by Scott Zesch
Inside the crude shacks, the hunters crept cautiously to the windows. Some were still in their underwear. Brandishing long-range rifles, they appeared at the openings just long enough to fire at their attackers. They’d had plenty of shooting practice, and their aim was deadly.
For half an hour, the Indians hurled lances into the compound, shot bullets and arrows through the windows, leaped onto the roofs, and beat on the doors with the butts of their rifles. They killed two German brothers and their black Newfoundland dog, then scalped all three. They also looted the hunters’ wagons and drove off their live stock. However, they were surprised that the battle wasn’t as quick and easy as Ishatai had promised. Even though the Indians greatly outnumbered their enemies, the hunters were experienced marksmen. Huddled in the buildings, they were also better protected. By the time the Indians retreated from the first attack to rest and regroup, the hunters had killed two Cheyennes and one Comanche.
Throughout the day, the Indians made several more charges, but the fight became a drawn-out, disheartening stalemate. Unable to overrun the settlement, the Indians suffered unexpectedly heavy losses in their attempts. The anticipated triumph turned out to be a costly fiasco. The Indians were amazed by the accuracy of the hunters’ shots. A Comanche named Cohayyah remembered, “Sometimes we would be standing way off, resting and hardly thinking of the fight, and they would kill our horses.” Even Quanah’s horse was knocked out from under him. For much of the day, Quanah was disabled by a blow from a ricocheted shell. “They killed us in sight and out of sight,” he said in later years.
Ishatai watched the debacle from the plateau. Too late his followers realized that they’d put their trust in a charlatan. One Cheyenne told him bitterly, “If the white man’s bullets cannot hurt you, go down and bring back my son’s body.” Another Cheyenne named Hippy grabbed the bridle of Ishatai’s horse and tried to use it as a quirt on him. Then came the medicine man’s greatest humiliation. A stray shot killed Ishatai’s horse, which he had coated with his special protective paint.
Around four o’clock, the Indians gave up. Three white men were dead, and the hunters had killed thirteen Comanches and Cheyennes. The bodies of some of the Indians were lying too close to the settlement for their friends to recover them. Later, the hunters cut off their heads and used them to decorate the gateposts of the corral.3
The defeat at Adobe Walls shook the confidence of the Comanches and Cheyennes, who had thought they would teach the buffalo hunters a lesson. Moreover, the attack on the hunters would lead to the abandonment of President Grant’s peace policy toward the Indians, setting off a military campaign known as the Red River War. During the remainder of 1874, Col. Ranald Mackenzie kept the Quahadas on the run. He had resolved to drive them onto the reservation and force them to surrender. That fall the weather was unusually wet, and the Comanches referred to the miserable pursuit as the “Wrinkled Hand Chase.”
Finally, Mackenzie and his cavalrymen wore down their adversaries. The Kotsoteka chief Mowway, whose village had once been defended by Adolph Korn and Clinton Smith, arrived at the reservation with a group of about 175 destitute Comanches on April 18, 1875. On April 23, Mackenzie sent four messengers to negotiate a truce with Quanah and the remaining Quahada holdouts. One of the emissaries was Jacob J. Sturm, who had recovered Banc Babb from the Comanches eight years earlier. On June 2, 1875, Quanah and over four hundred of his exhausted followers arrived at Fort Sill and surrendered to Colonel Mackenzie. Rudolph Fischer was most likely among this group.
Quanah’s surrender in 1875 is often said to mark the end of the Comanches’ free, nomadic life. That’s not exactly true. About forty to fifty Comanches, still refusing to walk the white man’s road, ran away from the reservation and remained at large over the next two years.4 This small group of renegades would eventually include the last white captive living on the Southern Plains, Herman Lehmann.
In the summer of 1875, after the Comanches had given up the fight, scattered bands of Apaches were still raiding in western and central Texas. Among their warriors was Herman Lehmann. By then he was sixteen and had lived with the Apaches for five years. With his fair skin painted red and black and his long hair that had turned bright red, the white teenager looked like a supernatural terror to his enemies, both Indian and non-Indian.
