Reading thru Hermann Lehmanns book (titled above) seeking out the usual historical tidbits. Ruffcutt and I were had just glanced upon the tortures and treatment of captives/prisoner.

Ran across a comment by Lehmann. He at the time was with a band of Apaches as they are the ones who first captured him. Their band was visited by a band of Comanches that had a white captive with them. About his age. Another child of German settlers to Texas name of Adolph Korn. He said they conversed in German so neither of their captors could understand them.

(While with the Apaches he mentions the on again and off again stints on one of the New Mexico reservations. And how he had to be hidden in the woods when the soldier came thru on an inspection.)

This encounter with Korn would have been circa 1870-71ish. So I took this to mean that by this time these two bands had learned enough English to be dangerous to them. I found that interesting.

Lehmann does describe that he witnessed the execution of white children captives who would not settle down and be quiet on the trail. Not pretty.

While on the subject of captives. Have also read the story of the Smith boys captured in Comal county. A good read but I certainly feel a bit more artistic license was used in this narrative. I also highly recommend Wilbargers monumental work “Indian Depredations in Texas”. While a bit dated now, it contains a weath of primary document gathered thru the interviews of surviving participants. As does Deshield’s The Border Wars of Texas"

Only $2.99 on my Kindle. Been looking for more good books to read and this genre is right up my alley.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Hey! You’re welcome Morewood!

Good reading!

The Boy Captives

By Clinton Smith

Is tbe other book I mentioned. It is still a good read.

I've read of Lehman's captivity in On the Open Range by J. Frank Dobie. My copy is durned near wore out as my Grandma from Dallas gave it to me when I was a kid. IIRC, his parting with the Comanch was after he was forced to kill their tribe's medicine man after he wouldn't leave him alone for some reason I've forgotten. Lehman took the evil native's Winchester and killed stuff with it until the ammo ran out and then hid it in a cave, IIRC.

Time for me to reread both of those. I read some about the Parker Fort family and captives, I don't
remember which book it was right off, but it was alot of info.

On the Open Range also has the gist of the tale of Cynthia Anne Parker.

In light of your reading interests may I recommend "A Land So Strange" by Andres Resendez.

J. Frank Dobie stated that Lehmann’s story was the definitive white captives story.

I think Quanah pretty much talked him into going back to his family in Gillespie Co.

Wasn’t the medicine man an Apache and his murder the reason he escaped to the Comanches???

I also believe Quanah was instrumental in seeing that Lehmann received a Comanche allotment (land) at Ft. Sill as he stated he was an official member of the tribe. Lehmann went back and lived there for a while.

The cave where he lived in Mason County I got to see a while back. Pretty cool stuff...

Cabesa de Vaca’s story!! Have read his account!! Another classic!!!

Thanks!!!

Mason is an awesome county!!! I love the place as well as Menard county.

Our old TxDOT maintenance supvr. in Mason, Wibby Shearer had all kinds of stuff he had dug up being raised there. He had oodles of neat stuff he dug up at old Fort Mason. He’s long passed now and best I know the historical society there now has his collection. They have a nice museum on the square.

The TxDOT yard a few miles east of Mason on the Llano Highway, my parents live about 3 miles NE of....

Flagging for a return so I can find the names later.

Thx
K

Bob,

I may have to look that one up. Sounds like a cool read.

Way before that kind of history, but still an interesting take on captivity, if you ever get a chance to read Col Ethan Allen's Narrative of his captivity you might enjoy it.

I was particularly intrigued by parts where he discussed the poor treatment of an Officer by the Brits. I mean, after all, he was no common soldier and should not have been treated as such, right.

I'd send you my very old copy, perhaps early 1800's, but I'd not trust it to the USPS..............ever!

Yep. Good one. I’ve bought it at least twice to pass it along.

Probably.

I'd have to read it again to know for sure, but you're probably right Bob.

I haven’t got quite that far yet in this narritive. So I’m guessing from the other sources Ive read on subject myself.

Going back toward the Fly Gap? All good country!!

Some great reading and history in this thread.

The interesting aspect of Lehmann's story is, he wasn't a small child when he was taken captive. He was 11 years old. Yet after living 9 years as a plains Indian, he wasn't eager to return to the white man's world. He "went native" and never took both feet out of his Indian past. I get the impression from his writings that he always considered himself a Comanche who just happen to live among whites.

share picture

Absolutely, Bristoe!

Counting Coup and Cutting Horses by Anthony R. McGinnis is a good read too.

I do not know if it is on kindle as I do not have a device, but again I cannot let this book get by without a mention.
“The Evolution of a State" by Noah Smithwick.

If you read no other book on the 1830-1860 time period of the area, this is THE book to read. That os if you want first hand experiences and events from one who was right in the thick of it.

The thing that impressed me about his narrative is its the middle to late 1870’s and the 17 year old Herman has killed an Apache and is on the run. Months later sheer loneliness compels his to walk up to a Comanche camp up on the Panhandle out of the dark.

By that time those Comanches were hunted, refugees in their own land. No reason at all to take pity on some lone, wandering White youth. He’s lucky he didn’t get killed in the first moments when the Comanches scattered from the fire in the dark.

Instead, their initial alarm gave way to curiosity
, ending with, as even T.R. Fehrenbach put it, the Comanche band leader saying simply ”You’d better come with us.” Almost certainly saving the young man’s life.

One of the cooler vignettes in our frontier history.

Thanks!

This!!!

It was online for free on “oldcardboard” for years, now on “lsjunction”. Here it is in it’s entirety.

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd.htm

What about fiction? Do you guys know of any related fiction novels that come close to being historically accurate in the story? Recommendations?

Don’t mean to sidetrack but good time to ask. I really enjoyed Comanche Dawn by Mike Blakely.

Im really not into fiction. Just me. But, for me the non-fiction I have read is in many instances, more unfathomable than any fiction! Just my tastes run to the non-fiction. Specifically first hand accounts.

Thanks Birdy!!!

(Birdy knows I’m a bit biased when it comes to old Smithwick. I live right in the middle of his backyard!).

A more recent book that ties together several of the captives is; "The Captured" by Scott Zesch.

He covers Lehmann, the Babb's, Smith brothers, Adolph Korn( who was a relative of Zesch) and Rudolf Fischer who lived out his life with the Comanches and could not readjust to white life. Several other captives are also covered.

What's interesting with getting Lehmann's side of the story is that in some of the fights between the whites and the Indians you get a different take on what went down. The white story is often how numerous Indians were killed and Lehmann will say how nobody was killed or losses were minimal at best when talking about the same engagement.

