The Captured

by Scott Zesch

  During the early months of 1877, Herman and the Comanche renegades hunted on the plains of the Texas Panhandle as they’d always done. The small party found enough wild game to meet its modest needs. Although they had to be on the lookout for soldiers and Texas Rangers, their most serious threat was the buffalo hunters. Nothing gave the Comanches more satisfaction than destroying their camps. “The plains were literally alive with buffalo hunters,” Herman recalled many years later. “We would often see great wagon loads of hides being hauled away, and would find the carcasses of thousands of slaughtered buffalo. It made us desperate to see this wanton slaughter of our food supply.” The Comanches were wary of launching full-scale attacks on hunters’ camps, however, for some of them had fought in the disastrous battle at Adobe Walls.

  One morning in February 1877, Herman was riding with a large group of Comanches when they spotted a buffalo hunter named Marshall Sewell. He was working by himself, away from his camp near the headwaters of the Salt Fork of the Brazos River. The Comanches watched in silent fury as Sewell brought down the enormous beasts one by one. Finally, he ran out of ammunition. Buffalo hunters were notoriously careless; Sewell had failed to save a few cartridges for self-defense. The Comanches swooped down on the lone hunter and started circling him. They shot him in the thigh. Panicked, Sewell struggled to get back to his camp. He was close to it when the Comanches finally killed him. Meanwhile, Sewell’s two skinners, known as Wild Skillet and Moccasin Jim, had started from camp in a wagon to collect the hides. The Comanches began chasing them. The skinners turned their wagon around and fled, heading for a small, brushy ravine. The wagon plunged over the steep bank, and the two men escaped on foot through the brush.

  The Comanches headed for the hunters’ abandoned camp and took anything they fancied: guns, ammunition, skinning knives, axes, bedding, and tin utensils. Whatever they didn’t want, they destroyed. They even slashed the buffalo hides with knives and set them ablaze so the hunters couldn’t sell them. As they left the area, Herman Lehmann and the Comanches passed by Sewell’s body. They stopped to take two pieces of his scalp. They cut a gash in each temple, thrust a sharp stick through his stomach, and set fire to his wagon, delivering a potent warning to all buffalo hunters on the plains.

  Word of Marshall Sewell’s grisly death reached a settlement called Rath City (also known as Camp Reynolds), where buffalo hunters congregated. On March 4, 1877, a group of forty-six men, mostly hunters, left Rath City to pursue the Comanches who had killed Sewell. In the meantime, Herman and his party continued to plunder the camps of other hunters.

  The buffalo hunters’ guide accurately predicted that the Comanches would be camped in Yellow House Canyon, near present-day Lubbock, Texas. The “canyon” was just a small depression on the grassy plain, but the dense cover of trees and cactus gave the Indians a natural hiding place. On the bank of a small stream, the Comanches had camped with some Apaches who were trading with them.

  Just after sunrise on March 18, 1877, the buffalo hunters charged the Indians’ camp, taking them by surprise. The Indians thought the men shooting at them were either soldiers or Texas Rangers. At first a few Indians raised a white flag, but once they realized their attackers were few, they rallied and fought back. Some of the Comanche women jumped on their horses and headed out of camp to round up the rest of the herd grazing nearby. Other women grabbed bows, arrows, guns, and spears. They scrambled to the top of the canyon, firing pistols at the advancing hunters. Although the buffalo hunters were good shots, they weren’t trained as fighters, and they were terribly disorganized. Some retreated after the Comanche women’s first volley. Others shot at their fellow hunters rather than the Indians.

  Herman Lehmann and the Indian men took refuge under a hillside northwest of camp. There, they managed to hold the hunters at bay for about three hours, firing at them with long-range rifles. Neither side made much headway. Finally, Herman Lehmann and one of his companions got tired of waiting and decided to charge the hunters. Herman’s friend went first. He goaded his horse and rode out from his hiding place into the open. For a while, he dodged the hunters’ bullets by circling. Eventually, his horse was hit and fell to the ground. The man continued to fight on foot until he, too, was shot dead. That only increased Herman’s rage. He charged next. Before long his brown horse was shot down. Crouching behind its body, he continued to shoot at the hunters. Finally, the gunfire “got too hot” for the lone white Indian. He ran about fifty yards toward a bluff. While the hunters watched, Herman stopped for a moment and put his hand on his hip. Then he disappeared over the edge. Herman had been hit in the right leg, and his wound would cripple him for a long time.

