Life and Adventures of L D Lafferty: Being A True Biography of One of the Most Remarkable Men of the Great Southwest

By A. H. Abney

The story chronicles the escapades of Lafferty through the Louisiana, Missouri and Arkansas Territories, the lands of the Old Settler Cherokees, and into the new frontier of Texas.

"L. D. Lafferty has been described as a rough ashlar of reckless daring and thoughtless intrepidity and a youthful adventurer who had fought Indians at the age of 15." - We Never Retreat: Filibustering Expeditions into Spanish Texas (2015)

"L. D. Lafferty, a contemporary of Lafitte's, recalled that Lafitte frankly confessed that he had enough silver and gold on the island to freight a ship." -Mysteries and Legends of Texas (2010)

"Lorenzo Dow Lafferty, son of a Tennessee Indian trader who followed the Cherokees to Arkansas in 1810, spent three of his teenage years (1815-1818) living in a Cherokee town on the White River." -The Arkansas Historical Quarterly (1997)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Braunfell Books
• Release date: Feb 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805230526

Book preview

CHAPTER I.

PARENTAGE OF L. D. LAFFERTY

BEFORE entering upon the life and adventures of our hero, it will not be improper that we notice briefly the parent stock from which he descended. For the truth of the great law of hereditary transmission, as taught by modern phrenology and temperamental physiology, seems, in his case, to have been well exemplified and sustained. The same bold, adventurous spirit which electrified the active brain of the father, and sent him a pioneer to pathless wilds, was the controlling power in the mental structure of the son.

John Lafferty, the father, emigrated from North Carolina near the close of the last century, and settled in Sumner County, Tennessee; and though he purchased a home and stocked it with such comforts as a new country, at that time, could afford, yet his principal employment was on the Mississippi River, as a keel and flat-boatsman, where his stalwart arm assisted in driving many a water craft from the Crescent City high up the Mississippi and some of its tributaries.

In the year A.D. 1809, he discovered the mouth of White River, where it disembogues into the great aqueous highway of the West, in the Territory of Louisiana—as all that vast region belonging to the United States west of the Mississippi was then called, and out of which so many magnificent States and Territories have since been carved—and resolved at once to attempt its exploration, which he did in company with a few tried and trusty companions. But we shall not attempt to follow him through his many and hazardous adventures, both, up that stream, across the country to the Arkansas, and down its waters to the noble stream which has since become the great southwestern highway of the nation. So captivated was he With the results of his observation, that he returned home, sold his possessions, and on the first of March, A.D. 1810, emigrated to his newly-discovered El Dorado, stopping first at Arkansas Post, the only settlement, at that time, on the Arkansas River, and which subsequently became the capital of the Territory of Arkansas, and remained such until after its admission as a State into the American Union.

In September of the same year, having supplied himself with a good stock of Indian goods, he descended to the Mississippi, and thence up White River to a point about forty-five miles above the mouth of Big Black, and settled on the site where Batesville now stands, but which was then an unbroken forest, where the foot of the white man had never before trodden. It was whilst stopping at this place that, in one of his hunting excursions, he became acquainted with two white men, Col. Lynn, as he called himself, and Bill Noland, who had expatriated themselves from the walks of civilized life, to become the companions of a small band of Cherokee Indians who, under their sachems, Tom Graves and George Durol, had formed a colony twenty miles still higher up the river. But as we shall have occasion to speak of Lynn and Noland more fully in the early part of our work, it is unnecessary to make further mention of them for the present.

