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

Luckily they are all dead and I own some of their life sustaining property

1990 I rode a 750 Ninja motorcycle from College Station to Oklahoma City and back to go and see a day of the Red Earth Festival. I set out at night under the Comanche moon.

As I recall it was a LFW (long way).

The Tonkawas prob’ly get tired of hearing the jokes at their fry bread stand.

Couple years ago they think they found some karankawa descendants on the coast just south of matamoras. Some little village that makes karankawa style stuff and speaks what they think is karankawa

That was 30 miles north of present day Ft. Worth. In 1837 that was way up in Comanche land. I wonder if those Rangers had six shooters.

The party out behind the horse barns under the oaks at night, makes you think you have stepped back in time, at least 100 years, watch your top knot. Rio7

Doubt it seriously.

And amazingly enough you might be surprised just how much traffic there was in That area in 1837. For that matter even 1737. Big land? Yes. But There was more going on here than one realizes.

One example of my comment above

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/coffees-station

Holy smoke! Smithwick’s memoirs are worthy of their own thread.

1837-38 he’s actually living with a Penateka Comanche band as a sort of liaison for the new Republic. Accompanying them occasionally into Bastrop to shop.

He’s living with a prominent Chief and Medicine man he calls “Muguara”. In 1838 he accompanies five prominent Comanches including Muguara to go visit then-President Houston for a treaty.

He returns to Weber’s Prairie (south of Bastrop) and the following year takes part in Ranger Captain John L. Moore’s failed winter assault on a big Comanche camp on the San Saba.

I don’t recall Smithwick mentions the name but this was the camp of one “Mukwooru”. Mukwooru is gonna die in the 1840 Council House Fight.

Mukwooru had likewise travelled meet Houston with a contingent of prominent Comanches in 1838 for a treaty negotiation. Dollars to donuts Muguara and Mookwooru were the same guy.

Mookwooru had two prominent nephews, Yellow Wolf and Buffalo Hump. Yellow Wolf would go on to be Jack Hays’ principal opponent in those two opening revolver engagements with Comanches along the Guadalupe River in 1844.

Buffalo Hump would loom prominent in Texas history when he led the 1,000 man 1840 Great Comanche Raid in reprisal for the Council House Fight.

Smithwick doesn’t mention him by name, but Buffalo Hump was in that 1838 delegation that met with Houston. Which means that him and Smithwick woulda been on at least speaking terms. Possibly Smithwick was familiar with Yellow Wolf too.

While I’m dropping names, I’m gonna point out that the Lipan Apaches Castro and his son Flacco, who guided both the 1839 and 1840 Moore expeditions against the Comanche and who later prominently fought alongside Jack Hays rangers, in their free time would hang around Smithwick’s forge/gunshop at Weber’s Prairie, gifting Smithwick with an infant-sized beaded pair of moccasins when Smithwick’s wife had a baby.

Small world. More to come.

Birdy, Webber’s Prairie is west northwest of Bastrop. 🤣Was trying to remember the fight the ranging company was in, Smithwick was there. They chased Comanches waaaaaaaaaaY up north. Smithwick was in the group that turned back way up on the Brazos and returned to Webber’s Prairie. The other group went on. I want to say they mY have been under the command of John R. Moore. They went way up almost to the area of present Wichita Falls. They made. Stand in a pile of rocks and brush. I seem to remember they may have set the brush on fire to make good an escape from the outnumbering Comanches.

Both ranging companies were really hurting for supplies.

Smithwick married one of Nancy "Widow” Blakey’s daughters. ( or he may have married the widow. I can’t remember now) The Blakey place is where they Hobby Lobby, Lowes, and Academy is on the west side of Bastrop now. Someone bought and moved the remnants of the old cabin. Her husband was killed at the Battle of Brushy Creek.

Did I take you up there to the battle site when you came by here?? Can’t remember….. It’s right on SH 95 just south of Taylor.

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

I did take you by the Coleman place where they had the fight that started this affair and up the Manor hill cemetery which was a rock throw from where Smithwick lived.

Im gonna recommend Steven Moore’s series of books called “Savage Frontier”, exhaustively researched. I haven’t checked just now but I bet the fight you mentioned is in there.

Moore quotes the price of a Paterson revolver when it first appears in Texas as $400, an exorbitant sum at that time. Jack Hays was a rich kid, practically a stepson of Andrew Jackson, so he could probably afford a brace but even he doesn’t have enough to confront Comanches with them until 1844, and even then only fifteen rangers.

Moore gives two uses of Paterson colts around San Antonio in 1840, the earliest date he mentions. One was in the hands of a presumably wealthy Tejano leading a party going against Isomania’s Comanches in the approximate area of today’s Hondo TX (Fehrenbach writes Tejanos out of the script)

The other was at the Council House Fight. An officer in the Texian Army pulls out his Paterson to shoot a Comanche, but ends up in a desperate hand to hand struggle when the Patterson won’t function.

What had happened is, being new to the revolver, he had driven the barrel wedge in so tight that it locked up the revolver.

Birdy, I believe that Hays got to pick Patersons from the ones that had been purchased (well maybe not paid for) by the Texas Govt for the Navy. Navy didn't want them. Hayes didn’t want the carbines but they did get some of the pistols.

It was Lysander Wells who had the paterson issue at the council house. I have heard another account which stated the barrel wedge had fallen out and the warrior grabbed the pistol and the barrel came off in his hand!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. The warrior ran off with his prize! 🤣

Damn, I drove through there on purpose years ago, I coulda sworn I was going east on 290 and turned right, maybe I was heading west.

As I recall Webber was a guy from Connecticut who had got a slave woman pregnant. So his child could be born free Webber actually bought her and moved with her as his wife to Texas where such things were more tolerated.

IIRC Smithwick spoke highly of them and their charity, angrily railing against the arrival of “the better sort”, who moved in “when all danger had passed”, compelling the Webers to pull up stakes and move to Mexico.

They were lost to history when they went to Mexico. Remember the dance? Puss Webber would stand outside out of the way on the porch while the white folks danced. Remember a “new" lady appeared at the dance and was all the rage among the young men??? Puss Webber was livid!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣 When some of the women asked her what was the issue she had with the young lady she told them thT she was mKing a spectical of herself to all those young men! She went on to say “she is as black as I am!"

LOL! She knew!!! 🤣🤣🤣

Geeze! Now I gotta find the name of that Tejano packing a Colt against Comanches in 1840.

He could be the ONE, the first guy to pack a Colt against Comanches

Maybe if I can find a guy who brung a pepperbox earlier than that, he can get partial credit.

Funny !

LOL! I know that some of the rangers did get some of the Navy’s Patersons. Hays may have had his own. Like you said, he could have afforded it!

You will discover that Gregg on one of his last trips to Santa Fe has purchased FOUR Paterson revolving pistos and two of the carbines to split between himself and his brother. On the return to St. Louis he doesn’t again mention the Patersons ( Im sure he sold them in Santa Fe for beaucoup money!). But he does have a Cochran turret rifle!!

Some years back I was with some students and their parents doing a 24 hour project right on the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass. Early hours of the morning, pitch dark, quiet, the sound of the river flowing, a rooster crowing on the Mexican side.

For all you could tell we coulda been surrounded by a sea of prairie 😎

Ive got a damn red rooster that has showed up here on the old place and taken up with me for some damn reason. Vocal bastid he is! 🤣

The kids of the people who dealt with Texas indians didn't have anything good to say about them.

Sorry. I'm gonna go with that.