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I figured you'd know where the Lo reference came from.

Birdy I put it badly about the aculturization. What I mean is here is a bunch of strange folks that look more or less like Comanch but they dress like white men, use saddles on their horses, have good guns that they know how to use, eat mostly white man food like biscuits, beans and bacon, and generally do the same type of fighting as white men did. Didn't count their wealth in horses so much as in money which they had and knew how to the use of. The scouts weren't paid with trinkets but with cash money.

Points taken Boggy, tho I suspect those Comanches driving the massive stolen livestock trade from Mexico to points north and east and driving them 30,000 head of rustled beef in a single season from Texas to New Mexico may have moved on past the "trinket" stage in the popular sense of the word.

Which reminds me of another early 18th Century quote, this time from the guy in my sig line, the Onondaga spokesman, Canasatego...

"We know our lands have now become more valuable. The white people think we do not know their value; but we know that the land is everlasting, and the few goods we receive for it are soon worn out and gone."

Anyhoo... moving on...

More great info from Gregg, this time concerning a first buffalo hunt and the a meal after...

Note the mention of Mexicans armed with lances and bows. Ciboleros from New Mexico and the El Paso settlements prob'ly, a group pretty much entirely forgotten in popular history but also referenced elsewhere by Gregg and others.

http://www.kancoll.org/books/gregg/gr_ch03_1.htm

Our route lay through uninterrupted prairie for about forty miles � in fact I may say, for five hundred miles, excepting the very narrow fringes of timber along the borders of the streams. The antelope of the high prairies which we now occasionally saw, is sometimes found as far east as Council Grove; and as a few old buffaloes have sometimes been met with about Cottonwood, we now began to look out for this desirable game. Some scattering bulls are generally to be seen first, forming as it would appear the 'van' or 'piquet guards' of the main droves with their cows and calves.

The buffalo are usually found much further east early in the spring, than during the rest of the year, on account of the long grass, which shoots up earlier in the season than the short pasturage of the plains.

Our hopes of game were destined soon to be realized; for early on the second day after leaving Cottonwood (a few miles beyond the principal Turkey creek), our eyes were greeted with the sight of a herd amounting to nearly a hundred head of buffalo, quietly grazing in the distance before us.

Half of our company had probably never seen a buffalo before (at least in its wild state); and the excitement that the first sight of these 'prairie beeves' occasions among a party of novices, beggars all description. Every horseman was off in a scamper: and some of the wagoners, leaving their teams to take care of themselves, seized their guns and joined the race afoot.

Here went one with his rifle or yager � there another with his double-barrelled shot-gun � a third with his holster-pistols � a Mexican perhaps with his lance � another with his bow and arrows � and numbers joined without any arms whatever, merely for the 'pleasures of the chase' � all helter-skelter � a regular John Gilpin race, truly 'neck or naught.'

The fleetest of the pursuers were soon in the midst of the game, which scattered in all directions, like a flock of birds upon the descent of a hawk....

For the edification of the reader, who has no doubt some curiosity on the subject, I will briefly mention, that the kitchen and table ware of the trader usually consists of a skillet, a frying pan, a sheet-iron camp-kettle, a coffee pot, and each man with his tin cup and a butcher's knife. T

he culinary operations being finished, the pan and kettle are set upon the grassy turf, around which all take a 'lowly seat,' and crack their gleesome jokes, while from their greasy hands they swallow their savory viands all with a relish rarely experienced at the well-spread table of the most fashionable and wealthy citizen.

The insatiable appetite acquired by travellers upon the Prairies is almost incredible, and the quantity of coffee drank is still more so. It is an unfailing and apparently indispensable beverage, served at every meal � even under the broiling noon-day sun, the wagoner will rarely fail to replenish a second time, his huge tin cup.

..and sleeping arrangements, note what a production was popularly made about the essentially identical sleeping arrangements of Hays' Rangers earlier in this thread...

Upon encamping the wagons are formed into a 'hollow square' (each division to a side), constituting at once an enclosure (or corral) for the animals when needed, and a fortification against the Indians. Not to embarrass this cattle-pen, the camp fires are all lighted outside of the wagons.

Outside of the wagons, also, the travellers spread their beds, which consist, for the most part, of buffalo � rugs and blankets. Many content themselves with a single mackinaw; but a pair constitutes the most regular pallet; and he that is provided with a buffalo � rug into the bargain, is deemed luxuriously supplied.

It is most usual to sleep out in the open air, as well to be at hand in case of attack, as indeed for comfort; for the serene sky of the Prairies affords the most agreeable and wholesome canopy.

That deleterious attribute of night air and dews, so dangerous in other climates, is but little experienced upon the high plains: on the contrary, the serene evening air seems to affect the health rather favorably than otherwise.

Tents are so rare on these expeditions that, in a caravan of two hundred men, I have not seen a dozen. In time of rain the traveller resorts to his wagon, which affords a far more secure shelter than a tent; for if the latter is not beaten down by the storms which so often accompany rain upon the prairies, the ground underneath is at least apt to be flooded.

During dry weather, however, even the invalid prefers the open air.


"the serene sky of the Prairies affords the most agreeable and wholesome canopy.", and five hundred miles of virgin prairie. Oh my Lord, where do I go to sign up fer one of these things...?

Birdwatcher

Some geographical references...



http://www.kancoll.org/books/gregg/gr_ch03_1.htm

Half a day's drive after leaving this camp of 'false alarms' brought us to the valley of Arkansas river. This point is about 270 miles from Independence. From the adjacent heights the landscape presents an imposing and picturesque appearance. Beneath a ledge of wave-like yellow sandy ridges and hillocks spreading far beyond, descends the majestic river (averaging at least a quarter of a mile in width), bespeckled with verdant islets, thickly set with cottonwood timber.

The banks are very low and barren, with the exception of an occasional grove of stunted trees, hiding behind a swamp or sand-hill, placed there as it were to protect it from the fire of the prairies, which in most parts keeps down every perennial growth. In many places, indeed, where there are no islands, the river is so entirely bare of trees, that the unthinking traveller might approach almost to its very brink, without suspecting its presence.

