Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Comancheria

Pekka Hamalainen is the author, a Finn, turns out he's a Professor at UC Santa Barbara. I bought the book for this thread, shoulda bought it couple of years back when Sycamore pm'ed me about it. Little did I know it weren't one more of the same'ol same'ol Texan-centic versions which I was familiar with.

But again, in the context of twenty thousand Comanches extant in 1840, most of whom lived hundreds of miles away, the Great Comanche Raid, at a loss of maybe eighty dead, maybe weren't in itself that major an event, leastways not like it looms in our Texas history.

It did at least demonstrate that Texas was a whole different kettle of fish than Mexico. Comanches would still sporadically steal horses, plunder and kill at least as far as Bexar and Travis Counties for the next two decades or more, but always in small and elusive parties.

Anyhoo... I have a better map with more relevant place names, unfortunately with modern county lines and names obscuring things a bit...



We left off on the night of the ninth, following Tumlinson's Raiders who had picked up the trail on the 6th, followed it south to Victoria while expecting the Comanches to return hell-for-leather at any time as they typically did. These Rangers then finally coming upon the Comanches just north of Linnville (the site of Linnville located just outside where Port Lavaca now stands), east of Victoria on the morning of the 9th.

For future reference, the Battle of Plum Creek would be fought shortly after sunrise on the 12th, four days after the sack of Linnville. The battle site lies just outside the present town of Lockhart.

Mounting alarms had gone out, and doubtless many unheralded individuals had hastened home to carry word to kin and to protect their loved ones, heedless of the risk to themselves. In that age before mass communcation each messenger carried the news as they had experienced or heard it prior to their departure. Likewise men mustered as they were able, some limited by a lack of horses, others doubtless tending to their own affairs first. The community of Gonzales for example would muster at least three separate groups of rangers over these few days.

So it is that word of the attack on Victoria reached the Lavaca River settlements near modern-day Halletsville on the evening of the 7th. A group of twenty-two men elected one Lafayette Ward as their Captain and headed due west, like everyone else anticipating that the Comanche war party would be speedily running back home.

Coming across the two day-old Comanche trail going south, and seeing no sign of their return, they concluded as Tumlinson and his volunteers had done that the Comanches would return on a more westward route and pushed on to Gonzales on the Guadalupe, arriving there on the morning of the 9th, at about the same time Tumlinson and his men were engaging the Comanches perhaps sixty or seventy miles away down by Linnville.

Most all Texans of that era would have wondered at the absence in this narrative of one of the most prominent and active of border defenders; Captain Matthew "Old Paint" Caldwell, then 42 years of age. Hard to do justice to the man here, suffice to say Caldwell had been one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and at the time of the raid held the rank of Captain in the Texas First Regiment of Infantry.

As such, it does seem possible that he had access in 1839 to one of those new Paterson Colts but no mention is made of it. Certainly Patersons figure scarcely at all in accounts of Plum Creek.

Earlier in 1840, Caldwell had been outside the Council House and unarmed when that lethal fracas broke out and was reduced to defending himself by throwing rocks. He did receive a leg wound, possible from friendly fire. The following year he would lead a company in the ill-fated Santa-Fe Expedition (the basis for "Dead Man's Walk") and endure months of brutal captivity. Back in Texas by 1842, he would lead a Texas force to victory against Mexican General Woll's forces outside of San Antonio. He collapsed and died at home later that same year, some said as a result of hardships endured.

As we shall see later, Caldwell did have a knack for short and to-the-point speeches prior to battle. It was Matthew Caldwell that Ben McCulloch had probably been hoping to find when he left Tumlinson's party trailing the Comanches on the evening of the 9th and ridden all night to Gonzales.

Ironically, when word of the huge war party had first reached Gonzales via the mail carrier on the 6th, Caldwell had been away... leading a party in response to another Comanche War party to the west, returning to Gonzales on the 9th to find all hell broken loose, at least by word of courier and rumor.

That same day Caldwell met Ward and the Lavaca men in Gonzales who informed him that the Comanches had not come back up to the east after their attack on Victoria. Like everyone else, Caldwell assumed that time was of the essence as the Comanches must certainly be even then riding hard up-country. Since they were not east, and had not come up the Guadalupe, Caldwell concluded they must be coming up west of that river. Furthermore, they were most likely to ford that stream going north at the ford on the Camino Real, where New Braunfels now stands, the same ford where Smithwick had his brush with death earlier in this thread.

Nothwithstanding the oppressive August heat and the prior labors of everyone present, Ward's party joined Caldwell's, and within a hour of their meeting fifty-nine men under Caldwell hurried westward, directly away from the actual route being followed by the Comanches. The force rode through the night, reaching Seguin on the morning of the 10th. The very same morning Ben McCulloch and his three companions reached Gonzales.