  After several hours, the buffalo hunters called it quits and retreated. The Indians chased them briefly, then pulled back. Gathering their families and horses, they moved camp. Neither the hunters nor the Indians could claim victory in the battle at Yellow House Canyon. In fact, the incident was significant only in hindsight. None of the participants knew at the time that they had taken part in the last major fight between Indians and non-Indians on the high plains of Texas. During the months after this battle, the skirmishes between the Comanches and the buffalo hunters became progressively inconsequential.12

  Nonetheless, the raids did not go unpunished. On April 19, 1877, Capt. Phillip L. Lee left Fort Griffin to track down and punish the raiders. With him were ten Tonkawa scouts and more than forty African-American troops from the Tenth Cavalry. They trailed the Comanches for two weeks. At around two o’clock on the afternoon of May 4, they found the women, children, and wounded men camped at Quemado (Silver) Lake, a small salt lake in northern Cochran County, Texas, near the New Mexico border. Most of the able-bodied men, including Herman, were out hunting or raiding. Those in camp were still recovering from the injuries they’d suffered the month before at Yellow House Canyon.

  Captain Lee gave the order for his soldiers to charge. By official counts, the cavalrymen killed four Comanches and captured four women and two children. Herman Lehmann maintained that “all of our women had been killed or captured except ten and all the men but two Indians and a Mexican who had married one of our women.” When Herman and his group got back from raiding buffalo camps on the Brazos River, they found the mutilated corpses of their family members. “The bodies presented a revolting sight,” Herman wrote. “Our rage knew no bounds.”

  After this massacre, the Comanches vowed to take wholesale revenge on the people of Texas as soon as they could consolidate their forces. They never got that chance.

  Col. Ranald Mackenzie had succeeded in driving almost all the Comanches to their reservation in 1875. In the summer of 1877, he decided it would be wiser and easier to bring in the few stragglers from the plains through diplomacy rather than force. In early July, Mackenzie and Indian agent James M. Haworth arranged to send Quanah to locate those Comanches who had never surrendered or had run away from the reservation.

  On July 12, 1877, in the middle of a sweltering summer, Quanah left Fort Sill with three women, three men, and several government pack mules loaded with supplies. As testimony to their peaceful intentions, Quanah’s party carried a white flag and a stern letter from Ranald Mackenzie warning anyone they encountered not to harm them or interfere with their mission. Mackenzie was justifiably concerned about their welfare, and these precautions would be crucial during the dangerous journey. Any Texans who had suffered from Indian raids—and they were many—would have been delighted to take Quanah’s scalp.

  Quanah found Herman Lehmann and the runaway Comanches along the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico, where they had set up camp with about six Apache families. He met with the men in council for four days. Urging them to come to the reservation, he tried to convince the renegades that their roaming way of life was finished. “It is useless for you to fight longer,” he said. “The white people will kill all of you if you keep on fighting. They will come in on you from every side.” Although the Indians in the camp trusted Quanah, some of them
thought they should try to hold out on the plains a while longer. They argued about this a great deal before they finally agreed to leave with Quanah. Some, including Herman, went reluctantly.

  After Quanah persuaded the runaways to surrender, he still faced the challenge of moving them across the Texas Panhandle without getting shot by soldiers or buffalo hunters. On the evening of July 29, they started their trip under cover of darkness, leaving behind nearly two hundred horses and mules so they could travel more quickly. They abandoned over one hundred more head of stock at their campsite the next night. During the daytime, Quanah kept lookout with a pair of army field glasses, trying to keep the group as far away from the buffalo hunters as he could.

  Once Quanah’s party entered Indian Territory and got close to Fort Sill, the men started having second thoughts. They held a council, and fifteen of them, including Herman, took a new oath never to surrender or submit to white dominance. As they were about to flee to the prairie, Quanah succeeded in talking them out of it. Against their better judgment, they continued with Quanah toward the fort.

