Rio Bravo generally means the Rio Grande.Are they referring to the Red by that name?
No, the section of the link I quoted is by itself confusing. Sequoyah's two companions had left him alone with plentiful provisions in the Texas Hill Country and, having being denied horses in San Antonio, had gone on to Mexico to procure aid, the quote referring to their return journey.
Back to Plum Creek....
http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/plumcreek.htmFelix Huston, Ben McCulloch, and others had gathered a force of some four hundred volunteers, and the Indians should have been annihilated. Or so said John J. Linn, founder of Linnville. Mr Linn had the number of volunteers wrong but essentially he was right, in hindsight at least it seems the Texans could have hammered the Comanches a lot harder than they did. But perhaps as it was things worked out for the best; even if they could have shot more Comanches, the cost in blood on the Texas side was slight and a degree of victory was won.
The problems lay in the tardy arrival of Ed Burleson's force on the field, and in the choice of tactics by Felix Huston. It seems too that in the heat of the moment, the Texas may never have fully grasped the exact disposition and speed of the Comanche host passing from left to right across their front.
That the task facing the hundred men on the scene was a daunting one is reflected in the words of a brief speech Matthew Caldwell gave to the men before the fight, the gist of which is given by Moore:
"They must be attacked and whipped before they reach the mountains. If we can't whip them, we can try."But Caldwell would not command that day.
General Felix Huston was a wealthy man, and an educated one by the standards of the time. Moreover he had accrued considerable debt during the War for Texas Independence in the cause of liberty. Huston comes across through history as an archtypical Southerner of his era; a Kentucky lawyer and adventurer, Huston was the guy who, when he was removed from command of the Texas Army early in 1837, had provoked and fought a duel with his replacement, Albert Sydney Johnson.
Whether by reason of rank, wealth, or reputation (or a combination of all three), Felix Huston assumed command of the force at Plum Creek.
Unlike Caldwell, Huston had no prior experience fighting Comanches, and doubtless like most every other American military commander through the War between the States, he was using Napoleon as a reference. Moore has it that Huston proposed to have the Texans advance in a three-sided hollow square formation and then dismount to face tbe Comanche attack, as if the Comanches were Austrian cavalry under orders to do or die.
In Huston's own words....
I immediately formed into two lines, the right commanded by Colonel Anderson and the left commanded by Captain Caldwell, with a reserve commanded by Major Hardeman, with Captain Ward's company.
Moore has it that the Texan force assembled for action "in less than twenty minutes" (believable given the nature of the men) but that just as Huston was preparing to deploy, word came that Burleson was hurrying to the field with another hundred men "three or four miles out".
With the prospect of doubling his force, and perhaps because the main Comanche host was not yet in sight, Huston chose to remain in place and wait for Burleson.
Birdwatcher