Thus far, many of the prairies have a fine and productive appearance, though the Neosho river (or Council Grove) seems to form the western boundary of the truly rich and beautiful country of the border. Up to that point the prairies are similar to those of Missouri � the soil equally exuberant and fertile; while all the country that lies beyond, is of a far more barren character � vegetation of every kind is more stinted � the gay flowers more scarce, and the scanty timber of a very inferior quality: indeed, the streams, from Council Grove westward, are lined with very little else than cottonwood, barely interspersed here and there with an occasional elm or hackberry....

....Our route had already led us up the course of the Arkansas river for over a hundred miles, yet the earlier caravans often passed from fifty to a hundred further up before crossing the river; therefore nothing like a regular ford had ever been established. Nor was there a road, not even a trail, anywhere across the famous plain, extending between the Arkansas and Cimarron rivers, a distance of over fifty miles, which now lay before us the scene of such frequent sufferings in former times for want of water.

It having been determined upon, however, to strike across this dreaded desert the following morning, the whole party was busy in preparing for the 'water scrape,' as these droughty drives are very appropriately called by prairie travellers. This tract of country may truly be styled the grand 'prairie ocean;' for not a single landmark is to be seen for more than forty miles � scarcely a visible eminence by which to direct one's course.

All is as level as the sea, and the compass was our surest, as well as principal guide. In view of this passage, as well as that of many other dry stretches upon the route, the traveller should be apprised of the necessity of providing a water-cask holding at least five gallons to each wagon, in which a supply for drinking and cooking may be carried along to serve in cases of emergency.

The evening before the embarking of a caravan upon this plain, the captain's voice is usually heard above the din and clatter of the camp, ordering to "fill up the water kegs," � a precaution which cannot be repeated too often, as new adventurers are usually ignorant of the necessity of providing a supply sufficient to meet every contingency that may befall during two or more days' journey over this arid region


Birdwatcher

http://www.kancoll.org/books/gregg/gr_ch04_1.htm

It was generally supposed at the time that there was a great number of Comanches and Arrapahoes among this troop of savages; but they were principally if not altogether Blackfeet and Gros Ventres. We afterward learned that on their return to the northern mountains, they met with a terrible defeat from the Sioux and other neighboring tribes, in which they were said to have lost more than half their number.

Northern Plains Indians from Canada and Montana in Southwest Oklahoma, ain't supposed to happen in popular history but it did. I'm recalling a case in that same era where some Crows from Montana accompanied some Oklahoma Kiowas into Mexico far enough south to see Tropical forests.

'Nother example of the speed of change on our Frontiers: Lets take a hypothetical Delaware Indian dying at age 75 in the year 1820 along the Red River in Northeast Texas.

That guy could have been born on the Upper Delware in far Eastern Pennsylvania in 1745. Might as well have him spend his childhood in the polyglot town of Oquaga, on the upper Susquehanna in NY State on the southern fringe of Iroquoia.

Fascinating place, members of many tribes plus numerous Whites. One of those Indian towns with a church and sawn-timber houses. A health spa of sorts where Whites would go to seek Indian cures. Joseph Brant (the famous Rev War Mohawk) spent much time there, met his mixed-blood wife there.

Our Delaware would have probably grown up speaking a few languages, very possibly including English.

Anyway, as a kid our hypothetical Delaware would have seen Iroquois War parties travelling through on foot to attack the Cherokees, 500 miles away. He would have been 10 years old when a raiding party of French and Shawnees famously captured a teenage Mary Jemison not far from what was to become the Chambersburg Pike, west of the new settlement of Gettysburg, and he would have been 14 when Washington screwed up at Fort Necessity, 300 miles to the west of Oquaga at the start of the French and Indian War.

He could have been present at Braddock's Defeat on the Monongahela and would have been eighteen at the time if he was among those rifle-armed Delawares defeated by Bouquet's Scottish Highlanders at the Battle of Brushy Run in 1763.

Later that decade, in his twenties he would probably be living in the Ohio Country, living in a Euro-style cabin, armed with contemporary weapons, dressing in clothing made from trade cloth and ornamenting himself with German silver (as he would have been doing his whole life).

Likely he would have been among those Indians collectively trading an incredible 300,000 deer skins a year at Fort Pitt on the forks of the Ohio at present-day Pittsburgh. And active in transporting/trading the reciprocal flow of trade goods into the back country.

Our guy would have been 33 years old when the Delaware tavern keeper, trader and Delaware Chief White Eyes travelled to Philadelphia to make a treaty with the Continental Congress in 1778 to form a short-lived alliance, ending when White Eyes hisself was likely murdered by one or more militia members in the American force he was guiding against the British in Michigan.

We can certainly put our guy across the Mississippi and fomally settled in Missouri with the Absentee Band of the Dleawares by 1798 at age 53. The intervening twenty years would have occasioned frequent moves and travels. Very possibly our guy would have crossed the Mississippi before 1780, in his thirties, when many of his Ohio Country Shawnee neighbors picked up and moved west to escape the enroaching White Frontier.

Seventy-five in Frontier terms should not be considered inordinantly old, or at least not dotage, I believe Daniel Boone was in his eighties when he ascended the Missouri and possibly the Yellowstone. Nana the Chiricahua Apache was in his seventies when he was literally running rings around the cavalry in the 1880's, likewise John Burns "the Old Hero of Gettyburg", when he took up his old War of 1812 Springfield musket to join the Union position on Culp's Hill.


Likewise Sequoya, the famoulsy literate Cherokee, was 76 years old and not unduly worried when his companions left him alone and on foot somewhere in the Texas Hill Country in 1843 while they walked to Mexico to procure horses to replace the ones that had been stolen (by Indians). Unworried enough that he refused the kind offer of a travelling party of Delawares who came across him to "deliver him to his own front door".

So our guy, born well before the F&I War on the Delaware, could very possibly have made it at least as far as Santa Fe and back before he died. American traders were putting feelers out for that as early as 1812. Not impossible he coulda made it clear to California and back either, we know there were Oklahoma Delawares who did that around that time.

Birdwatcher

Yes, indeed. It's something to see these great flatlands. I grew up on the Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan prairies, which can be flat here and there, but there is nothing I've seen anywhere to compare to the Llano Estecado.

