A Tale of three Jims: Jim Ned and Jim Shaw and Jim Ned Lookout

Jim Ned Lookout, a mound in Montague County, Texas

Near the tiny settlement of Dye in Montague County, Texas, stands a 1,294 feet high "mound" called Jim Ned Lookout along Jim Ned Road. There are other places named Jim Ned in Texas, too -- like Jim Ned Consolidated Independent School District in Tuscola (Taylor County), Jim Ned Creek near Santa Anna (Coleman County), and Jim Ned Hill (Wise County). At one point, there was even a town called Jim Ned in Brown County that became known as Thrifty in 1880.

So I became curious... who was Jim Ned? Wow, did THAT simple question lead to a mysterious conclusion. I seemed to have learned that there were three Jims -- Jim Ned and Jim Shaw, both Delawares navigating their way through Texas, and Jim Ned, a literary figure.

The Delawares

The Delawares are a nation whose original lands in the eastern United States were stolen and carved away in a series of frontier violence and dubious treaties. Eventually, the Delawares migrated into the Red River Valley of Mexican Texas in the first part of the 19th century, where they could obtain land grants (the US did not extend land grants to Native Americans). At the same time, white Americans entered the Red River Valley. The Delawares tended to interact with European and African Americans rather than with the Comanches, Caddos, or Wichitas, who naturally opposed the intrusion of newcomers into their homelands.

Searching for Jim Ned

A search of primary and secondary sources reveal that Jim Ned was a Delaware who was either a Chief, a thief, a Scout, or an Interpreter-- and maybe all of these. He was described as contrary or friendly, depending on the source. According Mrs. W.R. Potter, who wrote "History of Montague County" (1911), Ned was a Caddo who "had but one eye." Thomas G. Western wrote to Sam Houston in 1844 that "Jim Ned is a refractory Spirit," and in 1845 described Jim and his men as "little better than a band of Out Laws" (Indian Papers). During a council meeting at Tehuacana Creek in May 1844, Jim Ned and the Delawares were accused of stealing horses (Indian Papers).

Then I came across a report from January 1847 (The Washington Union, February 1847) by a "Galveston Civilian" that tells of two Jims. One was Jim Ned, who "used every exertion to cause hostilities," and the other one was Jim Shaw, an interpreter. Interestingly, a bit of research on "Jim Shaw" revealed a newspaper article on the Fort Bird Treaty in 1843 that lauds Jim Shaw as the reason "the tribes were finally brought in" to negotiate the treaty (The Standard, October 1843), and I learned that Jim Shaw rode with Robert E. Lee in 1856 in an "expedition against the northern Comanches" (The Dallas Weekly Herald, August 1856). During some of his excursions, Jim Shaw negotiated for the release of kidnapped people.

Jim Shaw is described as an interpreter and Jim Ned as a trouble maker in this report published in The Washington Union (Washington, DC) February 6, 1847. This report leads me to believe that there were two Jims, both Delawares, who appeared in the same period. Only Jim Shaw could be found in accounts during the Republic of Texas; after Texas statehood (1846), the name Jim Ned appears instead, but this person was described like Jim Shaw.

Searching for Jim Shaw

The entry in the Texas State Historical Associations' Handbook of Texas Online for "Jim Ned" appears to combine Jim Ned and Jim Shaw into one figure However, there's an entirely separate entry for Jim Shaw . Both entries in the Handbook cite as their source an article from by R.N. Richardson, "Jim Shaw, The Delaware" in the West Texas Historical Association's Yearbook, volume 3, 1927.

According to R.N. Richardson (Yearbook, 1927), Jim Shaw was a Delaware scout who by 1841 had intimately learned the geography around the Red River and had established diplomatic relationships with the Comanches and Wichitas. In fact, he "evidently knew personally all of the chiefs" of the regional tribes. Richardson relays accounts of Jim Shaw imbibing too much "fire-water" in 1846, but a German observer from Fredericksburg described him as a well-dressed, "handsome man" who "entertained... with some Delaware music" in 1847, and by 1854, Jim Shaw had become a family man, "anxious to send his children to school" who "hoped... that he could settle down [on the Brazos River Reservation] and have a farm and permanent home." "As late as 1858," Richardson writes, Jim Shaw "impressed... with his dependability and wonderful knowledge of the country."

Jim Ned Lookout is a 1,294 feet mound/hill/outcrop near Dye and the Dye Mounds in one of Montague County's (Texas) most scenic areas. This 1905 map was updated in 1945 and reflects the name of the hill.

Jim Ned and Jim Shaw

Strangely, while there is no mention of a "Jim Ned" in Richardson's 1927 article, the TSHA article on "Jim Ned" that referenced Richardson's article never mentions "Jim Shaw." But there appears to have been two Jims who were Delawares and who interacted with Whites during the Republic of Texas and early Texas statehood. One was Jim Shaw, a respected interpreter whose influence brought some temporary peace around the Red, Brazos, and Trinity Rivers. The other was Jim Ned, who may have been an interpreter but seemed to be of a contrarian nature.

Fictionalized Jim Ned!

Further searches for "Jim Ned" revealed the reason for "Jim Ned Lookout" in Montague County. A fictionalized serial in 1894, published in multiple papers in Kansas and Missouri, transformed Jim Ned into a Comanche who avenged his sister's kidnapping in the wild lands of Texas. In this story, he met two white men at the mound that now bears his name in Montague County, and because they could not pronounce his Comanche name, they called him after their own first names -- Jim and Ned. Jim Ned, the Comanche, became a sentinel on the "lookout mountain," seeking his sister and acting like a de-facto guard for white settlers, thus inadvertently bringing peace into the region.

Creating fictionalized characters from actual people was a common practice that became the basis of the "western" in American literature, and Jim Ned/Jim Shaw achieved that status -- very much like mythologized figures like Jesse James and Doc Holliday.

All of this to say is that Jim Ned and Jim Shaw was melded into the same person for the sake of a fictional story, but they were actually two separate people. Unfortunately, unlike for Jim Ned, there are no places in Texas named after Jim Shaw; and Jim Ned Lookout (and perhaps all the other places) is named after a romanticized "western" newspaper story.

Jim Ned as depicted in an 1894 fictionalized "frontier" story, St Louis Globe Democrat, May 13.

The St. Louis Globe Democrat from May, 1894 published a widely-shared fictionalized story of "Jim Ned," a Comanche man who helped his sister escape after being kidnapped. Mythologizing real people people in western serials was a popular practice in this period; some of the stories were further published as dime novels. This is how characters like Billy the Kid and Jesse James were popularized, too.