Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Comancheria

One thing I've learned from this thread is the enormous volume of regular trade with Mexico all through the periods of hostilities, to the point that reg'lar folks going about their business likely far outnumered the folks involved in dramatics.

For example, in the 1850's when the Feds failed to act effectively act against Comanches; turns out only about 5% of the Texas population lived on the Frontier, the other 95% protecting themselves from threats (most often miscreant White folk) quite well. Add to that the enormous volume of Comanche trade in horses, and later cattle, going north, including to Americans, and ya start to wonder.

Meanwhile, in those same years, Mexicans were routinely driving large herds of horses to San Antonio, and points east while numerous Mexican ox carts crawling across the plains from the Gulf Coast ports and from Mexico were the life blood of San Antonio commerce.

How many Mexican carts I dunno. IIRCC, Olmstead in 1857 estimated that 5,000 Mexicans were living in San Antonio, almost exclusively engaged in the carting trade. Using the usual 5 to 1 estimate for males of active age, that gives about 1,000 able-bodied men and youths. How many ox teams and carts 1,000 men and youths could operate I dunno, but I'm gonna float a WAG of two to three hundred. Whatever, it was a lot of ox carts, quietly and routinely crossing terrain where, as the late Russel Means put it "White Men Fear to Tread".

More on Deaf Smith, and sme insight as to the character of the man...

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/erastus-deaf-smith.htm

Although all of Smith�s major missions are recorded, along with all his reports, we rarely get a glimpse of what an average day in Deaf Smith�s position would have been like. One report that he gave to Houston, however, gives us some insight.

It is said that Smith, being a man of few words that usually never complained, came to Houston greatly fatigued after one of his missions and asked to have a word with him. The spy stated "General, you are very kind to these Mexicans; I like kindness, but you are too kind�you won't allow me to kill any of them. If a man meets two of the enemy, and is not allowed to kill either, by the time he takes one and ties him, the other gets off so far, that it is very fatiguing on a horse to catch him; and I wish you would let me manage things in my own way."

Houston politely told him to avoid cruelness, but in the future, to do what he believed necessary.

Gus and Woodrow would have approved Or more likely, they woulda learned their trade from the likes of a Deaf Smith in the first place.

More on Smith here...

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/scri...port=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0026083

Including an explantion of his abrupt and vindictive abandonment of neutrality...

In 1835, when the war between Mexico and her American colonies began, commencing with the fight at Gonzales over the little cannon, General Stephen F. Austin raised a force and marched upon San Antonio, then garrisoned by, Mexican troops under General Prefecto Cos.

The Texans encamped on the Sallado Creek, four miles east of San Antonio, and while there Deaf Smith and a man named Arnold (who was his brother-in-law) came to Austin's camp on their way to San Antonio. They had geen gone for several weeks in the Little River country north of where the city of Austin now is, hunting buffalo, and Smith had not seen his wife and children for some time.

He told General Austin who he was and that his wife was a Mexican woman, and she and his children were in the town now commanded by General Cos, that he had heard of the war just commencing, but did not wish to take sides in the fight between the colonists and the military. He then asked permission of Austin to pass his pickets (who were in the prairie west of the creek toward the town), so that he could have a talk with the Mexican officers in command of the enemy's pickets who were beyond the Texans in the edge of the town.

Arnold preferred to remain with the Texans, but Smith was furnished with a pass and went on his way, getting through Austin's pickets all right, not anticipating any trouble in passing the Mexicans.....

Next day Mr. Smith came back to General Austin's tent without his hat, and he himself considerably ex-cited, and said: "General, I told you yesterday that I would not take sides in this war, but I now tender you my services, as the Mexicans acted rascally with me. The officer I talked with yesterday said I would have to consult General Cos as to whether or not I would be allowed to go into San Antonio to see my family, and told me to come tomorrow and he would let me know.

When I went awhile ago and was talking to the officer I saw cavalry coming toward me in a gallop, and being satisfied they intended to capture me, I wheeled my horse around and put spurs and whip to him, and finally had to resort to my gun. The officer I was talking to went for me and the cavalry commenced firing at me, and but for the timely arrival of some of the Texans who fired on the Mexicans, I expect I would have been captured."

Some Texan picket guards afterwards stated that the Mexican officer struck Smith over the head with his saber, knocking his hat off and wounding him so that he bled profusely, and that he fired his rifle and a brace of pistols while the cavalry were pursuing and firing at him.

Clearly, General Cos picked the wrong guy to oppress. Smith went to work with a will, plaing a prominent role in driving Cos back into the Alamo such that he agreed to terms and left.

The following winter and spring, Smith was all over the place, wearing out horses and riding with a will. Didn't forget the affront Cos had dealt him either, here he is at the capture of Cos after San Jacinto...

Captain Henry Karnes now, with Deaf Smith, Wash Secrest, Fielding Secrest and James Wells, went in pursuit of the fugitives, passing around the head of Vince's Bayou toward the Brazos River. Wells being the best mounted kept in the lead and came upon General Cos, Captain Iberri, Captain Bachiler and two or three others near the Brazos timber, where the fugitives seeing Karnes and the others rapidly approaching, halted and surrendered.

Cos, whose identity at that time was not known, inquired of Deaf Smith if General Cos had been killed or captured; Smith replied: "He has neither been killed or captured. I am hunting for him now, for he is one scoundrel I wish to kill in person."

Having fairly surrendered, however, Cos was safe even in the hands of Deaf Smith. They did not reach the Texan camp with their prisoners and others they picked up until the 23rd

As stated earlier in the thread, Smith's rangering career (actually his group in 1837 were mustered in as 'cavalry'; Rangers in all but name) was brief. Fifty years old at the time, it may indeed have been failing eyesight that caused him to quit, or poor health, or else maybe military pay was lean for a man with a family to support.

In any event he quit the service and, at the time of his apparently quite sudden death, had been planning to speculate in real estate. With what must have been an exact knowledge of Texas, likely he could have become a wealthy man.

In the fall of this same year, after his men were disbanded, Deaf Smith left his family in San Antonio and came to Richmond, Fort Bend County, and in company with John P. Borden established a land agency.

Soon after, however, a fatal sickness attacked him, and he died November the 30th, 1837, at the home of Captain Randall Jones, about one mile north of the present business center of Richmond.

Birdwatcher