  That night their leader, whom Herman called High Shorty, had a disturbing dream. The next morning, he called his men together, inviting Quanah to listen. After describing his dream, he told Quanah that he had done wrong by breaking his oath. “Quanah, I am not afraid of you,” he said, “but I dread the white men.”

  Quanah assured him that they would be protected at Fort Sill and would not be punished. Although High Shorty knew Quanah was a man of his word, he doubted whether he had much influence over the army officers. Growing philosophical, he said to Quanah, “You are one of us, but where did we lose our warriors? Did we lose them in battle? No, we weakened and submitted to the whites and they transported many warriors far away from their wives and loved ones.” High Shorty was referring to nine Comanche men who were accused of various crimes and sent to prison at Fort Marion, Florida, after they surrendered in 1875.

  Quanah’s reply was an appeal for pragmatism. “I have ridden on the black horse and seen white people by the thousands and thousands,” he said. He convinced them that it would be foolish for fifteen Comanches to try to whip the U.S. Army. “You are too near akin to me for me to let the soldiers hurt you or any of your men,” he said. “So come on and don’t be killed.”13

  The renegades kept riding with Quanah. On August 20, 1877, fifty-seven Indians and one white warrior finally arrived at their new, permanent home.14 When they were within fifteen miles of Fort Sill, they noticed a cloud of dust and saw the soldiers coming to meet them. Suddenly, Herman panicked. He turned his black mare around and started riding as fast as he could toward the Wichita Mountains. Quanah took off after Herman and caught up with him after three or four miles. “There is no need to be afraid,” he said. “You will not be hurt.” Herman stopped and listened in silence. Still, he refused to go back. Finally, Quanah gave up trying to reason with the hardheaded German Comanche. He told Herman to go hide in his camp, giving directions how to find it.

  Twenty-one men surrendered that day, along with their families. They were believed to be the last Comanches living off the reservation. The soldiers, after confiscating the horses and weapons, locked up the men in the guardhouse. True to his word, Quanah spoke to Ranald Mackenzie on the renegades’ behalf. Although he couldn’t prevent them from being classified as prisoners, Quanah was “very anxious that they be kept in confinement” with their families and friends at Fort Sill rather than being sent to Florida.

  The colonel was sympathetic. He had come to respect, even like, his most dedicated enemies, the Quahadas. He once wrote, “I think better of this band than of any other on the reservation…. I shall let them down as easily as I can.”15 On account of Quanah’s “excellent conduct in a dangerous expedition,” Mackenzie recommended to his superiors that Quanah’s request be granted. Noting that the prisoners surrendered “with no trouble whatsoever,” he opined that “the good conduct in this matter of the Comanches entitles them to consideration.” The colonel thought a lenient confinement at Fort Sill for one year would be a sufficient check on their propensity to run away and raid.

  Ranald Mackenzie didn’t know that one Comanche was still at large. Herman Lehmann, now a fugitive of sorts, was hiding in the Wichita Mountains near the fort. He followed Quanah’s instructions and found his camp on the reservation. For several months, Herman lived in the mountains near the post. During the fall of 1877, he took his meals with Quanah’s family, herded Quanah’s horses, and hunted a lot. For the first time in seven years, Herman had to worry about his skin color. Neither the Apaches nor the Comanches had treated him differently because he was white, but he knew that the authorities at Fort Sill might send him away if they noticed him. He tried to disguise his race and avoided white people as much as possible.

  The fall of 1877 was an unhappy time in Herman’s life. Although he remained unfettered, he couldn’t enjoy his freedom after his closest friends lost theirs. He grew sullen and resentful as he watched his fellow Comanches adjust to the drudgery of reservation life. “I did not like to see my comrades so badly treated,” he wrote. They “were made to grade the roads all around the post and to do farm work, with which they were not familiar.” Distressed by what he saw, Herman made up his mind to remain a true Comanche, even if he was the last one.

