Texas Rising

by Stephen L. Moore

  Despite their small numbers, Paint Caldwell told the assembled Texans: “They must be attacked and whipped before they reach the mountains.” Once the Comanches could take cover in the Hill Country thickets, he saw little use in following farther. Old Paint called for a swift assault, and hoped for the best. “If we can’t whip ’em, we can try!” he offered.17

  Chief Buffalo Hump’s Comanches were quite the spectacle.

  They were herding more than two thousand captured horses and mules, five hostages, and an immense hoard of stolen goods. Jim Nichols of Seguin saw one Comanche sporting a tall beegum hat from which streamed at least ten yards of ribbon in red, green, and blue colors. Robert Hall of Gonzales noted that many of the Indians had new white shields for protection but “presented a ludicrous sight.” Many of them wore shirts buttoned on backward in addition to other stolen shoes and clothes from the Linnville warehouses. “They seemed to have a talent for finding and blending the strangest, most unheard-of ornaments,” thought John Jenkins of Bastrop. Other Comanches carried umbrellas, some wore buffalo helmets or buck horns, and one leader sported a headdress made from a large white crane with red eyes.18

  Near Plum Creek, the Comanches were met by about two hundred Texans and friendly Tonkawa scouts. Revered frontier leader Ed Burleson offered command of the mixed bunch to Texas Militia general Felix Huston. The Comanches they faced were spread out over a quarter-mile-wide stretch of open prairie land. Minor skirmishes broke out as the Indians continued herding their stolen livestock northwesterly toward their home camps. Huston had his men dismount and form a defensive square, a command found most distasteful by veteran rangers and Indian fighters who preferred to remain on horseback.

  The Texans opened fire with muskets and long rifles. The Indians in turn launched arrows and charged in to riddle some of their foes and their staked horses with musket balls. Jim Nichols was in awe of the fine horsemanship of some of the Comanches: “Lying flat on the side of their horse with nothing to be seen but a foot and a hand, they would shoot their arrows under the horse’s neck, run to one end of the space, straighten up, wheel their horses, and reverse themselves, always keeping on the opposite side from us.” San Antonio surveyor Jack Hays, among the hastily assembled Texan volunteers, soon spotted an opportunity. He noticed that most of the lead bullets were glancing off the Comanches’ rawhide shields. Hays ordered his fellow men to hold their fire until after the Indians had launched their arrows and then shoot as they wheeled their horses away. During the next Indian charge, the Texans did as Hays instructed and were quite deadly. One Comanche chief with ribbons and feathers in his hair turned his horse, raised his shield high, and was then shot by John Smothers of Captain Zumwalt’s company.19

  Nineteen-year-old John Henry Brown of Lavaca noted that the Comanches “set up a peculiar howl” to mourn their chief, who slumped over his saddle horn. Ben and Henry McCulloch urged General Huston to call for a general charge, and the Texans rushed forward. The Comanches quickly broke into smaller parties and fled, firing back at the pursuing Texans all the way. Indians were shot down in small numbers for more than twelve miles from the Plum Creek battlefield as they were chased through boggy branches and thickets. The Comanches shot and stabbed several of their female captives as they fled. In return, the excited Texans killed at least a few Indian women during the running chase that lasted until sundown. General Huston’s men suffered one man killed and nine wounded in addition to the female captives killed and wounded. The Comanches were estimated to have suffered more than eighty chiefs and warriors shot down in the clash at Plum Creek.

  San Jacinto veteran John Harvey, having survived his third Indian battle in Texas, felt that if Ed Burleson or Paint Caldwell had commanded the volunteers “we would have done more execution.” Hamilton P. Bee, arriving in the wake of the battle, agreed that pursuit of the Comanches would have been continued more vigorously had Burleson been allowed to take charge. General Huston, a previous combat virgin, proudly trumpeted his victory—according to Bee—as “a second Waterloo.”20

  The remaining Comanches escaped with a large number of stolen horses and cattle, but they had paid a heavy price for their massive vengeance raid. They lost at least three times as many of their own as they had taken in Texan lives. The Texas Comanches would never again carry out such a major offensive raid so deep into the Texas settlements, but Texas Rangers and militiamen would still clash with these fearless warriors of the plains for many years to come.

