"Jack Hayes was the first captain in Texas to recognize the potentialities of Colt's newfangled revolvers. Because of this, in early 1840 he fought the first successful mounted action against the Comanches. Riding beside the Pedernales River nw of San Antonio with only 14 men, Hays was ambushed by a party of seventy Comanches. Previously, the standard tactic was to race for cover, and hold off the Comanches with their long rifles- heretofore their only hope for survival.
Hays, however, wheeled and led his men in a charge against the howling, onrushing horse Indians; the fourteen Rangers rode through a blizzard of arrows and engaged the Comanches knee-to-knee with blazing revolvers. Hays lost several men to arrows, but his repeating pistols struck down dozens of warriors.
Startled, amazed by the white men who charged and whose guns seemed inexhaustible, horrified by heavy losses, the Comanche war band broke and fled. The Rangers killed thirty Comanches."
Comanches: The History of a People by TR Fehrenbach
"Jack Hayes was the first captain in Texas to recognize the potentialities of Colt's newfangled revolvers. Because of this, in early 1840 he fought the first successful mounted action against the Comanches. Riding beside the Pedernales River nw of San Antonio with only 14 men, Hays was ambushed by a party of seventy Comanches. Previously, the standard tactic was to race for cover, and hold off the Comanches with their long rifles- heretofore their only hope for survival.
Hays, however, wheeled and led his men in a charge against the howling, onrushing horse Indians; the fourteen Rangers rode through a blizzard of arrows and engaged the Comanches knee-to-knee with blazing revolvers. Hays lost several men to arrows, but his repeating pistols struck down dozens of warriors.
Startled, amazed by the white men who charged and whose guns seemed inexhaustible, horrified by heavy losses, the Comanche war band broke and fled. The Rangers killed thirty Comanches."
Comanches: The History of a People by TR Fehrenbach
Yep. Those were Paterson Colts, his first revolver put into production. Real game changers for the time. Commercial failure, however, since they were extremely expensive, delicate, and underpowered for their weight. The Walker (and the Dragoons) were the answer to those complaints, the Third Dragoon being nearly the perfect cavalry arm till the 1860 Army came along.
That sounds a little like the attitude of a Nashville PD training officer when they switched from S&W revolvers to high capacity Tupperware- - - - -"You can throw away a few shots while diving for cover, without having to reload!" He got his man-panties in a wad when I asked him about maybe hitting an innocent bystander with one of those "throwaway" shots!
"Jack Hayes was the first captain in Texas to recognize the potentialities of Colt's newfangled revolvers. Because of this, in early 1840 he fought the first successful mounted action against the Comanches. Riding beside the Pedernales River nw of San Antonio with only 14 men, Hays was ambushed by a party of seventy Comanches. Previously, the standard tactic was to race for cover, and hold off the Comanches with their long rifles- heretofore their only hope for survival.
Hays, however, wheeled and led his men in a charge against the howling, onrushing horse Indians; the fourteen Rangers rode through a blizzard of arrows and engaged the Comanches knee-to-knee with blazing revolvers. Hays lost several men to arrows, but his repeating pistols struck down dozens of warriors.
Startled, amazed by the white men who charged and whose guns seemed inexhaustible, horrified by heavy losses, the Comanche war band broke and fled. The Rangers killed thirty Comanches."
Comanches: The History of a People by TR Fehrenbach
Thanks for the link.
I first read that book close on fifty years ago in New York State, not suspecting at the time that I would end up spending most of my life in Texas.
Fehrenbach writes a story well, but in that book cherry-picks the history and worse, rearranges the timeline of events to build his narrative of an intrepid Jack Hayes striking terror into the Comanches with his game-changing revolvers.
Jack Hayes was indeed an intrepid guy, and the evidence suggests him and his fifteen guys, each armed with a brace of Paterson Colts did indeed get the drop on the surprised Comanches twice, in the year 1844.
A much better source on the deployment of revolvers against Comanches is Texas Ranger Captain John Salmon Ford. Captain Ford stated that the bow and the revolver in mounted combat were about evenly matched. Even odds is not conducive to a long career, which imight be why Captain Ford did most of his Indian fighting (and he did a lot) with rifles, most often single shot muzzleloading rifles.
The largest slaughter of Comanches at the hands of Texians ever, one of the major bloodletting’s of the West, occurred in the winter of 1840 on the Colorado River, when IIRC a party of eighty Texians, scrupulously following the instructions of their Lipan Apache scouts, executed a perfect dawn ambush on a sleeping Comanche camp, killing as many as 180 Comanches.
Almost all the Texians were packing muzzleloading rifles, one guy did have one of those very expensive and fragile Paterson Colt carbines.
In building his revolver-as-superweapon narrative, Fehrenbach, like every other pop-Historian., all but ignores this epochal event.
"Jack Hayes was the first captain in Texas to recognize the potentialities of Colt's newfangled revolvers. Because of this, in early 1840 he fought the first successful mounted action against the Comanches. Riding beside the Pedernales River nw of San Antonio with only 14 men, Hays was ambushed by a party of seventy Comanches. Previously, the standard tactic was to race for cover, and hold off the Comanches with their long rifles- heretofore their only hope for survival.
Hays, however, wheeled and led his men in a charge against the howling, onrushing horse Indians; the fourteen Rangers rode through a blizzard of arrows and engaged the Comanches knee-to-knee with blazing revolvers. Hays lost several men to arrows, but his repeating pistols struck down dozens of warriors.
Startled, amazed by the white men who charged and whose guns seemed inexhaustible, horrified by heavy losses, the Comanche war band broke and fled. The Rangers killed thirty Comanches."
Comanches: The History of a People by TR Fehrenbach
I believe the more common term used back in the day was Texian. It is the term used in most contemporary accounts and writings. Texican to me is more of a Hollywood term. Personally I do not think it was popularly used. Historically speaking it may have been used. For most serious reenactors its a "cringe" word.
"Empire of the Summer Moon" is a good read about this stuff. Very interesting.
Where Empire of the Summer Moon shines in his description of Early Texas society as often being an exceedingly harsh place, hence the death by exposure of that former Comanche captive girl in the East Texas woods while hiding with her relatives from another family they were feuding with.
Another area where it shines is following the later political careers of Quanah Parker and his rival Isa-Tai in tribal elections.
It does stumble right off the bat, the opening paragraphs where he describes the remnants of the infamous cannibal Tonkawas, then scouting for Ranald MacKenzie, as “always losing”.
The Tonkawas, never very many, had been living within raiding distance of the far more numerous Comanches for at least 35 years, and had been killing and eating Comanches for all that time.
1840, at Plum Creek, at the invitation of famous Texas Indian fighter Ed Burleson, a party of thirty Tonkawas under their Chief Placido, ran twenty five miles overnight to take part in that fight. In the battle, it was this small group of Tonkawas that inflicted most of the Comanche and Kiowa casualties and who captured ALL of the horses recovered.
1860, when Texas Ranger Captain John SalmOn Ford led 100 Texans against Buffalo Hump’s Comanches in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma, he also recruited 100 Tonkawas who he referred to as superior men (skills, not culinary habits) with an encyclopedic knowledge of the West.
It was a Tonkawa scout who dismounted, took careful aim, and struck down the famous Comanche Iron Jacket in his coat of Spanish mail, using a .54 cal Mississippi rifle to do the deed.
1874, Red River War, the Tonkawas were reduced to a mere handful, but true to form, were implacably leading the US Cavalry down on those Comanches still out.
By that time, most Comanches were ranching in Oklahoma (which Summer Moon ignores). The radical traditionalist fringe, including Quanah Parker, actually held for the first time a Northern Plains style sun dance in an effort to fortify their spiritual mojo.
The hundred or so young men who participated, hyped up and bulletproof, decided to go against the Buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls. Quanah Parker himself had wanted to go against the Tonkawas.
So the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, actually a skirmish, happened. I forget if Summer Moon mentions the fact that those young Comanche men at Adobe Walls subsequently fanned out and wrought havoc.
And EVERYONE seems to forget the gentle German Botanist/Doctor, JJ Sturm, well known to and trusted by the Comanches, who rode out alone after the Palo Duro Canyon Fight, to seek out and bring in the fugitive Comanches, including Quanah Parker.
1840, at Plum Creek, at the invitation of famous Texas Indian fighter Ed Burleson, a party of thirty Tonkawas under their Chief Placido, ran twenty five miles overnight to take part in that fight. In the battle, it was this small group of Tonkawas that inflicted most of the Comanche and Kiowa casualties and who captured ALL of the horses recovered.
It might be hard to argue that they didn't earn those horses, running 25 miles!
1840, at Plum Creek, at the invitation of famous Texas Indian fighter Ed Burleson, a party of thirty Tonkawas under their Chief Placido, ran twenty five miles overnight to take part in that fight. In the battle, it was this small group of Tonkawas that inflicted most of the Comanche and Kiowa casualties and who captured ALL of the horses recovered.
It might be hard to argue that they didn't earn those horses, running 25 miles!
I’m pretty sure the Tonkawas were culturally and maybe linguistically allied to the Waco and Pawnee; farmers living in villages on the fringe of the plains.
It was common practice to go out into Comancheria on foot, expecting to return on Comanche horses. Placido himself presumably acquired his two Comanche wives this way.
Knowing what they were like, Ed Burleson went out of his way to invite Placido. Fehrenbach in his book does mention the Tonkawas showing up at Plum Creek, but pretty much writes them out of the script.
I visit Henry Marion Smith all the time, poor fella is buried in a marked grave overgrown by brush and I knock the brush back as best I can. He is buried on an off-Shoot of the Cibolo Creek on Camp Bullis. His first wife is buried about 30 yards away under a pile of stones.
He fought in the battle of Bird’s Creek, was City Marshall of San Antonio, his sons are the focus of a small local book called (The boy Captives), and he owned the land my son’s house is on most likely where his boys were captured.
Not so much an engaging shoot ‘em up like Fehrenbach or Gwynn, more like a serious study of the Comanche themselves. There was more to ‘em than just implacable raiders.
One thing it looks at is the unsustainable impact of the Comanches themselves and their massive horse herds, particularly along the wooded valleys where they wintered.
Also not generally covered in most books is the switch of many Comanche and Kiowas themselves to a cattle-based economy as buffalo numbers dwindled.
1864, First Battle of Adobe Walls, Kit Carson found the Comanche and Kiowa camps surrounded by droves of cattle.
Don’t forget that t the Comanche were the big time horse and mule traders with the Americans out of Louisiana after the purchase. Like Philip Nolan and Anthony Glass.
I visit Henry Marion Smith all the time, poor fella is buried in a marked grave overgrown by brush and I knock the brush back as best I can. He is buried on an off-Shoot of the Cibolo Creek on Camp Bullis. His first wife is buried about 30 yards away under a pile of stones.
He fought in the battle of Bird’s Creek, was City Marshall of San Antonio, his sons are the focus of a small local book called (The boy Captives), and he owned the land my son’s house is on most likely where his boys were captured.
"Empire of the Summer Moon" is a good read about this stuff. Very interesting.
An excellent book with more information than my little mind can absorb in one reading. I’m on my third or fourth reading and have several more to go….. I have started to highlight important passages in an attempt to retain more information. I’m finishing up the second read of the Earth is Weeping and transitioning my material back to the NW Coastal natives from Oregon through BC and into SE Alaska but I will be reading Empire of the Summer Moon soon.
I visit Henry Marion Smith all the time, poor fella is buried in a marked grave overgrown by brush and I knock the brush back as best I can. He is buried on an off-Shoot of the Cibolo Creek on Camp Bullis. His first wife is buried about 30 yards away under a pile of stones.
He fought in the battle of Bird’s Creek, was City Marshall of San Antonio, his sons are the focus of a small local book called (The boy Captives), and he owned the land my son’s house is on most likely where his boys were captured.
Wow, twenty five years ago I was on Camp Bullis every spring, employed doing bird surveys for the DoD. I expect there must be more than one burial plot on there.
There was one place, IIRC in Area 9, where we couldn’t get access very often, on an open hillside there was a grave-sized rectangular area of piled-up rocks. Sure looked like a grave, can’t have been dug very deep given the shallow nature of the soil.
Do you mean the other Hay/Comanche revolver skirmish?
Steven Moorein his “Savage Frontier” places it along the Guadalupe River not far from Sisters Creek.
A problem being of course Hayes and his Rangers never wrote much down.
Oops not the Hays fight. i believe this was the fight way up in San Saba country. Maybe Tumlinson and Eastlands ranging comanies. smithwick was there. Big raid. Remember the paterson carbine Smithwick mentioned
AgriLife still does the bird surveys and the last guy looked homeless.
Naah, that weren’t me but coulda been. I actually quit that gig, $20/hour to ride around on my dirt bike and watch birds on Bullis, the whole area reserved for me
‘Cept for the one time I was standing out in the LZ, wearing my red vest and holding a clipboard when a C 130 flew over and guys started jumping out in parachutes, landing all around.
As cool as that was the time I was in Area 9 just over the ridge from the machine gun range. IIRC They were shooting at old trucks, I got to hear incoming, everything backwards, starting with the rounds hitting steel
If you had property where I do, you’d understand why the Comanche fought so hard.
I’m not sure where in Texas you are but even with the migratory buffalo herds and plethora of wild game in the pre-Civil War days it was unforgiving country. A lot of arid wasteland with not much nutritional value in the native forage that just didn’t support a lot of game. Other areas were obviously much better since Texas is a big state but it didn’t change the Comanche’s motivation for fighting.
The settlers lightly guarded cattle and horses made for easy pickings in the early days of the Republic and whatever possessions the whites had were valuable to the the Comanche.
Fighting and stealing was what the Comanches, like most tribes simply did, they were ruthless, thieving, grudge holding bastards that loved brutality all in their quest for wealth and dominance. The Comanches were pioneers amongst the natives for their unbelievable horsemanship and their understanding of animal husbandry. Their wealth was almost exclusively tied to the horse so capturing a herd of horses was their equivalent of winning the lottery. White man’s guns were useful in their quest for wealth and as trade goods. Mostly though the young men needed to steal horses, count coup and perform the other requirements for manhood and warrior status so they needed to fight and do battle in order for the tribe and the young men to grow and flourish.
The Comanches were less guarding “their land” than they were simply doing what they’d done for generations upon generations. The ease with which they could steal horses, cattle and slaves as well as gang rape the white women and brutally torture and murder made attacking whites an easy choice. They iron loot, guns, coffee, sugar, tobacco, ALCOHOL and other plunder was how tribes garnered power and prestige and “wealth”. The Comanches were nomadic with vast territory. The buffalo and game were “theirs” but they really were not fighting for “their land”….at least certainly not in the early years pre-Civil War. Their desires were more geared towards the accumulation of wealth and power, ie horses, guns, powder and lead.
Oops not the Hays fight. i believe this was the fight way up in San Saba country. Maybe Tumlinson and Eastlands ranging comanies. smithwick was there. Big raid. Remember the paterson carbine Smithwick mentioned
1839. John (??) Moore’s first expedition against the Comanches, that time on the San Saba. So cold some horses died overnight. Did not follow the Lipan Chief Castro’s advice, the Comanches got away, the expedition ended up walking home.
There’s a great passage in Smithwick’s book where himself and a Lipan scout rode ahead to scout out the Comanche camp, the Lipan identifying theComanche camp by many small columns of smoke whereas a grassfire would have been one big cloud.
Moore listened to the Lipans on his next try, 1840, scored big.
If you had property where I do, you’d understand why the Comanche fought so hard.
I’m not sure where in Texas you are but even with the migratory buffalo herds and plethora of wild game in the pre-Civil War days it was unforgiving country. A lot of arid wasteland with not much nutritional value in the native forage that just didn’t support a lot of game. Other areas were obviously much better since Texas is a big state but it didn’t change the Comanche’s motivation for fighting.
The settlers lightly guarded cattle and horses made for easy pickings in the early days of the Republic and whatever possessions the whites had were valuable to the the Comanche.
Fighting and stealing was what the Comanches, like most tribes simply did, they were ruthless, thieving, grudge holding bastards that loved brutality all in their quest for wealth and dominance. The Comanches were pioneers amongst the natives for their unbelievable horsemanship and their understanding of animal husbandry. Their wealth was almost exclusively tied to the horse so capturing a herd of horses was their equivalent of winning the lottery. White man’s guns were useful in their quest for wealth and as trade goods. Mostly though the young men needed to steal horses, count coup and perform the other requirements for manhood and warrior status so they needed to fight and do battle in order for the tribe and the young men to grow and flourish.
The Comanches were less guarding “their land” than they were simply doing what they’d done for generations upon generations. The ease with which they could steal horses, cattle and slaves as well as gang rape the white women and brutally torture and murder made attacking whites an easy choice. They iron loot, guns, coffee, sugar, tobacco, ALCOHOL and other plunder was how tribes garnered power and prestige and “wealth”. The Comanches were nomadic with vast territory. The buffalo and game were “theirs” but they really were not fighting for “their land”….at least certainly not in the early years pre-Civil War. Their desires were more geared towards the accumulation of wealth and power, ie horses, guns, powder and lead.
Pretty much however the Comanche were the worst of the worst. The Comanche were feared by other fearless tribes and didn’t need provocation to unleash total brutality.
Comanche, means enemy, the name given to them by other tribes.
Yeah and it’s a well deserved name. As a kid I always thought the Apache were the worst but the more I read the more I realized that the Comanche made the Apache look like Sunday school teachers. 😁
Oops not the Hays fight. i believe this was the fight way up in San Saba country. Maybe Tumlinson and Eastlands ranging comanies. smithwick was there. Big raid. Remember the paterson carbine Smithwick mentioned
1839. John (??) Moore’s first expedition against the Comanches, that time on the San Saba. So cold some horses died overnight. Did not follow the Lipan Chief Castro’s advice, the Comanches got away, the expedition ended up walking home.
There’s a great passage in Smithwick’s book where himself and a Lipan scout rode ahead to scout out the Comanche camp, the Lipan identifying theComanche camp by many small columns of smoke whereas a grassfire would have been one big cloud.
Moore listened to the Lipans on his next try, 1840, scored big.
I’m in some rugged country with big peaks, clear creeks, cypress, maples, sycamore, Lacey Blue Oaks, pinion pines, madrone trees, and over 1000 springs. God’s abundance of game animals, so many exotics that don’t fall under Texas law that eat better than any whitetail and I kill them all year round. NO MOSQUITOES, ALWAYS BREEZE, and 68 degree nights on the hottest of Texas days. My Hollows look much like the Buffalo River in Arkansas.
I am Blessed, Thanks Be to God !
And I’ll fight harder than any Comanche to keep it !
Originally Posted by AcesNeights
Originally Posted by JohnnyLoco
If you had property where I do, you’d understand why the Comanche fought so hard.
I’m not sure where in Texas you are but even with the migratory buffalo herds and plethora of wild game in the pre-Civil War days it was unforgiving country. A lot of arid wasteland with not much nutritional value in the native forage that just didn’t support a lot of game. Other areas were obviously much better since Texas is a big state but it didn’t change the Comanche’s motivation for fighting.
The settlers lightly guarded cattle and horses made for easy pickings in the early days of the Republic and whatever possessions the whites had were valuable to the the Comanche.
Fighting and stealing was what the Comanches, like most tribes simply did, they were ruthless, thieving, grudge holding bastards that loved brutality all in their quest for wealth and dominance. The Comanches were pioneers amongst the natives for their unbelievable horsemanship and their understanding of animal husbandry. Their wealth was almost exclusively tied to the horse so capturing a herd of horses was their equivalent of winning the lottery. White man’s guns were useful in their quest for wealth and as trade goods. Mostly though the young men needed to steal horses, count coup and perform the other requirements for manhood and warrior status so they needed to fight and do battle in order for the tribe and the young men to grow and flourish.
The Comanches were less guarding “their land” than they were simply doing what they’d done for generations upon generations. The ease with which they could steal horses, cattle and slaves as well as gang rape the white women and brutally torture and murder made attacking whites an easy choice. They iron loot, guns, coffee, sugar, tobacco, ALCOHOL and other plunder was how tribes garnered power and prestige and “wealth”. The Comanches were nomadic with vast territory. The buffalo and game were “theirs” but they really were not fighting for “their land”….at least certainly not in the early years pre-Civil War. Their desires were more geared towards the accumulation of wealth and power, ie horses, guns, powder and lead.
Pretty much however the Comanche were the worst of the worst. The Comanche were feared by other fearless tribes and didn’t need provocation to unleash total brutality.
The Tonkawas weren’t all that scared of them, neither were the Waco’s, Omahas or Pawnee, all of whom would go out on foot into Comancheria, expecting to return on Comanche horses. But who was REALLY cutting a wide swathe into the Comanches were the displaced rifle-armed Eastern tribes; Cherokee, Creek, Delaware, Kickapoo, Seminole among others.
Noah Smithwick, mentioned in that other thread, lived with them for six months, in a Comanche camp. Those Comanches saved his life when vengeful Waco’s wanted to kill him.
