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

NO. We didnt vote for Zero or Hillary or Bidet after reading that.

Thanks for that, Birdy.

I’m gonna get around to reviving this thread.

Just to recap, just three days after first contact 60 miles away, around 165 men had assembled to intercept by far the largest assemblage of hostile Indians anyone had ever seen. A pretty swift response given the lack of means of long distance communication available at the time.

Of course the Comanche/Kiowas themselves did much to transmit the news by attacking Victoria and smaller settlements on their way down.

What is often lost in these accounts are individual heroics. Like the guy mentioned in passing who rode alone east across the predicted path of the Comanches to see what militia was assembled to the east.

Even in those times few men chose to be Rangers. Captain Tumlinson, who was, is gonna decline to engage at least five times his number of Indians upon contact, instead he’s going to elect to disengage and follow along behind.

Likely this was a realistic assessment of the armament, skills and dispositions of his scratch force and the condition of their mounts.

Ben McCullough, 28 years old, present in Tumlinson’s force, WAS one of that minority with the temperament for rangering. He must have had a good horse, frustrated by Tumlinson’s failure to order a headlong attack, he separates himself from the force that same evening (the 9th) and sets out on a grueling 60 mile ride northeast back to Gonzales to try to get ahead of the Comanches in time to raise a force sufficient to intercept them.

This notwithstanding the fact that he had already been on the trail for the previous three days and furthermore had received a crippling wound to the arm just six months earlier in a duel.

In the years subsequent to this raid Ben McCullough would be among that tiny minority of men who would care to go rangering with the likes of a Jack Hays.

Yes I have. Good book!

Lots of romantic talk about the Rangers latter years, but not much of how they came to be.

Texas indians were ruthless savages that welcomed the Europeans as a source of free food and sex, but got more than they bargained for.

Decades ago.

James Buchanan Gillett, Texas Ranger in 1875 at age 19. The real deal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Gillett


The same year he joined the Rangers the 19yo Gillette nearly shot the Apache captive and adoptee 16yo Herman Lehmann. IIRC the Rangers had taken an educated guess at where the Apaches were headed and ridden through much of the night, surprising the Apaches in the morning.

Lehmann was mounted behind an Apache friend, the two riding two-up, their horse consequently lagging behind. Gillett, riding ahead of his companions closed the distance, dismounted and shot the horse with his Winchester rifle (my own contention is, never mind revolvers, rifles had it all over handguns in plains combat).

If I recall correctly, both Lehmann and his friend escaped.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Lehmann

I bought it as an ebook on Amazon several years ago. It was on sale for like $2.95. Good read.

Thanks Mike for bringing this thread back. One of my favorite type thread to read on the Campfire.

SUNDAY August 9th 1840

The war party of perhaps as many as 1,000 Comanches and Kiowas had a productive raid. On this, just the fourth day after crossing the line of settlement they had raided across 90 miles, acquired perhaps 2,000 horses and mules and more trade goods than they could easily carry from the warehouses at Linnville on the Gulf Coast.

Waiting to intercept them that morning to the west of their route were a force of 120 men under Captain John Tumlinson coming from Victoria and to the east forty men out of Texana under the command of Captain Clark L. Owen.

One George Kerr was among the brave souls who had ridden east from Tumlinson’s force in the night to locate Owen, that morning he sent a message to Colonel John Moore of LaGrange, asking that a force be assembled to the north to intercept the Indians.

From Steven L. Moore’s “Savage Frontier” on the dangers of looking for Comanches, even if you are on a good horse as we might guess such volunteers were...

During the early morning hours of August 9, Captain Owens company was approached by the returning Comanche war party. The hundreds of campaigning Indians passed between the camps of Owen and Tumlinson, making it impossible for the two to unite.

Captain Owen sent out three of his men as scouts-John Sutherland Menefee, a Dr. Bell, and a man named Nail. These three were attacked and chased by the Comanches on Arenosa Creek. Dr. Bell was killed and Nail escaped only by the sheer speed of his horse. He fled towards the Lavaca settlements and escaped.

John Menefee, a San Jacinto veteran and Texas Congressman, was struck in the body by seven arrows. He somehow managed to escape and hide in some brush along the creek bank until the Comanches passed on.

Menefee walked and crawled to a ranch the following day. He had managed to pull the seven arrows from his own body. Although suffering from serious blood loss, he survived, and would keep the seven arrows in his Jackson County home for years.

Too bad those Uvalde cops forgot their history.

Now that’s stamina. Meme fee was tough.

Captain John Tumlinson, was one of my ancestors.

That is something to be proud of. It's somewhat off topic but the bowie knives of the south/south west are way cool.

A way cool heritage Roger 😎

The morning on August 9, Captain Tumlinson’s scouts reported the massive body of Comanches returning from Linville. His men diverged from Texana road and crossed a large prairie... they rode roughly 7 miles further until they finally came in sight of their adversary after 10 AM.