  THE NEXT MAJOR CLASH between Texans and Comanches occurred on October 24, 1840. General Huston granted veteran Indian fighter John Henry Moore permission to raise an expedition to go into Indian country to follow up on the Plum Creek battle. During early October, Colonel Moore raised ninety ad hoc rangers from Fayette and Bastrop counties, commanded by Captains Thomas J. Rabb and Nicholas Mosby Dawson. Accompanied by a Lipan Apache detachment under Colonel Castro and Lieutenant Flaco, the expedition departed the Austin area on October 5 on a course up the Colorado River. Moore’s Lipan scouts found a large Comanche encampment on October 23 on a horseshoe bend of the Colorado River about 250 miles northwest of Austin.21

  Colonel Moore’s men advanced on the sleeping Comanche village—estimated to contain sixty families and 125 men—during the cold early morning hours of October 24. He stationed a detachment of mounted cavalrymen to cut off the Indians’ retreat route while he advanced on foot with the remainder of his rangers. A Comanche watchman shrieked an alarm as the Texans moved within two hundred yards of their camp. Moore ordered a charge and his men raced into camp, discharging rifles, shotguns, and pistols at close range. Many Comanches who tried to swim the Colorado River were cut down on the far banks by the waiting cavalrymen. The massacre was devastating. At least 140 Comanches, and likely many more, were killed or drowned in the river after being wounded. Thirty-four others, mainly women and children, were captured in small groups, along with about five hundred horses. Ranger Micah Andrews reported using a new Colt Paterson Model 1839 five-shot repeating carbine in the attack. Horsemen preferred the revolving-cylinder carbines because of their twenty-four-inch or less barrel length, as opposed to thirty-two or more inches of barrel lengths on most rifles of the day. Andrews managed to fire the Colt revolving cylinder carbine ten times while his companions were only able to fire their rifles twice.22

  Only two Texans were wounded in the bloody rout of the Comanche village. The rangers made their way back into Austin during early November with their large herd of captured horses and Comanche prisoners. Moore’s Indian village attack and the Battle of Plum Creek handed the Comanches two back-to-back defeats that they could not easily recover from. Senior leaders of the tribe in future years apparently decided to leave the Texas settlements alone, as Comanche raids were thereafter concentrated primarily against Mexican settlers.23

  19

  CAPTAIN DEVIL JACK

  MIRABEAU LAMAR’S PLANS FOR the Frontier Regiment had gone largely unrealized during its first year. Constant Indian campaigns and slow recruiting had hindered his new army of Texas. During the fall of 1840, however, the president gave approval for his regulars to step up their efforts to build frontier forts linked by a military road.

  Ed Burleson had resigned from the army, leaving Colonel William Cooke and Lieutenant Colonel Adam Clendenin as the two leading officers. Cooke stationed one company at the San Marcos River to establish a permanent post while he led an expedition to lay out the road toward the Red River. They spent three miserable weeks near the Trinity River in October so starved for supplies that his men were forced to kill and eat their own horses and pack mules. The surveying work continued and several new posts were established at the Red River and in northern Texas. The highest station at Holland Coffee’s Red River outpost, known as Coffee’s Fort, was an estimated 270 miles from Austin. Colonel Cooke’s men were also instrumental in mapping out the northern areas of Texas and the vast Cross Timbers region, which extended from the Brazos River to the present Texas border wit
h Oklahoma. During the first two years of existence, the Frontier Regiment recruited only 674 soldiers but lost more than one-quarter to desertion.1

  The Texas–Mexico borderlands were becoming more of a political hotbed by late 1840 as the Mexican Army maintained patrolling forces near the Rio Grande. Secretary of War Branch Archer was authorized to use more volunteer and militia forces to supplement the regular army, which was thinly stretched trying to build frontier posts and the military road. A new resolution was passed on December 26, 1840, authorizing three new ranger companies of fifteen men each, “to act as spies upon the Western and North Western Frontier of this Republic, for the space of four months.” The first company raised was under Captain John T. Price, a veteran cowboy with experience in dealing with Mexican forces. His small company of rangers was designated to scout toward Corpus Christi to keep watch on the movements of federalist leader General Antonio Canales, and centralist leaders Rafael Vásquez and Enrique Villareal, who were operating in the area below the Nueces River. The second new ranger company, organized on January 20 in San Antonio, was under Captain Antonio Pérez, who had served on Henry Karnes’s fall 1839 Comanche expedition.2