Let not the reader imagine that we are presuming upon either his ignorance or credulity, when we assert as a matter of fact, that a band of Cherokee Indians were domiciled in that remote region, a quarter of a century anterior to the removal of the Cherokees from their hunting-grounds in Georgia by the federal government; for such appears to be a well-authenticated fact. How they got there, and whence they came, is thus explained by themselves, as we received the story from L. D. Lafferty; During one of the old colonial wars between the early settlers of Georgia and the tribe of which this band was a part, about the time of the Revolutionary war, this band, headed by an old chief, refused to make war upon the whites, as was resolved upon in a general council of all the various bands of Cherokees, and withdrew from the council. For this act of insubordination, they were by the main body of the nation declared outlaws, and were expelled the country, and commanded to gather their household gods and other effects, and to betake themselves across the Father of Waters, where their unwarrior-like conduct might render them ready food for the cannibals which were supposed to hold the reins of empire amid the lands of the setting sun. And, after a series of most marvellous adventures, they reached the point where the elder Lafferty found them, and had built up a thriving settlement, raising corn, potatoes, peas, etc., sufficient for their subsistence. But, like all of their race, they depended upon the wild game of the forest for their principal means of support. There were grown men among them who had never seen a white man, except those herein before referred to. They were remarkably friendly toward the new settler and his family. Indeed, had it not been for their friendship and protection against the incursions of the nomadic savages north and west of them, he would not have been long able to resist the depredations of those marauders. But under the fostering care of those pacific and hospitable Cherokees, he kept up his trading house, and lived in comparative peace and safety. It will not be amiss, in this connection, however, to state that, when in after-years the main body of the Cherokees was transported to the West by the United States government, this band was again received into full fellowship with the parent stock, and that both parties buried the tomahawk, and smoked together the calumet of peace.

In the fall of A.D. 1814, Mr. Lafferty was en route to New Orleans for the purchase of goods with which to supply his trading house, when he fell in with a company of volunteers, on their way to join the forces under Gen. Jackson. No sooner did he hear the martial strains of the life and drum, as they floated in thrilling tones along the smooth current of the Mississippi, awakening in his bosom the latent fires of patriotism, than he determined to join the standard of his country, and to defend the soil he so much loved. Pursuant to this resolution he volunteered, and in the memorable battle of the 8th January, A.D. 1815, and amid the acclamations of victory from the American lines, he lay in painful agony from a gun-shot wound received whilst gallantly defending an important point to which his company had been assigned to duty. He returned home to die of his wound, in a few months thereafter, leaving a widow and six children—five sons and one daughter. His eldest son, John L., was elected to the first Legislature that ever convened in Arkansas, and many times subsequently thereto, and died only about the close of the late Confederate war. Jacob B. and Austin R. were respectable citizens, but filled no office of public trust. Henderson S. was an eminent minister of the Methodist Church for forty years, and died in Texas, in June, A.D. 1870. The youngest son, L. D. Lafferty, the subject of our sketch, was born in Sumner County, Tenn., A.D. 1800, and is now, August, 1874, still living, and is the last surviving member of the family.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY LIFE OF L. D. LAFFERTY.

IN early life, the education of young Lafferty was sadly neglected, for notwithstanding his elder brothers had received a tolerable English education, yet when he emigrated with his father to the West, in A.D. 1810, he was ignorant of even his alphabet. And, of course, in that wilderness of untutored savages, for many years school-houses were unknown, whilst the excitement incident to his peculiar surroundings was not calculated to promote either moral or mental training of a high order.

Phrenologically speaking, he inherited a temperament of the nervous-sanguine order; which gives very light hair, fair complexion, and blue eyes. His constitution was of a tough, wiry cast, and in person he was about medium size, and rather good-looking, with large combativeness, secretiveness, and caution. And though he inherited large hope, conscientiousness, and benevolence, with over an average of causality and comparison, yet with a large cerebellum brain, and the constant cultivation of the animal, to the neglect of the moral and intellectual organs, he grew up a rough ashlar of reckless daring and thoughtless intrepidity—one who never forgave an enemy nor forgot a friend. His memory of past events is, to this day, most extraordinary, and he can detail with great accuracy all the leading incidents of his father’s eventful trip from his home in Tennessee to his final stopping-place on White River. He gives a graphic account of a colony of African negroes which he saw just below the mouth of Little Red River. They occupied a large mound, the level top of which covered an area of about fifty acres, surrounded by a low swampy country. There were about thirty or forty of those Africans, all of whom, except the old ones, were as wild as the animals upon which they subsisted, and fled to their hiding-places as soon as they caught sight of the whites. Some of the old men and women were induced to halt and give an account of themselves. They represented that, thirty years before, a few of the oldest of them had fled from the Spanish settlement of New Madrid, on the Mississippi, and had lived in that state ever since, and raised families, feeding on roots, herbs, wild fruits, and such animals as they could either kill or catch. The elder Lafferty called the mound Nigger Hill, a name which it bore for many years, and which, perhaps, it bears to the present time. Those negroes were subsequently either killed or captured by the whites, and the colony broken up.

