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Berlandier's diary (if you can find a translation) is fantastic first-hand history. He was with Teran when he returned to Fort St. Louis and destroyed it so completely that its location remained a mystery for almost two centuries.

No, the section of the link I quoted is by itself confusing. Sequoyah's two companions had left him alone with plentiful provisions in the Texas Hill Country and, having being denied horses in San Antonio, had gone on to Mexico to procure aid, the quote referring to their return journey.

Back to Plum Creek....

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

Felix Huston, Ben McCulloch, and others had gathered a force of some four hundred volunteers, and the Indians should have been annihilated.

Or so said John J. Linn, founder of Linnville. Mr Linn had the number of volunteers wrong but essentially he was right, in hindsight at least it seems the Texans could have hammered the Comanches a lot harder than they did. But perhaps as it was things worked out for the best; even if they could have shot more Comanches, the cost in blood on the Texas side was slight and a degree of victory was won.

The problems lay in the tardy arrival of Ed Burleson's force on the field, and in the choice of tactics by Felix Huston. It seems too that in the heat of the moment, the Texas may never have fully grasped the exact disposition and speed of the Comanche host passing from left to right across their front.

That the task facing the hundred men on the scene was a daunting one is reflected in the words of a brief speech Matthew Caldwell gave to the men before the fight, the gist of which is given by Moore:

"They must be attacked and whipped before they reach the mountains. If we can't whip them, we can try."

But Caldwell would not command that day.

General Felix Huston was a wealthy man, and an educated one by the standards of the time. Moreover he had accrued considerable debt during the War for Texas Independence in the cause of liberty. Huston comes across through history as an archtypical Southerner of his era; a Kentucky lawyer and adventurer, Huston was the guy who, when he was removed from command of the Texas Army early in 1837, had provoked and fought a duel with his replacement, Albert Sydney Johnson.

Whether by reason of rank, wealth, or reputation (or a combination of all three), Felix Huston assumed command of the force at Plum Creek.

Unlike Caldwell, Huston had no prior experience fighting Comanches, and doubtless like most every other American military commander through the War between the States, he was using Napoleon as a reference. Moore has it that Huston proposed to have the Texans advance in a three-sided hollow square formation and then dismount to face tbe Comanche attack, as if the Comanches were Austrian cavalry under orders to do or die.

In Huston's own words....



Moore has it that the Texan force assembled for action "in less than twenty minutes" (believable given the nature of the men) but that just as Huston was preparing to deploy, word came that Burleson was hurrying to the field with another hundred men "three or four miles out".

With the prospect of doubling his force, and perhaps because the main Comanche host was not yet in sight, Huston chose to remain in place and wait for Burleson.

Birdwatcher

He could have went ahead and hit them and used Burleson's force for reserves or the next wave.

Just a synopsis of events.

August 8th - Comanches sack and burn Linnville on the coast.
August 9th - First skirmish, Tumlinson's force intercepts the Comanches east of Victoria. Ben McCulloch rides ahead overnight to Gonzales.
August 10th - Tumlinson's force attacks screening force in rear of Comanche column, Comanches withdraw.
August 11th - Henry McCulloch sees Comanches from hilltop east of Gonazales. Ben McCulloch and party hurry ahead to Plum Creek with group of thirty-five men, joined there that evening by Matthew Caldwell's force of eighty five. Burleson arrives from Bastrop the next morning.
August 12th - Comanches already on the move at first light, seven miles south of Plum Creek.


John Linn was not present at Plum Creek, but he was certainly interested in it as his economic loss as a result of the raid was catastrophic. he was relating events after the fact as he had heard it, by gossip and from people who were actually on the scene.

For example, Linn says there were 400 Texans at Plum Creek, about twice the number who were there for the fight. But by the end of the day there WERE 400 Texans there, accounts relate that men were hurrying in from all over just as fast as their mounts would carry them, groups arriving all through the day.

Also of interest is the following quote by Linn...



He is referring to the actions of the Comanches on the night of the 9th, following their first skirmish with Tumlinson's party southeast of Victoria. While an attempt to steal a march would have been logical that evening, we do know that Tumlinson attempted another action on the folliwing day when screened by a blocking force of Comanches, Tumlinson's men pushing them hard enough that some trade goods were recovered along the trail.