This past weekend my wife and I drove up to Lubbock to meet two of her sons, who were on the way to a wedding. The drive from Big Springs on north is about as flat an 80-mile stretch of land as you can find, and it continues just as flat north from Lubbock almost all the way to Amarillo without so much as a hillock and only the rarest of gullies. As we drove we talked about how it must have appeared 160 years ago, and we tried to imagine all the farms out of our minds' eyes and replace them with an unending sea of grass... it wasn't hard to do, really. It's mostly flat grassland and cropland today anyway!

I find it lovely beyond compare, having grown up on such lands... but I can imagine the disquiet it must have put into the hearts of people whose life experience had always included hills and/or trees...

Thanks for keeeping this going Birdwatcher.

The swift change of the frontier and its inhabitants really hit me when I read the book by Frank Linderman; "Pretty-shield, Medicine Woman of the Crows.

Born in the 1850's Pretty-shield lived largely a stone-age hunter-gatherer extistence following the huge herds of buffalo, surviving numerous Sioux attacks on her people, watching her husband go off to guide Custer, seeing the extermination of the buffalo and the hungry years that followed, the difficult early reservation years, seeing planes fly over the Crow reservation and she lived into the age of the atomic bomb and WWII.

Some really amazing changes in less than 90 years.

I still love to read your treatises on the Indians Mike, thanks for continuing Sir.

IIRC, Pretty Shield was considered quite a catch in her younger days

Your very welcome T, fascinating stuff ennit?

For this next quote from Greggs second trip (1839), it helps to know that the North Canadian River meets the South Canadian River east of present-day Oklahoma City, in about the middle of the state.

http://www.kancoll.org/books/gregg/gr_ch01_2.htm

On the 2d of May we crossed the North Fork of the Canadian about a mile from its confluence with the main stream. A little westward of this there is a small village of Creek Indians, and a shop or two kept by American traders.

An Indian who had quarrelled with his wife, came out and proposed to join us, and, to our great surprise, carried his proposal into execution. The next morning his repentant consort came to our camp, and set up a most dismal weeping and howling after her truant husband, who, notwithstanding, was neither to be caught by tears nor softened by entreaties, but persisted in his determination to see foreign countries.

His name was Echu-eleh-hadjo (or Crazy-deer-foot), but, for brevity's sake, we always called him Chuly. He was industrious, and possessed many clever qualities, though somewhat disposed to commit excesses whenever he could procure liquor, which fortunately did not occur until our arrival at Santa Fe.

He proved to be a good and willing hand on the way, but as he spoke no English, our communication with him was somewhat troublesome.

I may as well add here, that, while in Santa Fe, he took another freak and joined a volunteer corps, chiefly of Americans, organized under one James Kirker to fight the Navajo and Apache Indians; the government of Chihuahua having guarantied to them all the spoils they should take.

With these our Creek found a few of his 'red brethren' Shawnees and Delawares, who had wandered thus far from the frontier of Missouri. After this little army was disbanded, Chuly returned home, as I have been informed, with a small
party who crossed the plains directly from Chihuahua.

Couple of observations here....

First off, Louis L'Amour is/was certainly the unchallenged master of formulaic Western fiction. To some extent, if you've read one Louis L'Amour book, you've read 'em all

I'm talking Sacketts, cousins brothers whatever, from the Clinch River country etc, who on occasion have odd dreams about falling while fighting unspecified enemies with sword and shield but who always prevail against the bad guys while winning the ranch, the pretty but virtuous girl, the gold, and the respect of the local good Indians (sorry if'n I spoiled 'em for anyone ).

One thing not mentioned above but basic to most all L'Amour works is the speed and ubiquity which news spread word-of-mouth across the Old West. Seen in reality in Gregg's account:

A Creek Indian "Chuly", splits off in Santa Fe to go and fight Apaches with James Kirker. A few years later Gregg hears that Chuly and a small party rode direct from Chihuahua back to Oklahoma. How Gregg came to hear that piece of news specific to one old and obscure aquaintance is a puzzle.

A word here though on James Kirker, notorious scalphunter, and his right hand man Killbuck, the Shawnee. Engaged in a thoroughly nasty business, or so I have always read. Didn't speak well of the Delawares and Shawnee either to e involved in that trade.

Suprisingly, none other than the University of Texas paints quite a different portrait of James Kirker,formerly of Belfast Ireland....

Whatever else he was, Kirker was apparently a remarkable man who really LIVED his intense life...




http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fki54

KIRKER, JAMES (1793�1853). James (Santiago) Kirker, merchant, Indian fighter, and frontiersman, was born near Belfast, Ireland, on December 2, 1793, the son of Gilbert and Rose (Anderson) Kirker. In his youth he received some formal education and learned the leather and merchandising trades. To escape the British draft he sailed for New York City, where he arrived on June 10, 1810.

During the War of 1812 he served on the privateer Black Joke. He was captured and later exchanged for British captives. He returned to New York City, where he married Catharine Dunigan, with whom he had a son, James B., who became a major in the Union Army.

In 1817 Kirker joined kinsmen from Ireland, left his family and store, and departed for the West. In December he reached St. Louis, where he worked for McKnight and Brady, the leading mercantile, mining, shipping, and trading firm of Missouri, and later opened his own mercantile business.

In 1822 he traveled up the Missouri River as a member of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company trapping expedition of Ashley and Henry. He spent the winter in an advance post on the Yellowstone River and in the spring of 1823 participated in the famous attack of trappers upon the Arickara Indian village.

In 1824 Kirker entered the Santa Fe trade. During the winters of the next decade he trapped in the southern Rockies and along the Gila River. In 1826 he began working at the Santa Rita Copper Mine for Robert McKnight. While conducting copper trains to the mint in Chihuahua City, Kirker and his guards fought several skirmishes with Apaches along the way. He gained a reputation as a skillful Indian fighter and subsequently developed an escort and security service.

In 1833, without divorcing his first wife, he married Rita Garc�a; they had a daughter and three sons. In 1835 Kirker acquired Mexican citizenship.

He combined trapping and mining with trading with the Apaches for livestock, causing the authorities to charge him with contraband in weapons and declare him an outlaw. But between 1839 and 1846 he entered into four contracts with governors of Chihuahua to fight Apache, Comanche, and Navajo Indians.

With his private company of Delaware and Shawnee Indians and border adventurers, he was very successful in killing hostile Indians. Under his first contract he was promised $100,000, and under the others he was promised pay according to the number of captives and scalps that he delivered.

