Stand Against the Wind

By Carol Harp Norman

Lourana Crawford Finney, a humble woman from the hills of Kentucky narrates this tale of her life. She recounts atrocities of the Civil War, slavery, Indian raids and the hardships and joys of her life. Lou stood strong and faced her challenges head on.
Concerned for the safety of her young family, the widowed Lou is forced to leave her beloved Kentucky home and move them to Texas. When the wagons headed west, Lou was the steadfast and reliable core of the wagon train. She describes this arduous journey and the events of the time.
This is the story of an amazing woman who put her indelible mark on American history. You will not soon forget her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Running Quail Press, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9780986270826

Book preview

Chapter 1

Denton County Texas

August 24, 1874

I wake early and look at the open window to judge the time. The full moon is low in the west, casting long shadows across the clearing. From our cabin on the crest of a knobby hill, I can see a thin pink line on the eastern horizon, and I know dawn is just an hour away.

Here in the fork of the Oliver and Denton creeks, the land is hilly, but not as hilly as our home back in Kentucky. I miss my Kentucky hills and I miss the cool Kentucky night air, heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and rich earth. Here, the August nights are just getting comfortably cool about dawn.

I like to get up early. It gives me a chance to start breakfast before the young-uns are awake. I ease myself carefully out of the bed to keep from waking the sleeping child next to me. With me today are my fourteen-year-old twins, Susan and Vol, Nan, twelve, and the baby, nine-year-old Julia, snuggled here in my bed.

I stretch and look down at her. Reb — that’s what her siblings nicknamed her because she was born during the war. She won’t remember much about our Kentucky home surrounded by kinfolk. Fortunately, neither will she remember the horrors of the war and its aftermath that tore our family apart and drove us from our home.

I have other children. Delina, twenty, and Mary, nineteen, are visiting their married sister, Louisa. My oldest son, Louis, was married before we left Kentucky. He, his wife and baby live there still. My sons, John and Will have both married within the last year and have cabins on homesteads of their own. Will’s wife, Annie is here with me for a few days while Will is away hauling freight from Ft. Worth. Annie is expecting a baby in a little more than a month and has been in fragile health throughout her pregnancy.

I want to get the fire going in the stove before I dress for the day. I like to feel the scrubbed plank floor beneath my bare feet. The planks make me think about how hard my sons worked to build this cabin and make it livable. The kitchen stove is new. When we first moved here, I had to do all of the cooking in the rough stone fireplace but now we have a pot-bellied stove for the coldest winter nights and this wood-burning stove for cooking. I hold my hand over the stove to feel the slight warmth it gives off, and I know the embers are still glowing in the firebox.

We never let the fire go out in the cook stove because it takes too long to get the oven warm again. I brush away the ashes and lay some cow chips on the live embers. By the time I can put a couple of mesquite logs over the cow chips, they have flared up into a hot blaze with an odor of burning grass. The oven will be hot by the time I get dressed and make the biscuits.

As I quietly slip out of my nightgown and into my dress, my heart swells with gratitude. These children have been through such great hardship but they are healthy and happy and strong.

While I am buttoning my shoes, I sense an ominous shift in the air. The rooster squawks as he flies from his crowing perch. The horses whicker nervously in the stockade corral. The hounds are going wild in their shed by the back door.

I hear another noise, faint at first, but swelling into a ground throbbing rumble, getting louder, coming closer.

I have heard this swelling rumble before, in the distant thunder of mounted soldiers; Confederate or Yank, during battle for central Kentucky. But this isn’t Kentucky, and that war ended more than nine years ago. I have a fleeting and hopeful thought of the cattle drives that follow the creek just below our pasture but the cattle drives are usually over by early summer and this is August.

Then I know. This is the sound of a mounted army but now I am hearing a different noise, the undisciplined whooping and yelping of excited men. Indians! Lots of Indians and they are coming this way!

I rush to the window and slam the wooden shutter, hoping the children will stay asleep. There isn’t time to do more to shield them. The mob is already here, trampling my garden in front of the house and spreading out in the open space beyond. I must go out to meet them. I, alone, must deal with them and it is best to do it away from the house and family.

I glance at the Enfield rifle on the rack by the door. I’ve used it before to defend myself but I realize that I would not be able to get off more than one shot before the mob swarmed me and the house.

