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789
winter of 1854 he moved to Texas, crossing the Red River at Old Preston, famous in the history of the settlement of northern Texas, and began raising cattle on the wide prairies he had traversed while chasing the Mexicans during the Mexican War and on his strip to California in the wake of the forty-niners. He had settled first on Keechi Creek, near the Brazos River, in the territory afterwards, in 1857, organized into what is Palo Pinto county. At that time the Comanches, Caddos, and other tribes of Indians were partly on two reservations, one under Captain Shaply Ross, father of General Sul Ross, one of the most knightly and famous soldiers ever produced by Texas, who afterwards became its Governor; the other under Capt. John R. Baylor, afterwards General Baylor. Captain Ross and Captain Baylor were agents for the Indians under the government on the reservations in Young county territory, one being stationed near where the town of Graham is now located. These reservations, though designed by the public authorities for a good purpose, in effect only furnished supply stations for others of the Indian tribes who claimed to be wild Indians, and depredated on the few settlers all along the border from the Red River on the north to the Rio Grande. They came regularly to the reservations to replenish their supplies of arms, ammunition, beads, etc., trading the horses and mules and other plunder they had looted the whites of to the friendly "buds" on the reservation.
Matters grew from bad to worse until the settlers arose in their wrath about 1858. On Salt Creek, below Belknap, quite a battle was fought, all Indians looking alike to the Texans. Several were killed on both sides, Captain Cureton being in command of his neighbors. It may be said that these old frontiersmen sometimes had more courage than discretion in these conflicts, and in this instance Captain Cureton had to be on guard to keep William McAdams and others of the company from