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"Jack Hayes was the first captain in Texas to recognize the potentialities of Colt's newfangled revolvers. Because of this, in early 1840 he fought the first successful mounted action against the Comanches. Riding beside the Pedernales River nw of San Antonio with only 14 men, Hays was ambushed by a party of seventy Comanches. Previously, the standard tactic was to race for cover, and hold off the Comanches with their long rifles- heretofore their only hope for survival.

Hays, however, wheeled and led his men in a charge against the howling, onrushing horse Indians; the fourteen Rangers rode through a blizzard of arrows and engaged the Comanches knee-to-knee with blazing revolvers. Hays lost several men to arrows, but his repeating pistols struck down dozens of warriors.

Startled, amazed by the white men who charged and whose guns seemed inexhaustible, horrified by heavy losses, the Comanche war band broke and fled. The Rangers killed thirty Comanches."


Comanches: The History of a People by TR Fehrenbach

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"Empire of the Summer Moon" is a good read about this stuff. Very interesting.




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That took guts.

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Looks like those Texas Rangers taught those Comaches a little bit about Sex.

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I second the empire of the summer moon book.


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Originally Posted by rainshot
That took guts.


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Originally Posted by simonkenton7
"Jack Hayes was the first captain in Texas to recognize the potentialities of Colt's newfangled revolvers. Because of this, in early 1840 he fought the first successful mounted action against the Comanches. Riding beside the Pedernales River nw of San Antonio with only 14 men, Hays was ambushed by a party of seventy Comanches. Previously, the standard tactic was to race for cover, and hold off the Comanches with their long rifles- heretofore their only hope for survival.

Hays, however, wheeled and led his men in a charge against the howling, onrushing horse Indians; the fourteen Rangers rode through a blizzard of arrows and engaged the Comanches knee-to-knee with blazing revolvers. Hays lost several men to arrows, but his repeating pistols struck down dozens of warriors.

Startled, amazed by the white men who charged and whose guns seemed inexhaustible, horrified by heavy losses, the Comanche war band broke and fled. The Rangers killed thirty Comanches."


Comanches: The History of a People by TR Fehrenbach
Yep. Those were Paterson Colts, his first revolver put into production. Real game changers for the time. Commercial failure, however, since they were extremely expensive, delicate, and underpowered for their weight. The Walker (and the Dragoons) were the answer to those complaints, the Third Dragoon being nearly the perfect cavalry arm till the 1860 Army came along.

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That sounds a little like the attitude of a Nashville PD training officer when they switched from S&W revolvers to high capacity Tupperware- - - - -"You can throw away a few shots while diving for cover, without having to reload!" He got his man-panties in a wad when I asked him about maybe hitting an innocent bystander with one of those "throwaway" shots!


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Originally Posted by simonkenton7
"Jack Hayes was the first captain in Texas to recognize the potentialities of Colt's newfangled revolvers. Because of this, in early 1840 he fought the first successful mounted action against the Comanches. Riding beside the Pedernales River nw of San Antonio with only 14 men, Hays was ambushed by a party of seventy Comanches. Previously, the standard tactic was to race for cover, and hold off the Comanches with their long rifles- heretofore their only hope for survival.

Hays, however, wheeled and led his men in a charge against the howling, onrushing horse Indians; the fourteen Rangers rode through a blizzard of arrows and engaged the Comanches knee-to-knee with blazing revolvers. Hays lost several men to arrows, but his repeating pistols struck down dozens of warriors.

Startled, amazed by the white men who charged and whose guns seemed inexhaustible, horrified by heavy losses, the Comanche war band broke and fled. The Rangers killed thirty Comanches."


Comanches: The History of a People by TR Fehrenbach

Thanks for the link.

I first read that book close on fifty years ago in New York State, not suspecting at the time that I would end up spending most of my life in Texas.

Fehrenbach writes a story well, but in that book cherry-picks the history and worse, rearranges the timeline of events to build his narrative of an intrepid Jack Hayes striking terror into the Comanches with his game-changing revolvers.