Some Tejanos in San Antonio were on a first-name basis such that when the angry Comanches came boiling into town after the 1840 Council House Fight debacle, their leader Isomania stopped in at a cantina to ask where the Texians were.
Throughout those decades, around 500 Tejano families were living out of carretas, ox carts, hauling freight across the Plains, somehow escaping rapine and pillage. Even more surprising, Mexican vaqueros were routinely driving hundreds, sometimes thousands, of horses and mules up from Mexico through Texas to sell in the US.
When the Comanches finally launched their big 1,000 man raid in 1840, they curiously bypassed most everything to hit Victoria TX and then Linnville on the coast, which were not coincidentally the seat of government in exile and the location of the arsenal of the Federalista faction of an ongoing Mexican Civil War.
Meanwhile the Hill Country Germans took the unusual step of politely asking permission to settle Comanche lands, Comanches still come down to celebrate a mostly unbroken truce every year in Fredericksburg.
Forty-Niners swarmed across Texas en route to California that year, few were molested by Comanches but they did bring cholera with them, wiped out about 10,000 Comanches, they never recouped those losses.
Comanche, means enemy, the name given to them by other tribes.
Yeah and it’s a well deserved name. As a kid I always thought the Apache were the worst but the more I read the more I realized that the Comanche made the Apache look like Sunday school teachers. 😁
The Comanches referred to themselves as “the people” [The Comanche /kəˈmæntʃi/ or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (Comanche: Nʉmʉnʉʉ; "the people"] And they quickly ran off the Apaches when they started to dominate the area that includes most of TX and a large area of NM. This area became known as Comancheriia.
After the Comanche chiefs were killed in the fort at San Antonio, the Comanches back at the camp had about 20 white captives there. They staked them out naked, including little children, and the squaws slowly tortured them to death. Cut open their bellies, cut off or burned off their hands and slowly tortured them over a span of a dozen hours.
After the Comanche chiefs were killed in the fort at San Antonio, the Comanches back at the camp had about 20 white captives there. They staked them out naked, including little children, and the squaws slowly tortured them to death. Cut open their bellies, cut off or burned off their hands and slowly tortured them over a span of a dozen hours.
So says Fehrenbach, he was born before his time, today he would be writing “graphic novels”.
Actually the Comanches did torture, of course. Indeed the sight of the brutally disfigured and abused Matilda Lockhart is what triggered the Council House Fight in the first place wherein all twelve (??) Comanche chiefs, including the one that had hosted Smithwick, died.
To the Comanches, the Texians had practiced unparalleled treachery, killing people who had entered trustingly under a flag of truce.
What Fehrenbach chooses to omit however is that subsequent to the fight, and the tortures, the Comanche Chief Isomania, working quietly behind the scenes through like minded residents of San Antonio, did arrange the exchange of several unharmed White captives for Comanche women and children held in Mission San Jose.
After the Comanche chiefs were killed in the fort at San Antonio, the Comanches back at the camp had about 20 white captives there. They staked them out naked, including little children, and the squaws slowly tortured them to death. Cut open their bellies, cut off or burned off their hands and slowly tortured them over a span of a dozen hours.
Well, that wasn't a very Christian thing for them to do.
After the Comanche chiefs were killed in the fort at San Antonio, the Comanches back at the camp had about 20 white captives there. They staked them out naked, including little children, and the squaws slowly tortured them to death. Cut open their bellies, cut off or burned off their hands and slowly tortured them over a span of a dozen hours.
So says Fehrenbach, he was born before his time, today he would be writing “graphic novels”.
Actually the Comanches did torture, of course. Indeed the sight of the brutally disfigured and abused Matilda Lockhart is what triggered the Council House Fight in the first place wherein all twelve (??) Comanche chiefs, including the one that had hosted Smithwick, died.
To the Comanches, the Texians had practiced unparalleled treachery, killing people who had entered trustingly under a flag of truce.
What Fehrenbach chooses to omit however is that subsequent to the fight, and the tortures, the Comanche Chief Isomania, working quietly behind the scenes through like minded residents of San Antonio, did arrange the exchange of several unharmed White captives for Comanche women and children held in Mission San Jose.
Dammit, I thought Fehrenbach was a scholar. Looks like his book needs to go into the trash. I did buy today The Comanche Empire by Hamailanen.
Dammit, I thought Fehrenbach was a scholar. Looks like his book needs to go into the trash. I did buy today The Comanche Empire by Hamailanen.
I believe Fehrenbach’s “Lone Star” is considered a definitive book on Texas history, been decades since I read it. He used to write newspaper columns, I seem to recall his politics were impeccable too.
His “Comanches: The Destruction of a People” is fast-paced and easy to read, but it borders on historical fiction. One of my favorite books for decades, until I began to look beyond it.
In Hamalainen you’ll read about Comanches who were astute businessmen and stock breeders, and the pressures on young Comanche men to accumulate wealth.
Easy to see how they could transition seamlessly into herding cattle as the buffalo dwindled. Indeed, in Central Texas those bands of Comanches were already driven to accept a reservation as early as the 1850’s when a major drought decimated the Buffalo herds.
Those reservation Comanches later removed to Oklahoma when their reserve was disbanded. It was during that Texas reservation period that Jacob John “Doc” Sturm was assigned to them as an agricultural advisor.
Twenty years later he was still with them in Oklahoma, where he also functioned as a Doctor. It was at his own request that he went out to bring in those Comanches still out see....
Subsequent to bringing in Quanah’s group, Sturm and the noted former Comanche war leader Mowray set out across Texas seeking scattered Comanche fugitives, women and children, and bringing them in.
IIRC later in life Sturm married an educated Creek woman and their home was renowned for their generosity, it is said that no one ever left there hungry.
They take a different view of things in Oklahoma, prob’ly on account of all the Indians, to the best of my knowledge Doc Sturm is still remembered fondly in Comanche memory today.
Similarly to some of the other comments I had always believed that it was the Apache that were the most brutal and most warlike. I mostly based that on Geronimo and what he was able to do with a small band of warriors and had assumed that the Comanche were the second string as far as warriors and warfare went.
Similarly to some of the other comments I had always believed that it was the Apache that were the most brutal and most warlike. I mostly based that on Geronimo and what he was able to do with a small band of warriors and had assumed that the Comanche were the second string as far as warriors and warfare went.
The Comanche were the greatest horse warriors of all time.
I’m in some rugged country with big peaks, clear creeks, cypress, maples, sycamore, Lacey Blue Oaks, pinion pines, madrone trees, and over 1000 springs. God’s abundance of game animals, so many exotics that don’t fall under Texas law that eat better than any whitetail and I kill them all year round. NO MOSQUITOES, ALWAYS BREEZE, and 68 degree nights on the hottest of Texas days. My Hollows look much like the Buffalo River in Arkansas.
I am Blessed, Thanks Be to God !
And I’ll fight harder than any Comanche to keep it !
Originally Posted by AcesNeights
Originally Posted by JohnnyLoco
If you had property where I do, you’d understand why the Comanche fought so hard.
I’m not sure where in Texas you are but even with the migratory buffalo herds and plethora of wild game in the pre-Civil War days it was unforgiving country. A lot of arid wasteland with not much nutritional value in the native forage that just didn’t support a lot of game. Other areas were obviously much better since Texas is a big state but it didn’t change the Comanche’s motivation for fighting.
The settlers lightly guarded cattle and horses made for easy pickings in the early days of the Republic and whatever possessions the whites had were valuable to the the Comanche.
Fighting and stealing was what the Comanches, like most tribes simply did, they were ruthless, thieving, grudge holding bastards that loved brutality all in their quest for wealth and dominance. The Comanches were pioneers amongst the natives for their unbelievable horsemanship and their understanding of animal husbandry. Their wealth was almost exclusively tied to the horse so capturing a herd of horses was their equivalent of winning the lottery. White man’s guns were useful in their quest for wealth and as trade goods. Mostly though the young men needed to steal horses, count coup and perform the other requirements for manhood and warrior status so they needed to fight and do battle in order for the tribe and the young men to grow and flourish.
The Comanches were less guarding “their land” than they were simply doing what they’d done for generations upon generations. The ease with which they could steal horses, cattle and slaves as well as gang rape the white women and brutally torture and murder made attacking whites an easy choice. They iron loot, guns, coffee, sugar, tobacco, ALCOHOL and other plunder was how tribes garnered power and prestige and “wealth”. The Comanches were nomadic with vast territory. The buffalo and game were “theirs” but they really were not fighting for “their land”….at least certainly not in the early years pre-Civil War. Their desires were more geared towards the accumulation of wealth and power, ie horses, guns, powder and lead.
I’m in some rugged country with big peaks, clear creeks, cypress, maples, sycamore, Lacey Blue Oaks, pinion pines, madrone trees, and over 1000 springs. God’s abundance of game animals, so many exotics that don’t fall under Texas law that eat better than any whitetail and I kill them all year round. NO MOSQUITOES, ALWAYS BREEZE, and 68 degree nights on the hottest of Texas days. My Hollows look much like the Buffalo River in Arkansas.
I am Blessed, Thanks Be to God !
And I’ll fight harder than any Comanche to keep it !
Originally Posted by AcesNeights
Originally Posted by JohnnyLoco
If you had property where I do, you’d understand why the Comanche fought so hard.
I’m not sure where in Texas you are but even with the migratory buffalo herds and plethora of wild game in the pre-Civil War days it was unforgiving country. A lot of arid wasteland with not much nutritional value in the native forage that just didn’t support a lot of game. Other areas were obviously much better since Texas is a big state but it didn’t change the Comanche’s motivation for fighting.
The settlers lightly guarded cattle and horses made for easy pickings in the early days of the Republic and whatever possessions the whites had were valuable to the the Comanche.
Fighting and stealing was what the Comanches, like most tribes simply did, they were ruthless, thieving, grudge holding bastards that loved brutality all in their quest for wealth and dominance. The Comanches were pioneers amongst the natives for their unbelievable horsemanship and their understanding of animal husbandry. Their wealth was almost exclusively tied to the horse so capturing a herd of horses was their equivalent of winning the lottery. White man’s guns were useful in their quest for wealth and as trade goods. Mostly though the young men needed to steal horses, count coup and perform the other requirements for manhood and warrior status so they needed to fight and do battle in order for the tribe and the young men to grow and flourish.
The Comanches were less guarding “their land” than they were simply doing what they’d done for generations upon generations. The ease with which they could steal horses, cattle and slaves as well as gang rape the white women and brutally torture and murder made attacking whites an easy choice. They iron loot, guns, coffee, sugar, tobacco, ALCOHOL and other plunder was how tribes garnered power and prestige and “wealth”. The Comanches were nomadic with vast territory. The buffalo and game were “theirs” but they really were not fighting for “their land”….at least certainly not in the early years pre-Civil War. Their desires were more geared towards the accumulation of wealth and power, ie horses, guns, powder and lead.
How do you suppose the Tonkawas cooked up the Comanches?
Stews? Roasts?
Maybe cook them whole, like a pig picking?
FWIW, I read in a book about different atrocities committed by Indians and whites that during the French and Indian war some Indians cooked up a young British soldier for their French allies who thought they were eating beef stew until it was revealed to them by the Indians that a little joke had been played on them.
How do you suppose the Tonkawas cooked up the Comanches?
Stews? Roasts?
Maybe cook them whole, like a pig picking?
Again, we turn to Noah Smithwick. He witnessed an incident at Webber’s Prairie.
The only [ceremony] I ever witnessed was in Webber's prairie, the occasion being the killing of a Comanche, one of a party that had been on a horse stealing trip down to Bastrop. They were hotly pursued, and , reasoning2…that the biggest must naturally be the best…they mounted a warrior on Manlove's big horse, which was part of the booty, and left him behind as rear guard, while the balance hurried the stolen horses away. The Tonkawas joined the pursuit and when the pursuers came in sight of the lone rear guardsman three of the most expert Tonks were sent to dispatch him. This they soon accomplished, his steed being a slow one. After killing and scalping him they refused to continue the chase, saying they must return home to celebrate the event, which they did by a feast and a scalp dance. Having fleeced off the flesh of the dead Comanche they borrowed a big wash kettle from Puss Webber, into which they put the Comanche meat, together with a lot of corn and potatoes…When the stew was sufficiently cooked to allow its being ladled out with their hands the whole tribe gathered round, dipping it up with their hands and eating it…. Having gorged themselves on the delectable feast they lay down and slept till night, when the entertainment was concluded with the scalp dance. Gotten up in…war paint and best breechclouts,3 the warriors gathered round in a ring, each one armed with some ear-torturing instrument, which they operated in unison with a drum made of dried deer skin stretched tightly over a hoop, at the same time keeping up a monotonous Ha, ah, ha, raising and lowering their bodies in time that would have pleased a French dancing master, every muscle seeming to twitch in harmony. Meanwhile…a squaw would present each in turn an arm or leg of the dead foe, which they would bite viciously, catching it their teeth and shaking it…. And high over all waved from the point of a lance the scalp, dressed and painted, held aloft by a patriotic squaw. The orgies were kept up till the performers were forced to desist from sheer exhaustion (Smithwick 179-181).
There is a reference in Josiah Gregg’s monumental "The Commerce Of The Prairie" dealing sith his travels on the Santa Fe Trail and Chihuahua Trail, to his demonstrating his Colt’s repeating pistol to an Comanche chief ( they were trading with his band) somewhere in the vicinity of the 100th Meridian after crossing into " Mexican” territory. This would have been on a return trip thru Oklahoma and not on the Santa Fe Trail. Gregg unholstered and showed the chief the gun then fired several shots in rapid succession. He mentioned the chief caught on to his demonstration and took his bow and shot just as many arrows in just as many seconds!
The Boy Captives. Johnny Loco mentioned it. The Smith brothers.
Or
Nine Years Among The Indians by Herman Lehmann
Herman and his brother were kidnapped by a band of renegade Apaches just n of Fredericksburg. He brother was rescued by troopers I believe from Ft. Mc Kavett. Herman escaped to the Comanches.
I just finished this one a few weeks ago. Very good read. He references the Tonkawas roasting the leg of a comanche over a fire. So they might've had a few "recipes".
270jrk I read NYATI recently as well. Interesting. I wish we could know more about how each tribe differed form one another. The Tonkawas helped whites kill as many Comanche as possible and seem to be perhaps the only tribe- or people- the Comanche wanted no part of.
Herman was captured by Apaches then ended up killing their medicine man and escaping. He was young and spent months isolated and more or less thriving. Was captured by Comanches but accepted after they believed he killed the Apache who they never trusted. I recall him saying the Apaches were somber people without humor but Comanches enjoyed a good laugh. Scary I suppose as the laugh might come at your expense in the form of some inflicted pain.
Haha, yeah interesting humor. Most of my reading has been on the Apaches, as I'm from southeastern Arizona. Herman's account was a good segue into the Comanche history.
Lehmann was asked onetime after he had been repatriated with his family, who was the most bloodthirsty comanche he had ever met, he was quick to answer, Adolph Korn! Another German boy who had been captured and adopted by the Comanche. When he first met Korn, who lived with another band, he said they both conversed in German because the Comanche had learned a bunch of English. And they didn’t want them to know what they were talking about. 😉
Lehmann was asked onetime after he had been repatriated with his family, who was the most bloodthirsty comanche he had ever met, he was quick to answer, Adolph Korn! Another German boy who had been captured and adopted by the Comanche. When he first met Korn, who lived with another band, he said they both conversed in German because the Comanche had learned a bunch of English. And they didn’t want them to know what they were talking about. 😉
The Captured about how fast boy captives assimilated was written by Korns great niece and was a really good book
IIRC Herman Lehman never did adjust completely back to White society.
In his account, after leaving the Apaches and living up on the Panhandle he grows desperate from isolation and the lack of human contact. No Indian friends, alienated from White people.
So much so he just walks in out of the dark on a small Comanche camp one night, the Comanches initially scatter in alarm. By this late date the Comanches were fugitives in their own home range, the frontier was closing in. The big surprise being that no one killed him right off.
Recovering from their surprise, IIRC one of the Comanches spoke Apache and they piece together his story.
Here’s another surprising part in light of pop history; Comanche warmth.
Taking an interest in the desolate young man, the Comanche leader says “You’d better come with us”.
Ya know, I who have never wrote anything have castigated the popular Texas Historian Fehrenbach here, or more exactly his “Comanches, the Destruction of a People” book.
But I gotta say he related the legend of Britton Johnson, AKA “Niqqer Britt” very well.
October 1864, a few hundred Kiowa and Comanche launch a raid on the Texas Frontier settlement of Elm Creek, killing settlers and abducting several children.
Tho technically a slave, it often happened that “slaves” were often blood kin or at least life-long associates of their masters. No mention of consanguinity is made in Britton’s case but he had a wife and kids and freely bore arms.
In the aftermath of the raid the survivors pool their resources, purchase a variety of goods of value to the Comanches, and Britton Johnson rides out alone into Comancheria looking to recover the children.
Ya know, I who have never wrote anything have castigated the popular Texas Historian Fehrenbach here, or more exactly his “Comanches, the Destruction of a People” book.
But I gotta say he related the legend of Britton Johnson, AKA “Niqqer Britt” very well.
October 1864, a few hundred Kiowa and Comanche launch a raid on the Texas Frontier settlement of Elm Creek, killing settlers and abducting several children.
Tho technically a slave, it often happened that “slaves” were often blood kin or at least life-long associates of their masters. No mention of consanguinity is made in Britton’s case but he had a wife and kids and freely bore arms.
In the aftermath of the raid the survivors pool their resources, purchase a variety of goods of value to the Comanches, and Britton Johnson rides out alone into Comancheria looking to recover the children.
I think the Williams in this are Gean Williams ancestors.
Ya know, I who have never wrote anything have castigated the popular Texas Historian Fehrenbach here, or more exactly his “Comanches, the Destruction of a People” book.
But I gotta say he related the legend of Britton Johnson, AKA “Niqqer Britt” very well.
October 1864, a few hundred Kiowa and Comanche launch a raid on the Texas Frontier settlement of Elm Creek, killing settlers and abducting several children.
Tho technically a slave, it often happened that “slaves” were often blood kin or at least life-long associates of their masters. No mention of consanguinity is made in Britton’s case but he had a wife and kids and freely bore arms.
In the aftermath of the raid the survivors pool their resources, purchase a variety of goods of value to the Comanches, and Britton Johnson rides out alone into Comancheria looking to recover the children.
I think the Williams in this are Gean Williams ancestors.
Yes, Gene used to talk about this here. Said that he helped to find several of the locations for historical markers and such. His grandmother was Comanche
They had genetic diversity, probably more than any other tribe. If you were a 19 year old Spanish girl, captured by the Comanche, bad deal. You would be gang raped night after night, and back at the main camp the squaws might burn your nose off. Or cut off one of your ears. You had no rights.
But a captured 5 year old girl or boy was a different matter. Many times Comanche would adopt them into the tribe. The girl would be engaged to a warrior, the boy would become a warrior. These adopted captives had full rights as a Comanche citizen.
Over the centuries the Comanche adopted thousands of Apache, Spanish, and Anglo American children. In many Indian tribes only native born Indians could be full fledged members of the tribe.
The Comanche had massive genetic diversity.
The mother of Chief Quanah Parker was a white girl.
I’m trying to load an online copy of Josiah Gregg’s “Commerce of the Prairies”, an account of his travels along the Santa Fe Trail in the 1830’s.
One return trip his guide was a Comanche married into a New Mexico Mexican community. By the 1830’s it was estimated that one third of Comanches had a Spanish-speaking parent. Lots of child abductions to be sure, but not always.
Same time period, individual Comanches have interactions with individual Tejano San Antonio residents, no surprise as at any given time many Mexican ox-carts were crawling across the plains hauling freight.
It was actually Mexican cart men who rescued Oliver Loving of Goodnight/Loving fame when they found him west of the Pecos with that infected Comanche arrow wound.
In the same way Comanche were supposed to be ineffably hostile to Apaches, yet you have Comanches who can speak Apache, and Quanah Parker himself learns about peyote from camping around Mescalero Apaches.
As far as genetic diversity I believe the Southeastern Tribes were way up there too. Osceola himsel was reportedly part Indian, part Black and part White, not unusual in that part of the world.
When it comes to our Frontier history we tend to draw everything in absolutes, forgetting there were a whole bunch of individuals involved.
Yeah...us old folks remember the old folks back then. These injuns didn't bring turkeys and maidens to people for Thanksgiving. Savage apologists will always be around.
There was a show on the History channel about the Comanche. This was years ago when they actually did shows about history, rather than 4 straight hours in a pawn shop.
This was a 2 hour show and it featured Fehrenbach, had him on for 15 or 20 minutes, he was an interesting interview. I remember he talked about the "last stand" up in a canyon in N. Texas or maybe Colorado, in the 1870s, hundreds of Comanche were hiding in there, the Army came in there and annihilated hundreds of horses in the Comanche herd, they figured "No horse, no Comanche."
There was a show on the History channel about the Comanche. This was years ago when they actually did shows about history, rather than 4 straight hours in a pawn shop.