Fortunately for all concerned, word of the Comanche attack on Linnville on the 8th had reached Gonzales on the 9th, some hours after Caldwell's departure. Immediately an active young man on a fast horse was dispatched to catch Caldwell's party.

As Caldwell and Ward's companies reached the Seguin area on the morning of August 10th they encountered courier Robert Hall, another Gonzales man. He was sent to find Caldwell's men to relay the word of the attacks on Victoria and Linnville.

John Henry Brown noted that Hall arrived "on foaming steed" to announce that the Indians were retreating directly up the trail they had made on the way down.

Next we get an example of that seemingly remarkable consensus common to all the disparate and separate parties of Texans in the field when they heard the Comanches were indeed coming back up east of Gonzales after all....

Captain Caldwell announced that his forces must move at once to meet the Indians at Plum Creek. "After rest and breakfast and strengthened by a few recruits," wrote Brown, "we moved on and camped that night on the Old San Antonio crossing of the San Marcos."

Note that on the map the course of the San Marcos River determines the squiggly line between modern Guadalupe and Caldwell Counties, perhaps twenty miles northeast of Seguin en route to Plum Creek.

Interesting the common urge of EVERYONE in this narrative to hurry, even though their destinations lay hours away. Their seemed to be a consensus that just minutes could count even after an all-day ride on failing horses.

Such would prove to be tbe case at Plum Creek.

Birdwatcher

History (or at least the books I got) does not record the sentiments of Ben McCulloch when, after four days on the trail, he rode all night into Gonzales on the morning of the 10th direct from tailing the Comanche party, only to find that possibly the premier Indian fighter of his day, Matthew Caldwell, had left town the previous evening with fifty-nine armed men in exactly the wrong direction.

A second courier was immediately sent out, the people in Gonzales having no way of knowing that Robert Hall ahd caught up to Caldwell that same morning at Seguin, Caldwell immediately reversing course and heading for Plum Creek.

McCulloch waited in Gonzales for Caldwell for what must have seemed a very long 24 hours, while yet another group of volunteers were mustered under Captain James Bird. Before dawn on the 11th, McCulloch's younger brother Henry rode out to a tall hill fifteen miles east of Gonzales and from that eminence saw the Comanches on the move, still shadowed by Tumlinson's group of more than 100 men.

Henry McCulloch returned to Gonzales at the gallop and the party of thirty three men started out at once, pushing hard to get to Plum Creek in time to intercept the Comanches. They must have been well-mounted, because they were the first of all parties to make the rendevous.

Meanwhile, up on the San Marcos, Caldwell's party, with less distance to cover, made slower time...

Captains Ward and Caldwell moved out from the San Marcos River on the morning of August 11th to effect a rendezvous. John Henry Brown of Ward's company recalled...

"The 11th was intensely hot, and out ride was chiefly over a burnt prairie, the flying ashes being blinding to the eyes. Waiting some hours at noon, watching for the approach of the enemy after night, we arrived at Good's cabin, on the Gonzales and Austin road, a little east of Plum Creek."

Also arriving at Plum Creek that same evening were Major General Felix Huston and Captain George Howard. The hot-headed Huston was the guy who had wounded Albert Sydney Johnson in a duel a couple of years earlier. One author characterized Huston as "a typical military adventurer" whose "actual personal service in Texas was more obstreperous than effective". By virtue of rank, Huston would assume command of the Texan force at Plum Creek.

(Point of interest to some here, Huston would relocate to New Orleans that same year to practice law.)

Captain Howard of the First Regiment will appear again on this thread, like Caldwell he would be captured with the Santa Fe expedition the next year. Huston escaped from captivity, made his way through the wilds back to Texas, and went on to serve with distinction in the Mexican War.

The combined party waiting for the Comanches at Plum Creek, approximately 100 men, finally went to camp around midnight, the aforemetioned Robert Hall and Henry McCulloch being given the daunting task of riding south into the night to locate the Comanche force.

While Ben McCulloch had been waiting in Gonzales on the 10th, and Cadwell's force had been making their weary way towards the San Marcos, Captain Edward Burleson over in Bastrop had been sending for volunteers...

Thomas Monroe Hardeman and Susan Burleson, cousin of Edward Burleson, were enjoying their wedding ceremony. Guests from many miles away had assembled to watch the wedding. One of Burleson's riders had appeared just as the happy party was enjoying a toast to the bride.

Just as quickly as the horseman dashed into the yard with the warning from Colonel Burleson, "the table was deserted" as the able men raced to help."