That August Herman was raiding not far from his old home in Mason County with a party of twelve Apaches and their Mexican captive. Herman and the Apaches had stolen over forty horses in Kimble, Mason, and Menard Counties. Once they were satisfied with their loot, they started driving the herd northwest.
Meanwhile, the local ranchers, helpless to stop the horse thefts, complained about their losses to some Texas Rangers stationed at Los Moras Camp in Menard County. On August 20, 1875, Capt. Dan Roberts, with a patrol of twelve men, left Los Moras in search of the raiders. They found the Apaches’ tracks on Scalp Creek, a tributary of the San Saba River in Menard County.
By that time, the Apaches thought they were safe. They planned to hunt for a couple of weeks around Kickapoo Springs. However, their scouts soon discovered that the “hateful Rangers,” as Herman called them, were on their trail. Herman wrote, “We well knew how sleepless and restless those Rangers were and how unerring their aim when they got in a shot, so we out-rode them.” They quit hunting and headed for the plains at full speed. For three days and nights, the Apaches rode without eating or sleeping. When their horses got tired, they roped fresh ones and kept riding.
By August 23, the fourth day of the chase, the Apaches had reached open country, far from any settlement, with nothing in sight for miles around but a few scattered mesquites. They finally stopped to butcher a donkey they came across. After building a fire, they roasted the meat and ate it leisurely while they rested and let their horses graze. Later, they killed and ate a mustang. As Herman remembered, “We thought we were out of danger, so we became a bit careless.” One of the raiders assured the others, “No white man will ever come here.” Then he added boastfully: “If they do, I can whip ten of them.” That evening they stopped and slept about sixty-five miles west of Fort Concho.
The Apaches broke camp at daylight on the morning of August 24, 1875.5 They’d ridden about half an hour when they realized they’d been fooling themselves. Only five hundred yards away, the rangers were charging them in single file from the east. The rising sun had blinded the Apaches, and they didn’t see the enemy approaching until they were almost on them. When the rangers started shooting and yelling, the Apaches panicked. Some of them began rounding up the herd. Others jumped on fresh horses, not stopping to take the saddles off the mounts they abandoned.
The rangers jumped off their horses and leveled their rifles. The Apaches’ leader ordered his men to stand close together. He told them they had no choice but to fight, for it was too late to escape. But the men didn’t obey him. The line of Apaches broke up when the shooting started. Herman recalled, “Everything was on the run and we were scattering like a flock of quail.” The Apaches grabbed their Winchesters and took off at a gallop. The rangers got back on their horses and chased them, singly or in pairs. The two sides were evenly matched in numbers. A few of the Apaches rallied on a small plateau, where they opened fire on the rangers, giving their comrades cover while they caught fresh horses. Then they all took off again. The running fight went on for three or four miles.
The rangers shot and killed the horse of an Apache named Nusticeno. He started running west on foot. Herman rode up beside him on a big stallion the Apaches had stolen a few days earlier. Several rangers started after them. Herman leaned over and shot a few arrows from under his horse’s neck. He missed, although two of the arrows struck a ranger’s saddle. He shouted at Nusticeno, “Get up behind me.” His fellow warrior jumped on Herman’s horse.
They took off and tried to catch up with their friends. The rangers cut them off, firing at least a dozen shots at them. Several bullets smashed into Herman’s shield, knocking it against his forehead. He could
hear bullets striking Nusticeno’s shield as well. Herman kept shooting arrows at the rangers in front of them. Nusticeno fired his Winchester at those in the rear. When he ran out of cartridges, he threw down his rifle and started shooting arrows. Herman’s horse was slowing down under the weight of the two young men. He and Nusticeno couldn’t get close to any fresh ones. They started to circle, a maneuver the Apaches used when they were cornered.
A ranger named Jim Gillett dismounted to fire at the stallion and its two riders. Gillett was only eighteen; this was his first Indian fight, and he later admitted he was “awfully nervous.” In spite of his anxiety, he managed to fire a bullet that struck Herman’s horse in the head. The stallion fell and slid forward twenty feet, pinning Herman to the ground beneath it. The horse’s body also broke Nusticeno’s bow during the fall. Nusticeno grabbed Herman’s bow and ran, holding his shield over his back for protection. Herman cried out to Nusticeno not to leave him. But his friend, in a panic, abandoned Herman to fend for himself.