Between contracts he operated in the Sierra Madre as a border lord, sustained by his personal followers as a law unto himself, fighting or trading alternately with the Apaches or the Mexicans. At one time he was called the "King of New Mexico."

In 1846 the Chihuahua government was no longer able to pay Kirker for Apache scalps and offered him instead the rank of colonel in the Mexican army. He refused, and, with a 10,000-peso price on his head as an enemy of the state, went north to join Col. Alexander Doniphan and his First Regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers. Doniphan made him forager, guide, interpreter, and scout for his campaign through northern Mexico.

His intimate knowledge of Mexican character, country, and resources made him very valuable to the invaders, and when he returned to the United States with the regiment he was received with much acclaim.

In 1848 Kirker served as guide, interpreter, and spy for the campaign of Maj. William W. Reynolds and the Third Regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers against the Apache and Utah Indians.

In 1849 he guided a train of Forty-niners across the plains to New Mexico. In 1850 he reached California, without his family, and settled in Contra Costa County near what is known now as Kirker Pass and Kirker Creek. He died in 1853 and was buried by his Delawares in Somersville Cemetery.

Don Santiago QuerQuer, as he is called in Mexican records, was a large, agile man, a superb horseman who dressed in fringed Mexican leather and carried an assortment of weapons. He spoke and wrote Spanish fluently and knew a number of Indian languages.

He was known throughout the West for his fearlessness. During his lifetime, Kirker was described as a man of great enterprise and vision.

Nary a mention of plugging helpless peons for their scalps, nor would UT shrink from mentioning that if it was supported by the evidence.

A pity we have no records of his campaigns, Shawnee and Delaware vs hostile Apaches fighting on their own turf might make for interesting reading, likewise when intercepting Comanche war parties, not merely to drive them away or to deter attack, but to hunt them down, kill them, and collect their scalps.

A tall order given the nature and abilities of the men they were hunting.

And $100,000 dollars would STILL be a fortune today,evidence of the seriousness of the problem Mexico was facing.

Birdwatcher

Now, THAT is a fascinating tidbit, Birdwatcher!!

One of the things I've found interesting but irritating in my readings about the Rangers over the past year is that there appears to have been a lot of Indian-fighting south of the Rio Grande, most of which is not recorded here in Texas. I have come across references to Kirker once or twice, but no details... I expect histories of his campaigns would be mightily interesting!

I have two biographies of Kirker: Savage Scene by William Cochran McGaw and Borderlander by Ralph Adam Smith. The latter is more thorough while the former is more entertaining. Both feature the picture included in your post on the cover. Both are good reads.

Relative to numbers, a disproportionate amount of it seems to have been the work of Eastern Tribesmen originating in the Indian Territories. Shawnees and Delawares mentioned with Kirker, Cherokees and Delawares mentioned with the probable psychopath John Joel Glanton. So many Cherokees having taken up residence in Mexico that the elderly Sequoya (who died on the trip) went looking for lost tribal members there.

Again in the 1850's, Kickapoos, Seminoles and Black Seminoles moving south of Eagle Pass, accepting a land grant specifically in return for intercepting Indian raids, prinicpally Comanche, Kiowa and Apache. Wildcat of Seminole War fame perishing in Mexico of smallpox in 1857, while living down there under that contract.

In fact I believe a MAJORITY of the successful interceptions of Comanche/Kiowa and Apache raids during those decades were the work of these dispaced acculturated Eastern Tribesmen living south of the Border.Jack Hays' group out of San Antone might have come close but Hay's time in this role was short. A decade later RIP Ford was often in the field too and intercepted many war parties, but never piled up a big body count that we know of.

Walter Prescot Webb in his classic "The Texas Rangers" lists hardly any successful intedictions of raiding Indians by rangers other than Ford and Hays, other than them Webb epending much space and text on the lead into and outcome of a single skirmish with Apaches in the 1870's. And most of the time Hays and everybody else employed Native scounts and trackers.


Easy to understand why the Eastern tribesmen would find Mexico appealing; ready acceptance into the communities, and a refuge from the prospect of yet another displacement/uprooting by an advancing American frontier, and also an escape from the continuing intertribal turmoil up in the Indian Territory.

Hostilities had already broken out between them and the Plains Tribes up in the Territory, seems like it would be an easy transition to prosecute war against these same peoples in Mexico too.
And settling into or forming their own sedentary communities, they too could be subject to Apache raids.

How many of these Eastern Tribesmen slipped over into the practice of murdering just anyone of any age with a suitable-looking head of hair, dunno, but at least some rode with Glanton....

.....and he was the sort of guy who gave scalp hunters a bad name...

Birdwatcher

Thanks for the pointers Mudhen, I'll keep an eye out for them two works.

Meanwhile, while looking up info on Glanton, I came across this absolute gem. "Confessions of a Rogue" by Sam Chamberlain, a guy who actually rode with Glanton as a scalphunter for a spell....

Seen here in 1907, a year before his death.



Chamberlaine left home as a teenager and enlisted for the Mexican War, later deserting to join Glanton's gang.

Spent the latter years of his life working on a masterpiece, complete with painted scenes yet. Working from memory, and the book partly ficticious, but true to the original situations.

From an incident in San Antonio....

http://www.tshaonline.org/supsites/chamber/story/life.htm

One evening I with Scotty sauntered in to the "Bexar Exchange," a noted drinking and gamblin[g] Saloon, the Barroom was crowded with volunteers, regulars, rangers, Texians with a few Delaware Indians and Mexicans. Tables and benches were arranged around the room for Monte Banks.

These were well patronized by the motley crowd of desperate characters that filled the place. The Texan Rangers present were a portion of Ben McCulloch's Company and a more reckless, devil-may-care-looking set it would be impossible to find this side of the Infernal regions. Some wore Buckskin Shirts black with grease and blood, some wore red shirts, their trousers thrust in to their high Boots. All were armed with Revolvers and huge Bowie Knives. Take them altogether, with their uncouth costumes, bearded faces, lean and brawny forms, fierce wild eyes, and swaggering manners, they were fit representatives of the outlaws which made up the inhabitants of the Lone Star State....