Burleson departed Bastrop on the 11th with close to 100 men, pushing on through the day and most of the night. Jonathan Burleson, brother of Edward, was sent on an errand.

Jonathan Burleson had rounded up Chief Placido and twelve of his Tonkawa scouts. They set out at 10pm on August 11 to join up with Colonel Burleson's main forces. Placido and his men ran on foot throughout the night. Placido keeping one hand on Jonathan Burleson's knee as he trotted with his Tonkawas alongside.

Best guess, Placido (whos Tonkawa name meant "Can't Kill Him") woulda been about forty at the time. Eighteen years later he would still be in the field, at that time scouting for Ford's expedition against the very same Buffalo Hump leading the Great Raid.

Dunno exactly how many folks he might have eaten during that time, but Ford for one wrote highly of him.

Birdwatcher

The behavior of the Comanches through all of this is something of a mystery. One really wishes that someone woulda thought to visit with Buffalo Hump and write his biography, surely he would have had much to contribute to our knowledge of the OTHER side of the Texas frontier in those years. Prob'ly wouldn't have been hard to do, the guy was quite accessible in his later years...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbu12



The fact that several hundred Comanches could be 100 miles behind the settlement line before anyone really knew it is not surprising. Clearly Victoria and Linnville were the objectives from the beginning. It is entirely possible too that the route had been carefully scouted beforehand, it would have been hardly difficult for a handful of Comanches to perform this task.

As for the timing of the raid, Moore has it that may have been as the result of the advice of Mexican agents. It seems just as likely to me that the big treaty conference up at Bent's Fort that same summer coulda held things up.

I'm wondering too at what time of year were the warehouses at Linnville likely to be the most full and if that could have affected the timing of the raid. Seems like the purchasing power of their Texan customer base would peak in the late summer/fall after the harvests were in. But then the folks at Linnville must have traded extensively with Mexicans and Tejanos too, hence their initial assumption that the approaching Comanches that morning with their large herd of horses and mules were Mexican traders.

Up until they sacked Linnville on the 8th the tightly choreographed discipline in the Comanche ranks can be explained. What puzzles is afterwards, on the way back. A frequent MO of later frontier raids would be that the Comanches would arrive in a body, set up camp, and fan out to simultaneously hit separate ranches.

On this raid we get NO reports of groups of Comanches fanning out on their own hook, despite the relatively enormous group of warriors on hand. Consider that the aforementioned John Menifree was able to walk and crawl to a ranch after being stuck with seven arrows down by Linnville, said ranch being left intact despite the huge number of Comanche warriors in the immediate area (if they ran off their horses too nobody recorded it).

And though the Comanches were driving about 2,000 stolen horses and mules at this point, the seeming enormity of that haul dimishes considerably in the light of the fact that the herd would presumably be divided among the at the very least 400 warriors participating.

Might be that the quantity and quality of the loot garnered from the warehouses at Linnville was enough to keep their collective attention on the way home, such that defending the pack train became a primary objective. I'll leave it to a real Historian to research the size of that haul and compare it to the volume of goods available, say, at a Comanchero trade fair and the value thereof.

Tumlinson's men, doggedly tailing the Comanches through three whole days in the endless heat on weary mounts, would miss participating in the fight at Plum Creek entirely. That fight would turn into a running skirmish, running AWAY from Tumlinson, perhaps nine out of ten of the Indians getting away clean, at least with their lives. But if Tumlinson had kept the Comanches worried about their loot and therefore close to the driven herd during their return trip throught the settlements, he may have saved some lives.

If the Comanches even threw out any scouts in advance on their way back, such is not recorded. A puzzle fer example that Henry McCulloch had been able to occupy that high solitary hill unopposed on the morning of the 11th and see the whole body of Indians. Were I Henry, I would have expected Comanche lookouts to be already up there.

Actually I'm sure he was keenly aware of that possibility at the time, his solo ride towards the biggest bunch of raiding Indians anyone had ever seen being one of those acts easy to relate after the fact, but probably a cause of no little anxiety at the time.

The Comanches made pretty good time on the return trip, considering they were driving 2,000 head of stock plus what must have been at least 1,000 horses they had brung with 'em. Multiple mounts were common on Comanche Raids, as they were soon to be among the rangers going out against them.

A straight line from Linnville to the Plum Creek fight site is about 100 miles long, prob'ly a bit more. The morning of the ninth the Comanches were down by Linnville, the morning of the 12th they were crossing Plum Creek, meaning they were covering 30-40 miles a day, in the same heat written about by the Texans.

Nobody seems to mention unusual thirst in their accounts, indicating that 1840 had not been a drought year, in which case water and forage along the route would have been largely absent. Still, watering 3,000 head on that return journey must have been time-consuming.