On the morning of the 11th, the day after Tumlinson's second skirmish, Henry McCulloch was able to see at least some elements of both the Comanches and Tumlinson's trailing force from a single vantage point.

At first light the very next morning however, on the 12th, when Robert Hall first saw the Comanches seven miles south of Plum Creek, the Comanches were already strung out in a column "seven miles long". Most of Tumlinson's force too, so close on the heels of the Comanches the on the morning of the 11th, would not arrive on the field at Plum Creek until the fight was over, really over, as in combatants gathered back together and spoils being divided.

Plainly, all of this suggests that the stolen march, where the Comanches shook off close pursuit by sneaking away in the night, occurred on the night of the 11th, the night before the Plum Creek fight.

To me it beggars disbelief that a force of at least 400 Comanche warriors would have been unaware of the forces gathering around them. Even if no formal scouting parties had been sent out, surely SOME of them would have been out away from the main body, for any number of reasons. By the eleventh the hornet's nest had been thoroughly riled up, and groups of armed Texans were hurrying everywhere it seems.

My own guess is that the Comanches were aware by the evening of the 11th that Texan forces were gathering in their front. Perhaps they had found the fresh trail of Ben McCulloch's party hurrying out of Gonzales. Certainly common sense would dictate that they would watch for something from that direction; a large community bypassed on the way down and directly adjacent to their path of retreat. On the 11th too Caldwell's force of 100 men also traversed the route the Comanches intended to follow, part of it through blowing dust and ashes, certainly these would be easily seen by anyone out looking.

To the Comanches, these assembling forces in their front, combined with the persistently trailing force of 100 Texans in their rear, would look like a developing trap and they acted accordingly.

A Comanche force already on full alert before dawn of the 12th would account for them slipping by the Texans at Plum Creek as rapidly as they did, and why all 400 warriors or so would be between the Texans and the main column from the very beginning of the action, remaining there the whole time until the main body had passed.

Birdwatcher

Now puzzling out the time frame:

Robert Hall, out looking for the Comanches in the early morning hours of the 12th, states that he found them at first light, already on the march, seven miles south of Plum Creek. At which time we can confidently presume that he and his companion hurried back to report just as fast as their horses could carry them.

Again, perhaps someone better versed with the performance of horses will chime in, but I'm gonna ballpark at least thirty minutes for those two horses, probably already ridden hard over the previous days, to bear their riders seven miles. Indeed, of the condition of the horses in Matthew Caldwell's force the evening prior to this fight John Henry Brown has written...

Men and horses were greatly jaded, but the horses had to eat while the men slept.

My own guess is that the condition of the Texans' mounts that morning would have a major effect on the subsequent events of the fight.

Robert Hall wrote that Burleson's force was already present on the field when he reported back. Moore (the author of the "Savage Frontier" series on which my narrative is mostly based) has it that Burleson was still " within three or four miles" at this point. Here's Moore's narrative of the point when Huston was just about to attack.

Another stroke of luck arrived in the form of two advance riders from another Texan volunteer party... with the news that Colonel Edward Burleson was right behind them. He had gathered
eighty-seven volunteers and thirteen Tonkawa Indians... Burleson's men were within three or four miles, adavancing at a gallop.

What the experience of Burleson's men had been overnight is recounted by one John Holland Jenkins, a youth of seventeen at the time....

Every now and then we met runners, who were sent to bid Burleson to come on. We rode until midnight, then halted to rest our horses. Very early the next morning we were again on the warpath, still meeting runners at regular intervals beseching us to hurry.

From which it may be inferred that the horses of Burleson's party were also fairly played out by the time they finally made it to Plum Creek.

Anyhow... a couple of pics. First the present Colorado at Bastrop, the location of the historic crossing point, looking here from the east bank, from which four years prior to these events the Texan rear guard had spied Santa Anna's forces advancing during the runaway scrape. Bastrop is where Burleson mashalled his force before setting out for Plum Creek.