Jack Hayes was indeed an intrepid guy, and the evidence suggests him and his fifteen guys, each armed with a brace of Paterson Colts did indeed get the drop on the surprised Comanches
twice, in the year 1844.

A much better source on the deployment of revolvers against Comanches is Texas Ranger Captain John Salmon Ford. Captain Ford stated that the bow and the revolver in mounted combat were about evenly matched. Even odds is not conducive to a long career, which imight be why Captain Ford did most of his Indian fighting (and he did a lot) with rifles, most often single shot muzzleloading rifles.

The largest slaughter of Comanches at the hands of Texians ever, one of the major bloodletting’s of the West, occurred in the winter of 1840 on the Colorado River, when IIRC a party of eighty Texians, scrupulously following the instructions of their Lipan Apache scouts, executed a perfect dawn ambush on a sleeping Comanche camp, killing as many as 180 Comanches.

Almost all the Texians were packing muzzleloading rifles, one guy did have one of those very expensive and fragile Paterson Colt carbines.

In building his revolver-as-superweapon narrative, Fehrenbach, like every other pop-Historian., all but ignores this epochal event.

JMHO


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Birdy, that was the Cedar Brake fight wasn’t it?


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Originally Posted by simonkenton7
"Jack Hayes was the first captain in Texas to recognize the potentialities of Colt's newfangled revolvers. Because of this, in early 1840 he fought the first successful mounted action against the Comanches. Riding beside the Pedernales River nw of San Antonio with only 14 men, Hays was ambushed by a party of seventy Comanches. Previously, the standard tactic was to race for cover, and hold off the Comanches with their long rifles- heretofore their only hope for survival.

Hays, however, wheeled and led his men in a charge against the howling, onrushing horse Indians; the fourteen Rangers rode through a blizzard of arrows and engaged the Comanches knee-to-knee with blazing revolvers. Hays lost several men to arrows, but his repeating pistols struck down dozens of warriors.

Startled, amazed by the white men who charged and whose guns seemed inexhaustible, horrified by heavy losses, the Comanche war band broke and fled. The Rangers killed thirty Comanches."


Comanches: The History of a People by TR Fehrenbach

Here you go SK.

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/walkers-creek-battle-of


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"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
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Should in their own confines with forked heads
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Originally Posted by elwood
"Empire of the Summer Moon" is a good read about this stuff. Very interesting.

Yep. Very eye opening.


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Kaywoodie & Birdie: I keep hearing the term "Texian" and I've also read it on several books, etc. So what about "Texican" was this also commonly used?


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I believe the more common term used back in the day was Texian. It is the term used in most contemporary accounts and writings. Texican to me is more of a Hollywood term. Personally I do not think it was popularly used. Historically speaking it may have been used. For most serious reenactors its a "cringe" word.

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Ancient Order of the 1895 Winchester

"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored."

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Originally Posted by elwood
"Empire of the Summer Moon" is a good read about this stuff. Very interesting.

Where Empire of the Summer Moon shines in his description of Early Texas society as often being an exceedingly harsh place, hence the death by exposure of that former Comanche captive girl in the East Texas woods while hiding with her relatives from another family they were feuding with.

Another area where it shines is following the later political careers of Quanah Parker and his rival Isa-Tai in tribal elections.

It does stumble right off the bat, the opening paragraphs where he describes the remnants of the infamous cannibal Tonkawas, then scouting for Ranald MacKenzie, as “always losing”.

The Tonkawas, never very many, had been living within raiding distance of the far more numerous Comanches for at least 35 years, and had been killing and eating Comanches for all that time.

1840, at Plum Creek, at the invitation of famous Texas Indian fighter Ed Burleson, a party of thirty Tonkawas under their Chief Placido, ran twenty five miles overnight to take part in that fight. In the battle, it was this small group of Tonkawas that inflicted most of the Comanche and Kiowa casualties and who captured ALL of the horses recovered.

1860, when Texas Ranger Captain John SalmOn Ford led 100 Texans against Buffalo Hump’s Comanches in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma, he also recruited 100 Tonkawas who he referred to as superior men (skills, not culinary habits) with an encyclopedic knowledge of the West.