At a small table sat two men playing Eukre for the drinks. One of these was the rascal John Glanton, by beau-Ideal of the Stage Villain. He was quietly playing his hand in a mild timid way utterly at varience with the hardened desperate he presented. Short, thick set, face bronzed by exposure to the hue of an Indian with eyes deeply sunken and blood shot, coarse black hair hanging in snake-like locks down his back, his costume was that of a Mexican heardman, made of leather, with a Mexican blanket thrown over his shoulder.

His opponent in the game was a tall, reckless, good looking young Ranger, dressed with a red shirt and buckskin leggins.

A dispute attracted the attention of all in the room to the two, when the short ruffian threw a glass of liquor in the tall ones face, who sprang to his feet drew his revolver and placing the muzzle against the breast of the thrower, swore with fearful oathes "that if he did not apologize he would blow a hole through him a rabbit would jump through!"

The threatend man did not move from his seat, but replied, "Shoot and be d-d, but if you miss, John Glanton wont miss you." When the ruffian mentioned his name, a look of fear and horror passed over the tall Ranger's face leaving him deadly pale. I expected to see him back out, but with a quivering lip he pulled the trigger, but only the cap exploded! when quick as a flash, Glanton sprang up, a huge Bowie Knife flashed in the candle light, and the tall powerful young Ranger fell with a sickening thud to the floor a corpse! his neck cut half through.

Glanton, with eyes glaring like a wild beast, jumped over the table and placing one foot on his victim and said, "Strangers! do you wish to take up this fight? if so step out, if not we'll drink." ...No one seemed disposed to accept the desperado's challenge...

..and this episode, from Mexico, I can not possibly improve upon or remove even a single sentence.

EL DOS HERMOSAS HERMANAS

I entered the house and the sleeping apartment of the doncellas, with the freedom of an old friend of the house. This was a great mistake of mine, I should have sent in my card! My two charmers were in bed, but not alone! The black shaggy head of a Mexican lay on the pillow between the raven tresses of Rosita and Nina!

I recognized in the invader one Antonio, a renegade, and guide to our army. Overcome with my emotions, I was about to retire with becoming modesty when the voluptuous rascal sprang up and drawing a "macheta" from under his pillow, and wrapping his blanket around his left arm, he rushed on me like some wild beast, while the fastidious young ladies, instead of fainting or screaming sat up in bed and cried, "Bravo! Bravo! bueno Antonio! matar, matar el grande pendaho." (Bravo Bravo good Antonio, Kill! Kill the big fool)

Birdwatcher

Turns out Cormac McCathy's fiction "Blood Meridian" was based on Sam Chamerlain's account of Glanton and his gang.

Seems like Glanton started out a talented young man in many ways, more complex than just a murdering psychopath. After all he grew up in a setting where a capacity for violence was often deemd a huge plus when running for office or getting elected leader (Andy Jackson and Jim Bowie fer examples), if nothing else maybe because folks were afraid of you.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgl02


GLANTON, JOHN JOEL (1819�1850). John Joel Glanton, soldier of fortune, outlaw, and notorious bounty-hunter and murderer, was born in Edgefield County, South Carolina, in 1819. According to reports he was an outlaw in Tennessee before his arrival in Texas.

In 1835 he was living with his parents at Gonzales, Texas. His fianc�e may have been killed by Lipan Apaches that year. On October 2 he joined the movement to San Antonio to dislodge Gen. Mart�n Perfecto de Cos. Glanton was a free scout for the army under Col. James W. Fannin, Jr., and allegedly a Texas Ranger captain at sixteen.

He narrowly missed the Goliad Massacre. According to camp gossip, President Sam Houston banished Glanton from Texas for reasons unknown, though apparently the order was never enforced.

After the Texas Revolution Glanton joined the ranger company of Capt. John C. Hays in protecting San Antonio. He is said to have gone to East Texas during the Regulator-Moderator War. Apparently Glanton supported neither faction in the dispute, but he allegedly wounded or killed the best fighter on each side. Local residents, objecting to his actions, reportedly considered lynching him. [/quote]

Says a lot that more polished and inoffensive folks such as RIP Ford and Jack Hays were able to command Glanton's respect and got excellent service from him.

He apparently he weren't just a stereotypical Mexican hater either, or else he made an exception for attractive women:


[b]In 1849 he rode out of San Antonio for California with thirty well-armed gold-seekers, leaving his wife, Joaquina Menchaca Glanton, called "the most beautiful woman in the Republic of Texas," whom he had married in 1846, and a daughter.

Left to his own devices tho, it would appear he spun out of control, concluding with homicidal acts that come across as merely pathetic: The takover of the Yuma ferry on the California Emigrant Trail, and the indiscriminate murders of some of the customers, White Americans included.

As if THAT would escape attention for very long.

By 1850, however, it became increasingly difficult for the Glanton gang to find hostile Indians, and they began to attack peaceful agricultural Indians in the vicinity of Fort El Norte. Finally they turned to taking Mexican peon scalps for profit. As a result the Chihuahua government drove Glanton and his company into Sonora and put a bounty on his scalp.

There he contracted with the authorities to fight the Indians, traded Indian scalps for bounties, and again resorted to taking Mexican scalps to increase his profit.

He and his gang seized and operated a river ferry controlled by the Yuma Indians. While operating the ferry, they killed Mexican and American passengers alike for their money and goods.

Finally, they schemed to kill a party of Mexican miners who used the ferry, but before they carried out their plot, the Yumas attacked the ferry and killed Glanton and most of his men in mid-1850. Glanton was scalped.

Dead at 31, lived by the sword, died by it too.

Maybe alchohol or drug (??) abuse addled his brain, who knows?

Birdwatcher

But you didn't post the great ending:

I drew my sabre and came to guard in an instant. He was as active as a cat, and I found I had all I could attend to in keeping his ugly knife from getting between my ribs. All my cuts and points were received on his confounded blanket, and more than once his knife glided over my guard cutting my jacket. I began to regret that I had not sent in my card!

I could hear the gentle Nina say "unda! unda! mia dulce, mia alma (quick! quick! my sweet, my soul), while Rosita, in her most dulcet tones murmered "Antonio, mia amor, pungar el gringo, y que la cama." (Antonio, my love, stick the foreigner and come to bed!)

How cheering to myself were the words of the darlings, but I did not lose heart, and finally succeeded in giving my antagonist an ugly slash across one of his bare legs, causing him to drop his knife, when I gave him a point in a part, that made him howl with agony, and would cause him to lose the regards of the "dos margaritas".

