by Scott Zesch
[M]y means are limited, and I wish to know if it is necessary that I go for him, and if so, are there any funds in the hands of the Government for defraying expenses of returning Captives if so, I beg your assistance in the matter…. [I]f it is necessary that I should go I will be compelled to go by stage as I have not the means to supply myself an outfit for such a trip at this season of the year…. 5
In response to Smith’s letter, Governor Davis wrote, “I will order the payment of the actual traveling expenses for bringing the youth home.”
Henry Smith made the long journey by train and stagecoach. He arrived at Fort Sill on December 5, 1872, only to learn that Clinton had left with the army caravan nine days earlier. This disappointment was too much for him, and he broke down. The Quaker teacher Josiah Butler observed, “He has one more son with the Indians—poor man, how I felt for him as he sat and wept.”
Late that night, a Mexican-American captive named Martina Diaz escaped from the Quahada camp near Fort Sill and sought sanctuary at the Indian agency. Martina, about eighteen years old, had been captured near San Antonio two years earlier and was anxious to return to her family. Lawrie Tatum found a way to make Henry Smith feel that his long trip hadn’t been for nothing. He asked Henry to escort Martina back to San Antonio and help her find her people. The following evening, the stagecoach pulled up to the Indian agency. Tatum’s whole household watched while Henry Smith, only twenty-four hours after he’d arrived, started back to Texas without his son. He would have to wait another month to see Clinton.
Four days later, on December 10, 1872, Rev. Leonard Friend arrived at the agency from El Dorado, Kansas, to find out if the older of the two unidentified white boys was his grandson, Temple. The Quakers at the Indian agency had become attached to the bright twelve-year-old boy. He seemed happy staying with them and had started speaking a little English. Late in the day, Lawrie Tatum and his wife, Mary Ann, took Reverend Friend to the Indian school. The boy ran up to Mary Ann Tatum and greeted her affectionately. The agent’s wife was a tender, plain-looking woman who was popular with the Indians for her acts of charity.
The boy ignored Leonard. Mary Ann told him, “Speak to the gentleman.”
He seemed confused. Leonard Friend gently put his arm around the boy and drew him near, recognizing his grandson at once. He tried to say something, but started weeping instead. When he finally got his emotions under control, he looked at the boy and said, slowly and distinctly: “Temple Friend.”
Temple stared at him, bewildered. The Tatums thought the boy seemed to recognize the sound of the words. He replied, “Yesh.”
Then the old man spoke his sister’s name: “Florence Friend.”
Again, Temple said, “Yesh.”
Leonard kept talking to him. Eventually, Temple started to answer questions about his capture in Legion Valley nearly five years before. It took Leonard several hours to convince him that his stepmother, Matilda Friend, had survived the attack. Not long afterward, the preacher and his grandson started home in a buggy.
That left only Toppish unaccounted for. Eventually, he was identified as John Valentine Maxey. His father arrived at the agency to claim him on January 4, 1873.
Adolph Korn had never seen a city that he could remember. He’d grown up in the isolated village of Castell and the wilderness of the Saline Valley. The largest settlements he’d ever visited were the small towns along the frontier where he’d stolen horses with the Comanches. As the army wagon train slowly made its way toward San Antonio, the towns got larger. The caravan passed through Gillespie County, whose population had grown to over 3,500. In Fredericksburg, the county seat, Captain Rendlebrock and the soldiers stopped to purchase supplies. News soon spread that two of the white boys recovered from the Comanches were in town. Curiosity seekers flocked to the store and crowded around the boys, who spoke to each other in Comanche and still looked wild even with their clipped hair and schoolboy clothes. Captain Rendlebrock had grown fond of Adolph and Clinton during the trip. When he saw what was happening, he decided to let them have a little fun. He handed Adolph an ax, indicating that he should sound the Comanche war whoop and start at the crowd. Adolph did so, and the townspeople scurried.
The two captives and their military escort finally entered San Antonio on January 7, 1873. Nothing they’d seen along the way, not even the pesky crowd in Fredericksburg, could have prepared the boys for what they were about to experience. San Antonio was Texas’s second-largest city, only slightly smaller than Galveston, and it was as cosmopolitan a gathering place as the Southwest had to offer. The town appeared abruptly on the mesquite plain. The adobe Mexican huts on the outskirts soon gave way to sturdy limestone houses with latticed balconies. As the wagon train got closer to the city center, the streets and plazas were packed with canvas-covered wagons, buggies, burros laden with firewood, and pedestrians.
