PHOTO: NPS The Indian Emily legend first appeared in print in Carlysle Raht’s The Romance of Davis Mountains and Big Bend Country, published in 1919. Raht told the tale of an Indian girl wounded in an Apache attack on the town of Fort Davis. The young woman was taken to the hospital at the fort and a Mrs. Easton nursed her back to health. The girl was called Emily and after her recovery she moved in with Mrs. Easton as a servant and companion. And she soon fell in love with Mrs. Easton’s son, Lieutenant Thomas Easton. As the yarn goes, the young lieutenant became engaged to another. Brokenhearted, Emily fled the post to return to her own people. Months later, Emily learned that the Apaches planned to attack Fort Davis. Fearing for the life of her beloved lieutenant, she returned to the post to warn the soldiers. Not recognizing her, a sentry shot her as she attempted to enter the garrison. According to Raht, her dying words were, “All my people come to kill . . . . Tom no get killed – goodbye.” In 1929, a somewhat different story of Indian Emily found its way into print when Jan Fortune published an article in the Dallas Semi-Weekly News. Fortune’s story reached a wider audience in the Frontier Times of April, 1930. According to Fortune, it was during the 1850s when the Eighth U. S. Infantry was stationed at the fort that a Lieutenant John Essen brought an Indian girl to the post. He and his scouting party had found the girl, later named Emily, lying by the side of the trail with an arrow through her side. In Fortune’s tale, Emily fell in love with Lieutenant Essen. She fled the fort when the lieutenant announced his engagement to someone else, but later returned to the post to warn of an attack. Fortune’s version, however, had the Indian girl warning of an attack by Comanches – not Apaches, and her dying words were, “I could not have them kill you, John . . . . I love you John.” During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, local historian and Fort Davis newspaperman Barry Scobee kept the Indian Emily legend alive. He retold Raht’s version of the story in various newspaper articles and in three books on Fort Davis. Scobee embellished and changed the tale in his 1936 book, The Story of Fort Davis. He wrote that the initial attack had been on the “garrison” and not the town of Fort Davis, as Raht had chronicled. According to Scobee, the event probably took place in the 1860s or 1870s and “in appreciation of her sacrificing her life for her lover and the post, Emily was buried in the post cemetery.”In his 1947 book, Old Fort Davis, Scobee added more detail. In this version, he referred to Emily as a “beautiful Indian Girl” whom Mrs. Easton housed “in an adobe hut behind their house” on officers’ row. Scobee further romanticized his earlier account by saying that “a grave was dug in the rocky soil at the foot of the mountain . . . and there, with loving hands, her friends left her to her eternal rest.” In 1955, Scobee wrote to a friend that he was aware the U. S. Army had no record of a Lieutenant Tom Easton, but he said, “I have for the most part kept mum about it, so as not to wreck a good story.”Virginia Madison’s account of the story, published in her 1955 book, The Big Bend Country of Texas, mirrored the tale as written by Raht and Scobee, while Faye Carr Adams elevated Emily to the status of a princess in her poem “Em’ly, the Chieftain’s Daughter,” published a few years earlier. 
Photo: NPS In a 1961 article published by the Houston Chronicle Magazine, author William Hall reported that the event involving Indian Emily happened soon after the Ninth Cavalry re-established the post in 1867. In the early 1960s, writer Aline Rothe published a similar story that followed Raht’s and Scobee’s accounts. Her version mentioned that Indian Emily had been perpetuated in “Laredo Crockett,” a comic strip published in several newspapers. Fred Atkinson’s article, “The Legend of Indian Emily,” published in the October 1968 edition of Big West magazine, basically recounted the same myth as many of the other writers. Atkinson, however, had Lieutenant Easton stationed at the post with the Third U. S. Cavalry, a regiment that served at Fort Davis from 1885 to 1887 and again in 1890 and 1891 – well after the threat of Indian attacks. Atkinson began his romanticized story by telling that many old-time residents heard cries of an Indian girl coming from the hills. The sounds, he wrote, were that of Indian Emily “sobbing in the shrill wind, moaning far off in a hoarse cry that numbed our childish senses.” According to Atkinson, Lieutenant Easton and Emily had roamed together “over the nearby Davis Mountains and the rambling range of hills encompassing the fort.” He further captured the reader’s imagination by stating that the legend of Emily’s ghostly screams began because some said she was not really dead but waiting in the mountains for Tom to come back to her.
In the book, Unsung Heroes of Texas, published in 1986, author Ann Ruff revived the Indian Emily legend in a story entitled “She Never Forgot.” Ruff’s account added minute details including a quote from the sentry who supposedly shot Emily when she was returning to the post to warn of attack. According to Ruff, the sentry said, “[The] Injun girl kept coming – like she wanted me to shoot.”The Indian Emily legend has become a part of the folklore of Fort Davis. Barry Scobee admitted he retold the tale to bring visitorsto Fort Davis. Along with several other local residents, Scobee in 1936 convinced the State of Texas to erect an historical marker on the fort grounds recognizing “Indian Em’ly.” The granite stone marked the purported grave of the young Indian girl who gave her life to save the post from attack. From 1936 until 1999, the marker silently stood in the old Post Cemetery. The Truth After Fort Davis became part of the National Park Service in the early 1960s, a concerted effort was undertaken to provide historical evidence for the Indian Emily story. None was found. There are no records to indicate that Fort Davis was attacked or raided, except during the Civil War when no troops were stationed at the post. Contrary to popular belief, an attack on any army fort in the Southwest was a rare occurrence. So where does the basis lay for the fabrication of the tale and the spell it has cast on the imaginations of so many? There are two incidents in the official U. S. Army records of Fort Davis that might have generated the legend.In September 1868, after a skirmish with Indians about one hundred miles southeast of the post, a detachment of Ninth Cavalry troopers returned to the fort with a female Indian child and two Mexican boys who had been held captive.The second possible source for the legend involved a company of Texas Rangers who captured a wounded Indian woman and two Indian children in January of 1881, north of present-day Van Horn. The rangers brought the captives to Fort Davis and placed them temporarily in the post hospital for observation and treatment. A year later, the post surgeon recorded that “a cowardly and brutal murder of an Indian captive (squaw) was perpetrated by some party or parties unknown near the hospital where the woman was tented.” The woman apparently was waiting to be taken to the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. Legends and folk tales have the power to capture our imaginations. They play an important role in our culture and in what is handed down from generation to generation. Most have some semblance of truth. Some are more factual, while others combine and embellish various events and add non-historical persons to the settings. Indian Emily is a good example of the latter. The event she was cast into did not happen, except in the writings of those who sought to create a romantic tale of the “Wild West.” |
Last updated: October 30, 2021