Birdwatcher

"Nobody seems to mention unusual thirst in their accounts, indicating that 1840 had not been a drought year, in which case water and forage along the route would have been largely absent. Still, watering 3,000 head on that return journey must have been time-consuming."

Not realy Birdy. Think on it a bit. The Comanches were moving, for them, relatively slowly. Many accounts of raiders covering 100 miles in 24 hours.

Now what is happening is the best horses and mules are going to be in the lead of the general heard and will be able to snatch a drink and a few mouthfulls of forage at any water point before the least able come up and push them on. The weakest, poorest would be at the very back of the heard and would not have time for anything. The Comanche knew that the best mounts would survive and the poorest be lost as was always the case on any raid. Many accounts in Wilbarger of Indians abandoning horses and mules when they were retreating from a strike when the animals could not keep up.
How much playing with their new gotten goods delayed them is open to question as you say. By the description of the way they were arrayed, top hats, parasols, bolts of cloth streaming from their ponies tails etc it must have been some.

As an aside: What was the main cause of the demise of the Comanche. IMO his total inability to be anything but a Comanche.

Carry on.

Boggy,

I was hoping that someone with experience with livestock would chime in

Maybe it was the mules holding them up, those bearing the loot from Linnville (and again, one wishes we knew just how many mules that was).

Sorta related, and pertinent elsewhere in the thread...

In your opinion, about how fast and how far could you push a herd of longhorns, like if you were in a big hurry?

Thanks,

Birdwatcher

Birdy I have no experience with Longhorns they are pretty tough. Usual trail herd distance was 8-10 miles a day but they were grazing as they went.
On a stamped longhorns have been known to go twenty miles but were completely played out and not fit for much. Certainly not a continued drive.
What we are looking for is how far and fast can you push a herd of cattle and keep going for more than one or two days.
From what I have read from Goodnight, Dobie and others about 15 miles a day for four days is about the best that could be done or hoped for. After that what were not dead would need two days to recruit.

Interesting observation. The apparent lack of "look-outs" as noted below in your narrative suggests that the Comanches were either aware of their pursuers and keeping their scouts' eyes directed rearward, or that they'd made unmolested returns from raiding parties so many times that they didn't consider the pursuit worthy of concern.



The fact that the Comanches were making 30-40 miles per day argues against them driving cattle, which I doubt could manage even half that pace. Maybe longhorns can go farther, but modern beef cattle are hard-pressed to do 8-10 miles in my limited experience.

Again, I suspect the apparent lack of Comanche scouts on McCulloch's hill may or may not be significant. They'd be mobile scouts, not stationary pickets, so McCulloch could've come up on the hill 5 minutes after a Comanche scout had left and wouldn't know it.

Again, I wonder whether the Comanches were simply indifferent to the idea of pursuit due to 200 years' experience of not being seriously pursued after raids.

Good stuff, Mike!

Being all worked up from victory and big plunder the Comanche may have been unafraid of what was ahead also. I'm still hangin' with this thread.

My vote is for indifference/unafraid. With 400 warriors? Where in the state of Texas would you have been able to raise such a force to contend with them? IMO that would have been their thought.

Prob'ly I wasn't making myself clear; I wasn't thinking cattle on this raid, but we know that the Comanches and Kiowas beginning in the year 1860 (according to Jones' "Frontier Defense in the Civil War") would progressively switch over to rustling cattle from Texas for sale in New Mexico in a big way, to the tune of 30,000 over just a three month period in 1872.

The fact that they were able to get away with that argues that the prospect of pursuit was mostly non-existent during those years, at least in some places.



I would put forward that apart from Mexico (and even then some Mexican and Tejano Vaqueros were formidable in the field), pursuit after a raid was OFTEN the case. It might be that these mega-scale raids were only possible in Mexico, this one into Texas sure seems to have cost more than the Comanches were willing to bear, even though around 90% of 'em must have gotten away.

For the most part, Comanche adversaries were no pushovers even when the Comanches were winning, said tough enemies including the Tonkawas, who Gwynne ("Empire of the Summer Moon") dismisses as "always losing". Texans were no exception, and as Boggy notes, the first thing Comanches usually did after a conventional raid was to put some serious real estate between themselves and the places raided, just as far as horseflesh could stand.

This was exactly the behavior everyone seems to have been expecting the Comanches to follow here before word got out of their actual dispostion, even then haste was patently of the essence.

Birdwatcher

I just thought maybe with the successes of this raid they were a little overconfident and distracted, who knows?

Comes down to it, that explanation is as good as any.

