by Scott Zesch
Tatum still hadn’t identified the other boy, Toppish. The boy’s answers to Tatum’s questions didn’t match the information he’d received from any of the parents who had visited or written to the agency. The agent, who had his hands full dealing with the Comanches and Kiowas, didn’t want the extra burden of restoring Top-pish to his family. He even encouraged Henry Smith to “take the other boy also if practicable, especially if his people can’t be found.” Meanwhile, Tatum placed advertisements in the major newspapers in Texas and Kansas, trying to locate the boy’s relatives. He hoped that some of them were still alive and were residing in one of those states. And that they’d be willing to claim an orphaned savage.
On November 14, 1872, three weeks after Clinton Smith and Top-pish had arrived at the Indian agency, another procession of Comanche men approached Fort Sill. Once again the Nokoni chief Horseback was in the lead, and he brought two more white captives with him. Winter had set in early, and the boys were shivering from the cold—or maybe from fright. They were twelve and thirteen years old. The Comanches told Lawrie Tatum that these were the last two white captives in their camps. Based on the intelligence he’d received from George Caboon the previous year, Tatum believed them. He knew that Rudolph Fischer was still living with the Quahadas, but the agent no longer thought of him as a captive.
Horseback made it clear to Bald Head that he was very anxious to get his relatives home from Fort Concho. Tatum couldn’t make any promises, since the military, rather than the Indian agency, had the final say on the Comanche prisoners of war. Nonetheless, the agent agreed to write to Brig. Gen. Christopher C. Augur, commander of the Department of Texas, praising Horseback’s good faith in securing the captives’ release.
After Horseback left, Tatum tried to talk with the two white boys. The younger one had dark eyes and light auburn hair. Even in his savage state, he had an alert, intelligent expression. The older boy had blond hair, a broad face, a high forehead, and a scar on his chin. He could speak some German and English. Tatum understood his name to be Adolph “Kohn.” The agent knew he could locate Adolph’s parents, because the Office of Indian Affairs had received correspondence concerning him in 1870. However, the other captive had been with the Indians so long that he had lost all his English. Tatum tried to question the boy.
What were his parents’ names?
John and Sarah, he thought.
How was he captured?
He said his mother was killed when he was taken. His father and sister were away from home at the time.
Where did it happen?
He didn’t know. He vaguely remembered a military post on the south side of a river and some mountains not far from his family’s house.
Was anyone else captured with him?
He recalled that the Indians who captured him killed several people. They took no other captives.
When was this?
The Comanches told him it was ten years ago.
That wasn’t much help. Tatum sent the two boys to be stripped, deloused, groomed, clothed, and enrolled in the Indian school alongside Clinton Smith and Toppish. Two days later, he wrote to Louis Korn about Adolph’s recovery, saying, “Please come or send for him. I think there will be no danger in coming here at present Post, Red River Station.” He also described Toppish and the other unidentified captive, adding: “If thou knowest anything of these homeless children please inform me.”
Once again Tatum placed notices in the major Texas and Kansas newspapers. He also wrote to the Friend family in Kansas, thinking one of the unidentified boys might be Temple Friend. Not many of the details matched, however. “Toppish” looked too young to be Temple, and he said that both his father and mother had been killed when he was captured. The older boy said that his mother’s name was Sarah, not Matilda, and that the Indians had killed her. Also, the boy indicated that the Indians took no other prisoners at the time they abducted him. If this boy were Temple Friend, surely he would have remembered his playmate and fellow captive, Minnie Caudle. Maybe he meant that the Indians were no longer holding any other captives from the Legion Valley raid. But it was unlikely that he would have known that Minnie, who had gone with a different group of Comanches, had been recovered and sent home. Was he trying to protect her, afraid that Minnie, like himself, would be taken from her Indian family by force? Was this “bright intelligent looking boy,” as Tatum described him, deliberately trying to mislead the Indian agent?
