For those who aren’t familiar, Bastrop lies about 100 miles northeast of San Antonio, Austin about 80 miles NNE, these would be the northernmost communities involved.
The day begins in LaGrange, about 15 miles south of Bastrop with 36yo Zachariah Morrell, who had hustled his ox team 30 miles the day before, arriving around midnight.
”At 4 o’clock in the morning I was in my saddle, intending to reach Colonel Ed. Burleson’s at daylight, 12 miles off, on a borrowed horse, as I had no horse in condition for the trip.”
Ed. Burleson quickly began organizing forces to make a stand against the Indians. Sending Morel as a rider on to Austin to spread the word and to raise more forces, Burleson worked on recruiting along the Colorado. He had none of his army troops anywhere in the area, so would have to make the most of the available citizens and the militia.
About that same time, 100 miles south of Bastrop, the Indians moved towards Linnville, then the second-largest seaport in Texas.
Before dawn on August 8, the Comanches approached the town of Linnville . This coastal town was the key shipping point for much of the goods between Southwest Texas and Mexico. Somehow the inhabitants of the town had received absolutely no warning yet of what had happened in Victoria.
Seeing the large herd of horses approaching, they had it first believe this to be a large band of friendly Mexicans arriving with horses to sell. The Indian riders approached in the shape of a half moon and began riding at full speed. Only as the killings began did the townspeople realize the horrible truth.
A part that interests me here is the assumption that the 1,500 horses approaching were being delivered by Mexican traders. Such large-scale trade in livestock by Mexicans and/or Tejanos travelling through Texas does not appear in popular Texas history. Seventeen years later, in 1857, Frederick Law Olmstead, would observe this trade still going on through San Antonio.
I’m gonna skip over the details of the Comanche sack of Linnville, suffice to say during the course of the day they torched almost the entire place and looted the abundant stored of goods in the warehouses there. Accounts speak of the Comanches fantastically garbed in top hats, parasols, reams of fabric etc...
Many of the Texian survivors escaped to boats in the harbor from which they witnessed the destruction. Not mentioned anywhere but it must have been a long, hot day on those boats in the bay in August, one wonders if they had brought enough water.
One guy, Judge John Hays (any relation to Jack Hays unknown) famously stormed back to shore to challenge the Comanches. Perhaps thinking him touched, the Comanches did not approach him. His friends eventually convinced him to come back, whereupon it was discovered he had forgotten to load his gun.
Much of the day the Comanches were engaged in the laborious process of packing mules and horses with plundered goods.
During the late afternoon of August 8, the Comanche host began their jubilant departure from the Texas coast. They withdrew from Linville across the nearby Bayou and made their camp for the night. In their wake they had left 20 dead. They had taken five prisoners, all women and children.
Their routes of retirement towards the Texas Hill country would be a path that would pass about 15 miles east of Victoria. Their return to their northern hunting grounds would not, however, go unchallenged.
The town of Linnville was never rebuilt.
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
