Clearly I was smarter in 2012......
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/6170946/24In popular Texas lore, the Great Comanche Raid of 1840 was a unique event, the Southern Comanche Nation mustering all their forces to strike the Texans a mighty revenge blow.
I suppose there was a lot of that in it, but raids on that scale certainly weren't unprecedented elsewhere, and a number of major raids involving hundreds of Comanches and Kiowas were launched in those years, all those OTHER big raids targeting Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche%E2%80%93Mexico_Wars
Though we view them primarily as sadistic raiders, as the wiki link above and Hamaleinen ("Comanche Empire") point out, there was a strong commercial aspect to these raids, This from Hamaleinen...
Early nineteenth-century Comancheria was a dense and dynamic marketplace, the center of a far-flung trading empire that covered much of North America's heartland... The Comanche trade pump sent massive amounts of horses and mules to the north and east, enough to support the numerous equestrian societies elsewhere on the Great Plains and enough to contribute to the western expansion of the American settlement frontier.
In return for their extensive commercial services Comanches imported enough horticultural produce to sustain a population of twenty to thirty thousand and enough guns, lead and powder to defend a vast territory against Native enemies as well as the growing, expansionist Texas Republic.
But that thriving exchange system was rapidly approaching the limits of its productive foundation... By the 1820's, the traditional raiding domains [to acquire livestock for trade] had become either exhausted or unavailable... Comanches continued sporadic raiding in Texas... but the returns failed to meet their expansive livestock demands, which skyrocketed in the late 1830's and early 1840's when the opened trade with the populous nations recently arrived in the Indian Territory.
To keep their commercial system running, Comanches needed new, unexhausted raiding fields, and they found them in Northern Mexico... Comanche raiding thus generated a massive northward flow of property from Mexico, a development promoted by many interest groups in North America... By the late 1830s it had become a common belief that "enterprising American capitalists' had established trading posts on the Comanche-Texas border in order to tap the "immense booty" that the Comanches, "the most wealthy as well as the most powerful of the most savage nations of North America", were hauling from northern Mexico.
Texas officials provided Comanche war parties free access through their state, hoping to direct the raids into Mexico, and even supplied southbound war bands with beef and other provisions.Probly relevant that one of the early Jack Hays stories has him and his Rangers meeting with and providing beef cows to a Comanche raiding party going south, in that version "attempting to dissuade them from raiding"..
Many internet sources have it that the Great Comanche Raid of 1840 killed "hundreds of Texans". All of the authors we have been quoting here, even Fehrenbach, agree that the actual death toll was low; about twenty people all told. What the raid DID target however was horses, about two thousand rounded up and taken along during the five-day raid before Plum Creek. Horses, and as it turned out, large quantities of trade goods looted from Linnville.
Why a raid on that scale was never again attempted against the Texans may have had something to do with the heavy casualties the Indians suffered at Plum Creek (more than eighty dead, if you've been to Cabelas in Buda on I 35, the fleeing Comanches drove their stolen stock through that area). OTOH Comanches, right up until the end, were never noted for timidity.
Actual conditions at that time seem to agree with Hamalienen's account, by 1840 it may be that the Texan settlements at the edge of the plains were pretty much picked over. Small-scale livestock raids were incessant during those years. During the Great Raid, Ben McCullough, attempting to raise a body of men, sent word around the Gonzales TX area seeking for volunteers to assemble. One volunteer later recalled....
A larger number would have moved out, but for the very short notice of the intended expedition and the great difficulty of procuring horses the Indians having about a week before stolen a majority of the best in the neighborhood.Noah Smithwick, at that time living on Webber's Prairie over by Bastrop, expounds at length on the topic of the innumerable thefts of horses around the settlements at that time, and his exasperation when his own last two horses were taken "in the year of the Comet" (1843).
http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd18.htmMy stock of horses had been depleted till I had none left except a blind mare and a colt, the latter a fine little fellow, of which I was very proud. That being the year of a brilliant comet, I called my colt Comet. The mare being stone blind I had no apprehension of their being stolen, so I let them run loose, they seldom being out of sight of the house. But there came a morning when the blaze of the Comet failed to catch my eye when I sallied forth in search of it. Looking about I found moccasin tracks and at once divined that the horses were stolen.
When I found by the trail that there were only two Indians, I thought I could manage them, so I took my rifle and struck out on the trail, to which the colt's tracks gave me the clue. Crossing Coleman's creek I found where the mare had apparently stumbled in going up the bank and fallen. Coming to a clump of cedars a short distance beyond the creek and not daring to venture into it, I skirted around and picked up the trail on the further side, where the Indians, seemingly disgusted with the smallness of the haul, turned back toward the prairie. I kept right along the trail, and on gaining the top of the rise above "Half Acre," discovered the missing animals feeding.
I looked to the priming of my gun, and then scanning the vicinity without perceiving any sign of Indians, went to the mare, near by which on a tree I found a piece of dried bear meat, of which I took possession. It was then quite late in the afternoon and I had left home without eating any breakfast, but I had recovered my horses and felt in a good humor with the world. I went to the village, where I recounted the adventure, exhibiting the bear meat as a witness thereto. The boys swore that when the Indians found that the horses were mine they brought them back and left the meat as a gift of atonement.
The sequel, however, which came a few days later, developed the fact that they only abandoned the mare and colt to get a bigger haul, which they made in Well's prairie, and coming on back again, picked up the mare and colt, which they failed to return.
I was mad to recklessness. Taking my rifle on my shoulder and my saddle on my back, I walked four miles to Colonel Jones' to borrow a horse to pursue the marauders. With others who had suffered by the raid we followed on up to Hoover's bend on the Colorado, ten miles above Burnet, where upon breaking camp, they scattered in every direction; but here my Comanche lore came to direct the search.
Going to the ashes where the camp fire had been, I found a twig stuck in the ground with a small branch pointing northward, it having been so placed to guide stragglers. Taking the course indicated, we soon had the satisfaction of seeing the trail increasing, and presently some one called out: "Here's the Comets track." Guided by the Comet, we kept on to the Leon river, where were encamped the Lipan and Tonkawas, friendly tribes. They were in a state of commotion over the loss of their horses, the Keechis, who were the marauders in this instance, having taken them as they passed.
We followed them twenty days but never came up with them.So it wasn't as if the Comanches were driven off in the aftermath of the Plum Creek fight, just that conditions on the Texan side of the plains probably weren't conducive to large raiding parties.
...and Noah Smithwick was a good man.