On November 21, 1872, a week after Horseback surrendered the last of the four boy captives to the Indian agent, Mowway arrived at Fort Sill from his trip to Washington. Soon he was reunited with the remnants of his people—those who had survived the attack on his village and hadn’t been captured. Before long he started lobbying for the prisoners’ release. In early December, Mowway called on Lawrie Tatum, accompanied by two other Comanche chiefs. One was Tabenanaka, a Yamparika leader whose camp had once been home to Banc Babb. The other was Mowway’s friend Paruacoom; the fearless Quahada war chief was about to have his first meeting with Bald Head.
Tatum welcomed the three chiefs but remained firm in his demands. Once more he told them that they must move their people onto the reservation by the middle of December. Otherwise, they could expect another drubbing by Ranald Mackenzie and the cavalrymen. The three Comanche chiefs, even Paruacoom, meekly agreed to do whatever the agent said. They told Tatum that they’d had their fight with the soldiers and had been whipped. They said they were ready to move to the reservation, send their children to the Quaker school, and even try farming. Later, the Quahadas delivered twenty-five horses to Tatum in partial payment for fifty-four that had been stolen from the quartermaster at Fort Sill the previous June. It appeared as though they were prepared to grovel if necessary.
Actually, they were just biding their time. Once the Comanches got their people home from Fort Concho, Bald Head would have no more power over them. They wouldn’t need his government handouts when springtime arrived and the buffalo hunts resumed. Furthermore, they welcomed a chance to get even with Mackenzie and his blue-coated devils if he dared come after them in Texas. The Qua-hadas knew that Tatum and the army wouldn’t be able to stop them from going back to the plains before long.
For the second time in their short lives, Adolph Korn, Clinton Smith, and the two other boy captives had their world turned upside down and were dumped into another disagreeable environment. Against their will, Lawrie Tatum introduced them to the discipline of the classroom. The boarding school for Native American children, part of the federal government’s program to civilize the Southern Plains Indians, was housed near Fort Sill in a two-storied, rectangular stone building with a steeply gabled roof. The boy captives had never attended school before, and they weren’t prepared for the torturous physical confinement. Most of their forty-eight classmates were Cad-does and Comanches. Clinton and Adolph must have held them in contempt—servile weaklings who took orders from the missionaries rather than helping their people fight the white enemies on the plains.
The school was run by two patient Quakers from Ohio, Josiah and Lizzie Butler,1 and Clinton Smith recalled that they were very kind. Each school day began with a Bible reading in English, which sounded odd, even humorous, to the white Indians. After that the children learned letters and geography. Adolph and Clinton, accustomed to the chants of Comanche war dances, were taught instead to sing “There Is a Happy Land.” At recess they got to play ball, a poor substitute for riding, stealing, and shooting. Although the Quaker school had a dormitory on the second floor, the white Indians, like the other Comanche children, were afraid to sleep upstairs. They spent the nights in tepees in a corner of the schoolyard. Even when the supper bell rang, the captives refused at first to go inside the dining hall that extended behind the classrooms. The Butlers brought their food outside on tin plates.
After a few days, Adolph, Clinton, and the other captives got used to the schoolhouse routine and learned to tolerate it. They didn’t try to escape, probably because the
y were near Fort Sill and didn’t want to fight any pursuing soldiers until they had a chance to get some good horses and weapons. Meanwhile, they didn’t bother to hide their lack of interest in Mrs. Butler’s lessons. When the bell rang, they dashed for the table, grabbed all the food they could carry, and headed outside to gobble it down.
One day a white man from Fort Sill arrived at the school in a buggy. He took out a boxlike contraption and set it up in the yard. The Indian children crowded around, curious and apprehensive. To the Comanches, the apparatus looked like a funeral scaffold. Adolph said to Clinton, “Somebody is dead. They are going to bury him right here in the yard.” The Butlers took the white boys by their hands and led them toward the odd platform. The man covered the box with a black cloth and stuck his head underneath, which made the boys uneasy. Then the man turned the box around and pointed it straight at them. Adolph let out a yell. He and the other captives scattered and hid. The photographer would come back another day, when the captives were calmer, and take the photographs that Lawrie Tatum would send to their parents to identify them.
