On October 20, Colonel Karnes moved his expedition out from San Antonio with the companies of Captain Gonzales and Captain Wilson. They headed for the Hill Country near the San Saba River. The terrain made for rugged travel through dense juniper brush and rocky passes. Two men were wounded in accidental discharges of guns and both of them eventually died from their wounds. One week into the expedition, two men were already dead and no hostile Indians had even been sighted. Food became a serious concern in this rugged, open country beyond the Pedernales River. The men gathered wild pecans and killed a buffalo and several bear to sustain themselves.
Near the present town of Fredericksburg on November 1, one of the advance spies of Captain Gonzales’s company raced into camp to announce that he had spotted Indians. The tejanos of the San Antonio company were greatly alarmed and refused to leave camp. Jack Hays gathered three other scouts from his company and headed out to reconnoiter the enemy. Hays located the Indian camp as darkness fell and then had his men quietly crawl forward until they could make out the Indians near their fire. Hays had his men cover him while he crawled to within eighty yards and made a count. The Comanches had quality horses and numbered about thirty men under one of their prominent chiefs, Isomania.58
Hays and his men fell back to the main Texas camp to report to Henry Karnes. Half of the Texans were left to guard their own camp and horses, while Karnes sent Hays, his small spy group, and half of Captain Wilson’s company back to attack the Comanche camp. They crept up on Chief Isomania’s sleeping Indians an hour before daybreak. Surprise was foiled when one of the Comanche horses became alarmed and began making noise. The surprised Indians grabbed their weapons and the shoot-out began. “The Indians were taken by surprise,” said Hays, “and thought more of flight than fight.” Twelve Comanches were killed and Chief Isomania was shot through with two lead balls. The other Indians fled, leaving the Texans to pilfer their camp goods and some forty mules and horses.
Chief Isomania lay heavily wounded on the ground for two more days. “His countrymen recovered him and he was soon restored to health,” Hays related. “He afterwards came to Bexar and there related his fate, stating that he had lain dead three days, and then came to life.” The expedition remained in the field, moving toward the Llano River, but the colder weather and lack of proper food supplies soon began taking their toll. Colonel Karnes, still not fully recovered from an arrow wound he had sustained in his Comanche fight on the Arroyo Seco thirteen months prior, fell ill. Jack Hays and his Anglo surveyors decided to head for Austin on their own on November 10. The balance of the group began breaking up during the next week. Karnes, Gonzales, and the remaining men made their way back to San Antonio on November 21 after an exhausting month of marching through trying conditions.59
18
WAR WITH THE COMANCHES
WAR ON THE TEXAS frontiers in 1840 became primarily focused on the Comanches.
Colonel Henry Karnes was still recovering in San Antonio from his most recent Indian expedition when three Comanche riders entered town on January 9, 1840. They were members of the Penateka (“Honey Eaters”) tribe, one of a dozen regional Comanche bands that had migrated to the North Texas plains almost 150 years prior. As many as forty thousand Comanches had inhabited Texas soil in the 1780s, but epidemics including cholera had reduced their number by the late 1830s to about twelve thousand.1
The Comanche representatives expressed the desires of their people to make peace with the Texans and offered up a young boy who had been captured in 1836. Karnes agreed to meet with their leaders but made it clear that any other American captives must be released before any agreements could be made. After the Penateka Comanches departed with their customary gifts, Karnes sent word to Albert Sidney Johnston that he recommended San Antonio be reinforced with enough men to apprehend the Indian leaders if the upcoming negotiations did not go as planned.2
Colonel William Fisher, who had inherited command of the Texas Army from Ed Burleson just days earlier, moved to San Antonio to oversee the pending negotiations. Fisher made his intentions clear: the Comanches were not to come into town without bringing all of their prisoners. It was not until March 19, 1840, that the Comanches rode into San Antonio with about sixty-five men, women, and children of the tribe. They brought with them only one prisoner—fifteen-year-old Matilda Lockhart, the niece of early Texas Ranger captain Byrd Lockhart who had been taken captive in December 1838.