The settlers did have their sense of humor about it - and named a couple of small towns Plainview, and Levelland.

And the guy who founded Lubbock's newspaper in 1900, picked the tongue-in-cheek name Avalanche Journal

Well Doc, I gotta leave some for folks to read for themselves.

Anyhow, the exact title of the memoiris "My Confessions. Recollections of a Rogue", I think I got it wrong earlier.

Apparently Mr. Chamberlain sometimes puts himself at places in the Mexican War where he demonstrably was not, but his account seems true in the gist, and events take place at times and in sequences that they actually did.

No one seems to question his account of the Glanton Gang, and as far as I can tell, it is probaly the best account we have of the last activities of that group.

A note here to those who have read Blood Meridian. The demonic and omnipresent Judge Holden in that book was modelled on a very real Judge Holden, second in command in Glanton's gang; tall, heavyset, educated, a good musician and a good shot, and a child-murdering pedophile...

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/scalpin/heads.html

Glanton's gang consisted of "Sonorans, Cherokee and Delaware Indians, French Canadians, Texans, Irishmen, a Negro and a full-blooded Comanche," and when Chamberlain joined them they had gathered thirty-seven scalps and considerable losses from two recent raids.

Second in command to Glanton was a Texan- Judge Holden. In describing him, Chamberlain claimed, "a cooler blooded villain never went unhung;" Holden was well over six feet, "had a fleshy frame, [and] a dull tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression" and was well educated in geology and mineralogy, fluent in native dialects, a good musician, and "plum centre" with a firearm.

Chamberlain saw him also as a coward who would avoid equal combat if possible but would not hesitate to kill Indians or Mexicans if he had the advantage. Rumors also abounded about atrocities committed in Texas and the Cherokee nation by him under a different name.

Before the gang left Frontreras, Chamberlain claims that a ten year old girl was found "foully violated and murdered" with "the mark of a large hand on her throat," but no one ever directly accused Holden.

Chamberlain goes on to describe them overrunning a camp of Mexicans, killing and scalping five, and keeping two young women for purposes of rape until, when a rescue/revenge party arrived, they killed and scalped the girls too, and fled.

From therethey raided north through New Mexico, collecting scalps as the opportunity arose, before being defeated by a large band of Apaches, then on to the Gila and the Yuma ferry.

Eventually they wound their way to the Gila and a new plan. The Yuma Indians there had set up a ferry about four miles south of the junction of the two rivers to take settlers into California. Glanton and Holden came upon their new El Dorado; the gang would "seize [the ferry], kill the Indians if they objected, capture the young girls for wives etc." The gang seized the ferry and nine girls and drove off the unarmed natives; they then began constructing a rock fort to defend their new possession.

When a party of Indians came demanding the return of their possession and women, Glanton proposed that he would keep all he had taken and that the natives should provide him with food or he would raze their village and kill all of them. The Indians attacked, but Glanton and his men killed four with concealed pistols- they were subsequently scalped "by force of habit."

Glanton left briefly to get provisions; he ran afoul of the law and returned empty-handed but with an interesting piece of information. A group of Sonorans were traveling home from the gold mines with plenty of gold; Glanton's plan to ambush them was struck down, but Chamberlain had had enough. He and three others plotted to desert.

On the day that they were to escape, the Yumas attacked- Glanton had been killed- and Chamberlain and his companions set out over the 130 miles of desert toward California. Twenty miles from their camp, they saw Holden fleeing from the Yumas. They had surrounded him armed only with clubs; he had "brained" one using his rifle as a club, but a dozen had cornered him. Chamberlain killed one and chased the others off, and so Holden briefly joined their escape party which ended at Los Angeles in 1850.

The party had abandoned Holden by that point, and the fate of the other three fugitives remains unknown. Chamberlain stayed in California for a while, then returned to Boston and married. He joined a volunteer regiment during the Civil War and was named a brevet brigadier general of volunteers in 1865. Samuel Chamberlain died in Massachusetts in 1908.

Birdwatcher

When ya follow up history, one line of inquiry leads to another.

For example the Yumas ("Quechans"), living around the junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers in SW Arizona.

Seems like they aquitted themselves well through history...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechan_people

In particular, in the above link students of Comanche history will recognise the name Juan Bautista De Anza, as being the same guy who carried the war to the Comanches in response to raids on New Mexico, establishing a lasting truce that spawned the Comanchero traders and the New Mexico trade that would remain in place until the very end of Comancheria.

Of interest in this thread is the concept of the Yumas running a ferry across the Colorado to capitalize on the Gold Rush, if true, being a remarkable or maye not-so-remarkable episode of Native entrepreneurship.

After all, the availability of European trade goods had profoundly changed Native economies since at least the 17th Century, famously sparking a great war of expansion among the Iroquois.

In these wars, great emphasis has been placed upon the spread of firearms, as giving those who had 'em a cutting edge. A puzzle since even as late as the 19th Century guys who would know like RIP Ford were placing the bow at rough parity with the revolver.

A Century earlier too the primary Native war technique back east had remained the ambush, opened with a round of gunfire and thrown tomohawks, followed by a closing rush to hand-to-hand combat. Under those circumstances seems like an opening volley of arrows would do as well.

I suspect the REAL advantage of access to trade goods was the whole package; cloth for clothing, blankets, iron pots and cooking utensils, knives, axes, mirrors, combs, the works.... (fer example; iron hinges, used to hang wooden doors on dwellings, have been found in 17th Century Indian village sites, technology spread faster than we commonly acknowledge).

Back to the Yumas.... Probably a rope-drawn ferry of sorts across the Colorado had existed forever (I'm distantly recalling the Mandans having such a thing on the Missouri, at least for buffalo skin boats, could be wrong).

When suddenly THOUSANDS started coming that way in response to the Gold Rush, it was apparently an American who saw the opportunity and who approached the Yumas....

http://genealogytrails.com/ariz/yuma/history.html

In 1849, so great was the travel to California, then the new Eldorado, that a ferry was established across the river by a discharged soldier from the United States army in conjunction with, and protected by, the Yuma Indians.

A party of renegades, under one John Glanton, known as "Dr." Glanton, arrived at the river about this time, having come from Texas through the Mexican States of Chihuahua and Sonora, committing all sorts of depredations en route, robbing ranches and churches and leaving desolation in their track.

