The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1907-03-19
BROWNSVILLE
Raid of Negro Soldiers
Explained by Con-
fession.
STARTED OVER WOMAN

Galveston, Texas, March 1.-THE
mystery surrounding the murderous
midnight raid of the negro soldiers
from the 25th infantry upon the peo-
| pie of Brownsville on August IL, has
been cleared up by the sworn con
fession of d. c. Gray, discharged
soldier of Company B, who is in Gal
weston. In his statement Gray said:
"On that night was in the barracks
room with number of fellows and we
were citing around playing cards,
when this fellow came in excited like,
and said he had found a white fellow
in the room with his woman, and that
man landed on him.
HE was awfully excited and we all
stopped playing and listened to what
he was saying. There were lot of
the boys in the crowd with the Mexi-
cans and white people of the town,
and they came over to where he was
bending down over his trunk and ask
ed him what he was going to do. He
said: I'm going to Sadie's house and
fix that white so that he will
never fool with another soldiers wo-
man. AS soon as he said that, one
of the men out of another company
swore, and said I'll go with you.
Everybody but me and one or two
others spoke at once and said they
would go with him. 1t was about mid
night and the men made rush for
the gun racks and about Is men left
the barracks, fixed the sentry, and
scaled the wall and started for town
headed by the leader Most of them
had been drinking. One of the young
er boys had fired a shot into the house
of Mr.. Cowarts, on Fourteenth street
Then all of them began shooting. Ne
groes are just like sheep when 1t
comes to anything of that kind, you
know, and that accounts for it. They
shot into the house of Starks, on
Washington street, as some of the
boys did not like him, and they want
ed to kill him. They ran on down an
alley to Thirteenth street shooting and
at this place where the alley joined
onto Elizabeth street, they met the
Mexican policeman, Dominguez, on his
horse. This was right near to the
Miller hotel. The policeman said:
Hey there, you boys, what are you do
ing?' and pulled his pistol. The boys
knew he wanted to pull them and
they shot at him. Dominguez fired
at the boys first, anyway, all of them
said that when Major Penrose exam
ined them. After the boys had gotteT
into the scrape, they forgot to go on
down and settle his trouble, for the
people were getting on the streets,
and they are certainly fighters. After
they had shot at Dominguez, his horse
divided up. They were afraid of get
ting hemmed up in the street.
Some of the boys had trouble in
the saloon, run by Frank Nataus, and
they fired in the direction of his
place. Just as things would have 1t.
he came out to the back of it to close
the gate, and one of the boys shot al
him. They were still firing and going
toward the Post when the bugle
sounded at the Post and they knew it
was all off. They stopped shooting
then and made for the barracks, so
that they might get in their .heds be-
fore 1t was known they had been OUT.
"I don't believe they were in town
more than 20 minutes. Then about
this time one of the boys came pant
ing back into the room. He had his
gun with him and flung it under his
mattress and pulled off his coat and
pants and got into bed Then two
more of them came in and before
knew 1t the whole post was busy. One
of the boys from the guardhouse ran
into the room and said in a loud
whisper, IF there are any of you fel-
lows in that dirty business, you had
better be getting your guns into shape
any time. for / know the captain is
calling for the guard, and there will
be inspection
I'VE all helped some of them get
their guns as clean as possible In the
dim light, but they had mostly used
pistols and they did not clean them
until next day at o'clock. Just at
this time the first sergeant called out
to hustle our clothes on and after
helping the boys clean the powder out
of their rifles and 1t was several min
utes before we could find our clothes
and get into them. We tumbled out
side and after some confusion and
scrambling around the roll was called
and l believe everybody answered to
their names except some of the boys
who were excused. There was no need
for any one to answer ony one else's
name that night because everybody
was in line except the men who were