Matilda was not a pretty sight to behold. The young girl’s body was a mass of bruises, sores, and scars where her flesh had been burned. San Antonio resident Mary Ann Maverick was shocked to see that the teenager’s nose had been “burnt off to the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh.” The younger Comanches and the women of the tribe remained in the courthouse yard, while the twelve senior leaders of the Comanches were led into the San Antonio Courthouse. This one-story stone building, built in the 1740s, would become known as the “Council House” for the Comanche negotiations. The Texan leaders present to lead the talks were Colonel Fisher, Colonel Hugh McLeod, and Colonel William Cooke, the acting secretary of war at the time. All three officers were staunch supporters of President Lamar’s Indian policies.3
The Texas commissioners proceeded to question the twelve Comanche chiefs within the Council House. They firmly believed that more than a dozen other white captives were in the possession of the Comanches, who had brought in only Matilda Lockhart. The abused teenager was brought in for questioning, and she told the panel that she had seen several other prisoners within camp just days before. “They brought her in to see if they could get a high price for her, and, if so, they intended to bring in the rest, one at a time,” McLeod related. Colonel Fisher turned to Chief Muguara and asked where the other twelve captives were being held. Muguara told the commissioners his tribe had brought in the only prisoner they had. “The others are with the other tribes.”4
McLeod, Cook, and Fisher sat silent as they soaked in what was an obvious lie.
“How do you like the answer?” Chief Muguara finally said.
Colonel Fisher then ordered one of his regular army companies into the council room to prevent anyone from leaving and had another company take station near the rear of the Council House where the younger Comanches were gathered. He then had his translator tell the twelve chiefs in proper Penateka tongue that they were now prisoners of Texas and would be held as such until all of their prisoners were brought into San Antonio. Seconds later, the Council House erupted into violence.
One of the Comanche chiefs tried to make it out the back door, stabbing a Frontier Regiment soldier in the process. Captain George Howard seized another of the chiefs but was stabbed in his side. One of Howard’s men shot and killed the chief before even more hell broke loose. The Comanches drew their knives and bows, ready to fight to the end. Muskets and belt pistols exploded within the tight confines of the old stone courthouse. Lieutenant William Dunnington was shot through with an arrow but discharged his pistol into a Comanche chief’s face before he collapsed. Judge John Hemphill defended himself by disemboweling another Comanche leader with his Bowie knife. Once the shouts and gun smoke died down, several Texans lay dead or wounded alongside the bodies of all twelve Comanche leaders.
The war whoops from within the Council House were understood instantly by the younger Indians outside. The Comanches used their bows and arrows, plus a few rifles, in fighting that quickly spread through the streets and into some San Antonio homes. Seven Texans were killed. Another eight lay wounded, including former ranger captain Mathew Caldwell, who was shot in the leg. Hugh McLeod reported that thirty-five Comanches were killed, including three women and two children. Another twenty-nine were rounded up as prisoners and locked in the city jail. Comanches were known to avoid capture, so the Texas commissioners were certainly aware of how violent the matter might become if they tried to arrest these Indian leaders.
The so-called Council House Fight marked the first limited use of a powerful new firea
rm in Texas, carried by Colonel Lysander Wells and several of his cavalrymen. His men had just taken possession of new Colt “Patent Arms” repeating revolvers, manufactured in Paterson, New Jersey, by Samuel Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Company. Many of the one-thousand production run of Colt’s Patent No. 5 were shipped to Texas for the use of its army, and they became commonly known as the Texas Patersons. This five-shooter was a light-caliber (from .28 to .36) cap-and-ball firearm with a four-and-one-half-inch octagonal barrel. The Texas Paterson could discharge five rounds as fast as the shooter could work the hammer and trigger. Ill-trained on how to operate the new Colt, Wells and his men killed only a few Comanches with the new repeating revolver in the frenzied initial combat. In time, however, the Colt five-shooter would earn respect on the Texas frontiers.5
Chief Muguara was the most influential leader of the twelve Penateka Comanche chiefs killed in the Council House Fight, but few of the senior Comanche chiefs were present in San Antonio. When word spread to these leaders and to their affiliated bands, the massacre in San Antonio caused great anger to sweep through the Comanches. Nine days after the shoot-out, a war party of at least two hundred Comanches rode into San Antonio looking for a fight. They were led by Chief Isomania, who had recovered from his near-fatal wounds inflicted by Jack Hays and his men months earlier.6
Isomania, nearly naked with his body streaked in war paint, rode up to the Mission San José and demanded that Captain William Redd’s Frontier Regiment soldiers come out and fight. Hoping to still secure the release of other American captives, Redd stated that he must hold to the twelve-day truce that had been promised at the Council House. Isomania and his men called the Texans “liars” and “cowards” before he finally led his men a short distance away to wait out the truce period.
