Reliable accounts of battles, wars, adventures, forays, murders, and massacres together with biographical sketches of many of the most noted Indian fighters and frontiersmen of Texas.

The original, unedited version of a Utah classic, with a new foreword by the author's great-grandson, Phillip B. Gottfredson.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Trade and Intercourse Acts passed by Congress between 1796 and 1834 set up a system for individuals to receive monetary compensation from the federal government for property stolen or destroyed by American Indians. By the end of the Mexican-American War, both Anglo-Americans and Nuevomexicanos became experts in exploiting this system—and in using the army to collect on their often-fraudulent claims. As Gregory F. Michno reveals in Depredation and Deceit, their combined efforts created a precarious mix of false accusations, public greed, and fabricated fear that directly led to new wars in the American Southwest between 1849 and 1855. Tasked with responding to white settlers’ depredation claims and gaining restitution directly from Indian groups, soldiers typically had no choice but to search out often-innocent Indians and demand compensation or the surrender of the guilty party, turning once-friendly bands into enemy groups whenever these tense encounters exploded in violence. As the situation became more volatile, citizens demanded a greater army presence in the region, and lucrative military contracts became yet another reason to encourage the continuation of frontier violence. Although the records are replete with officers questioning accusations and discovering civilians’ deceit, more often than not the army was forced to act in direct counterpoint to its duties as a constabulary force. And whenever war broke out, the acquisition of more Indian land and wealth began the cycle of greed and violence all over again. The Trade and Intercourse Acts were manipulated by Anglo-Americans who ensured the continuation of the very conflicts that they claimed to abhor and that the acts were designed to prevent. In bringing these machinations to light, Michno’s book deepens—and darkens—our understanding of the conquest of the American Southwest.

Beginning in the seventeenth century, with the colonization of the Americas, European immigrants and American Indians encountered each other's views on the rights and responsibilities of ownership. Disputes arose as a natural result of the meeting of two cultures, and occasionally these developed into sanguinary conflicts. In 1796 the United States Congress created the depredation claims system to compensate Indians and settlers alike for the loss of property and thereby preserve peace on the frontiers. By presenting the lives of non-Indian people who filed for relief from depredations and the legal and political systems under which they filed claims, Larry Skogen accentuates the distinction between the lofty ideals and the penurious, tedious reality of the claims system. Because the young nation could not afford to pay for every stolen cow or burned farmhouse, rules and policies were imposed on the system to protect the treasury, but they slowed the claims process and turned away legitimate claimants empty-handed. In addition the system, seldom used by Indians, became a target of unscrupulous settlers, who filed fraudulent claims and sometimes, because they had political connections, received compensation for losses never incurred. When the system did provide indemnities, Indian nations paid for the actions of their miscreants of whom they disapproved, or, as much more often happened, the U.S. government used monies from the general treasury to pay lawyers and administrators of the estates of long-dead claimants.

The book leads the reader through the past to the present and here leaves him amid active and progressive men who are advancing, along with him, toward the future. Including, as it does, lives of men now living, it constitutes a connecting link between what has gone before and what is to come after. It is therefore fitting that it should be dedicated to a prominent man of our day in preference to one of former times. The matter presented, in the nature of things, is largely biographical. There can be no foundation for history without biography. History is a generalization of particulars. It presents wide extended views. To use a paradox, history gives us but a part of history. That other part which it does not give us, the part which introduces us to the thoughts, aspirations and daily life of a people, is supplied by biography. The men whose deeds are recorded in this book were or are deeply identified with Texas, and the preservation in this volume in enduring form of some remembrance of them—their names, who and what they were—has been a pleasant task to one who feels a deep interest and pride in Texas—its past history, its heroes and future destiny.