Two rangers, Jim Gillett and Ed Seiker, ran up to Herman. Gillett pointed his six-shooter at Herman’s head. Herman closed his eyes just before he heard the shot. The bullet grazed his temple, and the gunpowder burned his face. He didn’t think he was badly wounded. He heard the rangers talking with each other. Herman didn’t understand English, but Seiker was shouting at Gillett: “Don’t shoot him! Don’t you see that he is a white boy?”6 Terrified, Herman opened his eyes. The boy warrior saw two frightened boy rangers staring down at him. Gillett lowered his pistol. Then the rangers took off running after Nusticeno. Herman couldn’t see anything from beneath his horse, but he heard several shots.
Herman finally managed to free himself from the body of the dead stallion. He crawled on his belly through the green grass, which was only seven or eight inches high in places. He remained motionless near a small mesquite tree. The young rangers came back to look for him. Several others joined them in a search that lasted at least an hour. The rangers covered every patch of ground for a mile around, examining each bush and tuft of grass. Twice they rode within a few feet of Herman. Finally, the rangers gave up. They stripped the bridle and saddle from Herman’s fallen stallion. Then they left, heading east.7
Herman waited until they were long gone before he stood up. Neither the rangers nor the Apaches were anywhere in sight. He walked to the lifeless body of his horse and saw that the rangers had taken all of his weapons. A few hundred yards away, he found his friend Nusticeno, who had been “butchered terribly.” In their zeal, the novice rangers had shot the Apache countless times, carved the skin off him, and even decapitated him. Herman couldn’t find Nusticeno’s head anywhere. The rangers had also taken Nusticeno’s bow, quiver, shield, and moccasins as trophies.
Herman was completely unnerved by the gruesome sight. Apaches were afraid of the spirits of the dead under any circumstances, and the horrible condition of Nusticeno’s corpse made things worse. Herman couldn’t even turn the body facedown, in accordance with his people’s burial custom, for there “was no face on which to turn him.” He stared in disbelief. Then he turned and started running across the plains as fast as he could. He kept running until he fell to the ground, exhausted. Recalling the scene more than two decades later, Herman wrote: “I can see that headless form yet when I close my eyes.”
He soon realized his Apache friends had given him up for dead. With no horse or weapons, Herman headed west on foot. He walked for five days through barren country, living on grasshoppers, lizards, bugs, roots, prickly pear, frogs, weeds, and anything else he could find. Water was scarce, and he nearly died of thirst. One time he ate mud to get some moisture. After a while, he became delirious. By the time Herman finally found his people’s village, his toenails had come off his blistered feet. The Apaches were overjoyed to see him. The women cooked him a big meal, fixed him a comfortable bed, and showed him “every consideration.” Having assumed Herman was dead, the Apaches had already killed all his horses so they might accompany him to the next world. They’d also destroyed his personal possessions in mourning.
It took two months for Herman to regain his health. One of his nurses was Ete, a sister of Herman’s adoptive father, Carnoviste. Ete was a kindhearted, modest girl about Herman’s age. They had been close friends since they were adolescents; as teenagers, they became even more intimate. She made him some moccasins and a new buckskin jacket decorated with red beads. He, in turn, lavished all his “love and affections on her.” Herman wanted to impress Ete, as well as his other Apache friends, and when he told them about the fight on the Staked Plains of Texas, he stretched the story a bit. He said he had buried Nusticeno facedown and had covered his grave with rocks, so the wolves would not disturb his body.
Over the course of more than five years, Herman Lehmann had plenty of occasions to prove himself to the Apaches. They, in turn, rewarded his loyalty and ability. He rose to the position of petty chief under his foster father, Carnoviste. By age sixteen, he was the leader of a small band of men. Herman’s memoirs suggest that he would have been content to remain with the Apaches forever. However, an unexpected crisis in the spring of 18768 changed the course of his life.