On April 4, heavyset Chief Piava rode into town with an Indian woman to meet with Captain George Howard and Colonel Fisher. The Comanches proposed trading some of their prisoners for some of their own people being confined in San Antonio. They were allowed to leave town under escort with an Indian woman and child captured in the Council House Fight. The Texans returned a half hour later with a twelve-year-old Mexican child and six-year-old Elizabeth Putman, who had been kidnapped from the Guadalupe River in December 1838. The Putman girl could not speak English, was covered in bruises, and her nose was partially burned off. Captain Howard continued to negotiate with Piava and managed to recover seven young Comanche prisoners by day’s end, in return for releasing an equal number of Indians.7
Chief Piava was particularly eager to secure the release of a wounded Indian woman, who had been the wife of one of the slain chiefs. Howard wisely withheld her, demanding the Comanches bring in more of their prisoners. Booker Webster, one of the recovered captives, said the Comanches “howled and cut themselves with knives” after learning of the Council House massacre. He said that thirteen American captives had then been butchered and roasted. Webster and Elizabeth Putman had been spared only because they had been previously adopted into the tribe. Further negotiations failed to bring in any more prisoners during the next few months, as the Comanches remained quiet. The remaining Indians held in San Antonio were shuffled over time from the city jail to the Mission San José to a camp by the San Antonio River. Several Comanche women and children were taken into San Antonio homes to work, but most eventually managed to flee when lax security permitted their escapes.8
Rumors continued to swirl through the republic in early 1840 of a new invasion by Mexican troops.
It was enough to keep Colonel Fisher’s Frontier Regiment vigilant. In May, Secretary of War Branch Archer ordered the Texas Militia out into the field to exterminate all Indians from Texas, but his proclamation was only partially carried out. Many men were needed near their homes to harvest their crops. Sporadic Indian attacks kept militiamen and rangers alike active during the summer of 1840. Colonel Henry Karnes was called upon to raise a new western frontier regiment, but he died on August 16 from yellow fever before he could fully raise his men for an expedition.
By late July, the peace maintained by the Penateka Comanches was coming to an end. They had mourned their losses from the Council House Fight for several months, but they moved north during May in search of allies. Their leading chief, Buffalo Hump, held peace meetings on the upper Arkansas River (outside Texas territory) with Kiowa Indians. They offered large numbers of horses to the Kiowas in exchange for guns, blankets, and kettles. The allied Comanches and Kiowas, numbering more than six hundred, descended back into Texas during July to begin what would be the largest of all southern Comanche offensives against the Anglo settlers of Texas.9
The first incident occurred on August 5 as the Comanches swept toward the coast and attacked two men east of Gonzales. Dr. Joel Ponton escaped, although wounded by two arrows. Ponton hid in a dense thicket and listened. The Comanches forced his comrade, Tucker Foley, to try to persuade Ponton to emerge from hiding while they slowly tortured, speared, and scalped Tucker to death. Ponton fled to the nearest settlement of Lavaca after dark and spread the warning. Captain Adam Zumwalt raised three dozen volunteers and visited the scene of the attack the next morning. The Comanches were long gone, leaving only the naked, mutilated body of Tucker behind.10
More volunteers were organized as word spread through the settlements of the body of Comanches sweeping south. In Gonzales, Captain Ben McCulloch moved out with twenty-four men on August 6 and joined Zumwalt’s party the following morning. The group had little trouble in picking up the trail of the massive Indian force and they were joined about noon by sixty-five volunteers from the Cuero and Victoria settlements, commanded by Captain John Tumlinson. As the veteran ranger, Tumlinson was given acting command of the 125 men. They took up the pursuit but were already too late to prevent the raids.11