This was a 2 hour show and it featured Fehrenbach, had him on for 15 or 20 minutes, he was an interesting interview. I remember he talked about the "last stand" up in a canyon in N. Texas or maybe Colorado, in the 1870s, hundreds of Comanche were hiding in there, the Army came in there and annihilated hundreds of horses in the Comanche herd, they figured "No horse, no Comanche."
They were talking about Palo Duro Canyon, in the TX Panhandle Region. And Quanah Parker’s Band of Comanches. it’s just south of Amarillo.
There was a show on the History channel about the Comanche. This was years ago when they actually did shows about history, rather than 4 straight hours in a pawn shop.
This was a 2 hour show and it featured Fehrenbach, had him on for 15 or 20 minutes, he was an interesting interview. I remember he talked about the "last stand" up in a canyon in N. Texas or maybe Colorado, in the 1870s, hundreds of Comanche were hiding in there, the Army came in there and annihilated hundreds of horses in the Comanche herd, they figured "No horse, no Comanche."
They were talking about Palo Duro Canyon, in the TX Panhandle Region. And Quanah Parker’s Band of Comanches. it’s just south of Amarillo.
Everything for them revolved around the horse, they would even eat them when they had to.
There was a show on the History channel about the Comanche. This was years ago when they actually did shows about history, rather than 4 straight hours in a pawn shop.
This was a 2 hour show and it featured Fehrenbach, had him on for 15 or 20 minutes, he was an interesting interview. I remember he talked about the "last stand" up in a canyon in N. Texas or maybe Colorado, in the 1870s, hundreds of Comanche were hiding in there, the Army came in there and annihilated hundreds of horses in the Comanche herd, they figured "No horse, no Comanche."
They were talking about Palo Duro Canyon, in the TX Panhandle Region. And Quanah Parker’s Band of Comanches. it’s just south of Amarillo.
Everything for them revolved around the horse, they would even eat them when they had to.
Even? That's how "dogs" came to be. What other creature would follow another animal around for scraps, waiting to be eaton?
There was a show on the History channel about the Comanche. This was years ago when they actually did shows about history, rather than 4 straight hours in a pawn shop.
This was a 2 hour show and it featured Fehrenbach, had him on for 15 or 20 minutes, he was an interesting interview. I remember he talked about the "last stand" up in a canyon in N. Texas or maybe Colorado, in the 1870s, hundreds of Comanche were hiding in there, the Army came in there and annihilated hundreds of horses in the Comanche herd, they figured "No horse, no Comanche."
They were talking about Palo Duro Canyon, in the TX Panhandle Region. And Quanah Parker’s Band of Comanches. it’s just south of Amarillo.
Everything for them revolved around the horse, they would even eat them when they had to.
I wonder how they treated their horses generally, cruelly, kindly?
Birdy, Gregg was also what I’d call one of us. A gun nut!!! You’ll find out when you read it.
Also if you can find Lt. James W Abert’s journal of his topographical expedition of the Canadian river 1845, its a must!!! Comanches would not bother them whole they rode across the present Texas Panhandle. They asked a band of Kiowa why the Comanches were avoiding them and they said their (Abert’s party) medicine was too great!
There was a show on the History channel about the Comanche. This was years ago when they actually did shows about history, rather than 4 straight hours in a pawn shop.
This was a 2 hour show and it featured Fehrenbach, had him on for 15 or 20 minutes, he was an interesting interview. I remember he talked about the "last stand" up in a canyon in N. Texas or maybe Colorado, in the 1870s, hundreds of Comanche were hiding in there, the Army came in there and annihilated hundreds of horses in the Comanche herd, they figured "No horse, no Comanche."
They were talking about Palo Duro Canyon, in the TX Panhandle Region. And Quanah Parker’s Band of Comanches. it’s just south of Amarillo.
Everything for them revolved around the horse, they would even eat them when they had to.
Even? That's how "dogs" came to be. What other creature would follow another animal around for scraps, waiting to be eaton?
Hell Pat I'm sure I've eaten dog and cat when I've bought street tamales, it's all good when you're hungry.
Ranald MacKenzie was the real deal. A major factor in his breaking the Comanche’s will to fight was the capture of their women and children. It worked for John Moore when he hit the Comanches, 1840, on the Colorado. Worked for Custer 1868 (??) on the Washita, and Custer was probably intending to take captive at the Little Bighorn. It sure lessened the risk of counterattack on the way home.
Didn't think of Brackettville? thought maybe Del Rio, live and learn. This is the best thread i can remember on the fire. Thank you all, keep it going. Rio7
There was a show on the History channel about the Comanche. This was years ago when they actually did shows about history, rather than 4 straight hours in a pawn shop.
This was a 2 hour show and it featured Fehrenbach, had him on for 15 or 20 minutes, he was an interesting interview. I remember he talked about the "last stand" up in a canyon in N. Texas or maybe Colorado, in the 1870s, hundreds of Comanche were hiding in there, the Army came in there and annihilated hundreds of horses in the Comanche herd, they figured "No horse, no Comanche."
They were talking about Palo Duro Canyon, in the TX Panhandle Region. And Quanah Parker’s Band of Comanches. it’s just south of Amarillo.
Everything for them revolved around the horse, they would even eat them when they had to.
Even? That's how "dogs" came to be. What other creature would follow another animal around for scraps, waiting to be eaton?
Hell Pat I'm sure I've eaten dog and cat when I've bought street tamales, it's all good when you're hungry.
They still eat donkeys in Mexico, “burrito” ain’t always a metaphor.
Didn't think of Brackettville? thought maybe Del Rio, live and learn. This is the best thread i can remember on the fire. Thank you all, keep it going. Rio7
Fort Clark, Brackettville, also Fort Duncan at Eagle Pass, right on the river.
Birdy, Gregg was also what I’d call one of us. A gun nut!!! You’ll find out when you read it.
Also if you can find Lt. James W Abert’s journal of his topographical expedition of the Canadian river 1845, its a must!!! Comanches would not bother them whole they rode across the present Texas Panhandle. They asked a band of Kiowa why the Comanches were avoiding them and they said their (Abert’s party) medicine was too great!
The Comanches were RIGHT, James Abert was a man of DESTINY 🙂
Ranald MacKenzie was the real deal. A major factor in his breaking the Comanche’s will to fight was the capture of their women and children. It worked for John Moore when he hit the Comanches, 1840, on the Colorado. Worked for Custer 1868 (??) on the Washita, and Custer was probably intending to take captive at the Little Bighorn. It sure lessened the risk of counterattack on the way home.
Yep. MacKenzie was a bad ass.
I didn’t realize he was stationed at Fort Concho, with the Buffalo Soldiers, at the time of the Red River War & The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon. That would be a brutal horseback ride.
Birdy, Gregg was also what I’d call one of us. A gun nut!!! You’ll find out when you read it.
Also if you can find Lt. James W Abert’s journal of his topographical expedition of the Canadian river 1845, its a must!!! Comanches would not bother them whole they rode across the present Texas Panhandle. They asked a band of Kiowa why the Comanches were avoiding them and they said their (Abert’s party) medicine was too great!
The Comanches were RIGHT, James Abert was a man of DESTINY 🙂
There was a show on the History channel about the Comanche. This was years ago when they actually did shows about history, rather than 4 straight hours in a pawn shop.
This was a 2 hour show and it featured Fehrenbach, had him on for 15 or 20 minutes, he was an interesting interview. I remember he talked about the "last stand" up in a canyon in N. Texas or maybe Colorado, in the 1870s, hundreds of Comanche were hiding in there, the Army came in there and annihilated hundreds of horses in the Comanche herd, they figured "No horse, no Comanche."
They were talking about Palo Duro Canyon, in the TX Panhandle Region. And Quanah Parker’s Band of Comanches. it’s just south of Amarillo.
Everything for them revolved around the horse, they would even eat them when they had to.
Even? That's how "dogs" came to be. What other creature would follow another animal around for scraps, waiting to be eaton?
Hell Pat I'm sure I've eaten dog and cat when I've bought street tamales, it's all good when you're hungry.
No doubt. It just gets tiring, listening to people try to change history.
Didn't think of Brackettville? thought maybe Del Rio, live and learn. This is the best thread i can remember on the fire. Thank you all, keep it going. Rio7
I concur 110%. Texas history is such a broad subject, and the shame of it is that so many of us know little more about it than the Alamo, San Jacinto, and Sam Houston's opposition to secession. On that note, I'll just sit quietly and try to absorb some of this.
Didn't think of Brackettville? thought maybe Del Rio, live and learn. This is the best thread i can remember on the fire. Thank you all, keep it going. Rio7
I concur 110%. Texas history is such a broad subject, and the shame of it is that so many of us know little more about it than the Alamo, San Jacinto, and Sam Houston's opposition to secession. On that note, I'll just sit quietly and try to absorb some of this.
Birdy, Gregg was also what I’d call one of us. A gun nut!!! You’ll find out when you read it.
Also if you can find Lt. James W Abert’s journal of his topographical expedition of the Canadian river 1845, its a must!!! Comanches would not bother them whole they rode across the present Texas Panhandle. They asked a band of Kiowa why the Comanches were avoiding them and they said their (Abert’s party) medicine was too great!
The Comanches were RIGHT, James Abert was a man of DESTINY 🙂
I did dug up my copy of RIP Ford’s Texas, the collected memoirs of that Ranger Captain. Here quoted on Comanches and horses....
Horse meat, with them, is preferred to any other. The neck immediately beneath the mane is considered a rare delicacy. The meat has a coarse fiber, is glutinous, smells badly, and has a peculiar sweetish taste, which remains in the mouth for nearly a day.
The writer never liked it, and will say so every time he has the chance. The liver does a little better. Never commit the indiscretion of applying a piece to your nose. A sudden rebellion of the stomach often follows such an act of imprudence.
Mule meat resembles beef in flavor, as it was said. To the Comanche a fat mule makes very palatable eating.
A party of warriors dressed in their trappings - embellished shields, fancy moccasins, long pigtails, be decked with silver shoulder belts worked with beads and adorned with shells, fine leggings, ornamented cases for bows and arrows - mounted upon spirited horses, singing a war song, and sweeping over a prairie is a beautiful spectacle to a man with plenty of brave fellows to back him.
Their motions are easy and graceful. They sit a horse admirably, and manage one with a master hand. Charge them and they will retreat from you with double your numbers. But beware when pursuing them, keep your men together, well in hand, with at least half their arms loaded, else you will find when it is too late, the flying Comanches will turn upon you and charge you to the very teeth.
A Comanche can draw a bow when on horseback, standing or running, with remarkable strength and accuracy. They have been known to kill horses running at full speed over 100 yards away....
Never ride on a bowman’s left, if you do, 10 to one that he will pop an arrow through you. When mounted an Indian cannot use his bow against an object behind and to his right.
The bow is placed horizontally in shooting, a number of arrows are held in the left hand, the bow operates as a rest to the arrows. The distance - the curve the missile has to describe in reaching the object - is determined by the eye without taking aim.
Arrows are sped after each other in rapid succession. At the distance of 60 yards and over, arrows can be dodged, if but one Indian shoots at you but one time.
Under 40 yards the six shooter has little advantage over the bow. At long distances the angle of elevation is considerable. It requires a quick eye to see the arrow and judge the whereabouts of its descent, a good dodger to move out of the way, and a good rider withal to keep in the saddle.
A man is required to keep both eyes engaged in an Indian fight.
Then there is: The Comanches by Wallace and Hoebel. I don't think it has been mentioned.
And Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Ft. Sill
The Comanches and Kiowa were not unlike some of the Woodland Indians in that war was by Gawd war and fought to vanquish the enemy if possible. That meant kill all the men and most of the young.....rape and enslave the women. Kill anything not useful to the People. They just didn't see the need for feel good programs to re-educate their adversaries. Whites pretty much employed the same tactics to survive.
I just finished this one a few weeks ago. Very good read. He references the Tonkawas roasting the leg of a comanche over a fire. So they might've had a few "recipes".
I remember reading somewhere that once they were all on the Reservations in OK, The Comanches ended the few remaining Tonkawas. From the face of the earth. 😬
I just finished this one a few weeks ago. Very good read. He references the Tonkawas roasting the leg of a comanche over a fire. So they might've had a few "recipes".
I remember reading somewhere that once they were all on the Reservations in OK, The Comanches ended the few remaining Tonkawas. From the face of the earth. 😬
The “Trail of Tears” map under the history tab on the Tonkawa tribe website has them leaving the Brazos Reserve in Texas in 1859 when Texas closed down that reserve and the Tonkawas, Waco’s, Anadarkos, Caddos and Comanches in it.
Interesting to relate, the Penateka Comanches on the reserve were specifically forbidden to join their fellow reserve residents in fighting other Comanches.
Fort Griffin opens in 1867 several Tonkawas moved near the new Fort Griffin in Texas to serve as Army Scouts, hence their participation in the Red River War.
At this point I’ll insert a link to a sort of bizarre kid’s page from the Fort Griffin website about a Tonkawa Scout Johnson celebrating killing bad Comanches.
Earlier, someone mentioned Wilbarger’s "Indian Depredations In Texas".
Many of those accounts happened within a 15 mile circle of my old digs. Took Birdy on a little impromptu tour of the area once. Author Wilbarger’s Uncle, Josiah, who’s story is a legend here and described in the book 1831 land grant is just across a hayfield from my old front door maybe 1/2 a mile.
guess its as good a time as any to make my first post on here.
as i sit here typing this catching a break from this oppresive heat and the frustration of trying to weld this cat roller frame up, im staring at a rather unimpressive set of 2 knobs across a pasture..
i wouldnt have wanted to make a stand against the horse people here. believe id have made for a creek bottom
I did dug up my copy of RIP Ford’s Texas, the collected memoirs of that Ranger Captain. Here quoted on Comanches and horses....
Horse meat, with them, is preferred to any other. The neck immediately beneath the mane is considered a rare delicacy. The meat has a coarse fiber, is glutinous, smells badly, and has a peculiar sweetish taste, which remains in the mouth for nearly a day.
The writer never liked it, and will say so every time he has the chance. The liver does a little better. Never commit the indiscretion of applying a piece to your nose. A sudden rebellion of the stomach often follows such an act of imprudence.
Mule meat resembles beef in flavor, as it was said. To the Comanche a fat mule makes very palatable eating.
Neal,
I found one of the 1970 reprints with color plates by Abert in of all places on a card table at the big house up on the Colorado place. I asked my now late aunt where she got it. She stated that an interior decorator from Denver was hired to outfit the big house and she came up with it from somewhere. So my aunt asked me why did I want it? I said hell yeah!!! A great read!!
I did dug up my copy of RIP Ford’s Texas, the collected memoirs of that Ranger Captain. Here quoted on Comanches and horses....
Horse meat, with them, is preferred to any other. The neck immediately beneath the mane is considered a rare delicacy. The meat has a coarse fiber, is glutinous, smells badly, and has a peculiar sweetish taste, which remains in the mouth for nearly a day.
The writer never liked it, and will say so every time he has the chance. The liver does a little better. Never commit the indiscretion of applying a piece to your nose. A sudden rebellion of the stomach often follows such an act of imprudence.
Mule meat resembles beef in flavor, as it was said. To the Comanche a fat mule makes very palatable eating.
Neal,
I found one of the 1970 reprints with color plates by Abert in of all places on a card table at the big house up on the Colorado place. I asked my now late aunt where she got it. She stated that an interior decorator from Denver was hired to outfit the big house and she came up with it from somewhere. So my aunt asked me why did I want it? I said hell yeah!!! A great read!!
I just finished this one a few weeks ago. Very good read. He references the Tonkawas roasting the leg of a comanche over a fire. So they might've had a few "recipes".
I remember reading somewhere that once they were all on the Reservations in OK, The Comanches ended the few remaining Tonkawas. From the face of the earth. 😬
Tonkawa's have a large group at Red Earth gathering in OKC, at the fair grounds every summer, tribes from all over the U.S. and Canada show up for Red Earth, it's big deal, lasts about a week, very interesting and colorful. Rio7
Tonkawa's have a large group at Red Earth gathering in OKC, at the fair grounds every summer, tribes from all over the U.S. and Canada show up for Red Earth, it's big deal, lasts about a week, very interesting and colorful. Rio7
1990 I rode a 750 Ninja motorcycle from College Station to Oklahoma City and back to go and see a day of the Red Earth Festival. I set out at night under the Comanche moon.
As I recall it was a LFW (long way).
The Tonkawas prob’ly get tired of hearing the jokes at their fry bread stand.
Luckily they are all dead and I own some of their life sustaining property
Couple years ago they think they found some karankawa descendants on the coast just south of matamoras. Some little village that makes karankawa style stuff and speaks what they think is karankawa
guess its as good a time as any to make my first post on here.
as i sit here typing this catching a break from this oppresive heat and the frustration of trying to weld this cat roller frame up, im staring at a rather unimpressive set of 2 knobs across a pasture..
i wouldnt have wanted to make a stand against the horse people here. believe id have made for a creek bottom
The party out behind the horse barns under the oaks at night, makes you think you have stepped back in time, at least 100 years, watch your top knot. Rio7
guess its as good a time as any to make my first post on here.
as i sit here typing this catching a break from this oppresive heat and the frustration of trying to weld this cat roller frame up, im staring at a rather unimpressive set of 2 knobs across a pasture..
i wouldnt have wanted to make a stand against the horse people here. believe id have made for a creek bottom
That was 30 miles north of present day Ft. Worth. In 1837 that was way up in Comanche land. I wonder if those Rangers had six shooters.
Doubt it seriously.
And amazingly enough you might be surprised just how much traffic there was in That area in 1837. For that matter even 1737. Big land? Yes. But There was more going on here than one realizes.
Holy smoke! Smithwick’s memoirs are worthy of their own thread.
1837-38 he’s actually living with a Penateka Comanche band as a sort of liaison for the new Republic. Accompanying them occasionally into Bastrop to shop.
He’s living with a prominent Chief and Medicine man he calls “Muguara”. In 1838 he accompanies five prominent Comanches including Muguara to go visit then-President Houston for a treaty.
He returns to Weber’s Prairie (south of Bastrop) and the following year takes part in Ranger Captain John L. Moore’s failed winter assault on a big Comanche camp on the San Saba.
I don’t recall Smithwick mentions the name but this was the camp of one “Mukwooru”. Mukwooru is gonna die in the 1840 Council House Fight.
Mukwooru had likewise travelled meet Houston with a contingent of prominent Comanches in 1838 for a treaty negotiation. Dollars to donuts Muguara and Mookwooru were the same guy.
Mookwooru had two prominent nephews, Yellow Wolf and Buffalo Hump. Yellow Wolf would go on to be Jack Hays’ principal opponent in those two opening revolver engagements with Comanches along the Guadalupe River in 1844.
Buffalo Hump would loom prominent in Texas history when he led the 1,000 man 1840 Great Comanche Raid in reprisal for the Council House Fight.
Smithwick doesn’t mention him by name, but Buffalo Hump was in that 1838 delegation that met with Houston. Which means that him and Smithwick woulda been on at least speaking terms. Possibly Smithwick was familiar with Yellow Wolf too.
While I’m dropping names, I’m gonna point out that the Lipan Apaches Castro and his son Flacco, who guided both the 1839 and 1840 Moore expeditions against the Comanche and who later prominently fought alongside Jack Hays rangers, in their free time would hang around Smithwick’s forge/gunshop at Weber’s Prairie, gifting Smithwick with an infant-sized beaded pair of moccasins when Smithwick’s wife had a baby.
Birdy, Webber’s Prairie is west northwest of Bastrop. 🤣Was trying to remember the fight the ranging company was in, Smithwick was there. They chased Comanches waaaaaaaaaaY up north. Smithwick was in the group that turned back way up on the Brazos and returned to Webber’s Prairie. The other group went on. I want to say they mY have been under the command of John R. Moore. They went way up almost to the area of present Wichita Falls. They made. Stand in a pile of rocks and brush. I seem to remember they may have set the brush on fire to make good an escape from the outnumbering Comanches.
Both ranging companies were really hurting for supplies.
Smithwick married one of Nancy "Widow” Blakey’s daughters. ( or he may have married the widow. I can’t remember now) The Blakey place is where they Hobby Lobby, Lowes, and Academy is on the west side of Bastrop now. Someone bought and moved the remnants of the old cabin. Her husband was killed at the Battle of Brushy Creek.
Did I take you up there to the battle site when you came by here?? Can’t remember….. It’s right on SH 95 just south of Taylor.
I did take you by the Coleman place where they had the fight that started this affair and up the Manor hill cemetery which was a rock throw from where Smithwick lived.
That was 30 miles north of present day Ft. Worth. In 1837 that was way up in Comanche land. I wonder if those Rangers had six shooters.
Im gonna recommend Steven Moore’s series of books called “Savage Frontier”, exhaustively researched. I haven’t checked just now but I bet the fight you mentioned is in there.
Moore quotes the price of a Paterson revolver when it first appears in Texas as $400, an exorbitant sum at that time. Jack Hays was a rich kid, practically a stepson of Andrew Jackson, so he could probably afford a brace but even he doesn’t have enough to confront Comanches with them until 1844, and even then only fifteen rangers.