The Indian pack animals were heavily laden.... Tumlinson’s companies rode out to intercept the Comanches on a level, treeless prairie. His right flankers were more than a mile away from his main body at the time of the Indian sighting.

Comanches customarily did not return from a raid the same route they went in, so escaping any organized armed response to their actions. Apparently Tumlinson was still thinking the Comanches might turn to the west and so threw flankers far out in that direction.

The Indians passed between his forces and this cut off this detachment from his men... The Comanches, armed with shields, guns, lances, and bows were mounted and prepared for the Texan charge.

Volunteer Washington Miller found the Comanches to be “hideously bedaubed after their own savage taste. Some wore feathers. Others were sporting huge helmets of buffalo or elk horns -armed with glistening shields, with bows and quivers, with guns and mounted on their chargers, dashing about with streamers flying behind them. He estimated the Indian party to number from 400 to 500.

Tumlinson preferred to dismount his men for an attack as he approached. As the Indians moved forward, a large number of their warriors encircled the Texans. This move was to keep the Texans at bay while other Indians herded their large droves of horses forward. Alfred Kelso , sheriff of Gonzalez, drew first blood this day, his target was a daring turkey-plumed Comanche chief armed with lance and shield. As the Comanche moved tauntingly close, Kelso dropped him from his horse with a well directed shot.

The firing continued for about 20 minutes. The battle never became general due to the lack of a charge by the volunteers. During the skirmishing one man on the Texas side was killed and three horses were wounded.

Washington Miller continues:

“They whirled about us and around us, exhibiting the most admirable feats of horsemanship and, being continually in motion, they were less liable to be struck by our rifle balls. Seldom did they withdraw from their daring sallies however without leaving upon the ground evidence of the skilled use of our arms.

Discovering the fate of several of their number, they became more wary, and kept at a more respectful distance. Those among them using rifles and escopetas dismounted and played upon us from the grass, at about 150 paces.”

Note: Escopeta literally translates from Spanish to “shotgun”, in this setting it would be a smoothbore carbine functionally similar to the various musketoons issued to cavalry of the period except with a Spanish-style Miquelet flintlock mechanism. 1840, it can be assumed that many if not most of Tumlinson’s men were still using flintlocks also.

Ben McCullough insisted that a charge should be ordered to scatter the Indians. He felt such action was the only chance of victory against such superior numbers. Sensing hesitation in his ranks, John Tumlinson would not commit to the full charge. He knew that many of his men might not follow....

Captain Tumlinson allowed his men to move to a nearby stream to take in much-needed water. While the Texans quenched their thirst, the Comanches who had kept them at bay joined the main body of retreating Indians

The volunteers found the weather to be excessively hot and their horses were much worn down. Tumlinson decided that the best course of action was to maintain a slow pace in the Indian’s wake.

Prob’ly a good call by Tumlinson, although he and his men, trailing the Comanches, would miss the action at Plum Creek three days and about 85 miles later.

Note that 25 of Tumlinson’s men had dropped out in Victoria the day before, citing worn out horses, as noted earlier in the thread, the settlements during this time period suffered from frequent theft of their best horses by Indians.

Noah Smithwick, two or three years later up by Bastrop, relates that the Comanches had stolen all of his horses except for a blind mare. In any event, these were mostly regular guys responding to the raid and not habitual Rangers like McCulloch and Tumlinson, so presumably were mounted accordingly.

I’m just going to add a little bit of context to this raid, by far the largest ever staged by Comanches against Texians. Most accounts give the actual cost in lives to be surprisingly low; 20 victims. Even if it were five times that number in terms of undiscovered bodies that would only be 100 victims.

In 1840 the estimated population of Texas was 70,000 people, by numbers White, enslaved and Tejano in that order.

As was usually true, the alarm and worry affected far more people than the raid directly did itself. Same thing is true in our popular histories, the mundane and ordinary lives of regular folks are often overlooked.

MONDAY AUGUST 10 was a relatively quiet day in terms of combat, at least in reports. The Comanches and Kiowas had broken with custom and, prob’ly buoyed by their numbers, were moving slowly to the north, about 25-30 miles each day the next two days.

Meanwhile couriers were raising the alarm far and wide, and men mustering hastily to intercept.

As for Ben McCulloch in particular, he and three companions had been riding all night, from Tumlinson’s command back to Gonzales.

Ben McCulloch seething with anger that he had been unable to bring Tomlinson to force to charge all day, turned his Gonzalez company over to a Lieutenant and departed with three of his trusted men. McCulloch rode hard back towards Gonzales throughout the night.

As he neared Gonzales, he dispatched one man to find Captain Matthew Caldwel, who was returning with a group of men from chasing other Indians. He also dispatched another of his men to ride hard to the Bastrop area, where he reached Colonel Edward Burleson at noon on August 10.