And this from modern FM 20 along the thirty-mile stretch between Bastrop and Isham Good's cabin, this ten miles above Plum Creek, perhaps Burleson's force rested briefly on the trail somewhere near here. I believe those medium-sized trees out in the field are post oaks. You can ID winter trees by their shape pretty easy, I just dont live in a post oak zone to know for sure.



Back to the time line. Thirty minutes or so after first light Robert Hall and John Baker got back to report to Caldwell. By that time we may presume that at least a few of Burleson's men were present but that Huston had elected to wait.

I'm gonna float a guess that the advance guard of the Comanches had covered half of the seven miles out that they had been when Hall and Baker first saw them. Perhaps three or four miles out as Hall was reporting his find.

Hall is dispatched again with five companions, presumably riding more or less south in the direction of the Comanches. I'm gonna estimate that the Comanches were probably less than two miles out when Hall found them again, saw the killing of a Texan private from another small group of Texans, and warned his own party to stay out at rifle distance from the Comanches. The advance guard may have been right on Plum Creek by that time.

How long Huston remained in place waiting for Burleson to come up is unknown. Long enough for Hall to ride back south, find the Comanches again and then screen them for two miles before Huston's combined force came on. I'm going to guess at least thirty minutes was lost before Burleson's force was in place on the field and dispositions of forces had been made, perhaps longer.

During that interval the Comanche main force, hurring from left to right across their front, crossed Plum Creek proper and hurried up the Clear Fork, the screening force of warriors coming within sight of those waiting for Burleson to come up. Of this interval, John Henry Brown (who had arrived the nght before with Caldwell) writes...

During this delay we had a full view of the Indians passing diagonally across our front, about a mile distant. They were singing and gyrating in various grotesque ways, evidencing their great triumph, and utterly oblivious of danger. Up to this time they had lost but one warrior, at the Casa Blanca.

What I'm guessing here is that the large party of Comanche warriors "singing and gyrating in various grotesque ways" were purposefully hamming it up, acting as decoys to hold the Texan's attention, laying down a visual smokescreen while the majority of the women, children, horses and laden mules hurried by in THEIR rear, unseen by the main body of Texans.

As for their losing "but one warrior, at the Casa Blanca", those Texans actually AT that intitial skirmish east of Victoria three days earlier reported shooting a number of Comanches out of their saddles. Certainly these particular Comanches were no stranger to the capabilities of Texans with rifles, having also experienced them when attempting a second attack on Victoria on the seventh.

In a more general sense, skilled marksmen from among the Eastern tribes had by 1840 been using rifles all across the Plains for decades, and we know that there were also riflemen among the Comanches at Plum Creek (whether Comanche, some other tribe, or Mexican we cannot tell, doesn't really matter in this context).

Certainly their respect for the capability of the rifle was such that they never paused to annihalate or otherwise drive away Tumlinson's hundred riflemen who had been hovering behind them for the previous three days.

In any event, by the time Huston moved out the Comanches were already ahead of them, the golden opportunity to catch them head-on had slipped by, and the Texans would be reduced to pursuing a retreating foe, a foe that was for the most part better-mounted.

Birdwatcher

At this point its appropriate to look at the performance of those thirteen Tonkawas under Placido who arrived with Burleson.

The night before the battle, they had all run thirty miles, possibly while carrying the heavy rifles of the era and the accountrements that went with them.

On a historical scale, the ability to run thirty miles at a stretch ain't that unusual. Scottish Highlanders are reported to have run those sort of distances regularly, weapons in hand, across steep terrain during their intercine conflicts and cattle raids. The over-thirty regiment of Zulus that attacked Rourke's Drift had run fifty miles to get there. And closer to Plum Creek, metioned earlier in this thread is the account of a group of rifle-armed Delawares running for two days after a much larger group of mounted Comanches, at the end of which run they avenged the death of one of their party, inflicting several casualities on tbe Comanches.

Still, even though such was more or less usual in Native warfare, the thirty-mile run of the Tonkawas prior to Plum Creek was extraordinary, thirteen of these men (who Gwynne in "Empire of the Summer Moon" has it were "always losing" in one of his more egregious errors), going up against several times their number of Comanches.

Why the Tonkawas chose to go into the fight on foot is a mystery, unless of course they lacked horses which seems unlikely. Reading up on the Tonkawas, what comes across is the idea that these were some pretty bad dudes. More extraordinary than their run was the performance of these men in the battle after that run. Moore writes...