Moore gives two uses of Paterson colts around San Antonio in 1840, the earliest date he mentions. One was in the hands of a presumably wealthy Tejano leading a party going against Isomania’s Comanches in the approximate area of today’s Hondo TX (Fehrenbach writes Tejanos out of the script)
The other was at the Council House Fight. An officer in the Texian Army pulls out his Paterson to shoot a Comanche, but ends up in a desperate hand to hand struggle when the Patterson won’t function.
What had happened is, being new to the revolver, he had driven the barrel wedge in so tight that it locked up the revolver.
Birdy, I believe that Hays got to pick Patersons from the ones that had been purchased (well maybe not paid for) by the Texas Govt for the Navy. Navy didn't want them. Hayes didn’t want the carbines but they did get some of the pistols.
It was Lysander Wells who had the paterson issue at the council house. I have heard another account which stated the barrel wedge had fallen out and the warrior grabbed the pistol and the barrel came off in his hand!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. The warrior ran off with his prize! 🤣
Birdy, Webber’s Prairie is west northwest of Bastrop.
Damn, I drove through there on purpose years ago, I coulda sworn I was going east on 290 and turned right, maybe I was heading west.
As I recall Webber was a guy from Connecticut who had got a slave woman pregnant. So his child could be born free Webber actually bought her and moved with her as his wife to Texas where such things were more tolerated.
IIRC Smithwick spoke highly of them and their charity, angrily railing against the arrival of “the better sort”, who moved in “when all danger had passed”, compelling the Webers to pull up stakes and move to Mexico.
They were lost to history when they went to Mexico. Remember the dance? Puss Webber would stand outside out of the way on the porch while the white folks danced. Remember a “new" lady appeared at the dance and was all the rage among the young men??? Puss Webber was livid!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣 When some of the women asked her what was the issue she had with the young lady she told them thT she was mKing a spectical of herself to all those young men! She went on to say “she is as black as I am!"
Geeze! Now I gotta find the name of that Tejano packing a Colt against Comanches in 1840.
He could be the ONE, the first guy to pack a Colt against Comanches
Maybe if I can find a guy who brung a pepperbox earlier than that, he can get partial credit.
LOL! I know that some of the rangers did get some of the Navy’s Patersons. Hays may have had his own. Like you said, he could have afforded it!
You will discover that Gregg on one of his last trips to Santa Fe has purchased FOUR Paterson revolving pistos and two of the carbines to split between himself and his brother. On the return to St. Louis he doesn’t again mention the Patersons ( Im sure he sold them in Santa Fe for beaucoup money!). But he does have a Cochran turret rifle!!
The party out behind the horse barns under the oaks at night, makes you think you have stepped back in time, at least 100 years, watch your top knot. Rio7
Some years back I was with some students and their parents doing a 24 hour project right on the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass. Early hours of the morning, pitch dark, quiet, the sound of the river flowing, a rooster crowing on the Mexican side.
For all you could tell we coulda been surrounded by a sea of prairie 😎
The kids of the people who dealt with Texas indians didn't have anything good to say about them.
Sorry. I'm gonna go with that.
You’re just profiling ‘cause you’re a Cop
OK, so they did pin old Grandma Parker to the ground with a lance at Parker’s Fort before gang-raping her.
I mean sure, they also bashed the Hibbon’s infant’s brains out against a tree in front of Mrs Hibbons where Austin now stands and sure, Fehrenbach tells us they horribly tortured to death a bunch of White women and kids in their camps after the Council House Fight which was likely true,
and sure they did capture that poor guy during the Great Comanche Raid and made him walk on the soles of his skinned feet before killing him, all the while getting him to call out to his companion hiding not far off to turn himself in (didn't work)
But they did leave that wealthy young wife captured on that same raid relatively unhurt except for sunburn, tied to a tree naked except for her whalebone corset.
True, they might have MEANT to kill her, they did shoot arrows into her corset, they were still stuck to it like it was a pincushion when she was rescued.
But seriously, was a guy like Noah Smithwick just ignoring that stuff when he lived among them? What about Sam Houston, former resident among the Cherokees?
The kids of the people who dealt with Texas indians didn't have anything good to say about them.
Sorry. I'm gonna go with that.
You mean they weren't mystic sages of the plains and forests, peacefully communing with nature and each other in perfect harmony until despicable white people showed up and stole their land?
Comanche women were in charge of torture, dreaming up newer, more gruesome ways to slowly kill captives. They weren't Christians, but Herman Lehman (?) felt they were even more pious and devout in their religious life. Indian brutality was a shade different than industrialized, white genocide. Never mind European infectious diseases. Supposedly Comanches have adapted better to the new order than all other tribes.
Yes the squaws were in charge of torture. When a raiding party brought a captive 18 year old white girl back to camp, the captive had no rights. She was a slave and the squaws made her do the nastiest menial jobs around the camp. She also was a sex slave and any warrior could bang her, any time he felt like it.
A squaw might get jealous because her husband was spending more time with the captive white girl, than with her, and the next morning the squaws held the captive girl down and sliced off one ear. Or staked her down and burned her nose off with hot coals. Then, she was back up on her feet, scraping buffalo hides and carrying firewood all day.
It was a fate worse than death, to be an adult captured by the Comanche.
Winter of 1839 Ranging Company Captain John Moore led an expedition against the Comanches and hit them on the San Saba River.
Moore disregarded the advice of his Lipan Apache scouts and attacked the sleeping camp on foot, leaving a few guards with their horses. The surprised Comanches recovered quickly, almost all escaped with light casualties, and stole the expedition’s horses, it was a long walk home.
Still, the attack prompted the Comanches to put out inquiries for a meeting in San Antonio. Unlike the Mexicans, Texians commonly shot back, were increasing in number and taking the initiative, carrying the war to the Comanches.
A thing that really bothered Americans back then was the thought of White women and kids in the hands of the savages, so the deal was peace might be made IF the Comanches brought in their captives, a thing difficult for any Comanche leader to enforce.
In the actual event, March of 1840, they only brought in two, a Mexican boy who quickly escaped back to the Comanches and the horribly disfigured and abused 15 or 16yo Matilda Lockhart, captured two years earlier.
The enraged Texians then informed the Comanche chiefs they would be held prisoners until all the captives were freed. All hell broke loose, this was the Council House Fight...
guess its as good a time as any to make my first post on here.
as i sit here typing this catching a break from this oppresive heat and the frustration of trying to weld this cat roller frame up, im staring at a rather unimpressive set of 2 knobs across a pasture..
i wouldnt have wanted to make a stand against the horse people here. believe id have made for a creek bottom
That was 30 miles north of present day Ft. Worth. In 1837 that was way up in Comanche land. I wonder if those Rangers had six shooters.
Steven L. Moore, Savage Frontier Volume I 1835 -1837 devote seven pages to this fight, calling it the Stone Houses Fight.
He gives as a partial cause the killing and scalping of a Kichai Indian by one Felix McCluskey (Smithwick, mentions this guy as getting many of his companions killed.) The Kichai and Toweash mentioned here were subsets of the Wichita’s, by this time there were numerous Indian groups in Texas
That particular Kichai was guiding a party of Cherokees bringing powder and lead to the Comanches in return for horses.
From the Captain of the Rangers....
I fell in with a large body of Indians... I first supposed them to be Keechis, but was afterwards informed that they were Toweash, Waco’s, and a few Keechis and Caddos. I got this information from the Shawnees and Delawares.
I judged the Indians to be about one hundred and fifty strong. About fifty or sixty of them were armed with rifles and the balance had bows and arrows.
The 19 Rangers fall back to a deep ravine, the Indians demand that McCluskey be handed over, the shooting conmences when this was refused.
Early on, one of the Indian leaders tries the old ride m-along-line-to-get-them-to-empty-their-rifles trick and is shot and killed for his trouble.
The Rangers try a similar ploy, hat on a stick perforated by as many as a half-dozen rifle balls immediately after which they would raise to fire. At this point four Rangers dead, one fatally wounded Ranger fires three more times, dies in the process of loading a fourth time.
Then the Indians set fire to the ravine, the rangers choose to make a break for it in the direction where the Indian riflemen were rather than the mounted bow and arrow guys on account of the lower rate of fire of rifles.
Their horses won’t run through the fire so they have to charge on foot, six more rangers shot down, the remaining nine, including McCloskey, make their escape but it’s a long walk home.
IIRC Smithwick later states that McCluskey was killed in a brawl.
The Rangers were using rifles in that fight in 1837. Would that have been a percussion lock Hawken?
The Shawnees were involved peripherally in this fight. I have studied up on them, fighting Daniel Boone and, yes, Simon Kenton in Ohio, in 1780. By 1837 the Shawnee had all been run out of Ohio, and now I see some wound up in N. Texas involved in the Comanche wars.
Really a sad story for those eastern tribes, disposessed of their land and the few survivors, sent out West. In fact I live in formerly Cherokee land in the NC mountains.
The did a pretty good number on Matilda Lockhart too!
Now days women pay thousands of dollars for Nose reductions. They gave Matilda one for free
She wasn’t the only one.
Steven L. Moore. Savage Frontier. Vol. III: 1840 -1841
April 3rd, a full two weeks after the Council House Fight, about thirty Comanches show up looking to trade captives in return for the 30+ Comanche women and children captured during that fracas.
In the words of one Captain George Howard...
I marched to the town with the company of Captain Kennymore and my own, early on the morning of yesterday, the fifth instant.
The Indian called Piava, well known as a crafty and treacherous Comanche, of some influence, came in and proposed an exchange of prisoners. I assented and requested him to bring in such taxi and prisoners as they had, and we would exchange one for one.
Two local Tejanos, Damasco and Antonio Sanchez, accompanied Piava back to his camp and returned with six year old Elizabeth Putman and a 12yo Mexican boy. Little Elizabeth was covered in bruises with a scarred nose.
In subsequent negotiations three five more Mexican girls and a young Booker Webster “returned with a shaved head and painted in Indian colors.”
It was from Booker Webster that we get an account of the reaction to the killing or capture of fifty or more prominent Comanches at the Council House.
As described by Booker the Indians howled and cut them selves with knives and killed horses for several days. They then took 13 of their American captives and roasted and butchered them to death with horrible cruelties.
Booker and the Putnam girl were spared on account of already having been adopted, as were three other Putnam children with other bands.
The Rangers were using rifles in that fight in 1837. Would that have been a percussion lock Hawken?
I have read that about 80% of flintlock longarms were eventually converted to percussion, and by the 1830’s St Louis merchants were advertised they had thousands of percussion caps in stock.
The thing is though if you ran out of caps you were out of beer, but rocks were free. David Crockett himself traded his percussion rifle for a flinter when arriving in Texas.
IIRC the Republic of Texas was issuing percussion caps AND flints to ranging companies as late as 1842 in numbers suggesting as many as half of the longarms could have still been flintlocks.
Hawkens do not appear prominently in Texas lore like they do in the Mountain Man era, in fact half-stock plains rifles are generally frowned upon as “farb” by Texian reenactors, especially in percussion form.
I do have a half-stock percussion Tryon plains rifle, but only use it for 1850’s events.
Really a sad story for those eastern tribes, disposessed of their land and the few survivors, sent out West. In fact I live in formerly Cherokee land in the NC mountains.
This Park Service piece about the Amistad National Recreation Area is a long but informative piece broken down by historic periods.
Note the presence of Cherokees and Shawnees contracted to protect Mexican settlements along the Rio Grande by the 1820’s.
IIRC Cherokees were established in Northern Mexico beginning in the 1790’s. Fifty years later Sequoia himself, the author of the Cherokee alphabet, would die across the Rio Grande of a fever. He was down there from our Indian Territories seeking to establish contact with the Mexican Cherokeesz
Shipping receipts from as early as 1831 show that percussion caps were very available and a hot item in in San Felipe. Matter of fact several cans of caps have shown up in archaeological excavations at the townsite in the locations of at least one of the merchants.
I don’t know why everyone immediately has to brings up Hawken rifles instead of discussing the infinitely many other types of rifles that were used west of the mississippi. Even tho Hawken rifles were a fine rifle and to many the benchmark of the mountain rifle, they were not that many actually produced considering the number of people going west.
A truer rifle would have been the cheaper Pennsylvania built trade rifles produced by such makers as Deringer, Tryon, Leman, Dickert, and a dozen other makers. These rifles were made literally by the thousands, for the government, trade companies, and assorted merchant houses. Cheap yet of decent quality that the average man could afford. I imagine the bulk of these rifles were flintlocks. Speaking with site manager at Ft. McKavett he stated he ran across a note in ressarch of an old settler of the area that was still using his flintlock ( circa 1855) due to the difficulty in obtaining percussion caps in their locale. Long drive to town! 🤣
Smithwick, mentions that it was a full time job for him to keep some rifles in adequate working condition for extremely poor folks moving into Texas. He made mention and I paraphrase, that had he seen some of these guns laying in the ditch along the road, he would have left them be!
With respect to the Texas Rev period, the Refugio Militia from the Goliad era is one of the most respected re-enacting outfits.
Here’s their take on available weaponry ca. 1836. Keep in mind tho they are talking regular settlers, ie farmers and tradesmen, not Rangers or members of ranging companies. For example there were a lot of muskets around, but I might pack something different for heading out across the plains to pick fights with Indians.
Shipping receipts from as early as 1831 show that percussion caps were very available and a hot item in in San Felipe. Matter of fact several cans of caps have shown up in archaeological excavations at the townsite in the locations of at least one of the merchants.
I don’t know why everyone immediately has to brings up Hawken rifles instead of discussing the infinitely many other types of rifles that were used west of the mississippi. Even tho Hawken rifles were a fine rifle and to many the benchmark of the mountain rifle, they were not that many actually produced considering the number of people going west.
A truer rifle would have been the cheaper Pennsylvania built trade rifles produced by such makers as Deringer, Tryon, Leman, Dickert, and a dozen other makers. These rifles were made literally by the thousands, for the government, trade companies, and assorted merchant houses. Cheap yet of decent quality that the average man could afford. I imagine the bulk of these rifles were flintlocks. Speaking with site manager at Ft. McKavett he stated he ran across a note in ressarch of an old settler of the area that was still using his flintlock ( circa 1855) due to the difficulty in obtaining percussion caps in their locale. Long drive to town! 🤣
Smithwick, mentions that it was a full time job for him to keep some rifles in adequate working condition for extremely poor folks moving into Texas. He made mention and I paraphrase, that had he seen some of these guns laying in the ditch along the road, he would have left them be!
I would think that a Hawken Rifle would have been pretty rare and hard to come by on the TX Frontier. Every novice that ever watched Redford in Jeremiah Johnson think the Hawken was what everyone had. 🤪
No doubt a Hawken or two made it to Texas. But they were not norm. Jeremiah’s Johnson did much for the Hawken’s popularity.
And Birdy is right. Lots of muskets as well as shotguns were used. Probably way more shotguns than we give credit for.
One of the enigmas of the period is what did the New Orleans Greys carry?? They were issued a military rifle. But, was it a Model 1817 Common rifle or,,,,, was it a Hall Breechloading rifle??? 😁😁😁
Or a mixture of both?
Who knows ??? We just don’t know? Oh well. Matters not to me. But fun contemplation. 😁
No doubt a Hawken or two made it to Texas. But they were not norm. Jeremiah’s Johnson did much for the Hawken’s popularity.
And Birdy is right. Lots of muskets as well as shotguns were used. Probably way more shotguns than we give credit for.
One of the enigmas of the period is what did the New Orleans Greys carry?? They were issued a military rifle. But, was it a Model 1817 Common rifle or,,,,, was it a Hall Breechloading rifle??? 😁😁😁
Or a mixture of both?
Who knows ??? We just don’t know? Oh well. Matters not to me. But fun contemplation. 😁
I figured there were more shotguns than anything. But I’ve been wrong before. 😬
I have read everything in this thread including all of the links, it is the most interesting thread on the forum.
I am surprised at how man of the mentioned incidents were woven into the Lonesome Dove series (prequel and sequel).
I have read everything I could find about Smithfield and am unsure where fact and fiction begin and end with him - there seems to be a lot "what I did" in his stories and I have some doubts that he may have actually done some of the things he says.
That was a big question back in the day. Just how much Smithwick really remembered. He was blind and like 96 (?) years old when he dictated his memoirs to his daughter. When scholars later researched his stories and compared them with those of other who were involved in many of the same affairs they discovered very little variance in the dialogs. Birdy can expound upon this much more than myself.
But his stories are generally accepted as quite factual by the majority of historians. And he is quoted quite often. The old gentleman had quite a mind!!!
I have read everything in this thread including all of the links, it is the most interesting thread on the forum.
I am surprised at how man of the mentioned incidents were woven into the Lonesome Dove series (prequel and sequel).
I have read everything I could find about Smithfield and am unsure where fact and fiction begin and end with him - there seems to be a lot "what I did" in his stories and I have some doubts that he may have actually done some of the things he says.
that Amistad link. wow i could literally get lost in there for days soaking that up
With respect to Indians in popular perception our own famous White guys can wander freely all over the map but we have a tendency to nail our Indians in place, so it comes as a surprise when they show up all over also.
For example a party of Crows, down from the Northern Plains, accompanied a group of Kiowas into Mexico and got far enough south to see parrots and monkeys.
One group that gets me is the Potawatomi, originally from the friggin’ Great Lakes but in the Texian period on the Texas High Plains.
Among the most remarkable tho are the Florida Seminoles and in particular a leader named Wildcat. Second Seminole War in Florida, in the dense swamps of Southern Florida they fight the US to a standstill (As an aside, Wildcat has been credited by some as being the author of the US Army’s “hooagh!”, that being Wildcat’s toast when invited to Army celebrations.)
1842 (??) the Seminoles agree to removal to the Indian territory along with their Black Seminole allies but things do not go well for them there, the Indian Nations was a rough place.
Within ten years Wildcat, the former swamp guerilla fighter, was roaming all across the Texas Plains, alternately fighting and seeking to unite the tribes, greatly alarming US and Texan officials.
Finally he brokers a deal in the 1850’s wherein return for land in Mexico south of Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras a mixed group of Seminoles, Black Seminoles and Kickapoo agree to interdict Apache, Comanche and Kiowa war parties
This they commence to do with an efficacy that likely far eclipsed that of the contemporary Texas Rangers. Wildcat died of smallpox 1857, after which most of his Seminole followers returned to Oklahoma.
The Black Seminoles, for obvious reasons, chose to remain in Mexico where, going on 20 years later they were invited to move to Texas and serve as scouts for the US Cavalry.
"I would think that a Hawken Rifle would have been pretty rare and hard to come by on the TX Frontier. Every novice that ever watched Redford in Jeremiah Johnson think the Hawken was what everyone had"
Yes! I saw Jeremiah Johnson at the theater in January 1973. This movie just blew me away. My buddy and I traveled in June from Atlanta to the wilderness of Ft. Nelson British Columbia. We rented horses from an outfitter and we spent the summer camping out, and riding through the wilderness like Jeremiah Johnson. Of course we had a pack horse, and panniers, and we knew how to throw our own diamond hitch. Fortunately we were not attacked by any Crow Indians. Thankfully we were not attacked by griz, though there are many grizzlies up there. We were way out in the wilderness.
I still have my TC Hawken. I have killed 6 whitetail with it. That .490 round ball is murder on deer. One shot to the lungs is all it takes. Never had one go over 50 yards when hit with the round ball, where I have had to track blood trails for well over 100 yards, with a deer hit in the lungs with a 30-06.
Jeremiah Johnson is set in the Rockies in 1847, so I didn't know if the Hawken had made it down to the plains of Texas in 1837. Having used the Hawken quite a bit, I can assure you that it would have been a perfect weapon against the Comanche, and with the shorter barrel, it would have been easier to carry in a saddle scabbard than the Pennsylvania long rifles that y'all mentioned.
Sorry to offend some of you guys with my question.
This rifle here has probably taken more deer and hogs than any other rifle I own. The late wife gave it to me as my wedding rifle in 1979. It is a Henry Leman style 1/2 stock trade rifle from Green River Rifle Works. It is deadly with 70 grains FFFG and a .490 round ball!
I decorated it up after my last OTC NM mule deer hunt up by Sheridan Peak in 1984. We took a tumble down a hillside while on horseback when a trail we were traveling on gave way. None of us any the worse for wear. 😊
Having used the Hawken quite a bit, I can assure you that it would have been a perfect weapon against the Comanche
Rifles were the thing to have, what you did was ride in groups and dismount to aim, not firing all at once so as always to have some rifles loaded. This was the tactic the Delawares and other Eastern tribes used to cut a wide swathe into the Comanches and other plains tribes.
Pop history had it that revolvers revolutionized plains combat. The challenge then becomes finding incidents where this was true outside of Jack Hays’ poorly reported 1844 fights, surprising the Indians with this new technology.
I’m going to jump out of sequence to 1865, Battle of Dove Creek, close to 500 mounted Confederates and Frontier Militia, out looking for Comanches, decide to surprise a Kickapoo camp instead.
