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Well hey, REAL Texas history is way to cool not to broadcast, and Steven L. Moore must be something of a prodigy...

http://www.stephenlmoore.com/

..anyhow, I dunno the quality of his WWII books, but he's rapidly climbing my list of favorite Frontier Authors.

One thing that puzzled me was that when Mr Moore wrote of the famous incident where the Comanches boiled into town spoiling for a fight right after the Council House fight (or ambush, from their perspective) and surrounded San Jose Mission, he made no mention of the subsequent duel where two Texan Officers shot and killed each other in a duel precipitated by one accusing the other of cowardice.

Turns out that the reason he did not was that this duel did not take place right away. The council house fight took place on March 19th, 1840. Nine days later, as Moore has it...

..a war party of at least two hundred Comanches rode down to San Antonio on March 28 looking for a fight. Chief Isomania, veteran of an earlier fight with frontiersman Jack Hays, boldly came into town with another Comanche. They rode into the San Antonio public square, tauntingly circling around the plaza on their horses. The two paraded some distance down Commerce Street and back again, shouting all the while for the Americans to come out and fight them...

In front of the local saloon on the northeast corner of the public square, he halted his horse. Rising in his stirrups, he angrily shook his clenched fist and shouted defiantly.

Mary Maverick wrote in her memoirs "The citizens, through an interpreter, told him the soldiers were all down the river at Mission San Jose and if he went there Colonel Fisher would give him fight enough."

A whole bunch can be gleaned between the lines here, the patrons of the saloon clearly not identified with "the Americans" down at Mission San Jose, neither by the patroms themselves nor apparently by the Comanches.

Often as I have been there, I dont have any photos of Mission San Jose at all where it sits today in the heart of the South Side on busy four-lane Roosevelte Avenue. Through chance preservation and purposeful restoration is remains by far the best-preserved of our five missions, and is the one I would recommend visitors to go see, maybe even more than the Alamo.

This sketch as it was back then is pretty much how it is today, part of a National Historic Park AND an active local congregation.




The acting commander of the "Americans" (I woulda said Texians) at Mission San Jose, one Captain William Redd, famously refused to fight, much to the chagrin of his own men, telling the Comnaches to come back in twelve days when the unilaterally declared truce was over. Redd apparently still believed more White captives could be ransomed for the Comanche women and children.

It was this refusal to fight that ultimately embroiled him in that fatal duel six weeks after the fact.

Turns out though that Captain Redd was absolutely correct in his assessment; the previously mentioned five prisoner exchanges took place after this incident, Cheif Isomania himself being one of the two Comanche leaders active in arranging the exchanges.

Indeed, the actual commanding officer at the Mission San Jose, Lieutenant Colonel Fisher, was laid up from falling off a horse at the time Isomania and his Comanches rode up. Fisher had been in charge on the Texian side at the Council House fight, and was not by any description an "Indian lover", yet he had this to say (as related per Moore) presumably pertaining to Isomania's subsequent negotiations...

I saw one of the principal War Chiefs, Isamani, who is well known here and sustains a great reputation for bravery.

He appears to be evidently anxious to become reconciled with the whites; and it appears that in a council held by them the evening before they came in town, he killed a Comanche Indian for endeavoring to excite the Comanches to offensive measures.

They have gone on the Pinto trail towards the head of the Pedernales.

Note, the Palo Pinto Trail was the very same followed four years later by Jack Hays prior to the Battle of Walker Creek.

Birdwatcher