This band of worthies soon discovered that the ferry across the Colorado River at Yuma was a steady producer, and determined to have control of the business; one night they attacked the Indian's boats and destroyed them, killing the American ferryman and two Indians. For a short time after this "victory" this party enjoyed a monopoly of the ferry and were fast getting rich, for, if a party crossed with good teams rather weak-handed, they were waylaid a few miles from the crossing and all remorselessly murdered and the property appropriated.

The Indians kept quiet, none were seen around, or to use the
euphonious expression of " Dr " Glanton, " The dare not show their faces in the presence of ' honest ' white men." "Lo" bided his time. This precious band of cutthroats had a hilarious night over a fortunate robbery, but at daybreak, when all were in drunken slumber, the avenging Indian pounced upon them in force and slaughtered all of the party but a boy whom, perhaps, the Indians were willing should escape.

Whether the Indians rendered God a service in exterminating this precious band of worthies is a question, but they certainly rendered a service to the toiling emigrant who was striking for California by the Yuma crossing of the Colorado River.

Birdwatcher

Back to Gregg again, some great writing and interesting character studies, And note again just how well travelled the Plains already were even before our Frontier arrived....

http://www.kancoll.org/books/gregg/gr_ch08_2.htm

Manuel el Comanche was a full Indian, born and bred upon the great prairies. Long after having arrived at the state of manhood, he accompanied some Mexican Comancheros to the frontier village of San Miguel, where he fell in love with a Mexican girl � married her � and has lived in that place, a sober, 'civilized' citizen for the last ten or twelve years � endowed with much more goodness of heart and integrity of purpose than a majority of his Mexican neighbors.

He had learned to speak Spanish quite intelligibly. and was therefore an excellent Comanche interpreter: and being familiar with every part of the prairies, he was very serviceable as a guide...

I determined to seek a nearer and better route down the south side of the Canadian river, under the guidance of the Comanche; by which movement, we had again to travel a distance of four hundred miles over an entirely new country. We had just passed the Laguna Colorada, where, the following year, a division of Texan volunteers, under General McLeod, surrendered to Col. Archuleta, when our fire was carelessly permitted to communicate with the prairie grass.

As there was a head-wind blowing at the time, we very soon got out of reach of the conflagration: but the next day, the wind having changed, the fire was again perceived in our rear approaching us at a very brisk pace.

The terror which these prairie conflagrations are calculated to inspire, when the grass is tall and dry, as was the case in the present instance, has often been described, and though the perils of these disasters are not unfrequently exaggerated, they are sometimes sufficient to daunt the stoutest heart. Mr. Kendall relates a frightful incident of this kind which occured to the Texan Santa Fe Expedition; and all those who have crossed the prairies have had more or less experience as to the danger which occasionally threatens the caravans from these sweeping visitations.

The worst evil to be apprehended with those bound for Santa Fe is from the explosion of gunpowder, as a keg or two of twenty-five pounds each, is usually to be found in every wagon. When we saw the fire gaining so rapidly upon us, we had to use the whip very unsparingly; and it was only when the lurid flames were actually rolling upon the heels of our teams, that we succeeded in reaching a spot of short-grass prairie, where there was no further danger to be apprehended.

The headway of the conflagration was soon after checked by a small stream which traversed our route; and we had only emerged fairly from its smoke, on the following day (the 9th) when our Comanche guide returned hastily from his accustomed post in advance, and informed us that he had espied three buffaloes, not far off.

They were the first we had met with, and, being heartily anxious for a change from the dried beef with which we were provided, I directed the Comanche, who was by far our surest hunter, to prepare at once for the chase. He said he preferred to hunt on horseback and with his bow-and-arrow; and believing my riding-horse the fleetest in company (which by-the-by, was but a common pony, and thin in flesh withal), I dismounted and gave him the bridle, with many charges to treat him kindly, as we still had a long journey before us. "Don't attempt to kill but one � that will serve us for the present!" I exclaimed, as he galloped off.

The Comanche was among the largest of his tribe � bony and muscular � weighing about two hundred pounds: but once at his favorite sport, he very quickly forgot my injunction, as well as the weakness of my little pony. He soon brought down two of his game, � and shyly remarked to those who followed in his wake, that, had he not feared a scolding from me, he would not have permitted the third to escape.

On the evening of the 10th our camp was pitched in the neighborhood of a ravine in the prairie, and as the night was dark and dreary, the watch tried to comfort themselves by building a rousing fire, around which they presently drew, and commenced 'spinning long yarns' about Mexican fandangoes, and black-eyed damsels. All of a sudden the stillness of the night was interrupted by a loud report of fire-arms, and a shower of bullets came whizzing by the ears of the heedless sentinels.

Fortunately, however, no one was injured; which must be looked upon as a very extraordinary circumstance, when we consider what a fair mark our men, thus huddled round a blazing fire, presented to the rifles of the Indians. The savage yells, which resounded from every part of the ravine, bore very satisfactory testimony that this was no false alarm; and the 'Pawnee whistle' which was heard in every quarter, at once impressed us with the idea of its being a band of that famous prairie banditti.

Every man sprang from his pallet with rifle in hand; for, upon the Prairies, we always sleep with our arms by our sides or under our heads. Our Comanche seemed at first very much at a loss what to do. At last, thinking it might possibly be a band of his own nation, he began a most boisterous harangue in his vernacular tongue, which he continued for several minutes; when finding that the enemy took no notice of him, and having become convinced also, from an occasional Pawnee word which he was able to make out, that he had been wasting breath with the mortal foes of his race, he suddenly ceased all expostulations, and blazed away with his rifle, with a degree of earnestness which was truly edifying, as if convinced that that was the best he could do for us.

It was now evident that the Indians had taken possession of the entire ravine, the nearest points of which were not fifty yards from our wagons: a warning to prairie travellers to encamp at a greater distance from whatsoever might afford shelter for an enemy. The banks of the gully were low, but still they formed a very good breastwork, behind which the enemy lay ensconced, discharging volleys of balls upon our wagons, among which we were scattered. At one time we thought of making an attempt to rout them from their fortified position; but being ignorant of their number, and unable to distinguish any object through the dismal darkness which hung all around, we had to remain content with firing at random from behind our wagons, aiming at the flash of their guns, or in the direction whence any noise appeared to emanate.