To Adolph and Clinton, the people in the streets looked as strange as the buildings. The American poet Sidney Lanier, who was visiting San Antonio that winter, was fascinated by the mix of cultures in the city, “the queerest juxtaposition of civilizations, white, yellow (Mexican), red (Indian), black (negro), and all possible permutations of these significant colors.” A sign at the Commerce Street Bridge warned in English, German, and Spanish: “Walk your horse over this bridge, or you will be fined.” Around the plazas, hard-drinking cowboys, high-rolling cattlemen, and grizzled Indian fighters jostled with perfumed dandies, Mexicans adorned in silver, and recent European immigrants wearing the garb of their homelands. Lanier was charmed by these “characters,” “a perfect gauntlet of people who have odd histories, odd natures, or odd appearances.”6
Since Lanier came from the comparatively quiet town of Macon, Georgia, he was shocked to learn that Indian raids still occurred not far from San Antonio. After reading a local newspaper’s account of the capture and recovery of Adolph Korn and Clinton Smith, Lanier wrote to his father back home: “[T]o think of children being carried into captivity by Indians, in the year 1869, [sic] and within a few miles of a town of near twenty thousand inhabitants! How far removed we all are, from even the remote appreciation of such a thing, at home!”7
And how far removed those two boys were from even the remote appreciation of a bustling American city. Adolph and Clinton gaped in fear and confusion at everything they saw. Clinton wasn’t quite as much of a bumpkin as Adolph; he’d driven sheep to San Antonio in his boyhood and was familiar with the city. Still, it had been a long time since he’d seen so many non-Indians in one place.
The boys didn’t slip into town quietly. News accounts of the white Indians had preceded their homecoming, stirring up much anticipation. When the wagon train stopped, a large crowd gathered to gawk at the two freakish youngsters. Reporters from three local newspapers covered the event.
The news articles noted that Adolph could speak no language other than Comanche, and that Clinton had to act as his interpreter. The Herald’s man reported that Adolph was “quite stout and healthy looking, having enjoyed good health since he was captured some three years ago.” However, the Express estimated that the thirteen-year-old boy was “only about nine or ten years of age,” again suggesting that his physical development had been arrested while he was with the Comanches, even though he seemed healthy. Clinton was described as “older and more manly appearing than the other boy,” although he was actually a year younger than Adolph. The Herald concluded, “The boys look wild out of their eyes, and it is doubtful if they will feel at home for some time to come.”
Word of the boys’ arrival soon reached the Korns’ confectionery shop on Market Street. Louis Korn left his business and hurried to find the army caravan. The reunion of father and son took place in full view of the crowd. Louis Korn carefully examined the boy to make sure he was really his son. His skin was much darker after three years in the sun, and he now walked with a limp. Nonetheless, he still had his childhood scar in the middle of his chin.
Uncle Adolph showed no emotion. Th
e German newspaper Freie Presse für Texas reported that Grandpa “cried like a baby, while the boy, looking on somewhat wildly, could not quite comprehend what was taking place.” According to the Express, Adolph “did not recognize his father.” He didn’t smile; he didn’t cry; he just acted irritated and uncomfortable.
Captain Rendlebrock brought the two boys to Louis and Johanna Korn’s house, and the crowd followed them there. The captain instructed his men to unload the boys’ bows, arrows, buckskins, moccasins, and ornaments. As people pressed closer, trying to get a better view and hear the boys’ strange chatter, souvenir hunters stole all of their Comanche gear. According to the Herald, Adolph’s reunion with his mother and siblings “was very affecting; he recognized them all, and was apparently glad to reach home.” Clinton Smith remembered things differently. He recalled that Louis and Johanna Korn “both cried, and hugged and kissed their boy, but he manifested great indifference to their caresses. He looked wild and stubborn, and sat down on the bed.”