  The third Texas Ranger company was to be led by a man who had never officially commanded his own ranger unit, Captain John Coffee Hays. The veteran frontiersman had certainly gained valuable experience in leading small squads of scouts in various Indian fights during the previous three years. In between surveying expeditions, Hays had also participated in campaigns under Deaf Smith and Henry Karnes, and had fought the Comanches at Plum Creek in 1840. His service as a surveyor, scout, and spy had given Hays an enviable reputation for bravery, endurance, and skill in commanding men. The boy-faced man who was commissioned by President Lamar to take command as a captain of spies over Texas frontiersmen many years his senior was well respected in his trade. Jack Hays turned twenty-four in San Antonio, now in command of his first small company of Texas Rangers.3

  He had only a dozen men initially. Among them were James Matthew Jett and his brother Stephen, who had served in Daniel Friar’s 1835 ranger company and in many other ranger and cavalry companies thereafter. Each man supplied his own horse, weapons, and equipment with the promise of three dollars per day payment from the government, plus supplied ammunition. The rangers each carried a carbine or rifle, a Bowie knife, and a small provisions wallet generally holding panola (parched corn), tobacco, and ammunition. Their horses were fitted with Mexican saddles, hair rope cabristas (halters), and rawhide Mexican riatas (a form of lariats) for roping horses. The lightly equipped rangers were prepared to move as nimbly over the plains as the Indians did. Hays and at least a few of his men had even acquired the new Colt Patent Arms .36-caliber five-shooter pistols originally purchased for the Texas Navy and the Frontier Regiment’s cavalrymen.4

  Captain Hays scouted from San Antonio in early January, moving along the Nueces River until he met up with the new company under Captain Price. Hays took his men into Laredo to reconnoiter Mexican troops rumored to be assembling there for an invasion. “There were but few soldiers there and the inhabitants were not disposed to offer resistance,” he related. His showing of force unchallenged, Hays patrolled his rangers on the western frontier before returning to San Antonio.5

  During this time, the Texas Army was coming to an end. The House and Senate of the Republic’s Fifth Congress squabbled over funding for Colonel Cooke’s Frontier Regiment. Acting President Burnet finally passed instructions on March 2, 1841, for the army to disband. Its men, who had largely completed the military road to the Red River and had established a number of fortified outposts, were mustered out of service by early April.6

  The first real challenge for Captain Hays’s San Antonio rangers came during early March. Thirty frontier marauders under Agatón Quinoñes attacked a party of traders and the alarm was spread to the chief justice at Béxar. Hays had added two more former Frontier Regiment soldiers—Mike Chevallie and twenty-one-year-old Pasqual Leo Buquor—to bring his company to fourteen rangers. They set out on March 15 in company with a dozen tejano rangers under Captain Antonio Pérez to intercept the robbers before they could reach Laredo. In addition to the Quinoñes gang, the rangers faced another twenty-five-man gang under Ignacio García. Mexican sympathizers in San Antonio sent two couriers toward Laredo with the news that Jack Hays was en route with his armed men.7

  About ten miles from Laredo on April 7, rangers Buquor and Martias Díaz spotted the first riders of García’s force. “They rode up to us, sounding a bugle, firing upon us and ordering us to surrender,” wrote Hays. He instead had one of his rangers shoot the Mexican official from his horse, and “a general fight then ensued.” The Mexican escopetas (shotguns) caused no injury, but the Texan long rifles killed one Mexican and wounded another. García’s men quickly took position on a small hill and tried to encircle the Hays and Pérez rangers. Hays ordered his men to dismount and to tie off their horses in a grove of Spanish persimmon trees with five guards, and he moved forward with twenty men to attack. “Being nearly all provided with Kentucky and Tennessee rifles, our shots were unerring,” recalled Buquor, who later served as mayor of San Antonio. “On the first fire, we killed two and wounded several, loading as we advanced.”8

  García’s other rebels took flight and the rangers scrambled to retrieve their own horses. Mike Chevallie, thrown from his horse during the engagement, was nearly overrun. Captain Hays and Nat Harbert charged forward, killing the nearest Mexican and pulling Chevallie to safety. The marauders made another stand a short distance later. Hays again had his men dismount and charge forward, killing two more Mexicans as escopeta blasts and pistol bullets zinged past them. Only Captain García and three of his men escaped. Ranger Buquor said that García “carried a bullet in the left cheek from my rifle.” He reported that the rangers killed or wounded nine before they subdued the remainder of García’s men for interrogation.

