Just a synopsis of events.
August 8th - Comanches sack and burn Linnville on the coast.
August 9th - First skirmish, Tumlinson's force intercepts the Comanches east of Victoria. Ben McCulloch rides ahead overnight to Gonzales.
August 10th - Tumlinson's force attacks screening force in rear of Comanche column, Comanches withdraw.
August 11th - Henry McCulloch sees Comanches from hilltop east of Gonazales. Ben McCulloch and party hurry ahead to Plum Creek with group of thirty-five men, joined there that evening by Matthew Caldwell's force of eighty five. Burleson arrives from Bastrop the next morning.
August 12th - Comanches already on the move at first light, seven miles south of Plum Creek.
John Linn was not present at Plum Creek, but he was certainly interested in it as his economic loss as a result of the raid was catastrophic. he was relating events after the fact as he had heard it, by gossip and from people who were actually on the scene.
For example, Linn says there were 400 Texans at Plum Creek, about twice the number who were there for the fight. But by the end of the day there WERE 400 Texans there, accounts relate that men were hurrying in from all over just as fast as their mounts would carry them, groups arriving all through the day.
Also of interest is the following quote by Linn...
The wily Indians silently folded their tents in the night and stole away. Zumalt saw no more of them until he ran into their rear as, they were crossing Plum Creek, and taking position in the post oak point beyond, on what was destined to be a fatal battle ground for them.
He is referring to the actions of the Comanches on the night of the 9th, following their first skirmish with Tumlinson's party southeast of Victoria. While an attempt to steal a march would have been logical that evening, we do know that Tumlinson attempted another action on the folliwing day when screened by a blocking force of Comanches, Tumlinson's men pushing them hard enough that some trade goods were recovered along the trail.
On the morning of the 11th, the day after Tumlinson's second skirmish, Henry McCulloch was able to see at least some elements of both the Comanches and Tumlinson's trailing force from a single vantage point.
At first light the very next morning however, on the 12th, when Robert Hall first saw the Comanches seven miles south of Plum Creek, the Comanches were already strung out in a column "seven miles long". Most of Tumlinson's force too, so close on the heels of the Comanches the on the morning of the 11th, would not arrive on the field at Plum Creek until the fight was over, really over, as in combatants gathered back together and spoils being divided.
Plainly, all of this suggests that the stolen march, where the Comanches shook off close pursuit by sneaking away in the night, occurred on the night of the 11th, the night before the Plum Creek fight.
To me it beggars disbelief that a force of at least 400 Comanche warriors would have been unaware of the forces gathering around them. Even if no formal scouting parties had been sent out, surely SOME of them would have been out away from the main body, for any number of reasons. By the eleventh the hornet's nest had been thoroughly riled up, and groups of armed Texans were hurrying everywhere it seems.
My own guess is that the Comanches were aware by the evening of the 11th that Texan forces were gathering in their front. Perhaps they had found the fresh trail of Ben McCulloch's party hurrying out of Gonzales. Certainly common sense would dictate that they would watch for something from that direction; a large community bypassed on the way down and directly adjacent to their path of retreat. On the 11th too Caldwell's force of 100 men also traversed the route the Comanches intended to follow, part of it through blowing dust and ashes, certainly these would be easily seen by anyone out looking.
To the Comanches, these assembling forces in their front, combined with the persistently trailing force of 100 Texans in their rear, would look like a developing trap and they acted accordingly.
A Comanche force already on full alert before dawn of the 12th would account for them slipping by the Texans at Plum Creek as rapidly as they did, and why all 400 warriors or so would be between the Texans and the main column from the very beginning of the action, remaining there the whole time until the main body had passed.
Birdwatcher