Cheif Placido and his twelve horseless Tonkawas were especially brave during the battle. They could only mount themselves by vaulting into the saddle of slain Comanches. According to one eyewitness, Placido and the Tonkawas "were all mounted in a marvellously short time after the action commenced."

In that light, the running to battle on foot and mounting yourself on a dead enemy's horse comes across as being possibly one of those demonstration-of-fortitude foibles of Indian warfare; like counting coup on a dangerous enemy with a harmless stick or staking onesself out in the path of a charging enemy, or even tackling grizzly bears with a knife just to wear the claws.

In the Texas era the Tonkawas were outnumbered as a nation perhaps twenty-to-one by their Comanche arch enemies, yet resisted extermination in all that time. We know the Comanches and their Kiowa allies reserved a special hatred for them because of their habitual cannibalism.

Indeed, the Tonkawas appear to have clung to and even celebrated that ritual cannibalism until their virtual annihalation at the end of the Frontier period. Among people as famously driven by contact with spirits and as mindful of witchcraft as were the Indian nations, the habit of comsuming one's enemies would presumably have dark occultic implications indeed. Ain't physically possible to demean and belittle a dead enemy more than by dismembering, cooking and eating them and turning them into feces.

I suspect the Comanches actually feared the Tonkawas, in common with a number of neighboring tribes, which may be exactly why the Tonkawas clung to cannibalism for so long (all of this JMHO of course).

That morning the thirteen Tonkawas would have had to physically run towards a much larger number of expert horsemen and skilled warriors...

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/badam2.htm

Multiple accounts of the Battle of Plum Creek give great praise to Placido and his Tonkawas who arrived on foot, but swiftly became mounted warriors by sometimes in one motion killing and swinging onto a Comanche warrior�s horse. Author Wilberger noted that Placido himself was "in the hottest part of the battle, dealing death on every hand, while the arrows and balls of the enemy were flying thick and fast around him."

...and of Chief Placido....

Placido, his son and Tonkawa associates were close and honored friends of the Burleson family and visited the Burleson homestead often near current San Marcos on the head springs of the San Marcos River. The Tonkawa chief boasted that he never shed the blood of a white man. The Comanches likely had no fiercer enemy than this hereditary one.

The Chief was implicitly trusted by the Burlesons and others with which he served including Texas Ranger Colonel John S. (Old Rip) Ford and Captains S.P. Ross, W.A. Pitts, Preston and Tankersley....

Wilberger and author John Henry Brown both agreed that he was "the soul of honor and never betrayed a trust. He rendered invaluable services in behalf of Texas, in recognition of which he never received any reward of a material nature, beyond a few paltry pounds of gun powder and salt. Imperial Texas should rear a monument commemorative of his memory. He was the more than Tammany of Texas."

Worth noting that Placido's own mother was a Comanche, captured in war, and that his wife was a captured Comanche woman too. Aint too many people could use the Comanches as a source of women like that, the way the Comanches themselves did to the Mexicans.

If those thirteen Tonkawas really did each kill a Comanche for a horse and then go on to kill more, man-for man as compared to the Texan force, they did a disproportional amount of the killing that day.

Birdwatcher

Fascinating. I didn't know that about the Tonks.

Here's more, from the University of Texas History Dept online source (IOW probably credible)...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpl01

After the Texas Revolution Pl�cido enlisted as a scout with the Texas Rangers. During the Republic of Texas he campaigned with the rangers against the Comanches and Kiowas. In 1840 he and his warriors joined Gen. Felix Huston's army after the Comanche attack on Linnville and participated in the battle of Plum Creek.

In this battle Huston's militia and Indian allies confronted an enormous Comanche war party led by Buffalo Hump. The fight was a victory for the Texans, and Pl�cido's warriors took a great many Comanche scalps and hundreds of horses.

If the those thirteen Tonkawas realy did leave the field with "hundreds" of horses, they carried off far more horses per man after that fight than did the Texan forces. As will be seen, some of the Texans would be reduced to quibbling for individual horses and mules just to get home.

