I'll have folks know I don't take invites from the 24hr crowd lightly, and they are much appreciated
Back to the fight...
Plum Creek is a major event in Texan history, and as such much is easily accessible about it, for example the actual first-person accounts posted online.
After Plum Creek the narratives become harder to find again, for these later events I am once again indebted to Moore ("Savage Frontier") for his exaustive citing and quoting of original source material. Moore's books are the next best thing to going to the collections and looking up originals for oneself.
The response to the Great Linville Raid on the part of the Texas Government was swift, 1840 being the year perhaps where the Texans came closest actually waging active war against the Comanche Nation. From Moore...
Felix Huston, correctly perceiving that the Comanches were on the run, proposed to President Lamar that a militia expedition be dispatched into Comanche country immediately to finish the chastisement of the Indians. Lamar rejected this proposal, likely because of his animosity towards Huston.A couple of months later (October), Huston finally won approval to lead an expedition of
1,600 men, him requesting that volunteers show up with
half a bushel of "cold flour" for himself, as well as sacks to carry corn for the horses and a hundred rounds of ammunition.Despite touring the settlements looking for volunteers, Huston had little success, apparently the court of popular opinion placed little faith in his Indian-fighting abilities. A prominent Texan James Harper Starr wrote...
Huston will return without having slain twenty Indians. Actually, 1,600 men, if well-guided and well-led, split into separate columns, might have been able to strike devastating blows. The attempt at raising this huge force however came to nothing, 1,600 men was an astronimical figure for such and undertaking at that time and place, and Moore has it that Huston was unwilling to countenance less.
So passed perhaps the only proposal in Texas history for an all-out offensive war on the Comanches by Texans (when the deed was finally done it would be the Feds what did it, about thirty-five years later). Perhaps the likes of an Edward Burleson might have been able to raise something like those numbers but he had resigned his commission the day after his return from Plum Creek, citing the need to devote attention to family matters.
Meanwhile, Major George Howard, Colonel of the Texas First Regiment and Mayor of San Antonio, was ordered out on a grand and ambitious sweep of Indian country; to proceed westward nearly to present-day Uvalde and then head north to the headwaters of the Colorado River.
The indefagitable Matthew Caldwell volunteered, just over a month after Plum Creek with a company of thirty-four Gonzales men, many of whom had also been at that fight. I dunno the state of Caldell's domestic affairs but one is left with the conclusion that the guy just loved being in the field, active as he was.
John R. Cunnigham of San Antonio, who had last ventured out and fought an engagement in July (earlier in this thread) raised twenty-one volunteers while Captain Salvadore Flores, also of San Antonio, recruited thirteen Tejanos. The addition of First Regiment men raised the total force to one hundred eighty men.
This force left San Antonio about October 1st, and would remain in the field for six weeks.
Birdwatcher
