On May 24, 1841, Captain John B. Denton, an aide to General Edward Tarrant, was killed by Indians lying in ambush in the thickets around Village Creek near its junction with the Trinity River, after Denton and Captain Henry Stout led a small scouting party into the creek in pursuit of Indians who had fled two villages attacked by their expedition farther south along the creek. Denton’s death marked the end of what came to be called the Battle of Village Creek. The official Army Archives report of the Republic of Texas counted 12 Indians killed and many more likely killed and wounded, and 225 lodges were destroyed, homes of tribes principally including Cherokees driven from Nacogdoches County, as well as some Creeks and Seminoles, Wacos, Caddos, Kickapoos, and Anadarcos. The battle marked a crossroads in the history of the Cross Timbers and resulted in the permanent abandonment of settlements that Native Americans had long inhabited along the creek named for their villages. Denton was the only fatality among the 69 volunteers recruited by Brigadier General Tarrant of the Texas Militia for his expedition into the Indian country of the Three Forks, largely because over half of the villages’ braves were away on a buffalo hunt when the attack came. Volunteers for this and other expeditions came from settlements near the Red River, and scouting forays were organized by the militia to locate and remove Indians with the help of volunteers serving three-month campaigns. By May 1841, Tarrant had decided on another punitive expedition in response to depredations by tribes resisting settler encroachment on their remaining hunting grounds, including attacks during the winter of 1840-41 on Bird's Fort, which he had commissioned nearby. Denton, born in Tennessee in 1807 and orphaned at age 8, went to Arkansas by 18, married, learned to read from his wife, ministered from 1826 to 1836 as a Methodist circuit-rider in Arkansas and southern Missouri, crossed the Red River in 1836, later moved his family to Clarksville, and became known in Texas as an orator, lawyer, and minister before dying at age 34.