Burleson then began to raise all the volunteers in his power to go to their assistance. He plan to ride out the following morning, in company with some of his trusted Tonckawa scouts.

Across the river from Burleson‘s plantation, cousin Susan was enjoying her wedding ceremony. Gas from many miles away headed assemble to watch the wedding. One of Burleson‘s riders appeared just as a happy party was enjoying a toast to the bride. Just as quickly as the horseman dashed into the yard with the warning the wedding was deserted as all the able men raced to help.

While he awaited the return of Captain Caldwel Ben McCullough assisted the Gonzalez citizens in raising another volunteer company, Captain James Byrd was elected to command 30 additional Gonzales volunteers.

Worth noting that Ben McCulloch and his companions had been on the Comanches’ trail for three days, culminating in a prolonged skirmish and then a fifty-mile all-night dash back to Gonzales.

By this time too word had reached Bastrop and San Antonio.

Meanwhile additional men released by Tumlinson were likewise rushing north to get around and ahead of the Comanches.

Hardly anyone would join this fight from San Antonio, the largest city in Texas, which is sort of a puzzle since the 500-man Texian Army and their officers had been stationed there.

Just days before, the Texian Army had evaporated as most of the men, tacitly encouraged by Texian President Mirabeau Lamar, had gone south to fight for the nascent Republic of the Rio Grande, indeed, comprising most of the force and by far the most combat-effective component of the RoRG Army.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_the_Rio_Grande

So at the time of this Comanche Raid and the ensuing battle, more than 400 men under arms in Texas were along the Border fighting for a different government to establish a different Republic. No one can see the future, that’s where the best prospect to prosper were in 1840, at least that’s how the men involved saw it.

President Lamar’s angle was he wanted a buffer state between Texas and Mexico. 70,000 Texians collectively too poor to field an army, 7,000,000 Mexicans with a history of raising armies. If they ever stopped fighting each other and headed this way we might not have been able to stop them.

If you’ve never heard of this whole Republic of the Rio Grande episode, no worries, it was pretty much written out of popular Texas History.

Ben McCulloch was a dynamo of energy when it came to countering this raid. Twenty-nine at the time, he first came to Texas four years earlier. Back in Tennessee his large family had been neighbors of the Crocketts and he had been planning to join that former Congressman’s entourage.

A timely attack of the measles saved him from sharing Crockett’s fate, McCulloch was back in action in time to crew the Twin Sisters cannons at San Jacinto.

Prior to arriving inTexas McCulloch had rafted timber and trade goods downriver to New Orleans and in 1833 arrived too late to join a party of trappers headed to the Rocky Mts.

In Texas Ben and his younger brother Henry had been employed as surveyors along with the likes of Jack Hays. Ben McCulloch’s story speaks volumes about society in early Texas.

1839 McCulloch had been elected to the Texas House of Representives for Gonzales, apparently displacing one Alonzo Sweitzer. Sweitzer took offense and challenged McCulloch to a duel.

McCulloch declined on the grounds that Sweitzer “was not a gentleman”. Not a whole lot appears to be known about Sweitzer prior to his Texas years, but two years later he would be shot and killed by Texas Indian Agent Robert Neighbors. Most likely he had it coming, Neighbors weren’t a bloody-handed individual.

When McCulloch refused the duel, the “noted duellist” Reuben Ross pressed the issue. As with Sweitzer, details of Ross’s life prior to Texas are unclear. Ross among other things was a Ranger Captain operating out of Gonzales, likely rival political factions came into play.

Most immediately prior to the October duel Ross had been commanding 200 men “most of whom were outlaws” along the Rio Grande, participating in the ongoing Mexican Civil War. Not all the cutthroats along the Border were Mexican.

The duel was fought with rifles, likely McCulloch’s first, not so Ross. McCulloch received a permanently crippling wound in his right arm.

Two months later, Ben’s younger brother Henry, five years younger than Ben and likewise not a “noted duellist”, under circumstances that are poorly recorded, shot and killed Rueben Ross in Gonzales with a pistol. If Rueben Ross were widely mourned it ain’t recorded. Sounds like it woulda made a good movie.

Ben McCulloch never married. He rangered alongside Jack Hays in the Ranger heyday of the early 1840’s, likewise served with Hays in the Mexican War, and like Hays moved to California in ‘49.

Unlike Hays, McCulloch did return to Texas and later entered Confederate service as a General Officer. Throughout his life McCulloch was noted for his ability to read a trail, a skill learned back in Tennessee from the Choctaws. McCulloch was killed by a Union sniper while scouting out the lay of the land before the Confederate lines, Pea Ridge Arkansas 1862.

Camp Ben McCulloch outside Austin was a reunion site
for Confederate Veterans of the area. Ben Mc is buried
at State Cemetery in Austin. Camp Ben on Onion Creek
is a really popular site for arrow head hunters.

Didn’t know that Mike. Lotsa history in that Cemetery.