Patient though he was, Lawrie Tatum must have been put out with the parents. For three years, he’d been subjected to curt letters insinuating that he hadn’t been diligent in searching for their kidnapped children. Now that he had at last succeeded in rescuing four boys and identifying two of them, their fathers, Louis Korn and Henry Smith, seemed to be in no hurry to come claim them.
Finally, Tatum decided that if the boys’ parents weren’t going to take any initiative in the matter, he would send the young rascals home the slow, cheap way. On November 20, 1872, Capt. Joseph Rendlebrock of the Fourth Cavalry arrived at Fort Sill with thirty-six enlisted men and seventeen wagons. The military caravan was on its way to San Antonio. Tatum arranged for Adolph Korn and Clinton Smith to travel with them.
Captain Rendlebrock was ready to leave Fort Sill by November 26. Shortly before the army convoy departed, the soldiers let Adolph and Clinton reclaim their Comanche gear, which had been confiscated when they arrived at the post. The two boys were overjoyed to hold their bows and arrows in their hands again. They knew they were one step closer to making their escape.
Their teacher, Josiah Butler, wrote in his diary that day: “ ‘May God bless them,’ is my sincere prayer, for the dear boys have had a rough life so far.” The “dear boys” were hellions during the trip home. Late the first night, they tried to run away to the Wichita Mountains, but the soldiers apprehended them and made them spend the rest of the night in Captain Rendlebrock’s tent. When he invited the young troublemakers to breakfast the next morning, Adolph and Clinton scooped butter out of the dish with their fingers and ate it with no bread.
The trip from Fort Sill to San Antonio took exactly six weeks. During the days, Adolph and Clinton passed the time by shooting arrows at objects beside the road and investigating every hole and hollow they saw. At night they climbed into trees and imitated owls, coyotes, and squirrels. They hated sleeping near the soldiers. The wagon train moved slowly, and the troops had to perform various duties at several military posts along the way. As the army wagons crossed the Staked Plains of Texas, the soldiers stopped for a few days at Fort Concho and set up camp along the river. Adolph and Clinton tried once more to escape, fleeing some distance upriver before the soldiers overtook them. After that they were guarded more closely.
The medical officer at Fort Concho examined the captives. Although he described the boys as “quite stout and healthy looking,” they must have been small for their ages. The doctor guessed that Clinton was nine and Adolph was seven. Actually, they were twelve and thirteen, respectively. It seems that their growth had been stunted while they were with the Comanches. The doctor also noted that Adolph had “lost his native language.” It’s not clear whether he meant German or English. What’s odd, however, is that the Quakers at Fort Sill recorded that Adolph could speak some German, English, and Spanish at the time Horseback delivered him to Lawrie Tatum. Adolph must have learned a few English words from the Butlers while he was at the Indian school, but now he spoke only his tribal tongue. The entry in the medical records at Fort Concho was the first in a series of reports suggesting that Adolph became less communicative and more resentful during the trip home.
While they were staying at Fort Concho, Adolph and Clinton were allowed to visit the Comanche prisoners from Mowway’s village. The two white boys knew all of them. According to Clinton, the women “came running to us and grabbed us around the neck.” Classified as prisoners of war, they had arrived at the post in October “in a very destitute condition” after their long march from the Texas Panhandle. The fort didn’t have a jail large enough to house all of them, so they were herded into a large stone stable. The post’s commanding officer, Maj. John P. Hatch, immediately issued them bed sacks, blankets, and a few flannel blouses and socks. He also ordered that they receive full rations of flour, beef, salt, and rice, and half rations of coffee, sugar, and soap. Major Hatch took great pains to make sure his prisoners got what they needed.2 His letters suggest that he was motivated both by compassion and by his awareness that these captives played a key role in the federal government’s negotiations with the tribe.