If the Comanche had killed Lehmann, it would have been because he was an Apache. By age 17 everything about Lehmann, except perhaps his eye coloring presented him as an Apache.

The fact that he was an outcast from his tribe for killing a respected Apache medicine man is what persuaded the Comanche to let him live.

The plains Indians respected strength and a warrior spirit.

The only reason he wasn't killed after he was captured by the Apache is because he held up under the tortures imposed on him during the trip to the Apache village. The Apache took a lot of satisfaction in making things very hard on their white captives.

Afterwards he developed a measure of status with the Apache for the abilities he demonstrated as he grew into a young man.

Lehmann doesn't portray himself as such in the book. But just from reading the activities that he participated in, he could be as badazz as the situation called for.

Killing a tribal medicine man took a lot of nerve. But Lehmann did so at age 17 to avenge the death of his benefactor.

Personally I just can’t get into fiction about the old west when there is so much history and eyewitness accounts of said history available.
My main interest lies in the Sioux wars, but this last winter I read “The Apache Wars” by Paul Hutton. Interesting read, their treatment of captives ranged from adoption into the tribe to unbelievable torture.
At one ranch the Apaches impaled a young girl on a meat hook in the barn. She was found days later still alive hanging on that hook, but soon died. Infants with their heads smashed with rocks seemed the favorite way to finish them off.
Had never been to Arizona until this past March and it made the book come alive. I never knew Arizona was so mountainous and beautiful, would love to go back and do some extensive off-roading.

Thanks Lonny! I could not remember the name of that book! But I saw it on my old compenero’s bookshelf when I pulled the Lehmann book out to bring home. When I take it back, I’ll grab that one!!!

George Bent was exactly the same as Lehmann in his descriptions of fights with the army, state teoops and etc.

Apparently, he read many (what we call today an After Action Report) army reports of engagements he was involved in as well as those he was not involved in while he was composing letters and interviewing other tribal members for historian George W. Hyde. He found many discrepancies with body counts and participants. On the other hand he also verified many reports as being correct as well.

The Great Menard County Indian raid of 1866 is one of my favorites

Yes! I just happen to be good friends with (as well as reenact with) the staff at Ft. McKavett!

Cody Mobley there on staff is a first rate collodionist!!

https://m.facebook.com/RubyAmbrotypes/

He did this likeness of me while at Washington on the Brazos last November!

Interesting thread here.

time for a couple of miles with the wife and dog,

I'll get back to reading this later.

Even though it's TX history, there's some cool stuff here it seems.

Glad to be of help kaywoodie. Nothing more frustrating than trying to remember the title or author of a book and not being able to come up with it.

There was a case where Lehmann said they had been on a raid and raised some hell, but had the Rangers on their tail. They found a trail of some white-friendly Lipans and followed it only to peel off one at a time and the raiding party regrouped later. The Lipans paid the price and in white history the raiding Indians were punished. The actual raiders got away though.

Also interesting is how the captives, especially the males, once they got past the rough initial treatment, favored the Indian life. Riding, hunting, raiding, always on the move, adventure just over the horizon, would have to be better than guiding a plow towed by oxen waiting for a hail storm to wipe out your food supply. Many former captives said they had more to eat and life was easier with the Indians than living in a frontier cabin on starvation rations working from daylight to dark.

Quanah indeed took Herman under his wing so to speak and the quarter section he received is only a few miles west of our place here. This area was and still is known as "The Big Pasture" from the days the Comanche and Kiowas rented out this area to Burk Burnett and other cattlemen basically overseen by Quanah.

I first read Lehman's book out of the library in Grandfield OK but do have it on Kindle too.

I have a very good friend, an old man now, who is “Comanche”. His grandmother was a captive who was adopted and put on the roll at Ft Sill. He has told me in secret that although he’s held tribal office and is officially a member he actually has no Indian blood.

Interestingly, he recently transferred title to the half section that was his mother’s Indian allotment over to his sister. He did so because he has no grandchildren and upon his death it would have reverted back to the Comanche tribe for them to do as they saw fit. But since his sister has grandchildren it can stay in the family and be passed down.

You must live pretty close to the Star House.

When it comes to ethnic stuff IMHO you do tend to take a simplistic views of things, real people are somewhat more complex.



I dunno that a tall, skinny, starving German kid would resemble an Apache, who as a group tend to be shorter, barrel-chested, bow- legged and decidedly brown. There’s a reason the Ashanti’s call us “Obruni Cocor” (red white men).

It is true that Lehman may have been fortunate that there was an Apache-speaker among even that small band of Comanches, which brings up an interesting point:

Apaches and Comanches were enemies, and yet here you have an Apache-speaking Comanche. Sorta in the same vien, in the 1850’s Texas Ranger Captain RIP Ford’s scout and compadre under fire in many combats was a local called Roque. Roque was half Mexican half Comanche and actively warring against the Comanches. Ford say that, out of politeness I guess, he never asked him why.

Same time period as Lehmann, same area, the tall, ebullient Black Seminole Scout Adam Payne was winning a Medal of Honor while guiding Ranald McKenzie and the 4th US Cavalry against the Comanches, the very same tribe that it is believed had captured Payne in his youth, such that the already tall Payne went into battle wearing a Comanche buffalo horn headdress. (read Thomas Porter’s “The Black Seminoles” next , it’s excellent).

According to the Pop History Plains Indian Rule Book, these things weren’t supposed to happen.



Possibly, and/or maybe they thought they could receive a reward for reuniting him with his family as was happening among the Comanches at that time. Far from reading strictly from the Pop History Plains Indian Rulebook, MOST Comanches were settled down and getting into ranching about that time, to the tune of selling 30,000 head of cattle in 1873 to the US Army in New Mexico. So many at least knew the value of a dollar at least as much they did the value of a Buffalo.



Who doesn’t? (apart from our rampant Progessives, Liberals and Feminists I mean).

Possibly THE most respected White guy among the Comanches was JJ “Doc” Sturm, a gentle German botanist who had first been assigned to the Comanches on the Brazos Reserve twenty years earlier as an agricultural advisor and remained with them in some capacity ever since.

Ranald MacKenzie broke the resistance of the last Comanche holdouts in the Red River War by capturing their women and children. At MacKenzies’ own request it was Doc Sturm who rode out alone onto the high plains, found their camp where the warriors were hiding and brung back the hostiles with him, this on the strength of his word alone.

Ain’t too many people who coulda done that. The following year Sturm and the former Comanche War Chief Mow-ray travelled all over the Texas Plains finding and bringing home fearful Comanche refugees.