The Kickapoos had rifles, had been using them for generations, in this case many had Enfield Rifle-muskets, difficult guns to range but they knew how to shoot. The Texans got decisively whupped.
I’m sure there were revolvers present, especially on the Texas side, but they were handguns.
So, close to 500 Texans at one place going up against about an equal numbers of Indians. In terms of numbers engaged possibly THE major Indian fight in Texas history.
Nobody has ever heard of it, doesn’t fit the popular narrative.
There’s five missions in modern San Antonio, the Alamo (AKA Mission San Antonio de Valero, longtime home of a mounted military unit from Alamo de Parras in Mexico proper, giving the nickname prevalent in 1836), all placed 2-3 miles apart along the San Antonio River.
Alamo northmost, third one down is Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, maybe five miles downriver from Old San Antonio. Today Mission San Jose sits in the middle of the South Side, along Roosevelt Drive, which used to be a main north-south drag into town before the Interstates.
Today, thanks to the Works Progress Administration it’s the most intact of the five missions, big compound, 10ft walls maybe 100yds on a side. In the middle of the city now, looking at it you’d never guess that, March 28th of 1840, 200+ Comanche Warriors surrounded those walls, challenging the Texians inside to come out and fight.
Unfortunately no one had a camera, must have been a colorful sight.
From Steven L. Moore. Savage Frontier.
Nine days after their council house losses, a war party of at least 200 Comanches rode down to San Antonio on March 28 looking for a fight.
Chief Isomania, veteran of an earlier fight with frontiersman Jack Hayes, boldly came into town with another Comanche. They rode into the San Antonio Public Square, tauntingly circling around the plaza on the horses. Rising in his stirrups, he angrily shook his clenched fist....
The citizens, through an interpreter, told him the soldiers were all down the river at Mission San Jose and if you went there Colonel Fisher would give him fight enough.
Isomania did just that. He and his war party rode up to the mission, located four miles below town, and dared the soldiers to come out and fight. Colonel Fisher was confined to his bed due to a fall from his horse and Captain William Redd was in acting command of the post.
Captain Redd stated that he must hold true to the twelve day truce promised at the Council House. Redd hoped to work out the release of other American captives. He would be happy to fight after the twelve days. The disgusted Indians denounced Redd’s men as liars and cowards and rode away, Isomania being the last to leave town.
Redd’s command decision was not a popular one with the men behind the mission walls. It was hard enough even to get a glimpse of Comanche raiders, and here were two hundred in plain sight asking to be shot at.
Turns out Redd’s decision was a correct one, six days later the Comanche leader Piava came in looking to exchange more captives including the Booker boy.
The Comanches under Isomania went away frustrated but it turns out they actually did precipitate the deaths of two Texian Officers.
Colonel Lysander Wells, also on the scene, accused Captain Redd of cowardice. Both men had fought at San Jacinto so had nothing to prove on that score. Could have been a duel, Texians shot each other that way rather a lot, but Redd refused to be provoked.
Colonel Wells wouldn’t let it rest, continuing to slander Captain Redd. The duel happened on May 7th, possibly fought with Paterson Colts but resolved with a single shot on both sides, both men died.
At one time there were sizeable populations of Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo and who knows what else residing in Texas prior to 1857 having been either displaced from their native range or moved in when they saw the writing on the wall prior to the Trail of Tears.
At one time there were sizeable populations of Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo and who knows what else residing in Texas prior to 1857 having been either displaced from their native range or moved in when they saw the writing on the wall prior to the Trail of Tears.
Caplock,
You’re at Atoka. I got a good friend up as Sasakwa! Missed a get together he had last February.
Approximate population of Texas 1836 - 30,000 1842 - 100,000 1850 - 200,00 1860 - 600,000 1870 - 800,000 Last major Indian War being the Red River War of 1874.
The point being, only a minority of residents at any given time lived within the reach of Indian raids, the proportion of those who did steadily decreasing as the population boomed and the settlement line moved west. Figure slaves were about 25% of the whole, at least at one point in time, so multiply the above numbers by 0.75 to get an estimate of the Anglo population.
Back when women were still having kids the rule of thumb was 20% of the population would be active men and youths of combat age. So in 1836 this estimate would be 4,500 White men and youths, 1842 - 15,000 White men and youths... etc. A good number of these in 1836 were involved in the events of the Texas Revolution, especially when Santa Anna's columns moved into East Texas subsequent to the Alamo.
Other than that, if 100 guys were actively involved in the field against Indians at any given point in time during that whole 40 years, that was a lot. Being a Texas Ranger was expensive, dangerous work and few men cared for it.
OTOH, in the early years of Texas, the threat of a Mexican invasion was very real. If nothing else the fact that upon independence the new Republic of Texas had unilaterally presumed to annex a 150 mile-wide strip of land between Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande, land that was at that time part of the Mexican States of Taumalipas and Coahuila, guaranteed there would be problems.
The Mexican Civil War over the Constitution of 1824 that Santa Anna kicked off when he abolished it in 1835 would not be over in Mexico until 1840. Meanwhile, the government of the pro-Constitution Federalista side was actually given uneasy sanctuary in Texas, the seat of the Federalista government in exile being Victoria TX, and the Federalista arsenal being located in Linnville TX on the Gulf Coast. Much of the muscle for the Federalista side here was supplied by the mercenary Texian Reuben Ross and his band of 200 outlaws.
Reuben Ross was apparently not a nice guy and among other things instigated frequent duels. In 1839 he crippled the arm of famed Texas Ranger Ben McCullough in such a duel and subsequently demanded a rematch to finish the deal, whereupon Ben's older and somewhat less-famous brother Henry shot down Ross in Gonzales under poorly-recorded circumstances. A pity, there was likely a good story there.
When the Constitution War ended in 1840, some of the defeated Federalista elements would attempt a short lived Republic of the Rio Grande, incorporating the states of Northern Mexico including what is present-day Texas south of Corpus Christi. As conceived, the Republic of the Rio Grande would have immediately been in conflict with Texas over real estate. Nevertheless the Republic of Texas President Mirabeau Lamar, seeking a buffer State between Mexico and Texas, supplied arms and ammunition and actively encouraged Texans to take up arms to support the cause. More than 400 did, which was a very large number at that place and time. Didn't work though and the project failed within the year.
The threat from Mexico was not an idle one, everybody knows a Mexican Army took the Alamo in 1836, most people don't know that a 1,500 man Mexican Army, under orders from El Presidente Santa Anna himself, would take San Antonio and the Alamo all over again in 1842. Didn't stick, in 1836 there were 30,000 Americans in Texas and that was too many, in 1842 there were 100,000.
Ironically, this second Mexican invasion would be a major catalyst in overcoming the widespread Northern opposition to the annexation of Texas into the Union, that 1845 event precipitating the Mexican War.
Meanwhile, throughout this whole period, Mexican government agents were actively fermenting unrest among the Indians in Texas, including probably the Comanches as events turned out.
I visit Henry Marion Smith all the time, poor fella is buried in a marked grave overgrown by brush and I knock the brush back as best I can. He is buried on an off-Shoot of the Cibolo Creek on Camp Bullis.... He fought in the battle of Bird’s Creek....
Bird’s Creek, Texas, 1839, as noted in the link, was the longest recorded fatal hit by a single aimed arrow in North America. 200 yards.
With regards to flintlock longrifles firing round lead balls the longest popularly known shot was during our own Rev War with one Col. Edward Hanger, a British Redcoat, observed a prone Virginia Rifleman aiming at his group from 400 yards away. The result was a near miss, killed a horse.
Fewer people are aware of the 1835 Battle of Withlacootchie, one of the opening battles of the 2nd Seminole War.
This from N.B. Bosworth’s “A Treatise on the Rifle” (1846), still in print.
when General Gains was entrenched against the Seminole Indians in Florida, he stated in his report to the War Department, that his sentries on duty, were wounded, and killed, by single shots from the Seminole rifle, at the distance of four and 500 yards!
Edmund P. Gaines is one of our great unsung American heroes. More to the point, in this context, he had previously surveyed across most of the Southeast and so was a competent judge of distance.
So, the longest record hit with a bow and arrow? 200 yards, by an Indian. Texas 1839.
Longest recorded hits with a flintlock longrifle? Four and five hundred yards, by Indians. Florida 1835.
After the Council House debacle in March of 1840 things got strangely quiet. Sure the Comanche leader Isomania had ridden into town the following week with 200 warriors at his back seeking combat, but he had left when none was offered.
What’s interesting about that episode is that there was no reports of widespread death, destruction and general havoc around the town, as if the Comanches were drawing a distinction between Tejano and Texan.
So where’d all the Comanches go? That summer the Bent brothers were throwing a huge party at Bent’s Fort way up on the Arkansas River in Colorado in the form of a treaty gathering to make a peace between the Kiowas and Comanches on the one hand, and the Cheyennes an Arapahoes on the other.
Not being aware of their future role in pop history, the Indians had been killing and skinning tens of thousands of buffalo each year in return for tons of trade goods laboriously poled upriver on flatboats to the Fort.
Intertribal hostilities were bad for business, William Bent, who had married into the Cheyennes, was instrumental in arranging a peace treaty gathering.
If travelling 600 miles to attend this gathering seems excessive, consider the case of Rachel Plummer, captured by Comanches during the Parker’s Fort massacre, 200 miles northeast of San Antonio in 1836. The following year she was rescued by Mexican traders operating out of Santa Fe, NM.
I didn't realize until not all that long ago that the tribes I was familiar with as a kid back east (Deleware, Shawnee, etc) had sufficient numbers to have an impact down there. The plains and badlands are a whole lotta different from the eastern hardwoods. Pretty cool they adapted and kicked ass down there too.
I have read that by the time the first White trappers blazed a trail to California, Delawares from Missouri had already been there and back five times.
Also there’s a range of mountains way out in West Texas up against the NM State Line. They’re called the Delaware Mountains. They ain’t named after the State.
You may already know of the Delaware Black Beaver...
The Great Comanche Raid in August of 1840 is understood to have been in response to the deaths and capture of Comanches at the Council House Fight in March of that year. Base treachery in the eyes of the Comanches.
But it wasn’t the first time a huge number of Indians had gathered together to attack the Texians. The first one was four years earlier in May of ‘36, Parker’s Fort, five hundred to seven hundred Caddos and Comanches.
The Caddo Confederacy is generally forgotten today, if the exponential tide of settlement had reached them in the 1720’s instead of the 1820’s perhaps they would have loomed larger in our history, like the Eastern tribes, but by the 1820’s the Frontier was advancing like a tsunami, sweeping all before it. Interesting trivia; Charles Goodnight said he learned his woodcraft skills as a boy from an elderly Caddo living along the Trinity River.
Whoever those Indians were it must have taken some time and effort to get them all to congregate at that one place. They hit the fort, killed or captured all they could of the eighteen inhabitants then living there, including nine year-old Cynthia Ann Parker, and then left.
A bit of a puzzle, apparently this army of warriors then doesn’t go on to wreak any more havoc than usual along the Texas Frontier, from our perspective they seem to disband.
Parker’s Fort of course is part of Texas legend because little Cynthia Ann goes on to become Quanah Parker’s mom. But the question isn’t usually asked why that place was singled out for such attention.
Fort Parker was completed the year before, 1835, and almost immediately was used as the staging point for the first major offensive by the Texians against the Indians.
August of ‘35, John H Moore led 98 men on a tremendous swing and a miss. Guys started leaving early as horses and patience wore out but Moore and about 30 men stayed out for nearly two months.
All they had to show for it was two dead Indians, four if you count a woman who stabbed her young child and herself some time after being captured, three other Indians captured who did not commit suicide, sixty acres of burned Indian corn, and one dead Ranger accidentally shot by another.
This was Moore’s first big expedition, a failure, winter of 1839 he would attack a Comanche camp on the San Saba and end up walking home, but the third time was the charm, winter of 1840, as many as 180 Comanches killed on the Colorado.
So Parker’s Fort certainly was an imminent threat, but author Steven Moore (Savage Frontier) throws in another detail associated with this expedition...
Adjutant James Neil took up his own little experiment for returning destruction to the enemy tribes. He had procured some type of smallpox virus and had this injected into one of the Indians his men had captured. This Indian was then released and allowed to carry the infection back to his tribe. Neil was never able to ascertain the success or failure of his little experiment.
Neither was anybody else, but I guess the thought might count, James Neill must have really hated Indians. We have no information whether the Indians assembled to attack the fort in 1836 were aware of this attempted epidemic. It is possible that they did, word has a way of getting around. For example years later Buffalo Hump in Oklahoma, the same guy who led the Great Raid, would hear of the birth of Jack Hays’ first child, in California, and send him an engraved silver cup, so word did get around.
Today’s MSM might present the massacre as an attack on a bioweapons facility.
Anyways, Cynthia Ann’s story is well known but that of her equally remarkable brother John, six years old at the time of capture, is generally overlooked.
In the topic of people who made remarkable transformations to succeed out West, how about James Kirker.....
Best of all he employed both Shawnees and Delaware, Black folks and even Irish, married a woman of color too, surely a multicultural guy way ahead of his time 🙂
Back to the Great Comanche Raid as per Steven L. Moore (Savage Frontier Vol. III)...
TUESDAY AUGUST 4th 1840
The Indian offensive was reportedly encouraged by General Valentine Canalizo, the military commander of northern Mexico, who was headquartered in Matamoros (near the mouth of the Rio Grande, on the Mexican side).
The Texans erroneously perceived that the Comanche threat had subsided during the early summer months, when in fact they were busy acquiring firearms for battle. The Comanches held a peace counsel with their old enemies, the Cheyenne and Arapaho‘s, during the summer near Bent Fort Inn the upper Arkansas river outside Texas territory....
The Comanches and Kiowas offered their new friends large numbers of horses. In exchange, they ask for guns blankets and kettles. The Comanches then broke camp and headed south back into Texas, taking along some of the extra guns and munitions they had been able to acquire.
The party of Comanches and Kiowa numbered more than 600 as they descended into Texas again. They also moved in company with a small number of Mexican citizens....
The senior surviving leader of the Penateka Comanches was Buffalo Hump, who now led what would be the largest of all Southern Comanche offensives.
During the night of August 4, they descended from the Hill country above San Marcos and Austin and began their march to the coast to avenge their fallen chiefs.
The large Indian force would slip around and between the Texas settlements to strike Victoria, the seat of the Mexican Federalist Government in exile, and Linnville, the site of their Arsenal. Some Historians have suggested Buffalo Hump was expecting a Mexican military offensive up from Matamoras in coordination with his raid.
Birdy is a plethora of good stuff. He’s great at the campfire too! I mean a real campfire. I have been neglectful posting much as my duties moving into Comancheria have taken precedence! I’m about done. Just nickel and dime stuff. Keep it up Birdy.
By Wednesday August 5th at least some of the Indians had travelled more than forty miles since passing by the site of present-day San Marcos and were now about ten miles east of Gonzales or about fifty miles east of San Antonio
From Savage Frontier....
The first notice that the Comanches were on the move came on August 5, 1840. Dr. Joel Ponton and Tucker Foley were en-route westbound to Gonzalez. The two were attacked by a band of 27 mounted Comanches. The two men wheeled their horses and raced for their lives.
The Indians chased them for about 3 miles discharging arrows along the way. The Comanches raced after Dr. Ponton, one arrow passed through his hat and two lodged in his back. Once his horse became too badly wounded to run, he abandoned the dying creature and hid in a dense thicket.
The Indians continued their pursuit of Foley. He tried to hide but was discovered and captured by the Indians. They immediately cut off the soles of his feet and made him walk barefoot on the rough ground back to the spot where they knew Ponton was hiding.
They forced him to call to Ponton to emerge from his hiding spot, but Ponton did not. The Comanches tortured and slowly mutilated poor Foley, as Ponton silently listen to his friend’s agonize screams. Finally the Indian speared and scalped Foley and left his mutilated body.
Although painfully wounded, Ponton managed to crawl through the bottomland thickets and made his way back home to the Lavaca settlements during the night. The site of Dr. Ponton and the tale he told of the murder of Tucker Foley was enough to energize the community.
Captain Adam Zumwalt was elected to take command of the Lavaca River settlers’ volunteer pursuit party. Zumwalt organized 36 men and the following morning they would set out towards Gonzales to the scene of the attack.
Birdy is a plethora of good stuff. He’s great at the campfire too! I mean a real campfire. I have been neglectful posting much as my duties moving into Comancheria have taken precedence! I’m about done. Just nickel and dime stuff. Keep it up Birdy.
I've said some unkind things to birdy over the years. But I would enjoy a campfire with him in the desert with a couple bottles of hooch.
Birdy is a plethora of good stuff. He’s great at the campfire too! I mean a real campfire. I have been neglectful posting much as my duties moving into Comancheria have taken precedence! I’m about done. Just nickel and dime stuff. Keep it up Birdy.
I've said some unkind things to birdy over the years. But I would enjoy a campfire with him in the desert with a couple bottles of hooch.
He is a hell of a good guy, just wish when he's here he'd sleep in a bed, instead of the floor.
Zumwalt organized 36 men and they set out west towards Gonzales for the scene of the attack on the morning of August 6. Tucker Foley’s naked, mutilated body was found. A grave was dug with butcher knives, Foley’s body was wrapped in a cotton saddle blanket and buried under a huge live oak tree.
Zumwalt’s company took up the trail of the Comanches and began tracking their movements.
That same morning perhaps twenty miles to the north.
In early 1840, the area moving northwesterly between Gonzales and the new capital of Austin was almost completely uninhabited.
One has to wonder how much mail carriers were paid back then.
The mail carrier from Austin to Gonzales happened upon a large, fresh Indian trail crossing the road in the vicinity of Plum Creek. The Indians appeared to be bearing down towards the coast of Texas. The mail carrier hurried to Gonzales and reported this startling find.
The Gonzales militia was under the command of Captain Matthew “Old Paint” Caldwell, who had been wounded in March in the council house fight. On August 5th, Caldwell had left with some of his men tracking other Indians who had been reported to the west.
Ben McCullough therefore organized a 24 man volunteer party to investigate the tracks. McCulloch sent Word at once to the settlements along the Guadalupe and Lavaca rivers. He asked for those citizens to come to the assistance of those from Gonzales in cutting off the body of Indians.
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.
Captain McCulloch’s volunteers rode out from Gonzalez at 4 PM on August 6 for the Big Hill settlement about 16 miles east of town. McCullochs men reached this point and made camp for the night.
Meanwhile, at least FORTY MILES or more to the south, at the same time McCulloch was leaving Gonzales...
at about 4 PM on August 6, the 600+ Comanche party under Buffalo hump appeared on the outskirts of Victoria.
In order to have hit Victoria about 4 PM on August 6th the Indians would have to have traveled about ninety miles in less than 48 hours, a remarkable feat for a party of more than 600 men, women and youths to accomplish.
It must have taken considerable command control and discipline on the part of the Indians, and gives an idea of the extreme mobility of Plains Indians. Buffalo Hump must have thought he was striking a lethal blow at the Texians.
The Indians first killed for black servants at Spring Creek, above Victoria. The townspeople were completely oblivious to the danger as the Indians approached. Some even thought that they were a friendly group of Lipan Apaches riding into town. Not until the Indians began yelling and riding towards the citizens did the realization of the true danger sink in.
As the panic set in, Victorians began fleeing for their lives. A small party of the men, numbering 13 hurried to confront the attacking Indians. Although too small in number to stop such a massive Comanche force, the men hoped to at least buy time for their wives and children to flee to safety. The citizen party had no chance against the Comanches, three were quickly killed.
Some Mexican traders were in Victoria at the time, and had about 500 head of horses on the prairie in the immediate vicinity of town. All these the Comanches captured, besides a great many belonging to citizens of the place.
The victorious Indians retired from town and camped that night on Spring Creek. There they killed a settler named Virlan Richardson and two black men, and they captured a black girl.
They had secured about 1500 horses and mules on the prairie in front of Victoria. Unlike most Comanche raids, this time they did not ride away for their homes with their plunder.
Birdy is a plethora of good stuff. He’s great at the campfire too! I mean a real campfire. I have been neglectful posting much as my duties moving into Comancheria have taken precedence! I’m about done. Just nickel and dime stuff. Keep it up Birdy.
I've said some unkind things to birdy over the years. But I would enjoy a campfire with him in the desert with a couple bottles of hooch.
I have shared a few campfires with Birdy. He is a good man. miles
McCulloch's Gonzales men located the great Indian Trail early on the following morning, August 7. At this juncture they were joined by the party of 36 men under the lead of captain Zumwalt. Collectively, the McCullough and Zumwalt companies numbered 60 men.
They continued south towards Victoria in pursuit along the Indian Trail, spreading out their scouts ahead, left and right, in constant expectation of meeting their savage foe.
Meanwhile, further north on the Bastrop - Gonzales road that same morning, Zachariah Morrell was driving a wagon back to Bastrop, after having delivered a load of lumber to build a house on the Guadalupe River.