One of Herman’s few enemies in his tribe was a medicine man who “never lost an opportunity to torment” the captive boy. Shamans could use their mystical power for either good or evil; thus, the Apaches feared as well as respected them. Herman had always hated this man. One day they got into a quarrel. After a short cat-and-mouse chase around a rock, Herman shot an arrow through the man’s stomach and another into his side. After the medicine man fell, Herman sent a third arrow through his heart. His eyes rolled up, and he died with a faint groan.9
Herman realized at once that he would have to run. Although the Apaches didn’t punish a murderer at the tribal level, they also didn’t stop the victim’s family from torturing and killing the murderer in revenge. Herman stayed in hiding the rest of that day, waiting until after midnight to slip into the village. Before he left, he wanted to see Ete one more time.
That night they had a long talk. Ete told Herman she loved him and admired him and was grateful for their friendship. “I will never forget you,” she said. For his own safety, however, she urged him to flee. Ete encouraged Herman to go back to his white family, for she thought he would be happy with them.
Herman told her, “I will not go unless you go, too.”
Ete replied, “I will not be well received among the whites, while you will be perfectly at home.” She also told him that she didn’t have the stamina for the rigorous journey ahead of him. The girl finally convinced Herman that he must leave the village alone. They made no false promises to wait for each other; both knew they were parting ways. Ete gave Herman some blankets, ammunition, and dried meat for the trip. They were both weeping when he drew her to his breast, and they held each other for a long time. Then Herman gathered the provisions Ete had given him, crept toward a gray horse, and took off.
Throughout the night, Herman rode east across a vast, deserted plain covered with cactus and sagebrush. For the first time in his life, he was completely alone. The teenage fugitive had no family, Indian or white. By then Carnoviste and his wife, Laughing Eyes, had both died, and Herman no longer thought of his relatives in Loyal Valley as his people.
After an exhausting ride, he came to a deep, narrow canyon watered by a small stream. He camped there for a long time and lived as a hermit, always fearful of being discovered and killed. “I regarded all men as my enemies,” he wrote. Often, he thought about the happy times he’d known with Ete. However, he hardly ever reminisced about his German-American family. He never considered going back to Loyal Valley, as Ete had encouraged him to do, for he still remembered how hard his parents had labored on their farm. Herman wrote, “How could I who was as free as a bird be cramped up in a house and forced to toil for a livelihood?”
Herman eventually left his hideout in the canyon and roamed the prairie, living off the land. By the winter of 1876,
10 the seventeen-year-old warrior had become despondent over his solitary existence. One morning he discovered that he was sharing the range with a party of renegade Comanches. All day long, Herman followed them at a distance. That night he watched the Comanches sitting around their campfire. They were eating and laughing and talking about the things they’d seen and done that day. Herman was cold and hungry, and he envied them. Deciding he had nothing to lose, he mustered his courage and walked into their camp unannounced. The sudden appearance of this wild-looking, redheaded youth with a drawn bow startled the Comanches. They let out loud whoops and yells, then disappeared into the darkness.
When they cautiously returned and surrounded him, Herman made signs for peace, since he didn’t speak much of their language. A Comanche woman approached him, scowling and chattering. Herman couldn’t understand her, but he later learned that she was encouraging the men to kill him. She warned, “He will bring us trouble.” A young Comanche man stepped forward and rebuked her. He walked up to Herman and said to him in Apache, “You are with Comanches, and if you prove to be all right, you will be among friends and will be protected.”
Through this interpreter, Herman explained to the group that he had been separated from his people by misfortune. He said that he was an Apache by adoption and that he “loved the Indian and hated the white man.” He also showed them his shield with the scalps of his white victims. Finally, he told them, “I want to become a Comanche.” The Comanches listened to Herman’s story and showed their interest “by many explosive grunts.” When he was finished, they told him he was welcome to stay with them as long as he pleased. Herman recalled, “How good, free, easy and at home I did feel!”
They allowed him to choose the family with whom he would live. Herman selected the head of the group, Cotopah, who spoke Apache. The Comanches gave the teenage boy a new name, Montechema.11 Without hesitation Herman severed his ties with the Apaches, just as he’d long ago done with the German-Americans. From that night until the end of his life, he considered himself a Comanche.