Late in life Sturm married a literate Caddo woman and they were highly esteemed in Indian Country for their medical help and many acts of kindness. It is said that no one hungry and homeless was ever turned away from their door.

A different sort of Frontier story I know, ain’t saying the blood-and-guts stuff didn’t happen, just that the whole truth was more complex than that.

Hey, one of the most famous Apaches of all, Naiche, son of Cochise, front and center in the most famous Apache War of them all, later became an Elder in the Methodist Church, and earnestly tried to get Geronimo to convert.

Filibusters out of Louisiana (likes of Anthony Glass and Philip Nolan) were trading with the Comanches just the other side of the crosstimbers right after the turn of the 18th/19th century for horses and mules. Big damn trade going on right under the Spaniards noses. Not that our old pal Wilkenson had any pull in this escapade. But Nolan was at one time his “secretary” and the Spaniards did catch up with him.

Also during Col. Dodge’s First Dragoon expedition to the western Indian territory they were welcomed and camped with the Comanches. (Love that Catlin drawing of Dodge done on that expedition! With his round hat and hunting frock).

Here you go!

For a quite different take on the Comanches I recommend Finnish Professor Pekka Hamalainen’s recent “The Comanche Empire”, Texas History from a more Comanche-centric perspective, including the immense amounts of horses and mules they were trading to Americans.

...and no worries, not politically correct at all....

https://www.amazon.com/Comanche-Emp...hy=9028068&hvtargid=pla-561430305496

I don't remember the source but remember reading where someone asked one of the Smith brothers who was the meanest comanche and they said Adoloh Korn

Prolly relation to Corn Pop.

I believe it was in Clinton Smith’s book.

As soon as I finish Lehmann, I’m starting this one



Birdy, I think Abert had a wren(?) named after him. Right?

i just got through with this book on kindle, and mentioned it to my wife. her family goes back into the 1840's in texas. she is also 81 now to give time perspective, but again mentioned a story told by her grandmother. it was either the grandmother, or a friend, noticed movement under a bed in the house, about the same time an indian appeared at the door of the house. turned out a black guy was hiding under the bed from some white people. he evidently said he would take care of the indian, if he was left along, which was agreed to. point of this, those times were not so far ago. there is a painting in a museum in sweetwater, texas, of one of her ancestors roping a steam engine chugging along, it was scaring the cows. Both my wife and her mother had/have facial features that make you think of cherokee, and there was definite intermixing in there at some point. Lehmanns book brings out that life was not walden's pond, but was savage for lack of a better way to put it.

Thanks for sharing that Ron.

you dont have to go very far out of phoenix to get into country where this stuff happened, bloody basin is only about 40 miles north. My dad had a ranch in that area in the 20's. and he described to me areas where there were skeletons still laying on the ground.

Stillbirth of a Nation
James Lafond
https://smile.amazon.com/Stillbirth...oding=UTF8&qid=1593373380&sr=8-2

Primary source history is the best history, and James LaFond gives us primary source material that will sear your undies.

This is the story of Peter Williamson, a child captured/kidnapped in Scotland and sold into bondage ("indentured servitude") with the help of the local Scottish law judges at the age of 12 years. He Served out his indenture (unlike so many who died indentured) and started a family...and was then captured by indians in New England. He survived them, fought them for years, then went back to Scotland and told his tale, whereupon he was imprisoned by local Scotish law judges (some of whom were the ones who help sell him into bondage) and others who wanted to maintain the profitable racket of white slavery. He eventually sued them and depsed many witnesses to their crimes and was eventually freed and then wrote his autobiography.

And a squirrel perhaps?

Abert's towhee I believe, a large desert sparrow.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Aberts_Towhee/overview#

...and a squirrel.

Clearly I was smarter in 2012......

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/6170946/24


In popular Texas lore, the Great Comanche Raid of 1840 was a unique event, the Southern Comanche Nation mustering all their forces to strike the Texans a mighty revenge blow.

I suppose there was a lot of that in it, but raids on that scale certainly weren't unprecedented elsewhere, and a number of major raids involving hundreds of Comanches and Kiowas were launched in those years, all those OTHER big raids targeting Mexico.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche%E2%80%93Mexico_Wars

Though we view them primarily as sadistic raiders, as the wiki link above and Hamaleinen ("Comanche Empire") point out, there was a strong commercial aspect to these raids, This from Hamaleinen...

Early nineteenth-century Comancheria was a dense and dynamic marketplace, the center of a far-flung trading empire that covered much of North America's heartland... The Comanche trade pump sent massive amounts of horses and mules to the north and east, enough to support the numerous equestrian societies elsewhere on the Great Plains and enough to contribute to the western expansion of the American settlement frontier.

In return for their extensive commercial services Comanches imported enough horticultural produce to sustain a population of twenty to thirty thousand and enough guns, lead and powder to defend a vast territory against Native enemies as well as the growing, expansionist Texas Republic.

But that thriving exchange system was rapidly approaching the limits of its productive foundation... By the 1820's, the traditional raiding domains [to acquire livestock for trade] had become either exhausted or unavailable... Comanches continued sporadic raiding in Texas... but the returns failed to meet their expansive livestock demands, which skyrocketed in the late 1830's and early 1840's when the opened trade with the populous nations recently arrived in the Indian Territory.

To keep their commercial system running, Comanches needed new, unexhausted raiding fields, and they found them in Northern Mexico... Comanche raiding thus generated a massive northward flow of property from Mexico, a development promoted by many interest groups in North America... By the late 1830s it had become a common belief that "enterprising American capitalists' had established trading posts on the Comanche-Texas border in order to tap the "immense booty" that the Comanches, "the most wealthy as well as the most powerful of the most savage nations of North America", were hauling from northern Mexico.

Texas officials provided Comanche war parties free access through their state, hoping to direct the raids into Mexico, and even supplied southbound war bands with beef and other provisions.

Probly relevant that one of the early Jack Hays stories has him and his Rangers meeting with and providing beef cows to a Comanche raiding party going south, in that version "attempting to dissuade them from raiding"..

Many internet sources have it that the Great Comanche Raid of 1840 killed "hundreds of Texans". All of the authors we have been quoting here, even Fehrenbach, agree that the actual death toll was low; about twenty people all told. What the raid DID target however was horses, about two thousand rounded up and taken along during the five-day raid before Plum Creek. Horses, and as it turned out, large quantities of trade goods looted from Linnville.

Why a raid on that scale was never again attempted against the Texans may have had something to do with the heavy casualties the Indians suffered at Plum Creek (more than eighty dead, if you've been to Cabelas in Buda on I 35, the fleeing Comanches drove their stolen stock through that area). OTOH Comanches, right up until the end, were never noted for timidity.