After they were released from the stable, the prisoners set up camp outdoors in the stone-walled corrals. To prevent escape, the perimeters were lined with broken glass. Otherwise, security was minimal. The soldiers assigned to look after them brought huge quantities of meat in army wagons. They threw it over the walls to the Comanches, who grabbed it and ate it raw. Since the women got little exercise, some of them started putting on weight.
The presence of the unusual prisoners broke the monotony of life at Fort Concho. Now and then, the Comanche women and children drew curious visitors. The officers’ wives were especially fascinated by them. The Comanches looked forward to their visits, because they brought food and candy. The Comanches and the white women also exchanged babies during these occasions. However, when the officers’ wives left the corrals, they were horrified to find that they and their children were infested with lice. Some of the soldiers, taking a fancy to the women, asked a local dressmaker to sew bonnets for them. The Comanches balked and refused to wear the ridiculous headdresses.
Many people, Indian and non-Indian, were wondering how long the women and children would stay at Fort Concho. Both Lawrie Tatum and the Comanche chiefs assumed that the prisoners would return to their families as soon as the tribe met the government’s demands. However, the army’s commander, Gen. William T. Sherman, complicated matters by submitting a proposal that caused an uproar in Washington. He wanted to take the Comanche children away from their parents, recommending that they “be provided for by the Indian Bureau at some asylum in the Indian country, where they can be raised with habits one degree nearer civilization than they now possess.” Sherman thought it was essential to force the youngsters onto the white man’s road in their formative years. He wrote, “These Comanche children are as wild as coyotes, and unless taken in hand early must grow up like their fathers, unqualified savages.”
When the commissioner of Indian Affairs, Francis Walker, learned of Sherman’s plan for a Comanche orphanage, he exploded. Walker wrote to his boss, the secretary of the Interior: “I gravely doubt whether the law of the land or the public sentiment of the country would justify parents being permanently deprived of their children, even for the sake of saving the children from the life of savages.” In the end, cooler heads prevailed. The secretary of the Interior agreed with Walker that “the children captured must be returned to their parents as soon as the restitution of white captives and Govt. stock is made by the Indians.”3 Until that time, however, the Comanche women and their young would remain camped in the corrals at Fort Concho, entertaining visitors while yearning for their families and friends far away.
In December 1872, as a reward for the Comanches’ good faith in returning Adolph Korn, Clinton Smith, and the two unidentified white boys, Gen. C. C. Augur ordered the rele
ase of Horseback’s relatives from Fort Concho. He also wrote to Lawrie Tatum, “I will release one, or two, as you may recommend, of the Indian prisoners, for every white captive returned to you by the Indians, from whatever tribe they may be obtained.” The captive whom Augur most eagerly sought was Clinton Smith’s younger brother, Jeff, possibly because their father had been so persistent in asking about him. Augur promised that he would “give double that number for the return of Mr. Smith’s son—understood to be with the Apaches.”4
Eventually, the army released the rest of the Comanche women and children once Tatum was satisfied that the tribe had surrendered all its captives. The prisoners were reunited with their people in Indian Territory on June 10, 1873, after a march of seventeen days.
* * *
Louis Korn was ecstatic that Adolph, the son he’d given up for dead, was on his way home. In his excitement, he took Lawrie Tatum’s letters to the offices of the San Antonio Express and the San Antonio Herald. The Express congratulated him “upon the near prospect of the recovery of his son from a condition worse than death.” The Herald also announced the thrilling news but used the occasion for political commentary, stating that Tatum’s letter was “one more powerful appeal for protection to the frontier.”
Why didn’t Grandpa Korn go to Fort Sill to get Uncle Adolph? Family history provides no clues. He may have been too poor to buy the stage fare, or to close his confectionery shop for the amount of time it would have taken to get there and back. Perhaps he was afraid of meeting Indian raiders along the way.
Henry Smith, on the other hand, didn’t let the danger or the distance deter him. As he put it, “I wish to get [Clinton] home immediately … for days are months to me now.” Money was a problem, though. Smith wrote to Texas governor Edmund J. Davis: