Epilogue: Victory?

Soulonge Lacaze had demanded peace while he lived in the Redbone country, but after making his mandate he did not long continue to reside there. Had he done so, the brave Cajun doubtless would have been blessed with that eternal peace which came to other settlers who continued to live in the Cherry Winche Valley; for bushwacking went on apace. A convenient time came and Lacaze moved away from the Redbone settlements.

Wives often have their way; they don’t like to have their husbands left in the woods, and so forth. Musgrove moved away. The Davises moved; old Rube moved. Not long after the Westport Fight, the Moore & Hatch store burned to the ground. A little later Hatch’s historic old mill disappeared in another conflagration. The site became known as the “Old Burn Down.” Hamilton, Moore and Hatch all escaped and never came back. They used good judgment. Watson continued to be fast on the draw, but he camped one night alone, on the borders of the Cherry Winche country. In the glow of his camp fire he was a plain target. I have had pointed out to me the hollow where he was killed. It is in the pine hills near the site of the old New Hope Church.
What the combined attack failed to do, Redbones working singly and in squads of twos accomplished. By deed and by warning, the “White” settlers were slowly but effectively ousted from the region. The process required several years to complete, during which the few remaining Anglo settlers burned very little oil in their kerosene lamps. Civilization has not yet completed its reduction of this Cherry Winche country, for the settlement of strangers there is tabu to this day. The Redbones won and as we view the valley and the land about, we are glad somehow that they did. For it is lovely there. The streams flow sweetly; sheep graze on the rolling hills and there is a peace over everything which makes Cherry Winche Valley more like it was a hundred years ago than those who have not seen it will believe*.

* This writing can be dated to the 20’s. There is now law & order, and no one gets ‘bushwhacked’. Intermarrying is commonplace, and with each new generation, a lil more history fades. The Ashworths, Bass’s, Buxtons, Clouds, Doyles, Droddys, Johnsons, Lambrights, Maricles, Marlers, Mancils, Odoms, Pauls, Perkins, Rays, Strothers, Sweats, Thompsons, Willis’s, Wares, Wests, and a host of others still reside in the old ‘Neutral Strip’. And lil’ by lil’, they get less offended if theys called Redbone.