Actual conditions at that time seem to agree with Hamalienen's account, by 1840 it may be that the Texan settlements at the edge of the plains were pretty much picked over. Small-scale livestock raids were incessant during those years. During the Great Raid, Ben McCullough, attempting to raise a body of men, sent word around the Gonzales TX area seeking for volunteers to assemble. One volunteer later recalled....

A larger number would have moved out, but for the very short notice of the intended expedition and the great difficulty of procuring horses the Indians having about a week before stolen a majority of the best in the neighborhood.

Noah Smithwick, at that time living on Webber's Prairie over by Bastrop, expounds at length on the topic of the innumerable thefts of horses around the settlements at that time, and his exasperation when his own last two horses were taken "in the year of the Comet" (1843).

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd18.htm

My stock of horses had been depleted till I had none left except a blind mare and a colt, the latter a fine little fellow, of which I was very proud. That being the year of a brilliant comet, I called my colt Comet. The mare being stone blind I had no apprehension of their being stolen, so I let them run loose, they seldom being out of sight of the house. But there came a morning when the blaze of the Comet failed to catch my eye when I sallied forth in search of it. Looking about I found moccasin tracks and at once divined that the horses were stolen.

When I found by the trail that there were only two Indians, I thought I could manage them, so I took my rifle and struck out on the trail, to which the colt's tracks gave me the clue. Crossing Coleman's creek I found where the mare had apparently stumbled in going up the bank and fallen. Coming to a clump of cedars a short distance beyond the creek and not daring to venture into it, I skirted around and picked up the trail on the further side, where the Indians, seemingly disgusted with the smallness of the haul, turned back toward the prairie. I kept right along the trail, and on gaining the top of the rise above "Half Acre," discovered the missing animals feeding.

I looked to the priming of my gun, and then scanning the vicinity without perceiving any sign of Indians, went to the mare, near by which on a tree I found a piece of dried bear meat, of which I took possession. It was then quite late in the afternoon and I had left home without eating any breakfast, but I had recovered my horses and felt in a good humor with the world. I went to the village, where I recounted the adventure, exhibiting the bear meat as a witness thereto. The boys swore that when the Indians found that the horses were mine they brought them back and left the meat as a gift of atonement.

The sequel, however, which came a few days later, developed the fact that they only abandoned the mare and colt to get a bigger haul, which they made in Well's prairie, and coming on back again, picked up the mare and colt, which they failed to return.

I was mad to recklessness. Taking my rifle on my shoulder and my saddle on my back, I walked four miles to Colonel Jones' to borrow a horse to pursue the marauders. With others who had suffered by the raid we followed on up to Hoover's bend on the Colorado, ten miles above Burnet, where upon breaking camp, they scattered in every direction; but here my Comanche lore came to direct the search.

Going to the ashes where the camp fire had been, I found a twig stuck in the ground with a small branch pointing northward, it having been so placed to guide stragglers. Taking the course indicated, we soon had the satisfaction of seeing the trail increasing, and presently some one called out: "Here's the Comets track." Guided by the Comet, we kept on to the Leon river, where were encamped the Lipan and Tonkawas, friendly tribes. They were in a state of commotion over the loss of their horses, the Keechis, who were the marauders in this instance, having taken them as they passed.

We followed them twenty days but never came up with them.

So it wasn't as if the Comanches were driven off in the aftermath of the Plum Creek fight, just that conditions on the Texan side of the plains probably weren't conducive to large raiding parties.

...and Noah Smithwick was a good man.

Wasn’t the squirrel named for his father! John James Abert

Apparently so:

https://www.coniferousforest.com/aberts-squirrel.htm

I wish they'd get these things right, and call them Abert Sr's squirrel

"Crossing Coleman's creek I found where the mare had apparently stumbled in going up the bank and fallen. Coming to a clump of cedars a short distance........”

Birdy I think I showed you Coleman’s creek on the way to the Manor Hill cemetery when you were here that day. The creek runs behind that cemetery and on up crossing the old Blake-Manor road twice in the post oak thicket.

It runs past the old Coleman homestead, where some of the Colonels family was killed in a Comanche raid.

His oldest son and wife were killed. His children who escaped said their brother was shouting numerous names to make it sound as if he had armed confederates in the house with him. ( the other children had made good an escape threw a trapdoor and into nearby woods.).

The boy was allegedly aremed with a "breechloading yager” rifle. Which most suspect was a Hall breechloading flintlock. They were known here.

Thank you for the recommendation!

It's outside of Cache getting in bad shape though.

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the history guys.

Also one of the few times that I’ve heard reference to the Hall rifle. I sold a beautiful Hall rifle to a museum in South Carolina.iirc.

Thank you for the heads up on a good read. I’ve been looking for one myself...

US Dragoons were an elite unit stationed in Fort Scott, Kansas and patrolling the pre-Civil War frontier. They used the Hall's Carbine. The Hall guns were used extensively in the Mexican War and the Civil War.

EE,


Dragoons were pretty much stationed all along the frontier. Precursor to the US cavalry. Many future cav leaders served with the dragoons. Lt. St. George Cooke 2nd Dragoons captured the Snively expedition out of the Republic of Texas. The expedition were pretty much nothing but land porates raiding the Santa Fe trail.

Dragoons were not precursors to the Cavalry, the existed alongside it. They were basically mounted riflemen meant to move on horseback and then fight on foot.

One of these days we got to get together and do some land porating ourselves. Not at the Alamo though.

Exactly. But at this time they were the Army’s only real mounted entity. There were also mounted infantry units ( utilized mules) that existed along side the dragoons. As the case at Ft. Lancaster. as well as several other frontier garrisons Instead of carbines they packed standard infantry arms.

I concur on the land pirating! LOL! The merchants along the Santa Fe Trail then had great concerns for the Texas land pirates. They were a real problem and the Republic wasn’t going to curry any favor with the US by using them. Their orders were to attack and pillage caravans belonging to Mexican traders. (As a state of war still existed between the two republics). However, many American traders traveled with Mexican merchants and there really was no way to tell the difference between caravans.

These raids were kinda the brainchild of Prez Houston ( I’m pretty sure he was drunk at the time) to incur a bit of revenue selling the looted goods. This idea being only second to Prez Lamar’s illfated Santa Fe expedition a year or so earlier. Not only was it an utter failure, 2/3rds of that expedition were told ( lied to) they were on a friendly expedition to establish trade relations between Texas and NM. The intent was to have the "freedom seeking" New Mexicans join up with the Rep of Texas in independence and gird up against Mexico. The issue was NM liked being a part of the Mexican Republic and wanted nothing to do with the diablo Tejanos.

