PART I.     1750-1876

I.     "THE TAOVAYAS (WICHITAS)

Between the years 1750 and 1757 a band of Indians established two permanent villages on opposite sides of the Red River, and the site on the south side of the river is today known as Spanish Fort. Looking on the map, Spanish Fort is located in north central Montague County, Texas, at the end of Farm Road 103 one mile south of the Red River. It began in the 18th century as a fortified Taovayas Indian settlement. It was misnamed later by Anglo settlers who found Spanish artifacts and ruins of a fort near the site. The Taovayas were a band of the Wichita tribe, who were part of the southern confederacy of Caddoan tribes and its linguistic family. The name Wichita is first found in historical records of French traders in the early seventeenth century. The French used the word Ousitas to identify one band which lived near the Arkansas River in present day Oklahoma. In the nineteenth century the name came to be used to refer to several confederated bands which recognized a common progenitor and had similar traditions and cultures. These Indians designed tattoos around the men’s eyes resembling the eyes of the raccoon. The Wichita therefore called themselves Kitikit‘sh which translated is raccoon eyes. In 1541 the Spanish explorer, Coronado, in search of great riches found the Wichita at a place called Quivira in present day Kansas and called them Quiviras. By 1719 these people had moved south to Oklahoma and were called Ousitas by French traders. Then in the 1750’s the Taovayas were on the Red in twin villages on both sides of the river at the Spanish Fort site. The Wichita became friends with the Comanche, the most dreaded and warlike tribe on the plains. Using the contacts with Louisiana merchants who sent traders up the Red, the Wichita became middlemen in the trade between the Comanche and the Louisiana merchants. The Wichita gained wealth, power, and prestige due to this relationship.

In the year 1758 warriors from the Wichita band accompanied the Comanche in the attack on the Spanish Santa Cruz de San Saba’ Mission (near present day Menard, Texas) which was looted in the process. In 1759 Colonel Diego Ortiz Parrilla led a retaliation effort against the Taovayas village on the Red. Several hundred Spanish soldiers found the Taovayan village fortified with entrenchments, wooden stockades, and a moat, and protected by some 6,000 Indians flying the French flag. The battle raged on for four hours. Finally, the Spanish began to retreat and left their baggage train and two cannon behind. By 1771 the Spanish had made peace with the Indians, but due to continued theft of horses and other property, the Spanish lieutenant governor of the Natchitoches region, Athanase de Mezieres, paid a visit in 1778 and persuaded the Taovayas to surrender the two cannon.

II.     SAN TEODORO

On his visit to the twin village area, Mezieres named the region San Teodoro. Beginning in 1778 the population of the village was decimated by smallpox. The American encroachment after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 also hastened the downfall. In 1805 the American agent at Natchitoches identified one of the Red River villages as the Wicheta. This village was abandoned in about 1810. By 1841 the Taovayas had left their fortification to crumble in San Teodoro. They moved on to other locations on the Wichita and Brazos rivers. United States dragoons visited a Wichita village on the north fork of the Red River west of the Wichita village in Oklahoma in 1834, and for years afterward the Wichita lived in the vicinity of the mountains, including the site where Fort Sill was later established and Rush Springs, where their village was destroyed in 1858 by a United States military force pursuing hostile Comanche who were camped nearby. The survivors of this raid joined remnants of other bands of the Wichita confederacy on the Washita River in 1859, and fled to Kansas, after the Civil War broke out, they were relocated with their kinsmen, the Waco, Tawakonis, the Kichais, and other associated tribes on the Wichita Reservation near present day Anadarko, Oklahoma. In 1891 this reservation was opened to allotment in an agreement with the Wichita and affiliated bands. The Wichita group still existed as a federally recognized governmental entity into the 1990’s and continue as such into the 21st century.

III.     WACO BAPTISTE

In the early morning hours of April 30, 1789, Moon Song, a young Wichita Indian mother, gave birth to a son and named him Waco in honor of her band of the Wichita. The father, Jean Baptiste, was a French trader from the Louisiana settlements near the mouth of the Mississippi River who had taken Moon Song as his bride in 1788 in a trade for goods with her father who was moving the family to the south to an encampment on the Brazos River. When young Waco Baptiste made his appearance into this world, the newly independent nation to the east was inaugurating its first president in New York City. The great white father, George Washington, had led the colonies to freedom from the British, and the new Republic would soon begin its expansion to the West. The Wichita had long been trading partners with the French and their trading partners of the plains, the Comanche, who protected them from their Osage enemies. They also had contact with the Spanish. But, the world into which Waco Baptiste was born was beginning to change. Moon Song was only seventeen years old when Waco was born. Her family had moved south to escape the ravages of the dreaded smallpox which had killed many of the Wichita over the last few years. She and her husband moved up and down the Red in a boat picking up trade goods in Natchitoches and bringing them north