Sorta surreal though that the Comanches had about 100 armed and dangerous men close on their tail for three whole days and were simply unable to do anything about it. Much is made (and wrongly so IMHO) of how the White guys were handcapped with rifles (tho' eastern tribes cut a broad swathe with theirs). One could make an equivalent case that the Comanches were never able to come up with an effective counter to a skilled rifleman, other than a rifle on their own part.

And it turns out there were more'n a few skilled riflemen on the Plains in those years.

Here's an excellent compilation of eyewitness testimony on a Texas A&M website...

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/plumcreek.htm

Jumping out of sequence a bit, here's an interesting account from Ben Highsmith recounting the Brushy Creek fight in 1839 involving the same Edward Burleson of Bastrop.

Interesting because it relates a fight where both sides were skilled riflemen, and because it ends up sounding like a modern firefight instead of an early nineteenth century....

As soon as the men started the Indians followed with fearful yells, and by the time the timber was reached considerable confusion prevailed among the white men...

The Indians were crowding the settlers closely and firing at them, and the dismounted men, seeing the stand was not going to be made, hastily remounted and followed. Their order as they left the trees was Turner in front, [Jake] Burleson next, and Highsmith last.

About this time the Indians, who were close upon them, fired a volley with rifles. Highsmith felt the wind of a ball close to his ear, and at the same time saw the dust rise from the crown of Burleson�s hat, who was directly in front of him. The next instant the gallant young man reeled and fell from his saddle, shot in the back of the head....

The Indians did not pursue far, and the men all got together; and went back towards Austin. Captain Rogers was greatly dejected. Before getting back, however, they met Gen. Ed. Burleson coming rapidly with twenty men. He was informed of the disastrous fight, and that his brother Jacob was killed...

The Indians went back to Brushy Creek and there strongly posted themselves. The creek here made an acute bend, and the. Indians were in the lower part of it and concealed from view except when some of them showed themselves in order to tell the movements of the white men...

General Burleson moved his men around the position of the Comanches and occupied the upper bend of the creek, and the fight soon commenced across the space between them, which was in short rifle range.

The battle lasted a long time and was hotly contested-rifle against rifle. The Indians seemed to be nearly all armed with guns and were good shots, and still outnumbered the white men. The latter, some of whom were old Indian fighters, were cautions, exposing themselves as little as possible. The Indians did the same....

One Indian crawled out of the bed of the creek unperceived and took a position behind a large bunch of prickly pears, where he lay flat on the ground and watched his opportunity to shoot as some settler would expose some part of his body , he did execution, and it was some time before he was located, but the smoke of his gun finally betrayed him.

Winslow Turner saw where the smoke came from, and quickly ascending a small tree at great risk of his life, got sight of the Indian, fired quickly, and came down again. The Comanche jumped at the crack of the gun and tumbled over the creek bank...

After the battle was over the loss of Burleson in killed was Jack Walters, Ed. Blakey, and James Gilleland. The latter was a Methodist preacher. Of the four men killed three were shot in the head. Gilleland was shot between the point of the shoulder with the ball ranging down and going through the lungs.

Highsmith helped to carry Blakey to the house of Noah Smithwick, at Webber's Prairie, twenty miles distant from the battleground. Smithwick was brother-in-law of the wounded man.


Birdwatcher

I have read that account and a few similar Birdy. But I think we both notice the annomaliy. Comanches warriors did not like to fight afoot. In fact they really didn't like to do anything that required them not to be on horseback.

Even later when they "knew better" they still insisted on forming their circle to fight foot riflemen.

from that same website...

The account of Robert Hall, the same guy who rode all night to turn Matthew Caldwell around, and who scouted out the Comanche position the night before Plum Creek. And note how Caldwell's men "almost left" Plum Creek the evening before on account of they didn't see anyone at first Proving that, in any given historical event, hindsite sure is clearer than it was to the people actually involved at the time.

Here starting with their arrival at Plum Creek. Recall that Robert Hall had left Gonzales the evening of te 9th before before Ben McCulloch arrived from tailing the Comanche host. So the night of the 11th was the first Hall saw of him.

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/plumcreek.htm#halldescrip



We got the news at Gonzales that a strong column of Comanches had passed into the lower country, and we at once got into the saddle and marched to the rescue of our friends. We camped at Isham Good's first, and, not hearing any news, we were about to return home, when Ben McCulloch rode into camp. Goat Jones was with him. They reported that the Indians had plundered the lower country, and were returning on the same trail.

Capt. Caldwell asked me to take a good man and scout to the front and see if I could see anything of the Indians. I took John Baker, and we rode all night. About daylight we came in sight of the Indians, about seven miles from our camp. We rode back and reported...