What is absolutely amazing is the Republic of Texas lasted as long as it did with the most inept and corrupt politicions that could be gathered under one roof. Especially in the days of the revolution 1835-36. There were exceptions, but for the most part they were all blackguards. Least IMHO

Birdy may wish to chime in on this.

Empire of the Summer Moon.
SC Gwynne

I, personally, have not read this book. And the reason I haven’t is all the professional anthropologist and historians (that have read it) I know have all told me the same thing. That I would not really appreciate it. It was well received when debuted, and here comes the but, while an entertaining book it makes way too many generalizations about the Comanche. And that much of it was probably plagerized from T. R. Ferenbach’s earlier works. And that there were better works available ( like the one Birdy mentioned above) that would probably be more to my liking.

That’s why I shy away from it. I know many here have read and enjoyed it. And that’s great. Not trying to make myself out as some kind of elitist as I am far from that. Just my two cents. I certainly would not talk anyone out of reading it. These are just my reasons.

Great thread !!!

kaywoodie,

You know of any good reads on Nolan or Glass? I'd only recently learned of their forays into Spanish held country to buy horses to drive back to Louisiana. I'm sure they must have had some exciting times trading with Comanches and trying to avoid the Spanish.

Glass left a journal. Very interesting but shory read. Several good side stories.

https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Indian-Trader-1790-1810-Southwestern/dp/1585440167

Nolan is a bit more enigmatic. Only really mentioned in other references. I’m trying to remember if Herbert Eugene Bolton Mentions him in any of his works. Dr. David Weber formerly of SMU hits on him some in his work on the Spanish frontier in North America.

Thank you!

Lonny,

I suggest looking into the book mentioned in the bibliography of this from Handbook of Texas.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fno02

Jack Jackson is a pretty good authority on early Texas history. I didn’t know this book existed.

I would like a recent work on the Tonkawas, the exuberantly cannibalistic guys of whom around thirty ran twenty-five miles overnight to fight on our side at Plum Creek, inflicted most of the Comanche/Kiowa casualties and captured all the horses. All this at Ed Burleson’s invitation, and Ed was a capable man.

Twenty years later RIP Ford took a fully half Tonkawa force (100 men) against Buffalo Hump’s Comanches, referring at that time to their leaders as ‘superior men with an encyclopedic knowledge of the west’ and won. Fourteen years later the dwindling Tonks were still at it, relentlessly guiding MacKenzie down on Quanah Parker’s bunch.

Never very many, always within raiding distance of the Comanches, yet the Tonkawas were killing and eating Comanches for more’n thirty years, Quanah Parker in common with the rest of his tribe hated and feared them.

After the big ‘74 sundance Parker had wanted to go and exterminate the few remaining Tonkawas rather than go after the buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls (after all the Comanches had largely switched to cattle by that time) but got outvoted. Maybe the rest of his bunch chickened out.

Anyways Gwynn predictably went the Pop Texas History route and at the very start of "Summer Moon” says the Tonkawas were “always losing”.

Edward Burleson was an exceptionally capable man. Unfortunately he had politics pretty much thrust upon him. But still one of exceptional quality!!! One of the exceptions I alluded to. He reigned pretty damn surpreme on the battlefield!

Where Empire of the Summer Moon does shine is when it goes where most Texas Frontier history books do not. One of these being the sad fate of Rachel Plummer and the fact that for most Texans, even as early as 1838, other Texans were as much of a threat than were Indians.

Rachel Plummer (née Parker) was a Cousin to Cynthia Anne Parker and was seventeen and pregnant when she and her two year old son were likewise captured in 1836 at Parker’s Fort. Thanks to the Herculean efforts of her father Rachel was ransomed 21 months later. Only to die in part from the effects of exposure while giving birth outdoors in inclement weather while hiding from other Texans looking to kill her father.

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

The other place where Summer Moon shines is following the later careers of Quanah Parker and failed “bullet proof medicine” medicine man Isa-Tai (“Coyote Droppings”) as rivals for elected office within the tribe. Isa-Tai coming across like a character only a Larry McMurphy would invent 🙂

Interesting.....thanks for your input. I’d never seen nor held a Hall until a Korean War veteran Marine in his 80’s contacted me about buying his collection. I bought everything he had for the price he was asking. He had a cartridge collection that was, in my opinion, a treasure trove of old, original, RARE cartridges. Everything from original Henry cartridges, Billinghurst Requa cartridges, original and oddball 1880’s 45-70 cartridges, 30-03, almost every version of 30-06 military loads including a “specialized” load that was meant for use against dirigibles in the Great War. I’ve got so many different cartridges from the pinfire, to inside primed, to Civil War paper wrapped ball and powder and everything in between but my problem is figuring out how to display it. I’ve always collected cartridges but the collection I bought would be impossible to put together today.

I bought some great things from him like the Hall carbine. I also bought a Johnson with original bayonet and scabbard. The only thing I passed on was a Spencer Carbine which I still kick myself over. It was in good shape but the markings were so faint as to be almost invisible so I reluctantly passed on it. I had already bought a dozen or so of his guns, his extensive cartridge collection and his bayonet and knife collection. The bayonet and knives he had were just as rare and desirable as his firearm collection. Revolutionary war bayonets, WWI and WWII training bayonets made from spring steel and leather wrapped for the 1903 Springfield and Bakelite training bayonet for the Garand. Ross rifle bayonets, 1866 Winchester bayonets, a BIG cleaver for the USMC (US Medical Corps) used for clearing brush to build quick MASH tents not for amputations which is what everyone mistakenly thinks it’s for.

I even bought his dad’s seabag from WWI. His dad was a Marine also and on his seabag he’d drawn a map of his travels throughout Europe during the war. Inside was his original issue gas mask and a few other odds and ends. That old man spent his life collecting that stuff and he wanted it to go to someone who’d appreciate, I assured him that it was. He made some good money from that liquidation sale and he was beyond thrilled with the wad of cash he ended up with. He told me that based on what he paid for everything versus what he sold it for that he made a rough average of 500% profit which was great because his asking prices were ridiculously low. I actually paid him more for some things than what he was asking. At the time I had no idea what a Johnson Automatic (semi) with bayonet and frog was selling for but I figured that it was at least worth the $250 that he was asking. He told me that he thought it had a broken extractor (or something) but I later checked it out thoroughly and realized that it didn’t and it functioned flawlessly. I had a customer that collected Garands, mostly Winchester Garands, and when he found out we had a Johnson he would not stop pestering me to sell it to him. When he got to $3500 with his offer I decided to sell it to the collector.