At first, as I step off the porch, I see only dust. Then they appear out of the dust, the Indians, a hundred or more, Comanche and Kiowa warriors on mounts that are lathered and blowing. I am a horsewoman and I am angry seeing the way these horses are being abused. Some of them are ready to drop but I see the herd of horses the Indians are driving and guess they will just leave a fallen mount behind and take another.

Excited riders are herding hundreds of frightened ponies, saddle horses, draft animals and even some mules. I recognize horses that belong to my neighbors.

The Indians are a motley horde, some dressed in trousers from castoff uniforms and some in nothing but buckskin breechcloths. They are all smeared with grease paint; black, ochre and muddy red. Their horses, too, have been painted with symbols and swirls and the rancid odor of the paint mixed with horse sweat and unwashed bodies are as overpowering as the dust cloud that envelops us. The excited riders jerk the reins of their horses; turning them and prancing them in a maelstrom of movement and noise. They drive the stolen horses into a cleared field on the other side of the main trail and keep circling to hold the frightened herd together. Now twenty or thirty of the riders separate from the writhing mass and position themselves in the garden directly in front of me. Suddenly, everything is quiet as if some unseen signal has frozen the scene. My panic is gone. My thundering heartbeat slows. An inner calm strengthens me. I scan the insolent assembly with my eyes looking for their leader.

Now I see him, one Indian on the biggest horse, sitting tall and still with his eyes on me. There is no doubt he is the leader of this pack. With a face like chiseled stone, he might be handsome except for his arrogant eyes and sneering mouth. His muscular chest and shoulders are bare except for paint. Some kind of animal claws or bones dangle on a leather thong around his neck. His long braids are wrapped with fur and tied with strips of bright calico. A hatchet and knife hang from a braided rawhide rope across the withers of his mount. With a raised hand signal he quiets his men and all eyes turn to him.

From childhood I have been taught never to show my fear, but I know that it is rare that a white person comes face to face with an Indian on the warpath and lives to tell about it. I know what I have to do, and without hesitation I throw my shoulders back and stretch myself to my full five feet, eight inches as I purposefully walk toward the man. His expression never changes. Without blinking, he keeps his eyes on me. I know what he is after—horses—and my Kentucky Thoroughbreds are the finest in the country. I will die before I see them abused by these renegades. I am glad my horses are out of sight behind a ten-foot high stockade fence. The first thing we did when we claimed this homestead was to erect the stockade, planting post oak poles in a solid wall to protect our Thoroughbreds from the roaming herds of mustangs.

The Indian can’t see my horses but, of course, he knows they are there and I have no doubt that this savage would know and appreciate good horses. His mount is a fine specimen, powerfully built with a noble head and intelligent eyes. I calmly put out my hand for the horse to sniff so he won’t shy from my billowing skirt and blowing hair.

I look the Indian in the eyes and say, Please don’t take my horses. I am a widow and they are all I have or can get.

For what seems like an eternity, the man looks at me with that stone-cold stare. I hold my breath but keep my eyes locked on his. Then, with a jerk of his reins and a jab of his heels, man and horse fly into motion. With a snort, the horse rears as the rider shouts and points in a northwesterly direction. Like a swirling tornado, the entire band of savages and horses is on the move and within minutes nothing is left but dust and my trampled garden.

For the longest time, I stand there frozen, afraid any movement might bring them back. I can’t believe what has happened. Annie steps out on the porch.

Mama, what can I do? she calls from the porch.

Just go inside and keep everyone quiet until we’re sure they’re gone.

And they were gone in the direction of our nearest neighbors three miles away. As I remember it now, breakfast was a little late that morning.

That was more than thirty years ago. Now, my children are grown, have children of their own and I have great-grandchildren. I have relived that experience a thousand times in my memory. Like a vivid dream, it comes back sharp and clear in my mind. No matter how many times I think about it, I will never know why that tribe of renegades decided to leave us alone. They left the reservation in Oklahoma in August of 1874. Traveling by night in the light of their full Comanche moon, they robbed and marauded all the way to Ft. Worth before turning back to Oklahoma and West Texas, driving hundreds of stolen horses.

The band had stopped at my sister Laurenda and her husband, Merriel Benton’s earlier in the night. The Bentons wisely stayed quiet, feigning sleep, while the Indians stealthily passed them by. By the time the band rode to my farm they were no longer trying to keep quiet. They were worked up and intoxicated with the excitement of the hunt.