” we passed with the wagons just in the rear end across the track of the Indians as they went down. From their trail I thought, and afterwards found I was correct, that there were four or five hundred. I trembled for the settlements below, for I knew this meant war on a larger scale than usual.”
He was immediately anxious to spread the word to Colonel Edward Burleson in Bastrop and the citizens living along the Colorado River Valley near his home in LaGrange. His wagon crossed the Indian trail at noon and he reached home around midnight.
“My oxen were in fine condition, I drove thirty miles in twelve hours. In view of the long race before me, I tried to sleep some, while a horse was being secured.”
While Morrell was reading the Indian sign around noon.
about noon on August 7, McCullough and Zumwalt’s scouts made out a company of horsemen advancing towards the trail. Word of the Indians had also made it down to the Cuero settlement on the Guadalupe River. Captain John Jackson Tumlinson Jr, the 36 year old veteran ranger commander, had taken command of 65 men who volunteered from the Cuero and Victoria area settlements.
Tumlinson brought news that the Comanches had attack the town of Victoria the previous day. Tomlinson took charge of all that he could muster and set out expecting to encounter the main body of Comanches at any moment.
With the force now augmented to 125 men, they pushed ahead at a brisk trot.
Experience had led these men to expect that, having raided Victoria, the Comanches would quickly make their escape back to the northwest.
Late in the day, having reached a creek called Bushy or Brushy Creek, it was deemed advisable to diverge a few miles to the right (West), in the direction of the Guadalupe, for the purpose of intercepting them if they had taken that passage. They stopped for the day about four miles from the trail, and sent out scouts with orders to ascertain whether they had yet passed up.
Tumlinson’s 125 men made a force sizable enough to engage the Comanches. The trouble was that they were too far behind to stop the raids that were already occurring.
Fascinating reading. I drove through, or, around Victoria dozens of times in the big rig, coming up from Los Indios and headed east. Gee, imagine there could be a town in S. Texas named Los Indios [The Indians.]
Fascinating to think that twice in each trip I cut across the trail of the massive Comanche raid on the coast, so many years ago.
Fascinating to think that twice in each trip I cut across the trail of the massive Comanche raid on the coast, so many years ago.
Yep. Every time I take I 35 to Austin, somewhere around San Marcos was where the Great Comanche Raid crossed, going down August 4th, and coming back August 12th.
Author Steven L. Moore (Savage Frontier Vols I thru IV) can be a tedious read as he tends to stick to a strict timeline of events, meaning the narrative can jump all over the place geographically between unrelated events. However his style works really well here, you get a sense of events unfolding as it was for the participants.
Meanwhile, down around Victoria....
on Friday, August 7, the Comanches moved from Spring Creek, moving the 3 miles back into Victoria. The Comanches proceeded to burn one house and robbed several others but they were quickly discouraged from doing any more execution. The local men were well armed and they put up enough heavy gunfire to convince the Comanches to move on. They opted to move down towards the lower coastal settlements, rounding up more cattle as they went.
The settler Cyrus Crosby had gone into Victoria early on August 7 leaving his family behind. During his absence the Comanches captured his 25 year old wife. That evening or during the early morning hours of the following day, her small child became hungry and began crying. When the mother was unable to quiet the child, one of the Indians grabbed a baby, threw it down, and speared it before the horrified mother.
The Comanches then turned to the east, across the prairie in the direction of Linville on the coast, 20 miles away. They camped for a portion of the night on Plácido Creek, on the Benavidez Ranch about 12 miles from Linville.
If I go back through the narrative, there’s about twelve additional recorded deaths of settlers and slaves in the path of the raid. I haven’t mentioned them for purpose of brevity. Considering the numbers of Indians involved, the casualty list seems surprisingly short. Perhaps because they stayed together in a cohesive group.
For those who aren’t familiar, Bastrop lies about 100 miles northeast of San Antonio, Austin about 80 miles NNE, these would be the northernmost communities involved.
The day begins in LaGrange, about 15 miles south of Bastrop with 36yo Zachariah Morrell, who had hustled his ox team 30 miles the day before, arriving around midnight.
”At 4 o’clock in the morning I was in my saddle, intending to reach Colonel Ed. Burleson’s at daylight, 12 miles off, on a borrowed horse, as I had no horse in condition for the trip.”
Ed. Burleson quickly began organizing forces to make a stand against the Indians. Sending Morel as a rider on to Austin to spread the word and to raise more forces, Burleson worked on recruiting along the Colorado. He had none of his army troops anywhere in the area, so would have to make the most of the available citizens and the militia.
About that same time, 100 miles south of Bastrop, the Indians moved towards Linnville, then the second-largest seaport in Texas.
Before dawn on August 8, the Comanches approached the town of Linnville . This coastal town was the key shipping point for much of the goods between Southwest Texas and Mexico. Somehow the inhabitants of the town had received absolutely no warning yet of what had happened in Victoria.
Seeing the large herd of horses approaching, they had it first believe this to be a large band of friendly Mexicans arriving with horses to sell. The Indian riders approached in the shape of a half moon and began riding at full speed. Only as the killings began did the townspeople realize the horrible truth.
A part that interests me here is the assumption that the 1,500 horses approaching were being delivered by Mexican traders. Such large-scale trade in livestock by Mexicans and/or Tejanos travelling through Texas does not appear in popular Texas history. Seventeen years later, in 1857, Frederick Law Olmstead, would observe this trade still going on through San Antonio.
I’m gonna skip over the details of the Comanche sack of Linnville, suffice to say during the course of the day they torched almost the entire place and looted the abundant stored of goods in the warehouses there. Accounts speak of the Comanches fantastically garbed in top hats, parasols, reams of fabric etc...
Many of the Texian survivors escaped to boats in the harbor from which they witnessed the destruction. Not mentioned anywhere but it must have been a long, hot day on those boats in the bay in August, one wonders if they had brought enough water.
One guy, Judge John Hays (any relation to Jack Hays unknown) famously stormed back to shore to challenge the Comanches. Perhaps thinking him touched, the Comanches did not approach him. His friends eventually convinced him to come back, whereupon it was discovered he had forgotten to load his gun.
Much of the day the Comanches were engaged in the laborious process of packing mules and horses with plundered goods.
During the late afternoon of August 8, the Comanche host began their jubilant departure from the Texas coast. They withdrew from Linville across the nearby Bayou and made their camp for the night. In their wake they had left 20 dead. They had taken five prisoners, all women and children.
Their routes of retirement towards the Texas Hill country would be a path that would pass about 15 miles east of Victoria. Their return to their northern hunting grounds would not, however, go unchallenged.
Meanwhile, what of the ranging companies mustering in response?
Twenty-two additional volunteers from the Lavaca River settlements east of Gonzales. The Big Hill is apparently a high point of ground 15 miles east of Gonzales which back then offered a commanding view. This was the place Ben McCulloch’s group has hastened to 48 hours earlier.
The men of Lavaca had been awakened on the night of August 7th via courier who raced into the settlements with the news that Victoria had been attacked. 22 volunteers gathered on the Lavaca River, they elected captain Ward into command and departed on August 8th.
Reaching the Big Hill, and finding the Indians had not passed up, the opinion prevailed that the Indians had crossed over and we’re returning on the west side of the Guadalupe river. The company hastened on to Gonzales.
Captain Tumlinson with his combined force of 125 men, had been delayed in their pursuit of the Comanches the day before by having to guard against that same possibility, stopping well before dark to camp while sending scouts to the west to check for a Comanche back trail.
Captain Tumlinson’s 125 man pursuit party returned to the trail on August 8th. His scouts had returned at daybreak with no news of the Indians. Tumlinson’s volunteers rode the trail throughout the day, without stopping, until they arrived at Victoria about sunset. News that Linville was under attack had made it to Victoria.
The men rested for a short time and took on supplies, approximately 25 of Tomlinson’s party were left at Victoria with worn horses, in return he received an equal number of new recruits.
Tumlinson’s group moved east of Victoria, making camp around midnight. A courier was dispatched to the east for more recruits from the town of Texana. There, he found Captain Clark L Owen of Texana with a 40 man volunteer company.
So, three days after first contact maybe sixty mile to the north, there were 125 men waiting on the west side, 40 men waiting on the east side of the Comanche’s backtrail.
The shooting would commence the next day, Sunday August 9th.
Um.... might take a while, due to familial obligations I’m headed out on a road trip this very morning.
Meanwhile, what of the ranging companies mustering in response?
Twenty-two additional volunteers from the Lavaca River settlements east of Gonzales. The Big Hill is apparently a high point of ground 15 miles east of Gonzales which back then offered a commanding view. This was the place Ben McCulloch’s group has hastened to 48 hours earlier.
The men of Lavaca had been awakened on the night of August 7th via courier who raced into the settlements with the news that Victoria had been attacked. 22 volunteers gathered on the Lavaca River, they elected captain Ward into command and departed on August 8th.
Reaching the Big Hill, and finding the Indians had not passed up, the opinion prevailed that the Indians had crossed over and we’re returning on the west side of the Guadalupe river. The company hastened on to Gonzales.
Captain Tumlinson with his combined force of 125 men, had been delayed in their pursuit of the Comanches the day before by having to guard against that same possibility, stopping well before dark to camp while sending scouts to the west to check for a Comanche back trail.
Captain Tumlinson’s 125 man pursuit party returned to the trail on August 8th. His scouts had returned at daybreak with no news of the Indians. Tumlinson’s volunteers rode the trail throughout the day, without stopping, until they arrived at Victoria about sunset. News that Linville was under attack had made it to Victoria.
The men rested for a short time and took on supplies, approximately 25 of Tomlinson’s party were left at Victoria with worn horses, in return he received an equal number of new recruits.
Tumlinson’s group moved east of Victoria, making camp around midnight. A courier was dispatched to the east for more recruits from the town of Texana. There, he found Captain Clark L Owen of Texana with a 40 man volunteer company.
So, three days after first contact maybe sixty mile to the north, there were 125 men waiting on the west side, 40 men waiting on the east side of the Comanche’s backtrail.
The shooting would commence the next day, Sunday August 9th.
Um.... might take a while, due to familial obligations I’m headed out on a road trip this very morning.
Just to recap, just three days after first contact 60 miles away, around 165 men had assembled to intercept by far the largest assemblage of hostile Indians anyone had ever seen. A pretty swift response given the lack of means of long distance communication available at the time.
Of course the Comanche/Kiowas themselves did much to transmit the news by attacking Victoria and smaller settlements on their way down.
What is often lost in these accounts are individual heroics. Like the guy mentioned in passing who rode alone east across the predicted path of the Comanches to see what militia was assembled to the east.
Even in those times few men chose to be Rangers. Captain Tumlinson, who was, is gonna decline to engage at least five times his number of Indians upon contact, instead he’s going to elect to disengage and follow along behind.
Likely this was a realistic assessment of the armament, skills and dispositions of his scratch force and the condition of their mounts.
Ben McCullough, 28 years old, present in Tumlinson’s force, WAS one of that minority with the temperament for rangering. He must have had a good horse, frustrated by Tumlinson’s failure to order a headlong attack, he separates himself from the force that same evening (the 9th) and sets out on a grueling 60 mile ride northeast back to Gonzales to try to get ahead of the Comanches in time to raise a force sufficient to intercept them.
This notwithstanding the fact that he had already been on the trail for the previous three days and furthermore had received a crippling wound to the arm just six months earlier in a duel.
In the years subsequent to this raid Ben McCullough would be among that tiny minority of men who would care to go rangering with the likes of a Jack Hays.
The same year he joined the Rangers the 19yo Gillette nearly shot the Apache captive and adoptee 16yo Herman Lehmann. IIRC the Rangers had taken an educated guess at where the Apaches were headed and ridden through much of the night, surprising the Apaches in the morning.
Lehmann was mounted behind an Apache friend, the two riding two-up, their horse consequently lagging behind. Gillett, riding ahead of his companions closed the distance, dismounted and shot the horse with his Winchester rifle (my own contention is, never mind revolvers, rifles had it all over handguns in plains combat).
If I recall correctly, both Lehmann and his friend escaped.
The same year he joined the Rangers the 19yo Gillette nearly shot 16yo Herman Lehmann. IIRC the Rangers had taken an educated guess at where the Apaches were headed and ridden through much of the night, surprising the Apaches in the morning.
Lehmann was mounted behind an Apache friend, the two riding two-up, their horse lagging behind. Gillett dismounted and shot the horse with his Winchester rifle (my own contention is, never mind revolvers, rifles had it all over handguns in plains combat).
If I recall correctly, both Lehmann and his friend escaped.
The war party of perhaps as many as 1,000 Comanches and Kiowas had a productive raid. On this, just the fourth day after crossing the line of settlement they had raided across 90 miles, acquired perhaps 2,000 horses and mules and more trade goods than they could easily carry from the warehouses at Linnville on the Gulf Coast.
Waiting to intercept them that morning to the west of their route were a force of 120 men under Captain John Tumlinson coming from Victoria and to the east forty men out of Texana under the command of Captain Clark L. Owen.
One George Kerr was among the brave souls who had ridden east from Tumlinson’s force in the night to locate Owen, that morning he sent a message to Colonel John Moore of LaGrange, asking that a force be assembled to the north to intercept the Indians.
From Steven L. Moore’s “Savage Frontier” on the dangers of looking for Comanches, even if you are on a good horse as we might guess such volunteers were...
During the early morning hours of August 9, Captain Owens company was approached by the returning Comanche war party. The hundreds of campaigning Indians passed between the camps of Owen and Tumlinson, making it impossible for the two to unite.
Captain Owen sent out three of his men as scouts-John Sutherland Menefee, a Dr. Bell, and a man named Nail. These three were attacked and chased by the Comanches on Arenosa Creek. Dr. Bell was killed and Nail escaped only by the sheer speed of his horse. He fled towards the Lavaca settlements and escaped.
John Menefee, a San Jacinto veteran and Texas Congressman, was struck in the body by seven arrows. He somehow managed to escape and hide in some brush along the creek bank until the Comanches passed on.
Menefee walked and crawled to a ranch the following day. He had managed to pull the seven arrows from his own body. Although suffering from serious blood loss, he survived, and would keep the seven arrows in his Jackson County home for years.
"Jack Hayes was the first captain in Texas to recognize the potentialities of Colt's newfangled revolvers. Because of this, in early 1840 he fought the first successful mounted action against the Comanches. Riding beside the Pedernales River nw of San Antonio with only 14 men, Hays was ambushed by a party of seventy Comanches. Previously, the standard tactic was to race for cover, and hold off the Comanches with their long rifles- heretofore their only hope for survival.
Hays, however, wheeled and led his men in a charge against the howling, onrushing horse Indians; the fourteen Rangers rode through a blizzard of arrows and engaged the Comanches knee-to-knee with blazing revolvers. Hays lost several men to arrows, but his repeating pistols struck down dozens of warriors.
Startled, amazed by the white men who charged and whose guns seemed inexhaustible, horrified by heavy losses, the Comanche war band broke and fled. The Rangers killed thirty Comanches."
Comanches: The History of a People by TR Fehrenbach
Yep. Those were Paterson Colts, his first revolver put into production. Real game changers for the time. Commercial failure, however, since they were extremely expensive, delicate, and underpowered for their weight. The Walker (and the Dragoons) were the answer to those complaints, the Third Dragoon being nearly the perfect cavalry arm till the 1860 Army came along.
The morning on August 9, Captain Tumlinson’s scouts reported the massive body of Comanches returning from Linville. His men diverged from Texana road and crossed a large prairie... they rode roughly 7 miles further until they finally came in sight of their adversary after 10 AM.
The Indian pack animals were heavily laden.... Tumlinson’s companies rode out to intercept the Comanches on a level, treeless prairie. His right flankers were more than a mile away from his main body at the time of the Indian sighting.
Comanches customarily did not return from a raid the same route they went in, so escaping any organized armed response to their actions. Apparently Tumlinson was still thinking the Comanches might turn to the west and so threw flankers far out in that direction. The Indians passed between his forces and this cut off this detachment from his men... The Comanches, armed with shields, guns, lances, and bows were mounted and prepared for the Texan charge.
Volunteer Washington Miller found the Comanches to be “hideously bedaubed after their own savage taste. Some wore feathers. Others were sporting huge helmets of buffalo or elk horns -armed with glistening shields, with bows and quivers, with guns and mounted on their chargers, dashing about with streamers flying behind them. He estimated the Indian party to number from 400 to 500.
Tumlinson preferred to dismount his men for an attack as he approached. As the Indians moved forward, a large number of their warriors encircled the Texans. This move was to keep the Texans at bay while other Indians herded their large droves of horses forward. Alfred Kelso , sheriff of Gonzalez, drew first blood this day, his target was a daring turkey-plumed Comanche chief armed with lance and shield. As the Comanche moved tauntingly close, Kelso dropped him from his horse with a well directed shot.
The firing continued for about 20 minutes. The battle never became general due to the lack of a charge by the volunteers. During the skirmishing one man on the Texas side was killed and three horses were wounded.
Washington Miller continues:
“They whirled about us and around us, exhibiting the most admirable feats of horsemanship and, being continually in motion, they were less liable to be struck by our rifle balls. Seldom did they withdraw from their daring sallies however without leaving upon the ground evidence of the skilled use of our arms.
Discovering the fate of several of their number, they became more wary, and kept at a more respectful distance. Those among them using rifles and escopetas dismounted and played upon us from the grass, at about 150 paces.”
Note: Escopeta literally translates from Spanish to “shotgun”, in this setting it would be a smoothbore carbine functionally similar to the various musketoons issued to cavalry of the period except with a Spanish-style Miquelet flintlock mechanism. 1840, it can be assumed that many if not most of Tumlinson’s men were still using flintlocks also.
Ben McCullough insisted that a charge should be ordered to scatter the Indians. He felt such action was the only chance of victory against such superior numbers. Sensing hesitation in his ranks, John Tumlinson would not commit to the full charge. He knew that many of his men might not follow....
Captain Tumlinson allowed his men to move to a nearby stream to take in much-needed water. While the Texans quenched their thirst, the Comanches who had kept them at bay joined the main body of retreating Indians
The volunteers found the weather to be excessively hot and their horses were much worn down. Tumlinson decided that the best course of action was to maintain a slow pace in the Indian’s wake.
Prob’ly a good call by Tumlinson, although he and his men, trailing the Comanches, would miss the action at Plum Creek three days and about 85 miles later.
Note that 25 of Tumlinson’s men had dropped out in Victoria the day before, citing worn out horses, as noted earlier in the thread, the settlements during this time period suffered from frequent theft of their best horses by Indians.
Noah Smithwick, two or three years later up by Bastrop, relates that the Comanches had stolen all of his horses except for a blind mare. In any event, these were mostly regular guys responding to the raid and not habitual Rangers like McCulloch and Tumlinson, so presumably were mounted accordingly.
I’m just going to add a little bit of context to this raid, by far the largest ever staged by Comanches against Texians. Most accounts give the actual cost in lives to be surprisingly low; 20 victims. Even if it were five times that number in terms of undiscovered bodies that would only be 100 victims.
In 1840 the estimated population of Texas was 70,000 people, by numbers White, enslaved and Tejano in that order.
As was usually true, the alarm and worry affected far more people than the raid directly did itself. Same thing is true in our popular histories, the mundane and ordinary lives of regular folks are often overlooked.
MONDAY AUGUST 10 was a relatively quiet day in terms of combat, at least in reports. The Comanches and Kiowas had broken with custom and, prob’ly buoyed by their numbers, were moving slowly to the north, about 25-30 miles each day the next two days.
Meanwhile couriers were raising the alarm far and wide, and men mustering hastily to intercept.
As for Ben McCulloch in particular, he and three companions had been riding all night, from Tumlinson’s command back to Gonzales.
Ben McCulloch seething with anger that he had been unable to bring Tomlinson to force to charge all day, turned his Gonzalez company over to a Lieutenant and departed with three of his trusted men. McCulloch rode hard back towards Gonzales throughout the night.
As he neared Gonzales, he dispatched one man to find Captain Matthew Caldwel, who was returning with a group of men from chasing other Indians. He also dispatched another of his men to ride hard to the Bastrop area, where he reached Colonel Edward Burleson at noon on August 10.
Burleson then began to raise all the volunteers in his power to go to their assistance. He plan to ride out the following morning, in company with some of his trusted Tonckawa scouts.
Across the river from Burleson‘s plantation, cousin Susan was enjoying her wedding ceremony. Gas from many miles away headed assemble to watch the wedding. One of Burleson‘s riders appeared just as a happy party was enjoying a toast to the bride. Just as quickly as the horseman dashed into the yard with the warning the wedding was deserted as all the able men raced to help.
While he awaited the return of Captain Caldwel Ben McCullough assisted the Gonzalez citizens in raising another volunteer company, Captain James Byrd was elected to command 30 additional Gonzales volunteers.
Worth noting that Ben McCulloch and his companions had been on the Comanches’ trail for three days, culminating in a prolonged skirmish and then a fifty-mile all-night dash back to Gonzales.
