Westport Fight (aint heard of it?)

In the fall of 1881, I was working with a government surveying party on Cherry Winche (1). I even had a Redbone (2) sweetheart. Toward the last of November we finished our survey, moved north and made camp near Hineston (3). About two weeks later I decided to try to see my girl again. I say try, because her pappy, old man Ephraim Dyal (4), was mightily opposed to my courtin’ her. But I expected to see Ruth by attending a dance which was to be given at the home of the Redbone farmer, Bob Wray. And this is how I happened to get into the Westport Fight. And you never heard of it? Well, it was shore a real battle and I am quite surprised that you haven’t heard the story many times. Still come to think of it, you have been away from this part of the country so long I guess, you have forgot that the old timers who set around Williams’ store at Hineston for twenty five years never tired of recountin’ vigorous though somewhat exaggerated versions of this famous old “Rawhide Fight.”

Well, back there in ’81, a man of the name of Joe Moore, with his partner Dr. Hamilton, was running a general merchandise store and a mill I believe, at Westport. A man named Hatch it seems, had an interest in the business, but was not an active partner. Hatch probably had established the mill at this place several years before, at least prior to May ’77, for in that month we ran line near the mill and I mark its location if I remember correctly, as being on the north side of the Old Sugartown(5) Road, some eight or ten chains east of the west line of Section 17. This would fix the site more than a mile from the crossing on Ten Mile Creek, at which place it generally is supposed the fight occurred. But the site of the old grist mill and store where the Westport Fight took place is not the same as the “Westport” on Ten Mile, from which the battle got its name. Moore was born in Mayo County Ireland. To escape the wrath of an irate nobleman whose dog he had killed, the boy fled to this country in the early fifties, and later settled in western Louisiana. About this same time the young doctor Hamilton had left his home in Virginia to try his fortune in the west and had taken up his residence in that same hinterland between the Quelqueshoe(6) and the Sabine. The culture Moore and Hamilton had known sorter drew them together it seems, and with Hatch, whom I know nothing of they established the store at Westport, in the very heart of the Redbone Country. There being no other trading post nearer than Hineston or Sugartown, it was a good stand and business prospered. But it was a “Daresome” venture, a downright risky thing to do, for ever and anon the Redbones looked with baleful eyes on this encroachment into their domain. It was anathema to the old Redbone tradition to permit an Anglo-American establishment west of the Quelqueshoe. This part of Louisiana was still a vast, unexplored and unclaimed hinterland over which the “Painter,” the wolf and their human cousin, the Redbone, held high carnival. Here, the untamed wilderness was making a stubborn last stand. Here was the pioneer’s paradise. The Redbones, though apparently and perhaps, even ostensibly engaged with the wilderness, were in reality standing guard against its spoliation. Like their Indian ancestors from whom the virtue was inherited, they could settle in a primeval region without besmirching it with the evils of progress.

The Neutral Ground, as history knows it, bred a race of heroic figures but having passed across the stage of American life at a time when the attention of the nation was centered on bigger events, those heroes of Western Louisiana remain pretty well unknown. Since this territory was a part of the original Texas, it is meet that several of its natives are numbered with the other immortal heroes of the Alamo. The deadly enmity between the incoming settlers from the east and the already established Redbones began in the twenties of the nineteenth century. In the early thirties, a moral fight between those opposing factions of American colonial life occurred at a place called Rawhide, the exact location of which I don’t know and I doubt it would be possible to ascertain, but it was somewhere in the Ten Mile or Six Mile country. In this fight(7) , the Redbones by force of overwhelming number had been victorious; the new settler had been driven out, and during the half century that followed, a constant hatred had been smoldering about the borders of the Redbone settlement(8) into which easterners were steadily trying to push their way. The valley of the Cherry Winche was a fine grazing country; sheep and cattle thrived; land cleared of its thick growth was productive of bountiful crops; hogs fattened to solid grease in the creek bottoms; and deer, turkey and all manner of other wild game provided an easy living. Every man engaged in the Westport Fight was a hero. Only heroes lived in Western Louisiana in the early ‘80’s, but in a stronger relief perhaps than any of the other combatants, there stands but one figure, this man was Gordon Musgrove. Musgrove moved to West Louisiana about 1878. He settled near the northwestern border of the “Dead Line”(9) flung about the Cherry Winche country by the Redbones. But it was not in Gordon Musgrove’s mind to stop at either an imaginary of a real line of demarcation. Nor was he inclined to call a spade a hand shovel, or a Redbone an “Israelite.” He was about thirty six at the time and of powerful physique. Reputed to have Indian blood in his veins, he was justly proud of his heritage; for he was a man of high character and unflinching courage. The beginning of the actual trouble which led up to the Westport Fight occurred at a camp meeting when Musgrove stoked the fire by suddenly leaving the building which was packed with Redbones, after making the statement that the "Smell of Nigger"(10) always made him ill. Then there was the animosity which had been stirred up by the horse race about ten days before Christmas, where it was quite generally accepted that the decision given had been unfairly in favor of the Redbone’s horse ridden by Henry Perkins. The new settlers had of course bet on the horse owned and ridden by the “White” farmer, Buck Davis. There was much bitter, ugly argument that day between Redbone and “White” settlers and nobody knows just how a serious encounter was averted. Yet the day ended without bloodshed, although the factions went away to their homes with much snarling and rancor [sic] of heart.

1 one of the many 'criks' that split off the Calcasieu, along with 10-mile & 6 mile & ouisko chitto
2 the term used to describe the Indian Clan of that area (a very mixed race)
3 a sawmill community in western Rapides Parish
4 a common Redbone name, known & spelt now as Doyle
5 a small community on the Vernon/Beauragard Parish line
6 Indian name for the river there, known & spelt now as Calcasieu
7 not likely one fight, but several battles over an extended period
8 the dense & fertile area between Westport & Hineston, recognized by the inhabitants, not the gov't
9 the invisible borders of the Redbone settlement; entering meant possible attack or death
10 Redbones had Negro in their bloodline, but vehemently denied it; they also hated to be called Redbone