  Jack Hays was back in San Antonio for mere weeks before another Mexican force under frontier commander Calixto Bravo was reported in May 1841. Bravo’s men attacked a small party of traders bound for the Rio Grande and sent a spy into Béxar to inform the rangers that his party included upwards of two hundred men. Undaunted by the impending ambush, Hays sent word back that he was mobilizing more than one hundred men from Gonzales to challenge the robbers. In reality, he rode out from San Antonio with only his company and a force of tejano mounted men under Antonio Pérez that totaled only forty. Outnumbered perhaps four-to-one, Hays and company charged doggedly against the Bravo bandits and chased them nearly to the Rio Grande.9

  Hays returned to San Antonio on May 10, where he disbanded his “company of spies.” The rangers under Pérez disbanded ten days later. The rangers regrouped during the next weeks at a time when the Republic of Texas had authorized the formation of county “minutemen” companies to range against Indian and Mexican attackers. Between May and July 1841, fourteen such minutemen companies were organized in the counties of Béxar, Fannin, Gonzales, Houston, Lamar, Milam, Montgomery, Nacogdoches, Paschal, Red River, Robertson, San Patricio, Travis, and Victoria. Jack Hays would spend much of June pulling together his new “Béxar County Minutemen.”10

  At least half a dozen expeditions were mounted by various-sized groups of rangers and militiamen during the late spring and summer of 1841. Of these, General Edward Tarrant’s offensive thrust into the Cross Timbers region produced the most significant Indian battle on May 24. About eighty men under Captains James G. Bourland and John B. Denton swept through a series of Caddo, Cherokee, and Tonakawa villages along the banks of Village Creek near present Arlington and Fort Worth. They killed at least twelve Indians and suffered eight Texans wounded, and Captain Denton was killed in an ambush. Tarrant was forced to retreat when his men were met with increasing numbers of Indians along their route. He would return with a four-hundred-man force in July only to find these Indian villages abandoned.

  Life in San Antonio was festive in between frontier engagemen
ts. President Lamar’s entourage visited town on a recruiting trip in June and enjoyed a grand ball thrown in honor of the president. Lamar opened the evening with a waltz with María Gertrudis Flores de Abrego Seguín, wife of new San Antonio mayor Juan Seguín. “Mrs. Seguín was so fat that the general had great difficulty in getting a firm hold on her waist, and they cut such a figure that we were forced to smile,” wrote local Mary Ann Maverick. Captain Hays, ranger Mike Chevallie, and another man had only one dress coat between them so they took turns wearing the formal jacket and dancing with the ladies.11

  By late June, Jack Hays had a dozen men enrolled in his new San Antonio Minutemen company. They set out on June 27 in company with a twenty-man tejano unit under Captain Salvador Flores to pursue a party of Indians who had driven off cattle from settlements near town. Hays led his group fifty miles west of town to the Canyon de Uvalde at the headwaters of the Frio River, where they discovered a Comanche camp. On June 29, he led his rangers in a charge against ten Comanches traveling through Uvalde Canyon. Ranger John Slein killed one Comanche with a blast from his double-barreled shotgun and the others retreated into a small thicket.12

  Captain Hays and three of his rangers dismounted and charged into the thicket. “Their fate was inevitable,” he wrote of his Comanche opponents. “They saw it and met it like heroes.” When the shooting was complete, Hays’s men had killed eight Comanches and taken the other two as prisoners. Gathering horses and other Indian property, the Texans withdrew to San Antonio to seek medical treatment for Joseph Miller’s wounds. Hays vowed to raise more men and return to the Comanche camp he had discovered.