Johanna Korn fixed the boys a big meal. Adolph and Clinton ate heartily, even though they were nervous with so many white people surrounding them. Afterward, Louis Korn led the pair to his shop and gave them as much candy as they wanted. They took what was offered to them and ate it, but the old man’s gestures of kindness didn’t make them like him any better. Adolph wasn’t ready to recognize the Korns as his people. For three years, Louis and Johanna Korn had prayed that someday they might be reunited with their son. That day had arrived, but instead of bursting with unbridled joy, they felt the onset of a new kind of heartsickness. Their boy was back, and he hated them.
The next morning, the reporter from the Express tried to interview Adolph and Clinton. The boys were uncooperative, ignoring him. Miffed, he concluded:
Doubtless owing to their youthfulness, severe treatment, and the habit of two years life among the dirty thieves and murderers, they have become more or less insensible to the vast difference between savage and civilized life. There was manifested little disposition or ability to communicate such facts as might have gratified the inquisitive.8
When Henry Smith learned of the two boys’ arrival, he went to get his son. Clinton recognized his father instantly. Henry hugged the boy and then burst into tears, his happiness mingled with frustration that Jeff was still missing. Clinton, who was “a bit timid at first,” described his return to the Smith farm and his first meeting with his stepmother and siblings as “a happy reunion.” After a few weeks of herding sheep and doing ranch chores, however, he “was not satisfied.”
* * *
Lawrie Tatum’s newspaper advertisements describing the two unidentified white boys at Fort Sill were widely read and discussed throughout Texas and Kansas, raising the hopes of all the parents of captured children. On December 3, 1872, Phillip and Auguste Buchmeier wrote to Tatum to find out if one of the children might be their son, Herman Lehmann. Phillip, unlike his wife, wasn’t entirely confident that their boy was still alive, for he told Tatum, “I am or was his stepfather.” They’d heard nothing about him since his kidnapping more than two years before.
They soon got some exciting news. Shortly after Adolph Korn returned to Texas in January 1873, he met with the Buchmeiers and told them that Herman was still living with the Apaches. For the first time, the Buchmeiers realized that Herman was with Apaches rather than Comanches, Kiowas, or Kickapoos. They enlisted the help of Henry C. King, a Texas state senator, to plead their case to the Indian agency.
Their perseverance paid off. On April 2, 1873, a man who was passing through Loyal Valley delivered some marvelous news. He said that Herman had arrived at Fort Sill and would be sent home as soon as possible. Phillip Buchmeier immediately wrote to the Indian agency, asking for a response “by return” giving him “all particulars, saying when and by what conveyance” he could expect to see his stepson.
As it turned out, the traveler’s report was only half-true. Herman’s group of Apaches did spend about six months on the Kiowa-Comanche reservation near Fort Sill in 1872–1873. The Kiowa chief Kicking Bird told Lawrie Tatum that he’d seen a white boy among them. Tatum mistakenly assumed the boy was Jeff Smith (who was actually in Mexico at the time). When soldiers from Fort Sill went to the Apache camp to investigate, Herman hid beneath some blankets while they searched the tepee. The Apaches left the reservation not long afterward, and Herman slipped out of the Indian agent’s reach.9
When the Buchmeiers finally received a letter dated April 23, they were told that the prisoner exchange with the Indians was already completed. The last five captives recovered had left Fort Sill for their homes on April 5. None of them matched the description of Herman; in fact, they were all Mexican boys. The agent wrote, “I am not able to learn of any more captives being held by the Indians of the Agency.”
The Smith family was luckier. Only four months after Clinton’s return, Henry and Harriet Smith got their younger son back. In early April 1873, William Schuchardt, the U.S. commercial agent at the American consulate in Piedras Negras, Mexico, learned from a Mexican trader named Alejo Santos Coy that Jeff was living in a camp of over three hundred Indians in San Rodrigo Canyon, about sixty miles from the Texas border. The group consisted of Lipan Apaches, Mescalero Apaches, Kickapoos, and Comanches who had been conducting swift raids into Texas and then dashing back to safety across the international boundary. Shortly afterward Albert Turpe, the district clerk in Eagle Pass, Texas, just across the Rio Grande from Piedras Negras, got this same information. Schuchardt and Turpe were certain the captive boy was Jeff Smith, for Santos Coy reported that he had been kidnapped two years earlier on Cibolo Creek while he was looking after his father’s sheep. The trader also learned that Jeff’s captor was willing to sell the boy. Schuchardt commissioned Santos Coy to return for the captive, and Turpe gave security for the ransom money.