Thanks for the interesting thread...👍

kaywoodie,

Again, thank you for the information!

An8’s

Ever seen this little Hall modification?

http://www.lodgewood.com/Hall-Belly...tons-Book-HALLS-BREECHLOADERS_c_251.html

You’re welcome Lonny!

Shout-out to the poster that recommended the online book: The Evolution of a State (or) Recollections of the Old Texas Days by Noah Smithwick.

Been reading it online. For free. Outstanding.

Good read I have the book, another good read is Rip Ford's Texas (Personal Narratives of the West).

Thanks, stxhunter. Hope your back feels better soon. Back injury sucks.

had some poppy seed tea, knocked the edge off the pain.

Mike, seems like I remember reading somewhere that the Comanches murdered what few surviving members of the Tonks that made it to the Reservations in OK.
Just can’t remember where I read it. If it’s true, wouldn’t surprise me if ole Quanah instigated their demise.
I would imagine he hated them like no other tribe.

Yep. Both great reads!!

There was allegedly still a Tonkawa family living here in Bastrop county at the turn of the 19th/ 20th century. Supposed to have lived on a small place about 3 or 4 miles north of Smithville. In the area not far from the current front entrance of Buescher State Park. They farmed in that area. Typical farm with barn, house, etc.

Need to run an email past the archivist at the historical society. See what she can come up with.

There was a reference in the "Carbine and Lance" by Nye I believe that shared the hatred all the tribes had toward the Tonks for their cannibalism . There is an old battle site in Caddo Co OK where a good many met their fate by some of the Keechi band.

George Bent mentions the very same thing in reference to Adobe Walls. That Quanah wanted to go finish off the Tonkawas because of their cannibalistic nature and stay away from Adobe Walls. They had no business being involved in it.

It’s supposed to be in a red rock canyon south and east of Anadarko near Tonkawa creek. I probably drive within a mile of it every day on my way to and from work but I don’t know the exact location.

It would seem the Tonkawas did indeed practice a very dark form of medicine. I do believe disease and combat whittled down their numbers more’n anything tho, the thirty under MaKenzie in the 1870’s being most of what was left of their warriors.

I recall reading mention of the few survivors marrying mostly into the Caddos. FWIW I believe there still is a Tonkawa Tribe existing as a entity in Oklahoma....

http://www.tonkawatribe.com/

I have no idea how the other Indians view ‘em today

Karankawa's down on the coast were cannibals also.

Yes sir that is where it happened. I was born and raised in that country. North and east of Indian City hill near the creek.


Small world I have a farm south of Cement.

Plácido, Head Chief of the Tonkawas, woulda been close to fifty when him and his bunch ran 25 miles overnight to make it to the Plum Creek fight.

The son of a Comanche woman captured and enslaved by the Tonkawas, both of Placido’s wives were likewise Comanche women captured on raids. In common with the Pawnee and prob’ly other tribes, the Tonkawas would customarily raid the Comanches on foot, intending to ride captured horses home,

Wiki has a decent account of his life.....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placido_(Tonkawa_leader)

His name in his own language translates to “Can’t Kill Him”, whereas “Plácido” is Spanish for “calm”, from which we might infer he was cool under Fire.

Kranks were alleged maneaters. De Vaca records that while several of his party were prisoners of that tribe, they appeared appalled when they discovered several of the Spanish prisoners had eaten a portion of a dead Spaniard. While they have always been touted as being cannibals, It’s been difficult to tie down any primary documetation unlike the case of the Tonkawas. Appear most is second or third hand info simply passed from one person to another. If they were indeed cannibalistic, chances were it was tied into some religiously significant custom, as these guys really lived in the breadbasket area of Texas. Having both the Gulf, estuaries, coastal plains, etc teeming with fish, fowl, and game. They had plenty to eat, which probably reflected in their appearance. Smithwick states they were tall and healthy, all the men topping the 6 foot mark. (Many coastal archaeological sites contain remains of the long extinct carribean seal!)

Austin’s colony had some serious run ins with the Kranks. And The first recorded incident of the San Felipe militia being mustered for service was in response to Krank attacks. (1825). Note! Jared Groce showed up with all his male slaves "well armed and mounted" for this muster. I can’t remember their number but it exceeded 40’armed slaves. In a personal conversation this past year with the historical director at San Felipe, he stated that the slaves were armed with firearms and not just cane knives.

Their sister group the Attakapas from SE Louisiana and the portion of Texas adjoining it were also accused of the crime. Their name is a Muskoegean phrase Hatak Upa. Attak (Hatak) = Man. Apa (Upa) = food or the act of eating.

This appears to be a common practice among several groups to brand their enemies as cannibals in order to demonize and dehuman them to some degree.

Most of the group had either been assimilated into the existing Mestizo community or other tribes, killed, or run into Mexico by the end of the Texas Revolution.

Birdy, I didn’t read the wiki page on Placido. But he was supposed to have lived for a time on the Colorado below Bastrop on Edward Burleson’s grant. Like in a dugout or cave in the river bluff. Often wondered where that was. I suspet is was just South of town as the bluff runs out not too far out of town.

This “past” year.

Thank you!!!!!



Nazi!

Of the grammar/spelling type!!!

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

So the Kronks may have gotten a bad rap, well ya learn something new every day. I think it was Fehrenbach who gives a description of them cooking and eating parts of a still-living prisoner, in front of the guy.

Way back East it seems to be an accepted truism that the Mohawks ate people, at least before the Eighteenth Century, and IIRC one of the things the backwood hick Ottawas hired by Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne in 1777 for the Saratoga Campaign did that appalled just everybody was boiling up and eating a prisoner.

LOL! Read some references that many of the NE fellas like you mentioned took prisoners not for slaves, but for sustenance to get ‘em back home. Steele’s book Betrayals on the fall of Fort William Henry, after Montcalm release of the prosoners used the reference of les Sauvages walking in amongst them ( the prisoners) poking and prodding them, squeezing their arms and legs, while licking their lips and smacking their chops, all the while making moaning sounds of eating a delicious meal! 🤣

I recall that account, and IIRC they eventually did eat the fattest prisoner.

But, turnabout is fair play, at least one Indian woman prisoner was killed by Robert Rogers hisself and eaten by him and his party on their hard retreat from the Saint Francis raid. A rotting scalped corpse was eaten raw by the famished men too IIRC. Several of Rogers' rangers were captured during that pursuit, and those is possession of human flesh summarily had their throats cut. Otherwise the captured rangers were treated surprisingly well for the most part.