I can’t imagine why they treated me as they did but some people say maybe they respected my courage, while others say they probably thought I was crazy. They tell me that Indians have a superstitious fear of people who are not in their right mind. I will never know if their leader understood my words but I’m sure he understood my meaning.

Neither will I ever understand the unspeakable brutality of these savages. They rode from my place to the home of a neighbor and massacred everyone there. They killed the mother as she tried to hide under the floor of her cabin and scalped everyone except one dark-haired daughter.

Memories — this is what I have left of my life. Some people would say I have had a hard life but I disagree because it was a life rich in experiences. I feel like a link in a chain, a strong, unbreakable chain that stretches from my Scottish forefathers all the way into the New World. Links of that chain represent bloody battles against tyrant rulers, the hardship of long ocean voyages, disease, famine, revolution and Indian wars. Other links represent the love of family, honor of service to our country and excitement of exploration. My own link took shape in a gentle Kentucky valley and was hardened in the crucible of our nation’s bitter self-mutilation — the Civil War, and the lawlessness it spawned.

Now I am past my eightieth birthday and my body has grown weak and my eyesight dim. As I sit and look out the window and watch the dust storm, wisps of memories sweep through my thoughts similar to the gusts of wind as it stirs up the unsettled dirt. I realize that many of my grandchildren did not have the opportunity to know their parent who had been my child. Often their curious thoughts urge them to question me about their Mama or Papa. No one knew them better than I did because these lost parents were my children. Even though my body is idle, my memories often take me back and I relive experiences of my life just as if they are happening today.

I now realize, finally, that these memories belong to my family — my children’s children for generations to come. I don’t want this chain to be broken. I don’t want these stories to be forgotten, so I am writing them down in the hope that my children will link them with their life experiences and extend the chain to the end of life. My hand shakes when I take up the pen to write, but God has blessed me with a keen memory and vivid imagination. This is my story and the story of the people I have loved the most.

Now that I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, until I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come. Psalms 71:1

Chapter 2

Estill County Kentucky

1830

My memory takes me back to my childhood. If I lay my head back and close my eyes, I can see myself as a gangly six-year-old girl. As usual, my strawberry-blonde hair has loosened itself from its braids and hangs in damp tendrils around my face. My bonnet hangs by its ties down my back. I could never keep a bonnet on and, as a result, my sunburned nose and cheeks are sprinkled with cinnamon-colored freckles. I was always taller than most girls my age. My skinny legs can be seen between my outgrown smock and home-made shoes that are much too big and tied with twine. I always knew I was important to the family but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have chores that were my sole responsibility, and I took those responsibilities very seriously.

Chores, Chores, Chores! I think that word should be a cuss word! From sunup ‘til sundown, there is always a job that needs to be done. Because I’m still a young girl, one of my jobs is to gather eggs. Some of the old roosters are mean and try to attack me with their spurs and beaks. They don’t bother me one bit because I have new, or rather, hand-me-down shoes. A swift kick usually does the job to get ‘em away. I help my Mama with the cleaning, sewing and, ugh… the laundry. My schooling has been learning how to do things around our farm in Kentucky.

The year is 1830, I think. I’m six years old and I do know that! Occasionally, I get my vengeance! I get to pluck that ol’ rooster that has been terrorizing me. Good ol’ chicken ‘n’ dumplings for supper, definitely hits the spot! Mama says I’m almost big enough to help with the milking. Another ugh chore.

Now, snakes are something I fear and I’m afraid I’ll see one while gathering berries, nuts and wild grapes. I’m tough, so those snakes are scair’t of me! Injuns still occasionally roam our hills because this was some of their old hunting ground. I know where to hide and I came from a long line of Injun hunters. My great-grandpa was Col. Valentine Crawford. He and his brother, Col. William Crawford, fought the Injuns and British for many years. They surveyed the frontier for President George Washington and scouted the mountains with Daniel Boone. They were heroes, and the old men here still talk about them.

I don’t know everything, but most people say those Injuns can be very mean. I think they must be good people but their ways are so different from ours. I can be mean, too, especially when my brothers throw rotten eggs at me. Here’s how they do it — they bury eggs in the mud to use later as bombs. Stinky green slime sliding down my hair and face makes me look like a egg monster! When I run at my brothers with my most wicked face, they run away! Nope, those roosters and Injuns don’t stand a chance with me.