By this time too word had reached Bastrop and San Antonio.
Meanwhile additional men released by Tumlinson were likewise rushing north to get around and ahead of the Comanches.
Hardly anyone would join this fight from San Antonio, the largest city in Texas, which is sort of a puzzle since the 500-man Texian Army and their officers had been stationed there.
Just days before, the Texian Army had evaporated as most of the men, tacitly encouraged by Texian President Mirabeau Lamar, had gone south to fight for the nascent Republic of the Rio Grande, indeed, comprising most of the force and by far the most combat-effective component of the RoRG Army.
So at the time of this Comanche Raid and the ensuing battle, more than 400 men under arms in Texas were along the Border fighting for a different government to establish a different Republic. No one can see the future, that’s where the best prospect to prosper were in 1840, at least that’s how the men involved saw it.
President Lamar’s angle was he wanted a buffer state between Texas and Mexico. 70,000 Texians collectively too poor to field an army, 7,000,000 Mexicans with a history of raising armies. If they ever stopped fighting each other and headed this way we might not have been able to stop them.
If you’ve never heard of this whole Republic of the Rio Grande episode, no worries, it was pretty much written out of popular Texas History.
Ben McCulloch was a dynamo of energy when it came to countering this raid. Twenty-nine at the time, he first came to Texas four years earlier. Back in Tennessee his large family had been neighbors of the Crocketts and he had been planning to join that former Congressman’s entourage.
A timely attack of the measles saved him from sharing Crockett’s fate, McCulloch was back in action in time to crew the Twin Sisters cannons at San Jacinto.
Prior to arriving inTexas McCulloch had rafted timber and trade goods downriver to New Orleans and in 1833 arrived too late to join a party of trappers headed to the Rocky Mts.
In Texas Ben and his younger brother Henry had been employed as surveyors along with the likes of Jack Hays. Ben McCulloch’s story speaks volumes about society in early Texas.
1839 McCulloch had been elected to the Texas House of Representives for Gonzales, apparently displacing one Alonzo Sweitzer. Sweitzer took offense and challenged McCulloch to a duel.
McCulloch declined on the grounds that Sweitzer “was not a gentleman”. Not a whole lot appears to be known about Sweitzer prior to his Texas years, but two years later he would be shot and killed by Texas Indian Agent Robert Neighbors. Most likely he had it coming, Neighbors weren’t a bloody-handed individual.
When McCulloch refused the duel, the “noted duellist” Reuben Ross pressed the issue. As with Sweitzer, details of Ross’s life prior to Texas are unclear. Ross among other things was a Ranger Captain operating out of Gonzales, likely rival political factions came into play.
Most immediately prior to the October duel Ross had been commanding 200 men “most of whom were outlaws” along the Rio Grande, participating in the ongoing Mexican Civil War. Not all the cutthroats along the Border were Mexican.
The duel was fought with rifles, likely McCulloch’s first, not so Ross. McCulloch received a permanently crippling wound in his right arm.
Two months later, Ben’s younger brother Henry, five years younger than Ben and likewise not a “noted duellist”, under circumstances that are poorly recorded, shot and killed Rueben Ross in Gonzales with a pistol. If Rueben Ross were widely mourned it ain’t recorded. Sounds like it woulda made a good movie.
Ben McCulloch never married. He rangered alongside Jack Hays in the Ranger heyday of the early 1840’s, likewise served with Hays in the Mexican War, and like Hays moved to California in ‘49.
Unlike Hays, McCulloch did return to Texas and later entered Confederate service as a General Officer. Throughout his life McCulloch was noted for his ability to read a trail, a skill learned back in Tennessee from the Choctaws. McCulloch was killed by a Union sniper while scouting out the lay of the land before the Confederate lines, Pea Ridge Arkansas 1862.
Camp Ben McCulloch outside Austin was a reunion site for Confederate Veterans of the area. Ben Mc is buried at State Cemetery in Austin. Camp Ben on Onion Creek is a really popular site for arrow head hunters.
Camp Ben McCulloch outside Austin was a reunion site for Confederate Veterans of the area. Ben Mc is buried at State Cemetery in Austin. Camp Ben on Onion Creek is a really popular site for arrow head hunters.
I’ll have to find Camp Ben, the Onion Creek exit is a familiar landmark coming and going from Austin, all built up, I’m sure those Confederate Veterans wouldn’t recognize the place now.
Back to 1840....
There seems to have been a small number of men, skilled in arms, who enjoyed the rush of killing a man in a duel. Andrew Jackson, then age 33, killed one of these men, Charles Dickinson, in a duel in Kentucky in 1806. At age 26 Dickinson had already killed more than twenty men in duels.
His method was to insult a man, inciting a challenge. As the challenged party he got choice of weapons, his own pistols with which he was very fast and accurate,, dropping his opponent with a bullet in the heart every time.
This frequent dueling among earlier generations might have spawned the movie convention of the Old West gunfighter.
In the Jackson/Dickinson duel, Jackson used Dickinson’s marksmanship against him by wearing a large overcoat and inconspicuously twisting his torso so as to move his heart out of the way.
It worked, barely, Dickinson’s ball broke two of Jackson’s ribs and hit so close to his heart it could never be removed, paining him for life.
Jackson’s return shot misfired on the first attempt, at which time the Code Duello specified the duel was over until the next round. Jackson, likely believing himself mortally wounded, recocked the pistol, mortally wounding Dickinson on this second attempt.
Rueben Ross, leader of a gang of 200 mostly outlaws, appears to have been one of these killer/duelist figures.
While couriers rushed about and forces mustered, Captain Tumlinson, now with a force of 160 men, continued his methodical trailing the Comanche force, awaiting an opportunity and seeking to be the anvil at such time the Comanches might be attacked from the front.
during the day on August 10, his 160 men found the Indians....
.....“drawn up in a very imposing line, upon the crest of a ridge, to our left. We make for them – they fly in disorder, man and beast, bag and baggage - their object is what we apprehended, to elude us by flight.”
The inferior horses ridden by most of Tumlinson’s command made swift pursuit impossible, however a few men, well mounted, were dispatched to the north. These men would be repeating Ben McCulloch’s task of the previous night but Tumlinson of course had no way of knowing if McCulloch had made it through.
One thing I do find interesting is how all the separate commands, widely scattered, seem to have arrived at the same conclusion that Plum Creek outside of present-day Lockhart but at the time sparsely settled, would the best location to confront the Comanches.
some of the fleeing Comanches dropped their plunder along the trail. Tumlinson ordered the Texans with the freshest horses to ride hard through the night to get ahead of the advancing Indians. The best option now seemed to move the men ahead who had the best horses and set up an ambush at Plum Creek.
Have any of y’all read the Boy Captives? I believe that’s the title anyway.. it was about two brothers that got kidnapped by the Comanche and lived with them.
Have any of y’all read the Boy Captives? I believe that’s the title anyway.. it was about two brothers that got kidnapped by the Comanche and lived with them.
Yes I have. Although there was good factual stuff in it, I felt on several occasions there was a bit of artistic license in the story. Concerns the Smith brothers taken in modern Comal county. One brother lived with Comanches, the other with Apaches.
I think a better book would be Herman Lehmann’s account of his captivity. His is pretty spot on and many of his accounts check out with additional sources. I know Birdy mentions him in his account earlier in the thread on James B. Gillett.
The 1840’s marked a high point for the Comanches, 20,000 strong. But even then they didn’t have it all their own way, not even in their home range, a number of tribes customarily raiding into Comancheria on foot, returning with Comanche scalps on Comanche horses.
What drove the Comanches to the negotiating table at the Council House in 1840 was the exploding immigration of Americans into Texas, that flood of extra people we call the “Frontier”.
Buffalo Hump, age about 40 in 1840, apparently the chief organizer of the raid, had already met with Texas officials in 1838, would do so again in 1843, these Comanche delegations always trying to fix a permanent line of settlement.
If most American freebooters in Texas in 1840 were turning their attention to the ongoing Mexican Civil War along the Border to the tune of organized forces of hundreds of men going there, so was this Comanche raid, except working for the other side, specifically hitting Victoria and Linnville, home of the Mexican Federalists in exile.
During the 1840’s, the Comanches, including Buffalo Hump, went on to launch devastating, bloody raids into Mexico on a massive scale, on at least one occasion being supplied with cattle on the way down by none other than Jack Hays hisself.
Buffalo Hump continued to treat with the Texans and their burgeoning population impinging from the East, recognizing the inevitable, playing for time. Meeting with US negotiators in 1846, concluding a lasting peace treaty with the Hill Country Germans in ‘47, and actually guiding a US/Texan party across Texas to El Paso in 1849. This is where Buffalo Hump became acquainted with Ranger Captain John Salmon Ford.
What’s notable in that 1849 expedition is that the party was encountering Comanches that had still never seen a White man.
That winter of ‘49, catastrophe struck, the ‘49ers rushing to California seeded cholera across the plains, about half the tribe, 10,000 Comanches perished. Buffalo Hump caught it too but survived.
After the massive die off further catastrophe struck in the form of a major drought, both buffalo and cattle perished in droves, Buffalo Hump and his band finally accepting a small reservation in Texas around 1856.
Somewhere in the middle of all this Buffalo Hump, hearing that Jack Hays’ wife in California had given birth to their first child, sent them an engraved silver cup.
The Brazos Reserve didn’t last, Buffalo Hump removed to the Indian Territory along with the other Indians on that reserve when they were kicked out in ‘58.
The last we hear of Buffalo Hump was in 1858, when Ranger Captain Ford led an expedition of 90 Rangers and 100 Tonkawa allies against Buffalo Hump’s band in the Wichita Mountains.
The circumstances of Buffalo Hump’s actual demise are unknown, sometime before 1867, by which time the last free remnants of the Comanches and Kiowas up on the Panhandle had of necessity largely switched to a pastoralist economy, herding horses and cattle.
Do something ( if you haven’t already) on Walker’s Creek fight. On the Pinta Trails crossing. Out here close to my new stomping grounds.
Just an addendum; Buffalo Hump’s own cousin, Yellow Wolf was along on the Great Raid. Whereas Buffalo Hump at least attempted to negotiate with the Texians and later the US, Yellow Wolf remained unremittingly hostile throughout.
Which might explain why it would be Yellow Wolf who it was said opposed Jack Hays along the Guadaloupe River in those famous 1844 fights.
It was always hazardous being a Comanche, even a major War Chief. Yellow Wolf suffered a fatal encounter with a hunting party of Lipan Apaches in 1854.
Gonzales must have been a remarkable place in 1840, or maybe the sort of people that first settled frontiers were remarkable.
Residing in the little town itself you had people ranging from the likes of the McCulloch brothers all the way down to the lethal Rueben Ross. Texas was a rough neighborhood for a long time, the Indians being but a part of the problem and an increasingly insignificant one as time went by.
By the numbers, the biggest threat to Texians was other Texians, a lot of rough characters running loose. Four years earlier, right before the siege of the Alamo, Captain Almeron Dickinson had brought his young wife Susanna and their infant child Angelina to the Alamo for her own safety from Gonzales after a band of American outlaws had roughed her up and plundered their farmstead.
One of the notable Gonzales men, a good guy, was Mathew “Old Paint” Caldwell. The relative youth of the Texas population at that time might be inferred from Caldwell’s “Old Paint” moniker, applied to a guy who was just 42.
In the same way, if there had been a Moses Rose who was the only guy to opt to escape from the Alamo, it was likely one Louis Rose, a French guy in his fifties, called “Moses” by the others on account of his age.
It seems likely that Caldwell was afflicted with vitiligo although we are told the nickname came from his unusually colored beard. He must have been a dynamic character, his name comes up as the “go to” guy in the accounts of his peers.
On Monday the 10th, Caldwell was west of Gonzales leading 32 men, having assumed like most everyone else that the Comanches would follow usual practice and escape by a different route from where they came in. Riders sent out to recall him would find him that day in Seguin.
Caldwell was one of those guys who’s life demonstrates the precariousness of a life in those days even without Comanches or outlaws. He lost his first wife, mother of his three children, when he was thirty five. Caldwell himself passed away at home in 1842, at just 44 years of age, cause of death not given.
It seems likely that Caldwell was afflicted with impetigo although we are told the nickname came from his unusually colored beard. He must have been a dynamic character, his name comes up as the “go to” guy in the accounts of his peers.
It seems likely that Caldwell was afflicted with impetigo although we are told the nickname came from his unusually colored beard. He must have been a dynamic character, his name comes up as the “go to” guy in the accounts of his peers.
I wonder if the author meant "vitiligo."
Indeed I did, tks. Changed it in the original. my free time on the Fire is if I wake up early, didn’t take the time to Google it.
It seems likely that Caldwell was afflicted with impetigo although we are told the nickname came from his unusually colored beard. He must have been a dynamic character, his name comes up as the “go to” guy in the accounts of his peers.
I wonder if the author meant "vitiligo."
Indeed I did, tks. Changed it in the original. my free time on the Fire is if I wake up early, didn’t take the time to Google it.
So the guy’s name properly translates to “Hard On” or something like that. I gotta observe tho, it musta took exceptional men on either side of this conflict to inspire 100+ men to follow them at a time when all could come and go as they pleased.
There was a Comanche leader of that era, an older guy called “Amorous Man” which is open to translation.
Same year, 1840, a Comanche was born somewhere to the west who, thirty-four years later, would create bullet-proof medicine for the warriors attacking Adobe Walls. Isa-Tai, which popular history has it translates to “Coyote A$$hole”.
The medicine didn’t work, but Isa-Tai did go on to a notable career in Tribal elections on the reservation. Maybe politicians and some medicine men were similar sorts of people.
The fact that Comanche hostility wouldn’t end for another thirty-four years after 1840 is also notable. I dunno of any other tribe able to hold out that long.
Edited to add: Actually I do, the enigmatic Kickapoo, originally of the 18th Century Ohio Country who never made any treaties with the Whites but who did administer a sound drubbing to a joint Texas and Confederate force. Dove Creek 1864.
Thanks Birdie and Kaywoodie and everyone else for their contributions. I’ve been quietly following along and I look forward to each installment. When I was a young boy every Sunday was family dinner day. After mom got done playing the organ and acting as choir director for 3+ services she’d get home around 12-12:30 and begin cooking for the 7 of us in my immediate family plus my 4 grandparents and usually a friend of mine. After dinner my dad’s dad would start talking history and I was enthralled. I’d sip my coffee (I was a lucky kid and I promise it did NOT stunt my growth) and listen intently, hanging on every word grandpa said. He was especially focused on the civil war but his ability at recall amazed me. Grandpa was educated at Rutgers and went to law school there as well so education was big for him as was being in the proper social circles. I still miss those hours and hours of grandpa chain smoking, talking history and drinking coffee. I absorbed more in those Sunday suppers than I learned all through high school. Those early years were so informative, I’ve been an avid history buff ever since.
Thanks to all that have contributed here. This thread has been a comforting reminder of wonderful days gone by….I can almost smell the leg of lamb and pork roast mixed with cigarette smoke and fresh coffee from the percolator (the good stuff for company).😁
Google has it that after the debacle at Adobe Walls Isa-Tai blamed a Cheyenne for having killed a skunk and breaking his bullet-proof medicine.
Whereupon the Cheyenne’s, PO’d, started calling him by the derogatory term “Coyote Vagina”.
Some things get lost in translation.
Seemz there was a lot of dissension between the Cheyenne and Comanches before this battle. I believe the majority of the Cheyenne chiefs and all really wanted nothing to do with the affair. Isn’t that correct??? Been a long time since reading anything on it.
One has to tread carefully when discussing Tribal events and politics, there’s the Indian version, and then again there’s the White guy version which may or may not match. Here’s a White guy version.
The gist is by the summer of 1874 the Comanches were in crisis. Those who wanted to try and move to the agency and those who wanted to fight, the latter camp including many young men.
Seeking spiritual mojo the radical camp put on their first-ever sun dance that year. After that opinions were divided where to go next. Quanah wanted to go against the remnants of the hated Tonkawa, he got outvoted.
So they went against the Buffalo Hunters at Adobe Walls and lost maybe 30 guys in that fight. the rest of the Indians, possibly up to hundreds, then fanned out and wreaked havoc elsewhere.
However they felt about each other before Adabe Walls, Quanah and Isa tai did become rival politicians later on the reservation.
Still on Monday, August 10th, four days after the initial alarm. Gonzales.....
While he waited the return of Captain Caldwel Ben McCulloch assisted the Gonzalez citizens in raising another volunteer company. Captain James Bird was elected to command the 30 additional Gonzales volunteers. Among those now in his number were Ben McCulloch, and his brother Henry McCulloch.
Henry McCullough was five years younger than his older brother Ben, and was 24 years old at the time of these events. A few months prior to the raid Henry had confronted and shot the lethal Ruben Ross.
Henry would live to the ripe old age of 78 years old, in his later years becoming a much valued source on historical events in early Texas. A number of his letters on this topic survive but it may be significant that apparently none of all describe the circumstances of his killing of Ross.
It could be there were still Ross descendants/partisans around, or maybe he had just up and shot Ross outside of a duel setting, either way going up against the deadly outlaw leader was no small thing.
No surprise then....
As Captain Bird was gathering his volunteers, Henry McCullough set out to scout for the Comanches. He rode out to Big Hill, 14 miles east of Gonzales, to view the passing cavalcade. He saw them pass and noted Captain Tumlinson’s pursuit party still in tow. McCulloch then rode hard to alert his brother and Captain Bird.
It always struck me how much nerve it took to ride out fifteen miles by yourself towards a high prominence overlooking the route of possibly a thousand hostile Indians. I woulda figured there’d be Indians up there for the same reason.
The fact that there weren’t might indicate how careless and overconfident the Comanches had become.
Someday I shall have to go and locate this high hill. Not as easy to find today, the country was far more open back then, live oak prairie with strips of woodlands along the watercourses.
Just ten days later Henry McCulloch got married in Gonzales, a Kentucky girl, him and his wife had twelve kids, opened a mercantile business in Seguin.
He did remain exceptional on the Frontier, like his brother Ben noted for his skill at tracking, they both musta hung out with those same Choctaws in their youth.
1847, as a Ranger Captain, Henry McCulloch would establish a Ranger Station way up in Burnet County. Likely he was filling in for the likes of his brother and Jack Hays who at that time were down in Mexico for that war.
This Ranger Station was shortly taken over by the Feds and renamed Fort Croghan (??). 1847 that location was way out there, but by 1852 the place was already obsolete and abandoned, indicating just how fast Texas was settling up.
In his 40’s, as a Brigadier General for the Confederacy, Henry McCulloch commanded Texas cavalry both on the Texas Frontier, Arkansas and as far east as the Vicksburg campaign.
He’s surprisingly obscure in popular Texas history today, maybe we just had too many remarkable guys back then. One wishes he had written a book.
Then there was the thing that happened on May 19 1836.
The Fall of Fort Parker,lots of folks died and some were never found after being hauled off by one indian band or another.
This is when the Parkers,Plummbers,Nixons Falulkenberrys Anglins and others lives were changed forever.
The Parkers are the wife's folks.
They were tough folks back then but sometimes they did not think things out very well.
The massacre at Parker’s Fort was a typical example of Indian brutality, old Granny Parker in particular surviving being raped repeatedly while pinned to the ground by a lance.
I think I wrote earlier What’s not usually mentioned is that the fort was also a staging area for expeditions against the Indians and according to Moore the source of at least one attempt to infect the Indians with smallpox.
How much of that was known to what has been described as a mixed group of Comanche and Waco teenagers sacking the fort that day I dunno.
"In his 40’s, as a Brigadier General for the Confederacy, Henry McCulloch commanded Texas cavalry both on the Texas Frontier, Arkansas and as far east as the Vicksburg campaign."
My gggrandfather John Franklin Guthrie jr. Served in “A” company (Captain Fry’s co) McCulloch’s Frontier Rifle Battalion. Enlisted at Webberville in April 1861. Seved til the following July’62.
"This Ranger Station was shortly taken over by the Feds and renamed Fort Croghan (??). 1847 that location was way out there, but by 1852 the place was already obsolete and abandoned, indicating just how fast Texas was settling up."
Ft. Croghan is in Burnet county. Matter of fact just above Hamilton Creek in the current city of Burnet. When you drop by sometime we can go over there. Old reenacting bud is a docent there.
"This Ranger Station was shortly taken over by the Feds and renamed Fort Croghan (??). 1847 that location was way out there, but by 1852 the place was already obsolete and abandoned, indicating just how fast Texas was settling up."
Ft. Croghan is in Burnet county. Matter of fact just above Hamilton Creek in the current city of Burnet. When you drop by sometime we can go over there. Old reenacting bud is a docent there.
Durn it, I thought I wrote Burnet County, my fingers musta wrote otherwise. I corrected the original.
"This Ranger Station was shortly taken over by the Feds and renamed Fort Croghan (??). 1847 that location was way out there, but by 1852 the place was already obsolete and abandoned, indicating just how fast Texas was settling up."
Ft. Croghan is in Burnet county. Matter of fact just above Hamilton Creek in the current city of Burnet. When you drop by sometime we can go over there. Old reenacting bud is a docent there.