A rotting corpse, raw, hard to imagine being that hungry.

I never cared much for the Tory Roberts. Pouchet handed him his azz in every up front engagement they were in. Roberts never got the upper hand on him.

Many stories of people secreting stuff in caves and such. Like Herman and his Winchester. Or the "longest range rifle I ever saw" that was taken from a buffalo hunter they ambushed.

I’ve posted this before, but I’ve often reflected on it’s history. Wondering of it’s past. Apparently it was found with a second rifle too. And from the explanation the other wss a longrifle (it was used as a toy and did not survive the antics of country children).



German rifle by a Soligen maker. Found in a cave/shelter on the Perdenales River in the late 1920’s early 30’s. The finder was later killed in combat in Northern Italy during the war. An interesting old gun.

When I was still in Jr. high, I found the trigger (while metal detecting) that may have beloned to the other rifle. I have a photo of it somewhere. This was when we learned of the second rifle found. And at the same time learned of it’s fate.

At another location on a creek in the Pedernales watershed a Lefaunchex pinfire pocket pistol was fond by the same person. I will try to get a photo sometime of this relic!

I found a photo of the trigger.

Single lever double set trigger

Really enjoying this thread and now have several books to add to my winter reading list.

I have Empire of the Summer Moon. It was a good enough read but seemed to me that it rambled at times. Plus, I think some chapters contradicted themselves regarding movements, battles, etc.

Interesting rifle Kaywoodie!

I've read Lehmann's Book. Bought it at my wife's family Mund reunion auction in Fredericksburg. Her family still has the original 1846 property.

1911A1,

One of my hunting pards from Llano county was contacted by a family member in Fritztown that had a pair of guns they wanted to sell. And they knew he was an indivitual interested in such things. Anyway he ended up with them both. A rifle (with a pillared breech for the Tigne bullet system!) and a smoothbore. They had come withe the family from Germany in 1846. I don’t think there were any descendants left in the family interested in such things. Here they are (both in impeccable condition!).

Im holding them at our annual Llano co. Hog hunt.

Rifle


Smoothbore

When you and Mike were at Eds campout i wish i had spent more time with yall. I didnt know you 2 were a treasure trove of Texas history. This has been a great thread and now im going to have to go to the library to find some more books. All you guys i got to meet at Ed's campouts i would love to see around another campfire.

Maybe sometime we can all get together again sometime Texczech. Those were fun times.

That would be super cool! 🇨🇱😄

This is looking NNE from Cedar Mountain Llano Co. Texas. In the middle right of photo is the old Click family cabin. Dating back, oh I imagine to the 1860’s -70’s. The mountain middle left on horizon is Packsaddle mountain. From reading the book, Lehmann was involved in two fights in the vicinity of this mountain. Apparently the famous one where their bowstrings were wet and unable to shoot their bows.



https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/btp01

Sandy creek runs about the very middle of this photo from left to right.

The mountain on the far left are the Riley mountains. At the base of these mountains not far from the Honey Creek cemetery is the location of the old Los Almagre silver mine.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dkl05

You do any diggin there Bob ? You could’ve been RICH ! 😜

No. It’s on private property. And even back in the early teens there wasn’t much found there.

Now, where I took that picture. There allegedly is a place on that ranch where the locals used to mine lead. They cut it out of a hole in the side of the mountain with axes. And the covered the hole with a flat rock so ot wouldn’t cat h water. The ranchers dad ( who died in a private plane crash about 1947) had an old man out there once to look for the spot.

The old man was a young boy back in the 1860’s and said they would trespass on the place to get the lead. And it was his job to hold the horses and watch for people and I suppose hostiles too. Anyway there is an opd log cabin on this ranch down at the very south end of the place. Still there and rancher said he had Messkin folks in it back in the 60’s. But it's pretty run down now. Anyway the old man said he could see this cabin as well
As that one I mentioned earlier above. But the trees were all bigger and the country had changed so much he could not recognize anything

Now the cool thing was he still had several rifle balls they made out of that lead and he gave the ranchers dad a couple. They assayed close to 40% silver!

The boys and I always make a half ass adventure out of looking for the old mine, pigs, aoudads, and the elk that have showed up there!!! Another treasure story for you!!!

After all the years I’ve read about that Mine, and after reading J. Frank Dobie’s “Coronado’s Children” more times Than I care to count, I would have probably spent more time looking for the Mine than pigs & aoudads has I the opportunity to hunt there! 🤠

Seems like I remember reading something in Texas “Lore” about Comanches and Apaches casting round balls from silver because they had no lead. You ever read about that anywhere Bob ???

All I did was read a bunch of books, Bob was actually there 😎

That right there is funny Mike!👍🤗

Dang!

40% silver is great but I can only imagine how many rattlers there are thereabouts.

??

About the most surprising thing I’ve heard you write.

I don’t mind rattlesnakes I guess, and I’ve come across my share of ‘em.

Seen big rattlesnakes on the place, but amazingly the hogs keep em pretty much in check. Lost a big one coming into camp one night. Never found him!!!

As far a silver bullet and ball, I cannot remember running across any documentation, but that doesn’t mean much. Quite possible. I know the old Mountain Man Dick Wootten stated the Indians got copper ball from the Spaniards as he removed a few from his fellow compatriots.

Neal,

I remembered something else. There was a rumor floating around of a small scale gold operation going on up
Around Pontotoc. (Barry, you ever hear about it?). Even James Drury (yeah the Virginian) was suppose to be involved in it.

I hunted on a place up there that had old test holes (possible as old as the Spanish times) dug around on it. But the only other gold I’ve ever heard of in that area was the alleged shipment hid on the south end of Smoothing Iron Mountain. Which is an interesting but to me problimatic story.

Met James Drury a few years back at the Tulsa gunshow. Nice guy.

I had been on the road when this was started. Just read the entire thing. There is a lot of history in this thread.

On an unrelated note, I’ve met quite a few famous folks at the Tulsa Show over the years! Larry Potterfield of Midway Fame. Super Nice Guy!!!
The actor that played Grizzly Adams, Dan Haggerty if I got his name right. Later that evening he was staying in the same hotel there in Tulsa and had a drink with him in the bar.
Also ran into Hank jr aka “Bocefus” Williams. I knew him already though as he was one of my big customers when I was in the Wholesale Firearms Industry.
Also met the guy that does the Blue Book of Gun Values.
Fijestad??? He’s an asswipe.
And lots of famous knife makers.