Clearly there were some hard men among the Texas forces and all were brave, and there were many among them who hated Indians with a passion. The fact that the Tonkawas were able take hundreds of horses as their own without a recorded murmur of opposition from the assembled Texans might say much about how the they had performed in the fight.

As it would turn out too they were able to hold a victory feast within sight, smell and hearing of the Texans, cutting up and consuming at least one fallen Comanche. Just thirteen men, by that night in the presence of at least 400 assembled Texans, includng at least three Christian Ministers. If anybody said a word to object such ain't recorded.

Robert Hall, who saw the whole thing, reports that the Tonkawas acted as if they were intoxicated after consuming human flesh, clearly the whole practice had a profound effect on them if only by the power of suggestion.

I think the Tonkawas gave everybody a thorough case of the willies, Comanches and Texans alike.

Birdwatcher

Yeppers, the Comanche and Kiowa didn't really "settle up" with the Tonkawa until they got them penned up on the res in Oklahoma.

I think that the reason Gynne says the Tonks were always loseing was because they were outnumbered by the Comanche by about ten to one or more.

Our own Confederacy was reduced to "always losing" by the end of the war. In our case, it was due to the war of attrition waged by Grant and Sherman. This may have been the case in the Tonk's war with the Comanch. The Comanch simply wore them down with numbers.

The Karankawas were a highly feared, cannibalistic tribe too.

Cannibalism up in these parts was the rule rather than the exception. I wonder how many of the western tribes had that "little" glitch???

I don't know that much about the west coast tribes, but it seems like I've read some of them were into it. Amongst the Indians of the southern Plains, by the time the whites arrived, the two aforementioned tribes are the only ones I recall.

Oh yeah, The Kronks were bad dudes early on. BMFs too. Most all accounts of them note their size. Seems 6 footers were common. Another interesting thing most often noted was how they stunk. This in a time when personal hygene was not much in vogue. Probably from the Kronk's habitual use of alligator grease as a mosquito repellant. A layer of alligator grease just might make a feller a might "gamey" smelling.

Really? Got any reliable references to that? I'd be interested to see them.

Michael Langlade called in a marker and got 200 Ottawas to raid an English trading post. Killed 17 enemy Indians and a couple of Brits. Langlade killed an enemy chief who pissed him off. ALL of the dead and a couple of (formerly)wounded were cooked and eaten. Mohawks and Hurons routinely ate their dead enemies as did the Abenaki. After a battle near Lake George in 1756, the French Commander was seriously wounded and the Mohawks that supported the Brits wanted to chow down on him along with the dead enemy. The F&I War up here was not for the faint of heart. Ottawa were possibly the most "outgoing".


Added info:The Brits refused the Mohawks demand to eat the French Commander. I'd guess he wuz MIGHTY grateful!

Was wandering the backroads of west central Lousiana, saw a marker at the end of a muddy dirt road. Small sign nearly said the marker was the eastern boundary of the Republic of Texas. The only international boundary located within the U.S.

Dug out "The Indians of Texas" - W.W.Newcomb,Jr. Related that an account by Smithwick that the Tonks made a big washtub of Comanche meat, corn and potatoes."With the whole tribe eating it as greedily as hogs."

One historical lesson I suppose from the Tonkawas is that popular history can be misleading. Like most folks, before reading into it I would have dismissed Placido as some obscure and irrelevant figure.

Well, I suppose in the greater scheme of things he WAS obscure and irrelevant, but in his day he was a guy who, in his forties, could run thirty miles overnight and at the end of it engage far larger numbers of Comanches, them mounted and him on foot, and kill several.

If it was a Texan did that we would consider him superhuman, or greatly exaggerated. Furthermore that same guy was held in high regard by those prominent Texans who had actually fought with him. Some of whom hosted him and his circle at their houses.

Tho' how on earth they managed to separate the man from the cannibalism thing I dunno. Perhaps the fact that the Texas settlements were so very tormented by the Comanches and other Indians during those years accounts for that. Not so much the actual murders, tortures and abductions, although there were those, but instead the constant theft of horses, mules and other property. The sort of thing that was so annoying and financially debilitating that even White men who stole horses would be summarily hung or shot for it.
Back to the fight....