During my absence Gen. Felix Huston had been elected to the command of the army, and Ed Burleson had joined us with about one hundred men, including some fifteen Tonkaways. Gen. Huston asked me to take five picked men and ride to the front and select a good position to make the attack. I came in sight of them. They were on the prairie, and the column looked to be seven miles long.

Here I witnessed a horrible sight. A captain and one man rode in among the Indians. The captain escaped, but I saw the Indians kill the private. I ordered my men to keep at a safe distance and pick off an Indian as the opportunity presented...

At the first volley the Indians became demoralized, and it was easy to see that we had them beat just as we rode against them I received a bullet in the thigh. It made a terrible wound, and the blood ran until it sloshed out of my boots. I was compelled to dismount, or rather I fell off of my horse. After a moment I felt better and made an effort to rejoin the line of battle...

While on the skirmish fine, an Indian dashed at Mr. Smitzer with a lance. I fired right in the Indian's face and knocked him off his horse, but I did not kill him. However, I got the fine hat he had stolen...

An then one of them truth-stranger-than-fiction episodes, an account of Comanches on that march gathering around in the evening to be read to. Fehrenbach describes Wrs. Watts as an attractive woman, and apparently she was a class act....

A little further on I found Mrs. Watts. They had shot an arrow at her breast, but her steel corset saved her life. It had entered her body, but Isham Good and I fastened a big pocket knife on the arrow and pulled it out.

She possessed great fortitude, for she never flinched, though we could hear the breastbone crack when the arrow came out. She turned over on her side and bled a great deal, but she soon recovered. She was the wife of a custom house officer, and I think her maiden name was Ewing.

She asked for poor Mrs. Crosby and told us that the Indians whipped the poor woman frequently and called her a "peon," because she could not read. They had stolen several books, and when in camp at night they would gather around Mrs. Watts and ask her to explain the pictures and read to them.

And after the battle, the homecoming, Hall having been held up by his leg wound...

After some days my friends got an old buggy and hitched an old horse to it and made an effort to get me home. At the crossing of the San Marcos the old horse balked and refused to pull the vehicle up the hill. That made me mad, and I got out of the buggy and walked on home. I was tired and hungry, and I wanted to see Polly and get something to eat and have her dress my wound.

Polly was glad to see me, for she thought I was dead. Old man King had gone home, and, from some cause, he had carried my shoes. He told Polly I would be home in a few days, but during the evening she found my shoes, full of blood, and she began to scream and upbraid her father. He then had to tell her the truth, but he insisted that I was only slightly wounded.

Polly did not believe him, but when she saw me walking home she ran to meet me and declared that she never intended to let me go to fight Indians any more.

Hall, twenty-six at the time of this fight, would father thirteen children and later serve the Confederacy. For only $35,000 you can even buy some of his dud's online. Not mentioned here is that Hall arrived in Texas in 1835 crewing a sidewheeler steamboat, and later served aboard the famous Yellow Stone.

http://www.cowanauctions.com/auctions/item.aspx?ItemId=83437

At the age of 21 Hall moved to Texas and arrived shortly after the Battle of San Jacinto. He formally joined the Republic of Texas Army on June 1, 1836 and served about six months before being discharged.

Along Plum Creek and near the present town of Lockhart, the Texas volunteers surprised the Comanches and completely routed them. Hall sustained a gunshot wound in the thigh that was so severe that witnesses said the blood �sloshed out� of his boot....

After the battle, Sam Houston presented Hall with a magnificent hunting horn for his gallant conduct during the Plum Creek fight. This hunting horn, included in this auction lot, was Hall�s most prized possession. Hall valued the hunting horn so highly because, not only was it given to him by his good friend, Sam Houston, the horn itself had an inspiring provenance. According to Hall�s exceptionally rare biography, the hunting horn was presented in 1820 to Mrs. Jane Long by the buccaneer Jean Lafitte one evening during dinner aboard his flagship off Galveston Island. Mrs. Long, the wife of a Texas colonist, was informed that the horn had been taken from the body of a dead pirate. She later gave the hunting horn to Sam Houston, who then presented it to Hall. It has remained in the possession of family descendants since Hall�s death in 1899.

When Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845, conflict with Mexico was inevitable. Hall voted against joining the Union and stated that he had �voted first, last, and always for the Lone Star.� Nonetheless, when war became imminent, Hall joined a local ranger company and rode south to enlist with Ben McCulloch�s Texas Rangers in Mexico. Hall�s service as a scout with McCulloch�s Rangers was impressive. In 1847 he participated in the pivotal battle of Buena Vista and for years recalled episodes of that battle and its horrific aftermath.

