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The Fort Worth Gazette: 1849: Major Ripley Arnold Speaks Up In Def..
http://fortworthgazette.blogspot.com/2011/12/1849-major-ripley-amol.
Dragoons In field dress ~ From Ft. McKavett & The 2nd Dragoons
Supplies come in via Fort Graham to the south which also includes the mails. Newspapers of which the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Galveston News are the most prominent, are eagerly awaited. The June 17, 1849 edition of the Times-Picayune arrived with this article:
DaicooKs BEATKN.?Tha Houston.Tolegrepb ol a lata doto ?tote? that a party oMndlani, supposed to bo Wachltas and Tonkaways, lately vlklted the military poat abovo AVhuco vUlsg"o,'and captured, fifty horios belonging to ibo U. S, dragoon*, and u number belonging .to Ibo Battlers in tho neighbor hood~tbe Indiana making good tbeir escape. Comment e?n tbis U unuoceifsary. Our frontier is truly lu; a dbfancolo?s sUto.
Times-Picayune, June 17, 1849
This article, which contained no sources at all, was troubling. To most Americans of the time, Texas seemed as far away as Afghanistan is today. The newspapers of this era had found that the Indian wars were wildly popular with their readers and treated whatever news there was almost as a sporting event with the small US Army on one side and the native tribes on the other. As always happens in the media, if there is no current news, then there is sometimes a tendency by the less ethical to create some.
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