It was a Tonkawa scout who dismounted, took careful aim, and struck down the famous Comanche Iron Jacket in his coat of Spanish mail, using a .54 cal Mississippi rifle to do the deed.

1874, Red River War, the Tonkawas were reduced to a mere handful, but true to form, were implacably leading the US Cavalry down on those Comanches still out.

By that time, most Comanches were ranching in Oklahoma (which Summer Moon ignores). The radical traditionalist fringe, including Quanah Parker, actually held for the first time a Northern Plains style sun dance in an effort to fortify their spiritual mojo.

The hundred or so young men who participated, hyped up and bulletproof, decided to go against the Buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls. Quanah Parker himself had wanted to go against the Tonkawas.

So the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, actually a skirmish, happened. I forget if Summer Moon mentions the fact that those young Comanche men at Adobe Walls subsequently fanned out and wrought havoc.

And EVERYONE seems to forget the gentle German Botanist/Doctor, JJ Sturm, well known to and trusted by the Comanches, who rode out alone after the Palo Duro Canyon Fight, to seek out and bring in the fugitive Comanches, including Quanah Parker.


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Originally Posted by Birdwatcher
1840, at Plum Creek, at the invitation of famous Texas Indian fighter Ed Burleson, a party of thirty Tonkawas under their Chief Placido, ran twenty five miles overnight to take part in that fight. In the battle, it was this small group of Tonkawas that inflicted most of the Comanche and Kiowa casualties and who captured ALL of the horses recovered.

It might be hard to argue that they didn't earn those horses, running 25 miles!


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Originally Posted by RiverRider
Originally Posted by Birdwatcher
1840, at Plum Creek, at the invitation of famous Texas Indian fighter Ed Burleson, a party of thirty Tonkawas under their Chief Placido, ran twenty five miles overnight to take part in that fight. In the battle, it was this small group of Tonkawas that inflicted most of the Comanche and Kiowa casualties and who captured ALL of the horses recovered.

It might be hard to argue that they didn't earn those horses, running 25 miles!

I’m pretty sure the Tonkawas were culturally and maybe linguistically allied to the Waco and Pawnee; farmers living in villages on the fringe of the plains.

It was common practice to go out into Comancheria on foot, expecting to return on Comanche horses. Placido himself presumably acquired his two Comanche wives this way.

Knowing what they were like, Ed Burleson went out of his way to invite Placido. Fehrenbach in his book does mention the Tonkawas showing up at Plum Creek, but pretty much writes them out of the script.


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Birdy,

Snagged the new bio on Ed Burleson other day. You gotta read it!!! Hard to find now!!!


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Ancient Order of the 1895 Winchester

"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored."

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I visit Henry Marion Smith all the time, poor fella is buried in a marked grave overgrown by brush and I knock the brush back as best I can. He is buried on an off-Shoot of the Cibolo Creek on Camp Bullis. His first wife is buried about 30 yards away under a pile of stones.

He fought in the battle of Bird’s Creek, was City Marshall of San Antonio, his sons are the focus of a small local book called (The boy Captives), and he owned the land my son’s house is on most likely where his boys were captured.

http://www.texasescapes.com/ClayCoppedge/Birds-Creek.htm

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87484566/henry-marion-smith

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A must-read for anyone interested in Texas History is the Finnish guy Penza Hamalainen’s book “The Comanche Empire”...

https://www.amazon.com/Comanche-Empire-Lamar-Western-History/dp/0300151179

Not so much an engaging shoot ‘em up like Fehrenbach or Gwynn, more like a serious study of the Comanche themselves. There was more to ‘em than just implacable raiders.

One thing it looks at is the unsustainable impact of the Comanches themselves and their massive horse herds, particularly along the wooded valleys where they wintered.

Also not generally covered in most books is the switch of many Comanche and Kiowas themselves to a cattle-based economy as buffalo numbers dwindled.

1864, First Battle of Adobe Walls, Kit Carson found the Comanche and Kiowa camps surrounded by droves of cattle.


"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
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