Santos Coy soon ransomed Jeff Smith from his Lipan captor for $150 in gold. The U.S. government later reimbursed him, for, as consul Schuchardt noted, the boy’s father was “unable to pay the ransom money, being very poor.” Jeff was placed in the custody of special Indian agent Thomas G. Williams on May 1, 1873.
As it turned out, Jeff’s Lipan captor had unwittingly made a wise bargain when he agreed to sell the boy. On May 18, 1873, about three weeks after Jeff was ransomed, Col. Ranald Mackenzie and the Fourth Cavalry crossed the Rio Grande at night and attacked the Indian villages at Remolino just before sunrise. Mackenzie carried out this quick and daring raid with the secret approval of his military superiors but in flagrant violation of Mexican sovereignty. At least nineteen Indians were killed, and forty women and children were taken captive. If the Lipans hadn’t sold Jeff when they did, it’s likely that Mackenzie’s raiders would have taken the boy without payment.
In Eagle Pass, Texas, ten-year-old Jeff Smith found himself a prisoner once more. His new captors cut off his long hair and made him put on constricting clothes. He didn’t understand their language. They served him a good meal, but the boy was too frightened to enjoy it. He worried about what was going to happen to him. His captors, thinking he might try to escape, guarded him closely. Jeff wondered if they were going to brand him, as the Apaches had done. He refused the bed they offered him, finding the floor more comfortable. On May 2, 1873, his guards placed him on a stagecoach bound for San Antonio.
Like his brother before him, Jeff Smith drew a large crowd when he arrived in the city. Inquisitive onlookers gathered on a Sunday morning, May 4, to gawk at the white boy who had lived with the Apaches. As Jeff put it, “The wild life I had led the past few years had made me afraid of white people. They almost scared me to death, asking questions and crowding close around me.” A San Antonio reporter who saw him that day noted that he seemed “to have forgotten all his early language, and would not or could not respond to questions either in German or English. He appeared very much interested in the formation of the Turners for parade, and in listening to the music.”
That evening a man named Steeneken took
the boy by horse and buggy to his father’s farm north of San Antonio. Jeff, who still couldn’t figure out what was happening, assumed he’d been sold to yet another owner. He didn’t understand what the man was saying to him. However, as the buggy drew closer to the Smith farm, he gradually began to recognize places near his old home. Grunting, he pointed down the road.
When Jeff and Mr. Steeneken arrived at the Smiths’ house, Henry came out to the yard and wrapped the boy in his arms, hugging him close. Jeff didn’t respond. He recalled, “I had run wild too long for such expressions of joy.” His stepmother, brothers, and sisters poured out of the house to see him. Henry Smith was “all unstrung,” according to Jeff. For the rest of that afternoon, he walked the floor and exclaimed, “Mama, isn’t that a God blessing that we got them boys back.”
The only family member who kept his distance was Clinton. The Smiths had been watching him closely, afraid that he would run off. He peeped shyly over the fence at Jeff, then ducked behind it and hid. Although the two white Indians longed for each other’s company, they were afraid to talk with each other when anyone else was around. Jeff and Clinton Smith remained scared of white people for a long time.
At the time Jeff came home, a federal Frontier Commission was visiting San Antonio to investigate Indian depredations in Texas and report to Congress. Several former captives were paraded before the commission to testify, and the men from Washington were shocked by the “many acts of positive outrage” the witnesses described. Clinton Smith gave the wide-eyed commissioners an earful. He testified: “The Comanches are very rough with their captive boys and whip them terribly, sometimes killing them if they cry over the beating.” (Clinton made no such wild claims in his memoir; the shy adolescent may have been responding to leading questions or simply been afraid to contradict the white men.) Jeff Smith also appeared before the commissioners; however, “being too young to understand an oath, and his mind somewhat clouded by ill treatment, he was not exam-ined.”10 Nor did Adolph Korn testify, even though he was living in downtown San Antonio and was well known in the city. It seems that my stubborn ancestor was still unwilling to talk about his life with the Comanches.