  I n May 1877, three months before the last free Comanches surrendered, preparations were under way for another white Indian’s return to his family in the Texas Hill Country. For nearly two years, people around Fort Sill had noticed the wavy, auburn hair of a Comanche man known as Asewaynah. When questioned, he revealed his birth name, Fischer. He no longer remembered his parents’ names or the place of his birth (or else pretended not to), but he admitted to having heard of Austin, Texas. On that slim clue, an advertisement was published in an Austin newspaper. That was how Gottlieb and Sophie Fischer of Fredericksburg, who had heard nothing about their son for six years, learned that Rudolph was still alive. Rudolph’s mother was “said to be almost frantic with joy at the recovery of a son, whom she believed dead already.”

  Although it didn’t take long to locate Rudolph on the Kiowa-Comanche reservation, the arrangements for his trip to Texas dragged on all summer. The main problem was not where but how to send him. William Nicholson, the Indian Office’s superintendent in Lawrence, Kansas, didn’t want the government to spend much money on Rudolph’s trip home. Nicholson specifically rebuffed a suggestion to hire an interpreter to accompany the young man to Fredericksburg:

  In the first place, if he was 13 years of age when captured, he must have been able to speak English very well and he can scarcely have so far forgotten his knowledge of it as not to be able to make himself understood on his journey homeward. Moreover, if it were really the case that he has lost all knowledge of English he would need an interpreter quite as much after getting home as on the way thither. Finally he is of sufficient age to take care of himself and if he remains with the Indians it must be because he prefers to do so and not from necessity.16

  Nicholson’s insensitivity was stunning. Rudolph Fischer, a German-American, spoke only a little English prior to his capture. More significant, a captive often lost his mother tongue after living merely a year or two with a Native American tribe; Rudolph had spent twelve years with the Comanches. Nicholson’s observation that Rudolph would need an interpreter after he got to Fredericksburg was beside the point. The Indian Office still had an obligation to get him there safely. It seems that the superintendent didn’t really care whether the young man’s parents ever saw him again or not. Indian agent James M. Haworth, who was directly responsible for Rudolph while he was on the reservation, didn’t expend much effort on the Fischer family’s behalf, either.17 In June he did manage to recruit a character known as Mexican Jim Guadalupe, who was willing to take Rudolph home if his expenses were paid. However, Haworth appears to have taken no further steps to hire him.

  For Gottlieb Fischer, the wait that summer was unbearable. He spo
ke no English and had to ask friends in Fredericksburg to write letters for him. In August he solicited the help of a local gunsmith named Engelbert Krauskopf. On August 8, 1877, Krauskopf sent a telegram to Fort Sill asking how much Mexican Jim would charge to bring Rudolph home. The military officers at the post asked agent Haworth to obtain an estimate. Still, the matter languished.

  Exasperated, Fischer and Krauskopf contacted their U.S. congressman, a fellow German-American named Gustav Schleicher, to see if he could move things along in Washington. Gottlieb Fischer also asked whether the Indian Office would cover the expenses of sending his son to Fredericksburg. Congressman Schleicher contacted the commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Smith. Finally, the Fischers’ pleas fell on a sympathetic ear. Smith wrote to Superintendent Nicholson in Kansas: “From the statements made in the case I think it calls for favorable action, and one hundred dollars, or so much thereof, as is found actually necessary to pay the expenses of the young man’s transportation from Fort Sill, where he now is, to his fathers home in Texas, will be allowed for the purpose indicated.” The commissioner further directed that agent Haworth place Rudolph “in charge of some reliable person, or transportation company, to be taken to his home in Texas.”

  Once the money matters were resolved, the Indian agent faced the more daunting challenge of convincing Rudolph Fischer to leave his Comanche family and go live with people in Texas whom he barely remembered and no longer cared about. Rudolph was twenty-five years old by then. He was married and reportedly had fathered two children.18

  In August Rudolph was brought to Fort Sill and was kept there while awaiting his return to Texas. According to a letter published in the San Antonio Daily Express, he would be leaving the Comanches “against his protest, for he is said to have not only forgotten his native tongue, but has become a stranger to all civilized customs, and is really of Indian nature.” Even before Rudolph got to Texas, the writer declared that he would be opposed to his parents “in all their principles of living and in all their ideas of civilized life—an Indian warrior, the husband of a squaw, and the father of two young savages.”