Bad day! My Mama gave me the talk! She said I have to act more like a lady. Alrighty then! I do realize I embarrassed her at church today but Sundays are always the longest days and then I have to get gussied up in my best dress, bonnet and shoes I wear every Sunday. Also, I don’t get out of my chores even though the Bible says Sunday should be a day of rest. I have to take a bath on Saturday to get ready for Sunday, which doesn’t make any sense to me. My dress is getting tight and uncomfortable. I think Mama wears a poker in her Sunday dress because she stands so straight and is — oh well, I don’t think I should criticize her.

I do like seeing my friends on Sundays and after church we run and play, but we have to pay for it first. Our preacher sure does like to talk a long time! Today, I was pestered by a horse fly during the preaching and Mama had a fan but she was so intent on listening to Brother Thornberry that she didn’t notice that I needed a weapon myself. I finally stood up and yelled at the fly right in the middle of the sermon. I got hauled out of the church by some deacons and my parents. The look on their faces showed how upset they were and I could see disappointment in my Mama’s eyes. Later, I got the talk.

Mama told me I have to learn a lot more stuff before I grow up. I have several grown brothers and older sisters. I have three younger sisters, but one baby was born dead. Sometimes I see Mama by his little grave crying. I know life is tough and I need to grow up. I’ll try.

I am already learning to sew. I watch my sisters with their knitting but I can hardly wait ‘til I am big enough to weave cloth on the loom. I am already helping with the spinning and dying. We grow flax to make our cloth and one of my chores is to help my sisters hoe weeds and nettles from the growing flax. We harvest the flax in the fall, bundle it and spread it in a place where it can weather under the rain and snow through the winter.

The next summer, it can be broken and the fibers, called tow, are stripped away, combed and spun into yarn. The flax can be spun into fine linen for our underwear and baby clothes or into a tough, durable cloth for our outer clothes. We make linsey-woolsey by threading the loom with linen yarn and interweaving it with wool. Linsey-woolsey is best for our winter dresses and the boy’s pants because it’s stronger than wool and warmer than linen.

One of my very favorite chores is to help dye cloth. Most of the dye is made from the bark my sisters and I gather from the woods. The prettiest brown comes from hickory bark. Sumac fruit makes pink or orange. Sometimes, we have beet peelings and trimmings to make a pretty rosy pink. We hunt through the woods for black oak trees where we gather the inside bark to make our yellow dye. Osage orange also makes a pretty yellow. Blue is a special color because we have to buy a brick of indigo. We dissolve a chunk of the indigo in lye water which we make by steeping water through ashes. The magic of indigo is that the cloth is yellow when it comes out of the dye, but then the sun and air turn it a dark blue that my sisters say matches my eyes.

Another chore I like is feeding the chickens, turkeys and guineas. Those baby guineas are so cute. You can’t really see them running through the clover, but you can see the clover move when they do. I’m teaching my little sisters to gather eggs so that will be one chore I don’t have to do any more.

We have a few colored slaves who do the harder work the on our farm. To me, they are part of the family. We share in the work and we share the things we grow on the farm, whether it’s garden vegetables or milk and meat from the animals. Sometimes I get into trouble when I help the colored people with their chores because Mama says I get in the way. I don’t understand that because there is so much to do and I have learned a lot from them. My Papa and brothers do most of the hunting and help the colored men with the farming.

The heavy laundry is done in a big black kettle over a fire under the shade of a tree. You use a stick to stir and poke the clothes in the hot soapy water, then use the stick to lift the clothes out and drop them in a tub of rinse water. After the clothes are rinsed and wrung out, they are spread across the split-rail fence that runs from the kitchen porch to the outhouse. I think that big black wash pot is probably the most useful pot our family owns.

The wash pot is really put to good use when we butcher hogs in the fall. In early November, after the weather is cool, the hogs are driven in from the woods where they have been feasting on acorns and other nuts. Very early in the morning of butchering day, the pot is filled with clean water and set over a blazing fire to heat. After the hogs are killed, the scalding hot water is poured over them to loosen the hair. Everybody helps to scrape the hair away and clean the skin. Then, hogs are hung from a high beam and butchered by the men. The women separate the internal organs and wash the guts for sausage casing. We sugar cure our hams, shoulders and bacon with a mixture of brown sugar, salt, saltpeter and spices. After the meat has been thoroughly coated with the sugar mixture, it’s hung, unwrapped, in the smokehouse. After a week, the meat is covered with a sugary crust, and then it’s wrapped in muslin and hung back in the smokehouse to cure.