It must not be inferred, that because our young adventurer had been deprived of the benefits of education in his youth, he never betook himself to books in after-life, for such is by no means in accordance with the facts in his case. In his twenty-fourth year he applied himself to study, and though he never attended school a day in his life, he nevertheless became a man of fine information, especially in history and other works of solid worth. He is a good arithmetician, and writes with much point and grammatical accuracy. At one period of his life he became concerned on the subject of religion, and after much sorrowing, prayer, and repentance, he attained to the Christian’s hope; and though he afterwards, for a time, wandered in forbidden paths, yet the early impressions made by a pious mother ultimately prevailed, and he is now endeavoring to be ready when the Bridegroom cometh.

CHAPTER III.

THE EARLY INDIAN WARS, AND THOSE WHO FIGURED IN THEM—LAFFERTY SECRETLY LEAVES HOME, AND JOINS ONE OF THOSE EXPEDITIONS AGAINST THE HOSTILE SAVAGES.

FROM the earliest settlement in the West by the Cherokees, and for many years thereafter, the Osage, Kickapoo, and Pawnee Indians were in the habit of making periodical forays upon them, for purposes of plunder. Hence a warlike feeling had sprung up between the parties, which had culminated in the most deadly hate, often leading to battles of the most internecine character. Neither party ever thought of either asking or giving quarter; and every avenue of sensibility was closed against the frosty locks of age, or even the uplifted hands of agonizing mothers pleading for themselves and their helpless infants. All! all! without regard to either age, sex, or condition, were consigned, with remorseless vengeance, to the bloody hecatomb.

At the period of which we write, those wild savages principally occupied the country upon the head waters of White, Arkansas, Osage, and the Missouri rivers, in the Territory of Missouri; for since the organization of Louisiana as a State in 1812, the remaining portion of the United States possessions in the West was organized into Missouri Territory.

Notwithstanding those savages had constructed a great many rude villages of reeds, poles, etc., over which occasionally the skins of wild animals were thrown, to give protection from the weather, yet they made no pretensions whatever to the cultivation of the soil, and lived alone by hunting and fishing, or by plunder. The best of their wigwams were most barbarously primitive in material as well as in construction. The natives themselves were almost cannibals, frequently eating their food uncooked. The Osages were a large, muscular, though cowardly tribe, more distinguished for fleetness of foot than for prowess in battle; and when pursued by a mounted enemy, they had been known to outrun the swiftest pony. But they always tried to avoid an open fight, and invariably resorted to strategy to secure success. The Kickapoos were of medium size, of stout build, and as brave as Spartans; always ready for a fight, and never flinching in the face of danger. But the most formidable of the trio were the Pawnees, who were rather spare built, of medium height, and as tough and wiry as whalebone. Unlike their confederates, they never fought on foot; but, mounted on well-trained ponies, they handled the bow and arrow with an ease and dexterity which absolutely challenged admiration. They could approach an enemy diagonally, at full speed, whilst suspended from their saddles, and shielded by the animals on which they rode, exposing to view only part of one foot with which they clung to the saddle, and at the same time keep a continuous stream of arrows whizzing into the ranks of an enemy; in this position often shooting from beneath their ponies, whilst dashing at full speed.

It was shortly after one of these remorseless contests, in which the Cherokees had come off victorious, that the young Lafferty, then fifteen years of age, resolved to join them in an expedition against the common enemy. His father having died, as before stated, he was left with his widowed mother and the family, to steer their course alone on life’s perilous sea, with no companions near them save the friendly Cherokees, and Lynn and Noland, the two white men previously referred to in our first chapter. And though he seems to have been very much devoted to his mother, yet his love of adventure so far overcame the ties of filial restraint that he secretly left home, and joined a company of warriors then under drill for the opening campaign. He was delighted to find his friends Lynn and Noland among the dusky veterans, whose number now reached one hundred braves, all armed with the irrepressible bow and arrow, tomahawk and scalping knife, with a few firearms of the flint-and-steel order of the olden times. Each warrior was clad in a buckskin hunting-shirt, with leggings and moccasins of the same material, the seams of which were well garnished with a long fringe of like character. On their heads they wore closely fitting foxskin caps, securely fastened under their chins, whilst the tail of the animal hung down their backs with marvellous uniformity. Lynn, or Colonel Lynn, as he was styled, thus accoutred, presented a spectacle