Kit Acklin: The Report Of His Death Was Greatly Exaggerated

Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas, by Andrew Jackson Sowell:

From Henri Castro's Diary:

Texas August 26th [1844]

Today five or six Comanches came within two hundred yards of the house I occupy on Soledad Street and succeeded in capturing eleven mules that were grazing in the in closure.

Alarm was given in the town and the robbers were pursued but without any result. The mules were lost. Such acts of audacity on the part of the Indians intimidate my colonists and tend to injure my enterprise.

Four volunteers who were sent by Captain Hays to reconnoiter on the Nueces River, ninety miles from San Antonio, were surprised while bathing in the river by a large party of Indians. Two were reported killed.

(This surprise of the rangers which Mr. Castro has thus described occurred at the three forks of the Nueces as the place was then called by the rangers and was in Nueces Canyon. The men were Kit Ackland, Rufe Perry, James Dunn and John Carlin. The two last named were in bathing when the attack was made on their camp and they went to San Antonio and reported Ackland and Perry killed, but they although badly wounded, made their way back to San Antonio on foot.)

Note: Christopher "Kit" Acklin died in California on 13 December 1871.