We grind the sausage meat and stuff it into gut casings to hang in the smokehouse. We always make some shuck sausage by wrapping sausage in corn shucks. The shuck sausage is good for camping because it can be cooked in hot ashes and eaten directly from the shuck wrapping. The shuck sausage is stored in baskets and hung in the smokehouse.

Next, the wash pot is filled with the fat trimmings from the meat. After several hours over a hot fire, the fat is melted from the strips of skin and meat. The lard is strained into crockery jars for storage. After the lard is strained off, the strips of skin and meat are brown and crisp. We call that cracklins, and we love to eat it while it’s still warm. Gloria makes the most delicious crackling bread with cracklins and corn meal.

Not long after butchering time, Gloria and Eliza will use the wash pot to make soap. We fill the pot with leftover cooking grease and old lard, and boil it with lye water. Papa made our lye water vat from a wooden barrel. Another one of my chores is to take the ashes from the cook stove and fireplace and put them in that barrel. I dip water from the cistern and pour it over the ashes. The water seeps through the ashes and we can collect lye water from a hole near the bottom of the barrel.

It takes several hours to cook the soap down and the women take turns stirring it. It’s my job to keep the fire going and make sure the smaller children stay a safe distance from the dangerous hot mix. When Gloria decides the soap is done, we let the fire die down and the soap cool off.

You young-uns stay back now ‘cause this soap is hot and it might splatter, Gloria calls out.

She ladles the soap into trays. After it cools overnight, she can cut it into bars. Gloria can make strong soap for scrubbing floors, a regular soap for laundry and dish washing, and mild soap for bathing. Sometimes Mama has her put some vanilla or other sweet smelling stuff in the mildest soap. Mama calls this our face soap.

While they are stirring the soap, I listen to Gloria and Eliza talk about their childhood on a Virginia plantation. I shiver when I hear them talk about plantation owners who lock their slaves up at night and use dogs to hunt them down if they try to get away. I heard them whisper about a neighbor, here in our hills, who keeps his slaves chained at night. I can’t imagine anything so mean.

Sometimes, we have a big get-together with all of our kin. There are lots of Crawfords in these hills. We always have mountains of food and lots of music. The Crawfords came from the hills of Scotland and we love hills and that’s where we always seem to be. One of my cousins told me we have one leg longer than the other, but I don’t believe him. I look at mine and they’re both just the same! We all look normal enough. I like playing with my cousins and seeing my parents relax with family.

Hey, Lou, do you know why we all have one leg longer than the other? one of my cousins asked me.

Well, I don’t think that’s true, but what’s your answer.

One leg’s longer than the other because we walk on these hillsides, and he laughed and laughed.

I never want to go to bed after one of these get-togethers and sometimes I’ll sneak out and listen to the adults talk. One old uncle just loves to talk. His name is Archibald Crawford but we all call him Uncle Archie. What a character! He’s over six feet tall and has red hair, a beard to match and a mustache that points up on the ends. He has a bad scar on his cheek that he says came from an Injun’s arrow in the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. He wears that scar like a medal.

Those darn Brits lost to us in the revolution, he says, then they made the Injuns feel like they could go on the warpath against us again. That was part of the War of 1812. We won that one, too.

Chapter 3

Clan Crawford

"I Will Give You Safety Through Strength"

One of my favorite things when I was growing up, was listening to the Crawford men tell stories of the Crawford clan from years long ago. These stories have been passed down from generation to generation. Granted, we didn’t have many books, so this storytelling was a great way to keep our history alive and besides, it was entertaining. Mama taught us to read, write and cipher, but, I must admit, history was something I learned from the men. Our Crawford men are very proud of their heritage and they would tell colorful stories of Crawford heroism and loyalty that has changed the course of history.

According to Grandpa, our Crawford clan began in Scotland about a thousand years ago. The Scottish king granted our ancestor land and the title of Overlord of Crawford for helping the king fight off the advances of William the Conqueror’s army. The family later began using the name Crawford as their surname.

One notable family was the Wallace family. My ancestor’s daughter, Margaret, married Sir Malcolm Wallace. They had a few children during a time of strife in Scotland and in the late 1200s, King Alexander III died without a male heir. Scotland then entered into a time of civil unrest, as different barons tried to decide which family would become the new ruling family. This rivalry nearly plunged Scotland into civil war. King Edward I,