Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Texas Rangers vs Comanches

Don’t forget that t the Comanche were the big time horse and mule traders with the Americans out of Louisiana after the purchase. Like Philip Nolan and Anthony Glass.

If you had property where I do, you’d understand why the Comanche fought so hard.

An interesting story, those Smith boys!!

Yeah, another good one is “Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas”

An excellent book with more information than my little mind can absorb in one reading. I’m on my third or fourth reading and have several more to go….. I have started to highlight important passages in an attempt to retain more information. I’m finishing up the second read of the Earth is Weeping and transitioning my material back to the NW Coastal natives from Oregon through BC and into SE Alaska but I will be reading Empire of the Summer Moon soon.

Wow, twenty five years ago I was on Camp Bullis every spring, employed doing bird surveys for the DoD. I expect there must be more than one burial plot on there.

There was one place, IIRC in Area 9, where we couldn’t get access very often, on an open hillside there was a grave-sized rectangular area of piled-up rocks. Sure looked like a grave, can’t have been dug very deep given the shallow nature of the soil.

Always wondered what the story was.

Do you mean the other Hay/Comanche revolver skirmish?

Steven Moorein his “Savage Frontier” places it along the Guadalupe River not far from Sisters Creek.

A problem being of course Hayes and his Rangers never wrote much down.

AgriLife still does the bird surveys and the last guy looked homeless.

The golden-cheeked warbler still lives !

Old TA-9 is the impact area so its off-limits to many things. They just re-numbered the areas.

Many days I check out hunting but I’m actually exploring caves and aquifer ducts…Shhhh

Since I’m affiliated with Hillary’s Army, I’m also on Camp Stanley & Medina.

Oops not the Hays fight. i believe this was the fight way up in San Saba country. Maybe Tumlinson and Eastlands ranging comanies. smithwick was there. Big raid. Remember the paterson carbine Smithwick mentioned

The problem with all of this great CHIT is, most youngsters couldn’t give a rat’s Azz anymore.

Naah, that weren’t me but coulda been. I actually quit that gig, $20/hour to ride around on my dirt bike and watch birds on Bullis, the whole area reserved for me

‘Cept for the one time I was standing out in the LZ, wearing my red vest and holding a clipboard when a C 130 flew over and guys started jumping out in parachutes, landing all around.

As cool as that was the time I was in Area 9 just over the ridge from the machine gun range. IIRC They were shooting at old trucks, I got to hear incoming, everything backwards, starting with the rounds hitting steel

“plonkplonkplonkplonkplonk”
“swishswishswishswishswish”
“bangbangbangbangbang”

Adventures while bird watching

Can’t believe I quit after a few years but I did. It was taking all my weekends, mid March through July 4th, away from spending them with my family.

It weren’t AgriLife back then but a private Contractor.

Great thread !!!

I’m not sure where in Texas you are but even with the migratory buffalo herds and plethora of wild game in the pre-Civil War days it was unforgiving country. A lot of arid wasteland with not much nutritional value in the native forage that just didn’t support a lot of game. Other areas were obviously much better since Texas is a big state but it didn’t change the Comanche’s motivation for fighting.

The settlers lightly guarded cattle and horses made for easy pickings in the early days of the Republic and whatever possessions the whites had were valuable to the the Comanche.

Fighting and stealing was what the Comanches, like most tribes simply did, they were ruthless, thieving, grudge holding bastards that loved brutality all in their quest for wealth and dominance. The Comanches were pioneers amongst the natives for their unbelievable horsemanship and their understanding of animal husbandry. Their wealth was almost exclusively tied to the horse so capturing a herd of horses was their equivalent of winning the lottery. White man’s guns were useful in their quest for wealth and as trade goods. Mostly though the young men needed to steal horses, count coup and perform the other requirements for manhood and warrior status so they needed to fight and do battle in order for the tribe and the young men to grow and flourish.

The Comanches were less guarding “their land” than they were simply doing what they’d done for generations upon generations. The ease with which they could steal horses, cattle and slaves as well as gang rape the white women and brutally torture and murder made attacking whites an easy choice. They iron loot, guns, coffee, sugar, tobacco, ALCOHOL and other plunder was how tribes garnered power and prestige and “wealth”. The Comanches were nomadic with vast territory. The buffalo and game were “theirs” but they really were not fighting for “their land”….at least certainly not in the early years pre-Civil War. Their desires were more geared towards the accumulation of wealth and power, ie horses, guns, powder and lead.

1839. John (??) Moore’s first expedition against the Comanches, that time on the San Saba. So cold some horses died overnight. Did not follow the Lipan Chief Castro’s advice, the Comanches got away, the expedition ended up walking home.

There’s a great passage in Smithwick’s book where himself and a Lipan scout rode ahead to scout out the Comanche camp, the Lipan identifying theComanche camp by many small columns of smoke whereas a grassfire would have been one big cloud.

Moore listened to the Lipans on his next try, 1840, scored big.

sounds like pretty much every other culture.

Pretty much however the Comanche were the worst of the worst. The Comanche were feared by other fearless tribes and didn’t need provocation to unleash total brutality.

Comanche, means enemy, the name given to them by other tribes.

Yeah and it’s a well deserved name. As a kid I always thought the Apache were the worst but the more I read the more I realized that the Comanche made the Apache look like Sunday school teachers. 😁

Thats the one

John Moore!! Thanks! Packing crap in boxes And trying to do this thread at same time!