Didn’t meet him at Tulsa, but at his old hang out as resident Gunsmith in Austin, at McBride’s Gun Store, our very own Kaywoodie aka Bob is the most famous Movie Star I’ve ever met ! 🤠

Bob, that’s Barry’s old stomping grounds. Maybe he could guide us to the Gold ! 😜😁🤠

Ha! I’m no movie star, and I sure as hell ain’t not gunsmith.

Gun plumber maybe. But not a gunsmith.

OK, boys, I read the reviews and I bought the books.
To be fair I did read the Lehmann book 8 or 9 years ago, liked it very much but have lost it.

Any book worth reading is worth reading twice.

I am from the Southeast and have studied up on our Cherokee Indians and the Creeks. When I started driving the Big Rig out west 9 years ago I gained a fascination for the Comanches. All in all it looks like they were the biggest, and baddest tribe of all.

Going west out of Ft. Worth I often imagined a herd of 200,000 buffalo covering the plains. When I saw a creek, I thought that quite probably in 1820 there was a Comanche camp right there, the tipis and the massive horse herd.

I did read a book back then, I have since lost it as well, easy to lose stuff when you are "on the road" and you change trucks every 9 months, but it was a book about the origins of the Comanche Nation, and the first Comanches to have a horse.
In 1690 they were a small impoverished tribe in the Wyoming mountains. About a thousand people.

But, one day they got a few horses. And they had sent out scouts, and they realized that in north Texas, where Amarillo is now, there were massive buffalo herds. And if they moved down there, two warriors could hunt, on horseback, for an hour and get enough food to last the tribe 3 weeks.

So down to Texas/Oklahoma they went and their horse herds increased as did the size of the tribe. They made a practice of kidnapping Apache children, and Spanish, and later American, and adopting them in to the tribe.

Anyway it was a great book, fiction, about the beginnings of the Comanche as an Indian supertribe.


"Little Spaniard" by George Catlin. A full fledged Comanche, ca. 1835, had been kidnapped as a young boy from a Mexican settlement.

Little Spaniard almost certainly led a much better life as a Comanche than he would have as a Mexican peon. OTOH in Josiah Gregg’s “Commerce of the Prairies”, (which like Noah Smithwick’s “Evolution of a State” is available entirely online)....

http://atlas.nmhum.org/pdfs/CommerceofthePrairies.pdf

Gregg at one point returns along the Santa Fe Trail with a Comanche in his party who had married a Mexican woman and lived in her village. At one point they were attacked by a party of Pawnees who, like the Tonkawas and the Omaha’s to name but two, raided deep into Comanche territory on foot with the intention of riding Comanche horses home.

Gregg’s guides on at least some trips were actually Mexicans from the New Mexico settlements who were also skilled with the bow and lance on horseback. Which brings up another significant presence on the plains almost completely overlooked in Pop History; Ciboleros, Mexican buffalo hunters from New Mexico and the El Paso settlements who drove their big ox-drawn two-wheeled carretas (carts) out onto onto the plains each fall to harvest buffalo on horseback with lances and bows.

When these same guys used those carts for trade we called em Comancheros. It was Mexican ox-cart guys who found Charles Goodnight’s delirious partner Oliver Loving wandering with his gangrenous arm wound up by the Pecos after that Comanche stand-off and who brung him in to Fort Sumner, this episode inspiring Mc Murty’s “Lonesome Dove”.

Even more written out of the Pop History script; San Antonio as the largest Mexican settlement in Texas also had its CIboleros, buffalo hides and meat being a major seasonal component of the household economy here.

For an insight into what made Comanches tick I highly recommend Pekka Hamalainen’s “Comanche Empire”

https://www.amazon.com/Comanche-Empire-Lamar-Western-History/dp/0300151179

Hamalainen has it that the large numbers of Comanches and their even larger numbers of horses and mules comprised an unsustainable ecological burden in their own territories by the early 19th Century. Also the first market hunters on the High Plains were the Indians themselves, the Bent brothers locating Bent’s Fort where they did for that very reason. The buffalo herds were in steady decline from disease and over hunting decades before White hunters arrived to drive he nails into the buffalo herds’ coffin.

Also generally overlooked is the devastating Cholera epidemic of ‘49/‘50 which carried off an estimated 10,000 Comanches, fully half the tribe it was at that time.

Then followed the devastating dry years of the 1850’s which hammered the buffalo herds to the extent that, even with half the tribe gone, it was starvation that drove large numbers of Comanches onto their first reservation.

But Columbus' "discovery" of America was bad and the white man was evil. There is a good chance the Comanches would have perished as a people due to these factors without the bad, evil reservations and being forced into the white man's ways. Just like nearly every other tribe.

Well one thing obvious is any Indian tribes version of history most likely differed considerably from our own.

For example, half of everybody dead of of a horrible disease like cholera in a single winter (seeded it is believed by the '49ers crossing Comancheria) was probably a major event to the Comanches, at the time it seems our guys hardly noticed, most likely because they didn't see it happen. Same thing with the extermination of vast numbers of Texas buffalo in that catastrophic drought.

Here is another exceptional book if you ate interested in the Santa Fe trail.

https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Santa-Fe-Trade-1844-1847/dp/0803297726

And Webb, unlike Gregg, died of old age back east.

Another Classic read is

https://www.amazon.com/Wah-yah-Taos-Trail-Rancheros/dp/1429045523

this book like Gregg’s Commerce of the Prairie is an old standby!!!

While on Gregg, his last trip to Santa Fe he and his brother both had a pair of Patterson Colts and a Patterson revolving rifle, which gave the pair 36 consecutive shots!!! ( The revolving rifle were 8 shots apiece!).

Upon his return to St. Louis he doesn't mention the Pattersons again. He did loan his brother his two revolvers when they were about 60 miles out of Santa Fe as he went in early with two of the New Mexicans. Im sure they were sold for beaucoup gold. He does mention that he did carry a Cochran turret rifle on the way back that he finally managed to kill a buffalo with! I believe they were like .36-.40 calibre.

The wife's side is of the Parker family.

They moved up to this county back in 1902.

A time when there was more horses than people in this area.

The Parkers had a store around the FT.Worth area and there is a lot of relatives there as well.

Amazing all the paths that cross in these books! Currently reading Lt. James Aberts Canadian river exploration journal. All the way from the mouth of the “Picketwire on the Arkansas thru to Raton pass down the Canadian to where it runs into the Arkansas.

Thomas Fitzpatrick ol "Broken Hand" and John Hatcher were his guides and hunter!!! It was Fitzpatrick that sewed Jed Smith back up best he could after his run-in with ol Ephram (grizzly bear).