After the Comanche chiefs were killed in the fort at San Antonio, the Comanches back at the camp had about 20 white captives there. They staked them out naked, including little children, and the squaws slowly tortured them to death. Cut open their bellies, cut off or burned off their hands and slowly tortured them over a span of a dozen hours.
So says Fehrenbach, he was born before his time, today he would be writing “graphic novels”.
Actually the Comanches did torture, of course. Indeed the sight of the brutally disfigured and abused Matilda Lockhart is what triggered the Council House Fight in the first place wherein all twelve (??) Comanche chiefs, including the one that had hosted Smithwick, died.
To the Comanches, the Texians had practiced unparalleled treachery, killing people who had entered trustingly under a flag of truce.
What Fehrenbach chooses to omit however is that subsequent to the fight, and the tortures, the Comanche Chief Isomania, working quietly behind the scenes through like minded residents of San Antonio, did arrange the exchange of several unharmed White captives for Comanche women and children held in Mission San Jose.
Dammit, I thought Fehrenbach was a scholar. Looks like his book needs to go into the trash. I did buy today The Comanche Empire by Hamailanen.
