The thing that impressed me about his narrative is its the middle to late 1870’s and the 17 year old Herman has killed an Apache and is on the run. Months later sheer loneliness compels his to walk up to a Comanche camp up on the Panhandle out of the dark.
By that time those Comanches were hunted, refugees in their own land. No reason at all to take pity on some lone, wandering White youth. He’s lucky he didn’t get killed in the first moments when the Comanches scattered from the fire in the dark.
Instead, their initial alarm gave way to curiosity
, ending with, as even T.R. Fehrenbach put it, the Comanche band leader saying simply ”You’d better come with us.” Almost certainly saving the young man’s life.
One of the cooler vignettes in our frontier history.
If the Comanche had killed Lehmann, it would have been because he was an Apache. By age 17 everything about Lehmann, except perhaps his eye coloring presented him as an Apache.
The fact that he was an outcast from his tribe for killing a respected Apache medicine man is what persuaded the Comanche to let him live.
The plains Indians respected strength and a warrior spirit.
The only reason he wasn't killed after he was captured by the Apache is because he held up under the tortures imposed on him during the trip to the Apache village. The Apache took a lot of satisfaction in making things very hard on their white captives.
Afterwards he developed a measure of status with the Apache for the abilities he demonstrated as he grew into a young man.
Lehmann doesn't portray himself as such in the book. But just from reading the activities that he participated in, he could be as badazz as the situation called for.
Killing a tribal medicine man took a lot of nerve. But Lehmann did so at age 17 to avenge the death of his benefactor.