Chief Buffalo Hump’s five-hundred-plus Comanche party reached the outskirts of Victoria by late afternoon on August 6. Four black servants were killed, along with three citizens who tried to confront the attacking Indians. Buffalo Hump’s men swept through Victoria, where they seized fifteen hundred horses and mules, killing three more men, and seizing a black servant girl. The following day, the Comanches killed two more men who happened to pass near their camping place on Spring Creek, three miles outside of Victoria. Buffalo Hump took his men south to the little settlement of Nine Mile Point, seizing three generations of women. They were Elizabeth Bryan (a relative of Daniel Boone’s wife), her daughter Nancy Darst Crosby—the daughter of Gonzales mounted ranger Jacob Darst, who had perished at the Alamo—and Nancy’s young child. Unable to keep Nancy Crosby’s baby quiet, the Indians threw it to the ground and speared it to death. By the time the Comanches made camp on Plácido Creek, twelve miles from the coastal town of Linnville, they had already taken sixteen lives since starting their Texas offensive sweep.12
Shortly after 8 A.M. on August 8, Chief Buffalo Hump’s Comanches rode into the key shipping town of Linnville and began killing again. The citizens took to the bay in boats to save themselves while the Indians looted the vast stores of supplies in the town’s warehouses. They hauled off all the goods they could carry, along with vast herds of cattle, and burned down most of the buildings. By the time Buffalo Hump’s men moved from Linnville to make camp for the night, the death toll for the Great Comanche Raid stood at twenty, plus another five women and children taken captive.13
The men under Captains Tumlinson, Zumwalt, and McCulloch reached Victoria that evening and learned of the atrocities committed. Chief Buffalo Hump had his men on the move early on August 9, and they killed another Texan scout during the morning. The Comanches, burdened by stolen pack animals heavily laden with booty, were easy to track. John Tumlinson brought his men in for a charge against the Indians. Volunteer Washington Miller found the Comanches to be “hideously bedaubed” in war paint, feathers, huge buffalo and elk helmets, while “dashing about with streamers” flying behind them. Tumlinson’s men attacked Buffalo Hump’s band near Garcitas Creek, where the smaller
force of Texans was quickly surrounded. The Comanches skirmished for about twenty minutes, losing four of their own in exchange for one Texan killed. The larger portion of the Comanches used the distraction time to continue heading north with their herd of pack animals.14
Ben McCulloch was furious. Captain Tumlinson had refused to allow the Texans to make a full charge, and the Comanches were now riding away. McCulloch took three men from his company and rode hard for Gonzales all night to raise more men who would help him fight the Indians. He sent one of his men racing for the Colorado River to round up frontier leader Ed Burleson, asking him to rendezvous with McCulloch at Peach Creek. Tumlinson’s men, joined by forty men from Texana under Captain Clark L. Owen, continued to follow the Comanches through the next day.15
McCulloch’s scouts reached Bastrop on August 10, and Burleson sent out riders to round up the townspeople who were willing to fight. Thomas Monroe Hardeman was in the midst of a wedding ceremony to Susan Burleson, cousin to the former Texas Army commander. Toast glasses were quickly set aside and wedding guests dashed for their horses. Hardeman, now distantly related to Colonel Burleson, was elected major in command of the Bastrop troops who were hastily assembled. The Anglo volunteers were joined by Chief Plácido and twelve of his Tonkawa scouts soon after Burleson’s force headed toward the Gonzales area. By the evening of August 11, more than one hundred new Texan volunteers from many different communities had made rendezvous just east of Plum Creek.16
Scout Henry McCulloch sent a rider to the volunteers’ camp just before daybreak on August 12 to announce that the Comanches were approaching just several miles away. Captain Mathew Caldwell took the opportunity to offer a motivational speech. The forty-one-year-old signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence was well respected. He had fought in the Texas Revolution, had commanded rangers, and had commanded scouts for the Frontier Regiment. He was given the “Paul Revere of the Texas Revolution” moniker for riding from Gonzales to Bastrop in 1835 to call men to arms to defend Béxar. Most, however, knew him as “Old Paint” because of the white patches in his beard, in his hair, and on his chest.
Texas Rising Page 27