Indians Target Map-Makers For Massacre

The apprehensive Kickapoos watched every move the surveyors made on the morning of Oct. 8, 1938, knowing from bitter experience that, when white men came to measure the land, settlers were not far behind.

A ghost town now for more than a century, Old Franklin was in the early days of the Texas Republic a jumping-off place for the central frontier. A steady stream of surveyors stocked up on supplies at the outpost before plunging into the trackless wilderness to lay out homesteads for impatient pioneers.

Two days out of Old Franklin in October 1838, a surveying party camped for the night at Parker