Hall spent the decade of the 1850s farming and ranching in Gonzales County, Texas. Despite his Unionist sentiments, when Texas seceded from the United States, the 48-year-old Hall joined the 36th (Wood�s) Texas Cavalry Regiment. His first year of Confederate service was spent scouting on the western frontier of Texas. He later participated in several combat operations in Louisiana and along the Texas coast.

After the war, Hall moved his family to South Texas where he drove cattle in the brush country along the Nueces River. Later, he settled near the town of Cotulla.

During the 1870s Hall became an active member of the Texas Veterans Association. He savored his role as the venerable old Texas veteran and during the 1870s he made an impressive �frontiersman�s suit� from buckskin and an assortment of animal pelts. He wore the suit on �gala days and at the gathering of the old veterans.� The suit, included in this auction lot, was publicly displayed during the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas. Along with Hall�s canteen and hunting horn, the suit has always been in the possession of family descendants.

Robert Hall was still active in his 70s and 80s and he continued to hunt and roam the Texas prairies. One journalist described him as �hale and hearty� at the age of 82. He spent the last years of his life living with his children and grandchildren in Cotulla. He devoted a portion of that time dictating his memoirs. On December 19, 1899, the old warrior died in Cotulla

Little ol' Cotulla down in the brush country has remained basically BFE from that time until just recently, tho' I expect the Eagle Ford oil formation is presently changing all of that.

Birdwatcher

A description that later applied to many folks on the Plains where the daily use of a horse was an essential part of life, including cowboys and Texas Rangers, all of whom had rifles too.

The puzzling discrepancy is that a number of accounts, including Hamaleinen's "Comanche Empire" all state the great importance of firearms and ammuntion as trade items to the Comanches throughout their era.

Comanche rifles figure in both the skirmish outside of Linnville and again at Plum Creek, where we are told they did "most of the execution". Ford too cites a period of time when his rangers "held their breath" every time a skilled rifleman "armed with a Swiss rifle" among the Comanches fired at them, the guy hitting mounted rangers regularly enough to make them nervous.

As for the rest, one wonders how often yer average Comanche actually went up against White folks in open battle. Be pretty dumb to do the "ride-around-in-circles-while getting-shot-thing" twice. Note that not even the 400 warriors on the Great Raid pulled that stunt again after Tumlinson and his men demonstrated their excellent marksmanship the first time around. What happened at Plum Creek was mostly a stalling tactic on their part, which worked.

While we think of ourselves as the be-all and end-all, lots of Comanches likely never even SAW a Texan until the era where the borders of Comancheria had shrunk considerable. And those that did, mostly their experience would have been those innumerable raids involving lifting horses, committing random murders of opportunity, and getting away clean. So AVOIDING any fight at all. Few of these guys were ever brought to account.

Ford relates of his Pecos expedition (guided intitially by Buffalo Hump) what a great curiousity the Whites were to the Comanches, who would gather in crowds just to watch them.

What we do is tend to think of our enemies in simplistic terms, a common human trait.

JMHO and worth every penny.

Birdwatcher

Looking at this Comanche issue, we have a few overwhelming Texan victories on the one hand, contradicting the fact that an "impenetrable barrier of Comanche violence" (I forget which author put it that way) stalled the development of about half of modern-day Texas for more than thirty years.

Perusing the written histories, one finds that three out of four of these lopsided Texan victories had a common element; a superior force of mounted Comanches attempting to press home a victory against a much smaller force of Texans, and getting shot for their trouble. Perhaps ego and peer pressure came into play here, the Comanches simply not willing to cede the field to such a small number of opponents.

The first was Bird's fight in 1839, thirty four rifle-armed men versus two or three hundred Indians. IIRC five KIA among the White guys (including Captain Bird) versus at least thirty among the Indians.

The second Moore places in 1842, on the Guadalupe not far from the 1844 Walker's Creek fight. On this occasion Jack Hays and sixteen companions went out from San Antonio on the trail of the same Yellow Wolf who would be present on Walker's Creek, on this occasion he led 80 warriors in his raiding party.

Catching them on the Guadelupe, the two sides made a number of charges and counter-charges, the rifles of the rangers inflicting a reported 36 deaths and 13 wounded among the Comanches in return for perhaps five wounded on their own side.

Then the vaunted Walker's Creek fight in 1844; fifteen rangers versus eighty Indians (plus a few Mexicans in the party). Apparently the first time revolvers were used as a primary offensive weapon by an entire group of men. Against Indians as yet unfamiliar with the weapon. Twenty-three Comanche dead, thirty wounded versus one ranger dead, four seriously wounded. The Comanche totals being so high on account of they repeatedly pressed the fight. Even so, as Hays recounts, the fight might have gone against them at the end, requiring one of his men to take out a Comanche leader with a carefully-aimed rifle shot, finally demoralizing the remaining twenty Comanches on hand and bringing an end to the action.

