Hallie C. Stillwell, a Rancher And Texas Legend, Dies at 99 page 3

Life Experiences of Pickey - True Stories of My Life
By Mrs. L. C. Saunders then of Hyne, California
Written in 1930 at the age of 70 years

I was born May the 7th, 1860, at a small town called Kempers Bluff in Victoria County, Texas. My parents were John Stillwell (II) who was born in 1832 in the state of Mississippi (although documents show Arkansas!), and Miss Emily Kay who was born April 9th, 1838, in Victoria, Texas.

I know very little of my father's people, his father died while he and his brothers were small and he was bound out to a cousin to be raised. He ran away from this home at the age of ten years and a captain of some boat plying between Vicksburg, Mississippi and New Orleans, La, took charge of him and kept him until he was grown. Then he came to Texas and he and mother were married in Victoria, Texas.

His mother married again to a man by name of McKensie and there were some half brothers and sisters by this name but I never saw them. My mother had four sisters and five brothers; All her brothers fought in the Southern army.

In 1860, the year the war broke out, father and mother joined an expedition to Old Mexico gotten up by a man by the name of Box. The Mexican government had offered land to American settlers, so this expedition was a colonization scheme but proved a failure so the members scattered, most of them coming back to the United States. Father came back to the Rio Grande River near Brownsville, Texas. My first recollection of any events in life was when I was 4 years old. I remember some soldiers used to pick me up and take me to their camp and give me bread and and molasses to eat and laugh fit to kill because I got it all over my face. Mother told me afterwards that there was a regiment of soldiers camped near where we lived, and their captain was a great friend of ours named Vosburg.
I also remember some of the soldiers spreading a coat on the ground and telling me to pick the buttons up and I tried my best to do it and they would laugh and get a great kick out of watching me. These soldiers were called away at the end of the war and a regiment of colored soldiers were placed on the river about a mile below where we lived. There were several thousand of them.
Father made his living freighting with a small row boat from Brownsville up the river 25 or 30 miles. He brought his boat full of supplies for the merchants who lived along the banks of the river at small settlements. He often brought a boat load of bananas. I loved bananas and never got tired of eating them.
I remember one day father came up with a boat load of them and we met him where he landed and he tied his boat with a rope. I was about 5 years old and the thought came to me that if I could pull the boat up on the bank and get in it, I could eat all the bananas I wanted so, when everyone started to the house, I hung back and got hold of the rope and tried to pull up the boat but the current or wind caused it to swing out into the river and it jerked me out into the water. A woman heard the splash and looked back in time to see me sink out of sight. She let out a scream and told father to run, I was in the water. He got back in time to see me come to the top and jumped in after me.
While we were living in this place, father, at one time, moved a merchant's goods from the Mexican side to the American side and stored them in one end of our house. We lived in a long adobe house that was divided into two parts with a hall through the middle. There were doors at each end of the hall and it had a dirt floor.
Among this regiment of negro soldiers was a large negro and 5 or 6 others who would slip off at night and prowl over the country stealing and killing. They found out about the merchant's goods being stored in our house and planned to come and kill father and rob the house. Might have intended to kill all of us. The night they came mother was sick in the only bed we had and father and myself and little sister were sleeping on the floor on a bed made by spreading down some blankets. The mosquitos were bad so we had a place dug out in the dirt floor filled with cow chips which were set afire to make smoke to drive the mosquitos away.
Our bed was near the door and when the negro stepped inside his foot struck a piece of wood laying on the floor which awakened father, but before he could get to his feet, the negro had stepped to the side of the bed and had raised a brand new saber and was just in the act of striking mother on the head but father, rushing to his feet, attracted his attention, so he swung around and struck father on the head, felling him to the ground. While he was down, he reached under his pillow and got his six-shooter and shot the man once before he again got to this feet; as he arose the negro struck at him but just as he struck, father dodged and shot him the second time. The negro let the saber go as he struck at father the second time and it fell on the bed, cutting me on the leg and my sister on the foot. When he let go of the saber, he grabbed the six-shooter in father's hand and tried to wrench it away but father managed to shoot him the third time, all three shots went through his body, the last one through his heart. In the struggle for the six-shooter, they both fell to the floor. Father pulled himself loose from the man and struggled to his feet and wiped what he thought was perspiration from his face and eyes; it was blood from the wound on his head made when he was hit at the beginning of the attack. The negro had fallen across the little smoke fire in the floor that had been made for driving away the mosquitos.
Father reached down to pull him off the fire andthe negro nearly jerked him to the floor again, being yet alive. Father pulled away from him and said, 'If you are not dead yet, d___ you, I will kill you!' and picked up a rifle setting nearby against the wall. The robber rolled over and said, "I'se done", so father handed me his six-shooter and said, "Come with me". I took the gun and followed him out the door. He dragged the man to the banks of the river where he pushed him off into the water. The man was very large and it took both hands and all of father's strength to pull him down to the river. Father did not want to go outside of the house unarmed is the reason he had me go with him and carry the six-shooter. As I toddled along with the six-shooter (which was about all I could do to carry), I kept saying: "Va a matar otra vez?", which means "Are you going to kill him again? Having had a Mexican nurse and played with Mexican children I had learned the Mexican language first. I was 12 years old before I learned to talk American. The above phrase is perhaps not accurately spelled but I have written it as it sounded. When we returned to the house, father found a clean shirt and the robber's shoes just outside the door where he had left them. Father took mother out of the bed and carried her down to his boat tied near the house and laid her in the bottom of it on some blankets, myself and sister (Lola) following them. I was 5 and she was 2 years old at this time. I had to lead and help her along. Father took us and put us in by mother's side and covered us up. Then he paddled across to the Mexican side and landed near a house where a Mexican family lived. He woke them up and told them what had happened. So they came and helped him get mother and us children to the house and put us to bed. When father went in the house where it was light, he saw he was bloody from head to foot and he felt the top of his head and found a long wound where his skull was partially crushed. He had a very thick head of hair and the saber was new and had never been sharpened and that's what saved his life. The excitement kept him going although he was very weak from the loss of blood and fainted when he felt his head. The Mexican man put him in the boat and they went downstream to Brownsville to a hospital where he remained until he was out of danger. The Mexican famly took care of mother and us children until he came home. After this happened, we learned that the 6 other men had come with this killer and had waited outside to help with the robbing after the leader killed us all but on hearing three shots so close together, they ran off thinking there were several men in the house.
The body of this dead man floated down the river and was found by some of he other soldiers, so they kept a constant lookout to get hold of father to kill him. Several months later, several of them came to our house one night and called father out. Only one came to the door. It was dark and before he knew it, someone grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out. Just then, another one took his other arm and they told him to come along with them. He walked a few yards and asked them to let him tie his shoes as he had not taken the time to do this before he came out. As he was unarmed, they loosed their hold on his arms and he stooped down to tie his shoes and in place of doing this, he made a quick run and jumped into the river. He sank and swam as far as he could under water. It being dark, they could not see him, however, they fired several shots in his direction as he went into the water. They had told him they were going to take him down to a certain tree and hang him for killing their comrade. He swam across and got a bunch of Mexican men to come back with him and move us over on the Mexican side. We stayed on that side after that until these troops were taken away, on account of both Mexican and Americans killing them every chance they got because of the crimes they committed. Father said at one time the river was so full of dead soldiers that settlers would not drink the water. I remember I was so afraid of soldiers after our experiecne that everytime I saw one, I would run and hide, my favorite place being under the bed.