Durn it, I thought I wrote Burnet County, my fingers musta wrote otherwise. I corrected the original.
LOL! It’s ok. They right next to each other. Matter of fact back 115 acres here on the place is in Burnet co!
Birdue& Woodie, can you guys shed some light on the Seminole Scouts? The reason I ask, is there's a cemetery in Fort Clark where a lot of them are buried, quite a few recipients of the MOH. We always get up a working party and clean up the graves.
"This Ranger Station was shortly taken over by the Feds and renamed Fort Croghan (??). 1847 that location was way out there, but by 1852 the place was already obsolete and abandoned, indicating just how fast Texas was settling up."
Ft. Croghan is in Burnet county. Matter of fact just above Hamilton Creek in the current city of Burnet. When you drop by sometime we can go over there. Old reenacting bud is a docent there.
I always stop in Burnet to get me a Storm’s Special Hamburger. Triple Meat, Triple Cheese, and large fries. 🤠
Birdue& Woodie, can you guys shed some light on the Seminole Scouts? The reason I ask, is there's a cemetery in Fort Clark where a lot of them are buried, quite a few recipients of the MOH. We always get up a working party and clean up the graves.
One of the most remarkable and longest sagas in our history; the partnership of the Seminole leader Widcat and the nominal slave Juan Caballo AKA John Horse, a Black guy.
The Black Seminoles in Florida were runaways and their descendants who were allowed to live in Seminole territory paying some tribute in the form of crop yields. There was a lot of intermarriage, Osceola himself said to be a mix of White, Back and Seminole.
Second Seminole War, 1840’s, the Seminoles and their Black Seminole allies fought the US to a standstill. So much so that 500 Black Seminoles, who had recently been at war with the US Government, were actually allowed while still bearing arms, to remove with the Seminoles to Oklahoma.
The pretext was this they were called slaves of the Seminoles.
Things did not go well in the Indian Territory, tribal conflicts between tribes and slave raids on the Black Seminoles by neighboring Creeks who were selling them into actual slavery. 1850’s, the US passed a law forbidding slaves to bear arms, making things worse.
Wildcat and John Horse cut a deal with Mexico; a land grant in Mexico south of Eagle Pass in return for intercepting Indian raids. They did this, in the 1850’s intercepting more Indian raids than did the US Cavalry or Texas Rangers.
1857 Wildcat died of smallpox, most of the Seminoles subsequently returned to the US, the Black Seminoles remained in Mexico.
Twenty years later the US Army is sucking wind for Indian Scouts in Texas, Texas having chased out most all their Indians.
So they contract out to the Black Seminoles, a bunch of whom, including their aging leader John Horse, move up from Mexico and settle around Fort Clark.
Four Medal of Honor winners buried in that little “Seminole Indian Scout Cemetery”, highest per capita rate in the world.
“ Texas was a paradise for men and dogs, but a hell for women and horses.“
You can find that quote around, that one is cited from Illinois in 1847. Horses And their condition certainly were a limiting factor in this campaign, with the Indians being better mounted and covering shorter distances since leaving Linville.
Back to Monday August 10th.
The errant Captain Mathew Caldwell of Gonzales, who had gone west from Gonzales some days earlier to intercept the Indians on their probable return route, was finally located that morning in Seguin by a messenger from Gonzales “on a foaming steed”.
Caldwell had fifty-eight men with him and, notwithstanding their previous exertions, announced that they would set out for Plum Creek immediately after breakfast, 33 miles to the northeast.
It was probably a reflection of their horses and the excessively hot weather that they would only make about twenty miles that day. Camping for the night on the San Marcos River.
Meanwhile, that same evening of the 10th, those among Tumlinson’s command trailing the Comanches who were well mounted, pushed ahead through the night to get around and ahead of the Indians.
With most of our horses worn down with the extraordinary fatigue of yesterday and last night, having traveled some 60 or 70 miles. Here we quit the trail, and made for Gonzales for the purpose of feeding our horses, and as many of us can, joining the force supposed to be on Plum Creek.
Note: The implication was that not all of these guys would be able to make it depending upon how wore out their horses were.
It is plain that our sole reliance is to take advantage of them at Plum Creek bottom, where they will little expect to see us, and which is looked to as the ground where, of all others, they may effectually be chastised.
The converging Texian forces would start assembling at Plum Creek the following day, one day ahead of the Indians.
Three of the four MoH winners in that little cemetery, won them in the same action. They used to award Medals of Honor more liberally back then. For a period of time the White Officer in charge of the Black Seminoles was a twice-wounded Battle of Gettysburg veteran named Lt. John Latham Bullis, a lot more famous back then, they even named Camp Bullis after him.
Bullis and three scouts were out on patrol when they located a camp of twenty-five Comanches returning from Mexico with a herd of stolen horses.
Bullis decided to try and bluff them into running off so as to recover the horses, the four of them opening fire from a hillside above the camp. However the Comanches, well armed, quickly realize the ruse and began to flank them.
Bullis and the scouts fled back to their horses to escape, but in the confusion Bullis lost his horse, being left behind afoot. The scouts turned and charged back under heavy fire, the one lifting Bullis up behind him on his horse having the stock of his carbine shattered and a rein cut by gunfire.
The fourth Medal of Honor winner was a different fish entirely; Adam Payne, tall and outspoken, went to war in a buffalo headdress. Ranald McKenzie awarded Payne a MoH for “habitual boldness” and for “invaluable service” during the Palo Duro campaign.
One time Payne and some Creek scouts were out ahead of McKenzies’ column tracking a Comanche band until after dark. First light revealed the Comanches had likewise made a cold camp not far away, said Comanches charging upon the scouts.
One Creek scout lost his horse, Payne gave him his own and then knocked one Comanche horse down with the butt of his rifle, shot another Comanche off his horse and made his escape on that horse.
Payne left the service, got in a brawl in a Brownsville saloon and killed a soldier with a knife. The Sheriff of Brackettsville (outside of Ft Clark) and a deputy, Clarence Windus, attempted to arrest Payne in a Brackettsville saloon but backed down despite the two against one odds as Payne was armed with a revolver and had his rifle on the bar, Payne brazenly challenging them to either “have a drink or give him the door”.
Windus shot and killed Payne in the early hours of the morning New Year’s Day 1877,stepped out of the darkness at a New Year’s celebration and gave him both barrels of a shotgun point blank in the back, Payne being considered too formidable an adversary to apprehend any other way.
Payne was the cousin and close companion of the sergeant who had lifted Bullis onto his horse during that earlier skirmish, they are buried right next to each other in that cemetery.
Clarence Windus had previously been awarded a MoH serving with the cavalry against the Kiowa.
The shooting of Adam Payne was the only time in our history that one MoH winner killed another.
Said to be Lipan Apaches, surprised while looting a house. Maybe they were revisiting the scenes of their youth.
What is not usually mentioned is that local posses formed up but lost the trail. Several days later Bullis and his Black Seminoles were called in, picked up the cold trail, followed it all the way across Texas and into the Burro Mountains in Mexico south of El Paso.
There they surprised the Apache camp and killed several, returning with a woman prisoner.
Again not usually mentioned, about that same year (1880?) IIRC Lipan Apaches out of New Mexico were stealing livestock around Mason TX in the Texas Hill Country. That was WAY late for an Indian raid that far east . Again ya gotta wonder if those Lipans, coming all that way, were revisiting old haunts.
Bullis and his scouts were called in. What followed was the longest epic pursuit/tracking duel I am aware of in our history. Expert trackers trying to elude expert trackers. Six hundred miles winding across West Texas into New Mexico.
The Apaches made it back to their New Mexico reservation less than a half-day ahead of their pursuers, where the Indian Agent refused to recognize Bullis’s jurisdiction.
The whole remarkable Seminole/Black Seminole story is almost always written out of the script of pop Texas history.
Most likely because they were Black, just the way it was. And nowadays they ain’t PC because they mostly fought and killed Indians.
Bullis himself had come up from the ranks during the War Over Secession, beginning as a Private in a NY Infantry regiment. Wounded twice, captured twice, Harper’s Ferry and Gettysburg. Battlefield promotions.
One gets the feeling Bullis loved being on the Frontier, loved the adventure, and his partnership with the Black Seminoles was the means to make that happen.
Shortly thereafter he would be stationed in Arizona during the Apache Wars, and finished his military career in the Spanish-American War.
When he died, some of his by then-elderly and impoverished former scouts travelled unheralded from the Fort Clark area to San Antonio for his funeral.
I dunno if anyone’s still following this but it’s now Tuesday August 11th, 1840.
Close to 1,000 Comanches are three days and maybe 75 miles out heading NNW away from the coast, intending to make a wide left turn northeast of Gonzales and that high hill and then head directly northwest to escape towards the Texas Hill Country which at that time was still in Comanche hands.
Meanwhile, it seems to independently occur the everyone in a number of widely scattered locations that the best place to intercept them was at the “Plum Creek bottom”.
Why that would be so is not readily apparent today, native prairie was already going under by the 1870’s and in the absence of fire, overgrown pastures and wooded areas are the norm where it ain’t actively farmed.
Used to be scarcely a tree other than along the watercourses between Austin and San Antonio though.
One Robert Hall, twenty six at the time, on of the founders of Seguin a tough sumbich who would ranch the lawless Nueces Strip of far South Texas, riding in from the southwest with Caldwell’s men from Seguin towards Plum Creek reports the following...
The 11th was intensely hot, and our ride was chiefly over a burnt Prairie, the flying ashes being blinding to the eyes. Waiting some hours at noon, watching for the approach of the enemy after night, we arrived at goods cabin, on the Gonzales and Austin Road, a little east of Plum Creek.
We know that the country was open enough that one could see for miles from the Big Hill fifteen miles east of Gonzales, we also know that west of Plum Creek lay open prairie all the way west to El Paso and Chihuahuan desert country.
Yet around Plum Creek...
From the big hill near Gonzales on to Plum Creek, this area of Texas was heavily wooded. Beyond Plum Creek, there was an open prairie which led towards the Hill Country area of Austin.
That describes a band of woodland about thirty miles long stretching NW-SE in otherwise open country. Much of it laying along Plum Creek.
Sorta related, posted by a friend on Facebook who has access to the 1839 “Diary of a Campaign Against the Comanches” J.W. Benedict.
September ‘39, three years after the Alamo, eleven months before the Great Comanche Raid.
Sunday morning 20th. Left San Antonio for the San Saba hills and mountains. About 40 or 50 Mexicans joined us under Colonel Karnes together with some surveyors, scientific gentleman making discoveries and getting specimens of geology, mineralogy etc. making in all upwards of 100 persons which together with our pack mules extra horses for the spies gave us quite a formidable appearance....
Wednesday 23 - Went 3 miles across another ravine and camped in consequence of the man who was wounded being carried on a hand hearse. Thursday 24 - Went 5 miles encamped on the Guadalupe River about 100 miles above our first crossing. We were now forbidden to fire a gun at any account whatsoever except in seeing Indians. Wild game past almost within our reach.
We had several beeves provided on starting but by this time they were either killed and eaten or had escaped us. We had no bread stuffs provided. Within five days from starting from Bexar are only stock of provisions consisted and coffee and salt.
Five or six Mexicans were employed as hunters provided with spears bows and arrows and extra horses on those we were to depend for sustenance.
A party of maybe 60 mostly Texians/Americans and 40 Tejanos provisioned by five or six Tejanos on horseback expert enough with spears and bows to feed the rest. Buffalo had to be the main quarry.
One of two major punitive expeditions launched from Texas against the Comanches in ‘39, both of which were largely swings and misses. In response the Comanches initiate a treaty meeting in March of 1840, resulting in the Council House debacle, base treachery in the eyes of the Comanches.
In response the Comanches launched the Great Raid in August of 1840, we hit them back in turn the following December, resulting in the death of as many as 180 Comanches in winter camp on the Colorado.
Wasn’t decisive though, best estimates are there were about 20,000 Comanches in 1840. The cholera epidemic of ‘49 would take out an estimated 10,000 Comanches, dwarfing anything we did directly, things would go rapidly downhill for the Comanches after that.
Henry Wax Karnes at age 27 already had pull enough to summon 40 or 50 Tejanos to his call. Two years later Jack Hays would be riding out of San Antonio with similar forces of Tejanos, the majority of whom would shortly be dispossessed by the flood tide of settlement.
Born in Tennessee, raised in Arkansas and taught woodcraft by his Hunter and Trapper father, Karnes first came to Texas at age 16, returned to Texas just one year before the Alamo age 22. He must have been a larger than life personality because this backwoods character rises rapidly to the fore.
IIRC Karnes was mostly illiterate, like so many of these guys, he was taken out early, this time by yellow fever, San Antonio 1840, 27 years of age. Buried outside the cemetery wall because he weren’t Catholic, which says much about San Antonio at that particular moment in time tho big demographic changes were about to arrive.
Like Tejanos going after buffalo with spears and bows, Karnes ain’t much remembered in popular History today. He was in his day though, there’s a town and a county named after him.
One guy absent from this fight, and also indicative of the perilous nature of life in those times was Erastus “Deaf” Smith, originally from Dutchess County NY by way of Mississippi. His popular moniker (which reenactors take pains to point out was pronounced “Deef” back then) was as a result of hearing loss from a childhood infection.
Deef was a livestock guy, a stockman, who moved to Texas in 1821 at 34 years of age. Not much is known of his earlier life or his exact movements during the 15 years prior to the Alamo. It is believed in he traveled over much of Texas in advance of the Frontier. It is known that he partnered with the Ruiz clan around Mission San Jose here in San Antonio in moving livestock to trade in Louisiana.
1822 he married one Guadeloupe Ruiz Duran, a widowed daughter of the Ruiz patriarch whose late Vaquero husband have been killed in a fall from a horse. It appears to have been a love match, Smith became a stepfather to her four children and she would bear him two more.
If you’re looking for a politically correct Frontiersman, Deef is your guy. One of his adopted daughters married a free Black man named Hendrick Arnold, Deef and Arnold we’re 100 miles out of town hunting Buffalo in 1835 when the Mexican army occupied San Antonio. Being married to a Tejano Deef was politically neutral until upon his return to San Antonio he was severely beaten by a detail Mexican cavalry, at which point Deef and Arnold went over to the Texian side.
Both men were described in glowing terms by their contemporaries, William Barrett Travis himself described Deef as being “the bravest of the brave”. At the beginning of the campaign to drive the Mexican army out of San Antonio and capture the Alamo the attack was stalled because many of the men refused to begin unless Hendrick Arnold was present.
Deef was seriously wounded in this attack in November of 1835 but remained in service and of course famously burned the bridge at San Jacinto the following April, which burning resulted in the capture of Santa Anna himself.
Prior to that battle, Deef was credited with capturing the Mexican Courier bearing dispatches from Santa Anna that informed the Texians that Santa Anna was headed for San Jacinto with only 800 troops, setting the stage for subsequent events.
In the months after San Jacinto both Deef and Arnold led ranging companies down to the Rio Grande against Mexican bandits. The following year, 1837, Deef Smith died of an illness at just 50 years of age, his widow granted a home site and a pension in San Antonio.
Hendrick Arnold’s father had been a white man and his mother probably enslaved. Prior to his marriage to Smith’s stepdaughter he had fathered a child by a black woman, probably one of the family slaves. Much might be made of the fact that he held his own daughter as his slave until you consider the fact that it was illegal in the Texas Republic for free Blacks to reside there, Hendrick himself having been given special dispensation in this regard.
Arnold was granted a large tract of land north west of present day Bandera in the Texas Hill country where he settled his mother. Arnold took no part that we know of in the fight against the great Comanche raid. At that time he was operating a Gristmill at Mission San Juan south of San Antonio.
Arnold’s birthdate is unknown, but he perished in the great cholera epidemic of 1849, the same epidemic that killed off about 10,000 Comanches, most likely he would have been in his 40s at the time. Prior to his death Arnold had made arrangements for his enslaved daughter to be freed after a period of indentured servitude, said freedom being subsequently challenged by his daughter from the Ruiz family, Outcome of the case unknown.
The problem with all of this great CHIT is, most youngsters couldn’t give a rat’s Azz anymore.
Probably because they had Boomer parents and grandparents that spent more time chasing the dollar than raising their kids. It's a narrative that goes across many genres, not just history learning. Might be the reason for a lot of the problems we face today. Everyone here talks about how the democraps have been ruining this country for such a long time, but they did nothing to stop it. Instead, they just blame the product and claim a holier than thou status.
Tuesday August 11th 1840, five days after the first reports, close to 400 men were hurrying from all points of the surrounding compass to the strip of woodlands and marshy areas along Plum Creek close to present-day Lockhart, that location by common consensus being the best spot to waylay the returning Comanche horde, although there seems nothing unique about that particular area as it toisday.
The guy who who be conceded command of the assembled militia the following day was heading down from the brand-new City of Austin, said city until just the year before an otherwise largely unsettled area thirty miles to the north of Plum Creek. Austin had six hundred fifty residents already in a community designated as the Capitol of the Republic even before it was settled, although that designation would be shortly challenged by Sam Houston hisself.
Curiously, one reads of no organized militia descending from Austin, although the indefagitable Reverend Ezakiah Morell who had driven his ox team and wagon a possible world record 30 miles in a day on the 6th to bring the news to Ed Burleson at Bastrop and then ridden to Austin on the 7th probably arrived at Plum Creek from that location along with others.
Who was also coming down from Austin was one Felix Huston, Major General of Texas Militia. Huston generally rates but passing mention today as the guy who screwed up at Plum Creek and allowed most of the Indians to escape unscathed, although I believe that popular assumption with respect to his chosen tactics is incorrect.
Huston was a major player in Texas at that time although none of the 254 counties in present-day Texas bear his name, neither does there appear to be a single Huston TX anywhere that Google can find. An oversight that in this particular incidence may be justified.
Forty-years old at the time of Plum Creek, Huston was a high roller, like the Bowie brothers operating on a financial scale way beyond the norm of the common man. If the Bowie brothers had made the equivalent of millions today smuggling African-born slaves into Louisiana via Galveston Island and Texas, Huston had made his fortune in the rough company of Nachez MS lawyering, brokering slaves and speculating in plantations.
1836, when the Second Texas Revolution broke out, Huston raised funds from investors and contributed $40,000 in personal funds (if one uses the conventional 50X ballpark that $40,000 equates to two million in today's dollars) to raise, arm and equip an estimated 700 men. Accompanied by Jim Bowie's brother Rezin he didn't arrive in Texas until July, too late for the revolution but in command of possibly the largest force in the field in Texas at that time.
Political divisions were rife and acrimonious among the Texians from the very beginning. Shortly after his arrival, Huston had joined the Sam Houston faction in resisting an attempt by Mirabeau Lamar to take command of the nominally 2,000 man Texian Army. In return, Houston placed Huston in command.
Under Huston, the Texian Army became loaded with "adventurers and men of little discipline". The lethal duellist and outlaw leader Reuben Ross, the same guy later shot by Henry McCulloch after he had crippled Ben McCulloch in a duel, became Huston's Aide de Camp and Land Agent.
The following year, 1837, Houston replaced Huston by appointing West Point Graduate and future Confederate General Albert Sydney Johnson in command, Huston refused to concede before challenging Johnson to a duel wherein he shot Johnson in the hip. Politically Huston had switched camps, 1838 the new President Mirabeau Lamar appointed Huston Secretary of War. 1839 Huston was elected Major General of the Texas Militia. Huston had wanted to move south to engage in a further war of opportunity against Mexico, indeed his former Aid de Camp Reuben Ross led a band of 200 outlaws, probably drawn from the ranks, in that direction with the tacit approval of then President Mirabeau Lamar.
It was his position as Major General, and possibly his reputation for duelling, that led Ed Burleson and others to concede command the next day despite Huston's limited experience in organised combat.
Later that same year, his ambitions for further opportunities on the Border thwarted by the collapse of the Mexican Federalist faction and the failure of the Republic of the Rio Grande, Huston left Texas to set up a law practice in New Orleans, never to return.
Awesome thread...My family settled in Texas way back in the 1800's around the area of the Salt Creek Massacre, Graham, TX. .That Massacre by the Kiowas and possibly Comanches on a wagon train was basically the beginning of the end for the violent tribes in Texas..The US government had enough after that and sent in the calvary...
I always wondered, when thinking of my ancestors, it must have been really dang sketchy back in them days just going out to hunt food for the family hoping and probably praying not to run into hostile Indians in the thick brush and Post Oaks and Live Oaks in that area...Probably a lot more worrisome than thinking about a griz or mountain lion stalking you in the mountains....Must have been some kind of crazy life, and some really tough folks to survive it back then...It was definitely land worth fighting to keep in that area. Really nice cattle ranches and farms..That's the only reason I can think of they wouldn't have left like a lot of the other settlers in the area back then with all the raids going on..
The Salt Creek ran right through my dad's ranch outside of Graham and a lot of times when it would flood and recede back we would find a few Indian artifacts...Several arrowheads, mostly...
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