Indeed their yelling was almost continuous, breaking out every now and then in the most hideous screams and vociferous chattering, which were calculated to appal such timorous persons as we may have had in our caravan. All their screeching and whooping, however, had no effect � they could not make our animals break from the enclosure of the wagons, in which they were fortunately shut up; which was no doubt their principal object for attacking us.

I cannot forbear recording a most daring feat performed by a Mexican muleteer, named Antonio Chavez, during the hottest of the first onset. Seeing the danger of my two favorite riding horses, which were tethered outside within a few paces of the savages, he rushed out and brought safely in the most valuable of the two, though fusil-balls were showering around him all the while. The other horse broke his halter and made his escape.

Although sundry scores of shots had been fired at our people, we had only two men wounded. One, a Mexican, was but slightly injured in the hand, but the wound of the other, who was an Italian, bore a more serious aspect, and deserves especial mention. He was a short, corpulent fellow, and had been nicknamed 'Dutch' � a loquacious, chicken-hearted faineant, and withal in the daily habit of gorging himself to such an enormous extent, that every alternate night he was on the sick list.

On this memorable occasion, Dutch had 'foundered' again, and the usual prescription of a double dose of Epsom salts had been his supper potion. The skirmish had continued for about an hour, and although a frightful groaning had been heard in Dutch's wagon for some time, no one paid any attention to it, as it was generally supposed to be from the effects of his dose. At length, however, some one cried out, 'Dutch is wounded!"

I immediately went to see him, and found him writhing and twisting himself as if in great pain, crying all the time that he was shot.

"Shot! � where?" I inquired.

"Ah! in the head, sir?"

"Pshaw! Dutch, none of that; you've only bumped your head in trying to hide yourself."

Upon lighting a match, however, I found that a ball had passed through the middle of his hat, and that, to my consternation, the top of his head was bathed in blood. It turned out, upon subsequent examination, that the ball had glanced upon the skull, inflicting a serious looking wound, and so deep that an inch of sound skin separated the holes at which the bullet had entered and passed out. Notwithstanding I at first apprehended a fracture of the skull, it very soon healed, and Dutch was 'up and about' again in the course of a week.

Although teachers not unfrequently have cause to deplore the thickness of their pupils' skulls, Dutch had every reason to congratulate himself upon possessing such a treasure, as it had evidently preserved him from a more serious catastrophe. It appeared he had taken shelter in his wagon at the commencement of the attack, without reflecting that the boards and sheets were not ball-proof: and as Indians, especially in the night, are apt to shoot too high, he was in a much more dangerous situation than if upon the ground.

The enemy continued the attack for nearly three hours, when they finally retired, so as to make good their retreat before daylight. As it rained and snowed from that time till nine in the morning, their 'sign' was almost entirely obliterated, and we were unable to discover whether they had received any injury or not.

It was evidently a foot party, which we looked upon as another proof of their being Pawnees; for these famous marauders are well known to go forth on their expeditions of plunder without horses, although they seldom fail to return well mounted....

...The following day we continued our march down the border of the Llano Estacado. Knowing that our Comanche guide was about as familiar with all those great plains as a landlord with his premises, I began to question him, as we travelled along, concerning the different streams which pierced them to the southward. Pointing in that direction, he said there passed a water-course, at the distance of a hard day's ride, which he designated as a canada or valley, in which there was always water to be found at occasional places, but that none flowed in its channel except during the rainy season. This canada he described as having its origin in the Llano Estacado some fifty or sixty miles east of Rio Pecos, and about the same distance south of the route we came, and that its direction was a little south of east, passing to the southward of the northern portion of the Witchita mountains, known to Mexican Ciboleros and Comancheros as Sierra Jumanes. It was, therefore, evident that this was the principal northern branch of Red River. The False Washita, or Rio Negro, as the Mexicans call it, has its rise, as he assured me, between the Canadian and this canada, at no great distance to the southeastward of where we were then travelling.

On the 15th, our Comanche guide, being fearful lest we should find no water upon the plain, advised us to pursue a more northwardly course, so that, after a hard day's ride, we again descended the ceja or brow of the Llano Estacado, into the undulating lands which border the Canadian; and, on the following day, we found ourselves upon the southern bank of that stream....

... As we continued our route upon this narrow dividing ridge, we could not help remarking how nearly these streams approach each other: in one place they seemed scarcely five miles apart. On this account our Comanche guide, as well as several Mexicans of our party, who had some acquaintance with these prairies, gave it as their opinion that the Washita or Rio Negro was in fact a branch of the Canadian; for its confluence with Red River was beyond the bounds of their peregrinations.



Who'd a thunk Pawnees would be such a presence on the Southern Plains? Baddest guys on the block by some accounts (including their own), like Placido and his Tonkawas, setting out of foot through Comanche country.

And pertinent to this thread prob'ly my single favorite George Catlin portrait, from the very same decade as Gregg's account, a guy who had almost certainly been to Texas hisself....

Buffalo Bull, Republican (River) Pawnee, staring resolutely into the future.



The interesting thing about Catlin's protraits being his subjects knew why he was painting them,and agreed to pose, for posterity.

Birdwatcher

Just another aside on geographical mobility.... this here is the old Spanish Trail, 1,200 miles, stretching from Santa Fe to Los Angeles...




In its heyday Walkara, the Paiute Bandit (AKA "The greatest horsethief that ever lived") and his men raided and traded along all of it. Pretty much in the same period as the events occurring in Texas that we have been discussing here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkara

This guy is probably a familiar historical figure to Utah residents here. Surprised the heck out of me when I first learned of him. What are the odds of some obscure Great Basin Indian learning both Spanish and English, organizing a band of brigands, and raiding and slaving on that scale, over that large an area?

The easy mobility of the thing surprised me too; this guy was raiding Southern California, and driving thousands of horses clear to New Mexico.

His burial however was one of the more unpleasant occurrences in Western History. He was buried on a high mountain in a tomb built of rocks and boulders. At least two women and two small children were slaughtered and placed in there with him.

Worse, a boy was confined alive inside the stinking mortuary and left to die, despite his entreaties for days to be released, much to the amusement of Walkara's henchmen.

One of them occasions where you'd contemplate being dropped into history for a moment, AK-47 and several 30 round mags on hand

Birdwatcher