Interestingly, the number of Comanches and Rangers engaged was similar in both Guadalupe River fights, as were the number of Comanche and Ranger casualties. One fought with mostly with rifles, the other fought first with rifles, and then revolvers, ended by a rifle shot.

I dunno that such one-sided results in a pitched battle between parties of adult males would be obtained for another thirty years, that being at Adobe Walls, again an overwhelming majority of mounted Comanches pressing impulsive attacks against a few White guys with rifles.

At Plum Creek two hundred White guys faced four to five hundred Comanche warriors. On this occasion though, the Comanches exposed themselves to rifle fire to buy time for the main body to escape.

The exact tally of Comances killed or mortally wounded is unknown, Huston said forty, Burleson said sixty, later estimates ran to eighty and above. Apparently only twenty or fewer dead bodies remained on the field. The loss on the Texas side were one killed and perhaps ten wounded.

One thing that does become apparent in the Texas era is the primacy of the rifle. In the eighteenth century, despite the vaunted accuracy of the long rifle, research reveals that the majority of frontier weapons were probably smoothbores, including an odd but seemingly common weapon referred to as a "smooth rifle"; that is a smoothbore having the heavy barreled configuration, stock form, and sights of a rifle. Indeed, I believe research has revealed that a significant proportion of the personnel of Revolutionary War rifle units were actually carrying smooth rifles.

Modern reenactors can wring surprising accuracy out of these weapons, some claim comparable results with specific loads to actual rifles. OTOH you dont read much of these smooth rifles on the plains, there a premium was placed on precision marksmanship, as the dynamics of several fights of that era attest.

Birdwatcher

Where in your opinion, were the physical boundaries of the Comancheria? I'm not interested in Mexico, but just the United States. Could you relate them to present day towns in each direction? I realize that it wasn't a square, but four towns will do. I'm curious to see if the map in your head matches the one in my own.

My own would be Scott City, KS north, Roswell, NM west, Brownsville, TX south and Tulsa east.

Well, given that the borders of Comancheria were fuzzy rather than absolute, and given that we're talking maybe 1820's before Removal really kicked in....

Down here I would put Sherman, Waco and San Antonio as the eastern margins, with the understanding that they could and did raid and travel east of those points.

South of San Antonio and along the Rio Grande the Lipan Apaches hung in there remarkably well such that I wouldn't put Texas south of San Antonio firmly in the Comanches' collective pockets.

To the west I would agree with Roswell with the caveat that Lipan and Mescalero Apaches could still make travel on those plains hazardous for Comanches and Kiowas.

In the north, other than knowing of rival nations like Osages and Pawnee, and the longstanding emnity with tribes like Cheyenne and Arapaho, I must confess I am not familiar enough with the regional history up there to have an strong opinion.

Just to confound things, your question reminded me of a source I read once having some Crow Indians from Montana accompany Kiowas on a raid far enough south into Mexico that they saw parrots and monkeys, that same source recounting I believe travellers on the Santa Fe trail encountering a starving Crow Indian on foot, said Indian having set out to see the country and run into misfortune, losing his horses and gear.

Birdwatcher

I've had a book called The Tribal Wars of the Southern Plains, that I've needed to read for several years. I wish I knew more about territories and such but...I guess I should have defined "Comancheria" better, but I meant the area that they normally raided into as opposed to either areas they might raid into or areas that they always did. I've read about them raiding into Colorado for years and assume they did. They had longstanding feuds with the Osage who also had the "Civilized" Indians pressing them from the east. Kiowas were a known ally. Kiowas are even less known than Comanch. Some sources put them at the southern boundaries of the Comancheria whereas others put them in Oklahoma and Kansas. Kansas has Comanche County and the town of Kiowa so...You've got the Wichitas kind of as a barrier who were said to be friendly with whites and Comanch and a kind of trading buffer or partner. One figures that Comanch would have no trouble raiding into their territory though. It's almost always said they raided to or into the Cross Timbers, which I live near and used to live in...

Anyway as to the Cheyenne...you have a similar tribe that are allied with another weaker tribe, the Arapaho. But at least for the Adobe Walls fight, you had them allied with the Comanch. There is the sad tale of the German sisters captured in Kansas but then weren't they ransomed out of Texas or Oklahoma? I forget. Certainly the Southern Cheyenne would have had territory that overlapped the Comancheria-then there were the Pawnee, made out to be such badasses in Dancing with Wolves and always noted but not documented that much in stuff I've read. Pawnee County Kansas too, not so far north either.

Everything around here is "Osage" or "Cherokee" with a sprinkling of other eastern latecomer Indian place names.