As we have seen, by the time Huston was ready to move, the opportunity to actually stop the Comanche host had passed him by. Huston's own words on the fight are important because this description is IIRC the only one written on the same day as the battle, when events were still clear in recollection.

First, Huston's account make the movements of his column the night before the fight and the morning before the battle unclear if we are attempting to pin down the exact location of his force. Other accounts, including Moore, have him moving three miles the night before, Huston here states he moved three miles down the west side of Plum Creek after receiving word that morning of the Comanches' approach. Yet we know the Comanches were moving parallel to the Clear Fork of Plum Creek.

About six o'clock the spies reported that the Indians were approaching Plum Creek. I crossed above the trail about three miles and passed down on the west side; on arriving near the trail I was joined by Colonel Burleson with about one hundred men, under the command of Colonel Jones, Lieutenant-Colonel Wallace and Major Hardeman.

I immediately formed into two lines, the right commanded by Colonel Anderson and the left commanded by Captain Caldwell, with a reserve commanded by Major Hardeman, with Captain Ward's company.

On advancing near the Indians they formed for action, with a front of woods on their right (which they occupied), their lines nearly a quarter of a mile into the prairie.

Here's Moore's version ("Savage Frontier")....

As soon as Colonel Burleson's men reached Huston, his men were quickly informed of the open square battle formation and were ordered to deploy. Without a moment to lose debating who should be in command, Burleson - although certainly the most experienced Indian fighter on the scene - graciously accepted militia leader Felix Huston as the Texan commander who would lead this fight.

The Texan troops now advanced at a trot. This pace was steadily increased to a gallop. The main body of retreating Comanches had advanced to about a mile and a half ahead during the time that Burleson was allowed to arrive.

"As soon as we ascended from the valley on to the level plain, they had full view of us, and at once prepared for action." recalled Private Brown....

The distance between the opposing forces closed until Comanches halted their northwestward retreat at a place called Kelley Springs.

At this point, Huston abruptly STOPPED IN PLACE, and dismounted his men, handing the intitiative to the Comanches, and incredibly allowing them yet another twenty to forty minutes (depending on the account) for the main body to escape, and when it came to chasing running Comaches, a twenty to forty minute head start could be a long time indeed.

In Huston's words...

I dismounted my men and a handsome fire was opened-the Indian chiefs cavorting around in splendid style, in front and flank, finely mounted, and dressed in all the splendor of Comanche warfare. At this time several Indians fell from their horses, and we had three or four of our men wounded.

..and Moore's from book....

When within about two hundred yards of the Indians, Huston ordered his men to halt and dismount from their horses on the open plain of present Kelley Springs. The various units began to form the "hollow square" that General Huston had planned.

Birdwatcher

Incredible.

More thoughts...

The people of Texas, up until the very end of the frontier period, were never able to stop Indian raiding. This was especially true during the 1840's, when Texan numbers were still comparatively few and their Indian enemies so widespread and numerous across such a vast range.

I believe this is why a cannibal savage like Placido could be so esteemed my those actually going out where the arrows were flying. Placido could and did kill Comanches, and could guide parties of White men so that they could actually kill Comanches too, a thing that could otherwise be exceedingly difficult.

The situation on the Texas Frontier reminds me of the Russian Front from a German perspective in WWII. In WWII the Germans were facing a constantly losing battle across a wide front. On that front there were a few stars, popular heroes to the German public, who somehow prevailed again overwhelming odds.

The Stuka ace Hans Ulrich-Rudel comes to mind, who while flying an obsolete aircraft achieved the seemingly impossible, and became the most highly decorated serviceman of that war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel

Yet Rudel's effect on the outcome of the war? Negligible.

The same elevation of heroes during dark times applies to the German fighter aces and, in the previous war, to the British and German fighter aces battling over the unimaginable carnage that was killing so many down below.

I'm gonna advance the theory that Jack Hays fits that description. Of the just four (if we include Plum Creek) fights where parties of Texan and Comanche men fought pitched battles on open ground and the Texans won, two of these were led by Jack Hays.

In popular history Hays STILL walks on water today. Yet his individual effect on the greater flow of events? Negligible.

JMHO,

Birdwatcher