The Captured

by Scott Zesch

  6. Report of P.M. Butler and M.G. Lewis, Aug. 8, 1846, House of Representatives, 29th Cong., 2d Sess., Doc. No. 76, 8; The Civilian and Galveston Gazette, Weekly Edition, July 10, 1847, 2; Frontier Times, Jan. 1927, 24; and Phoebe S. Allen, “The Double Exposure of Texas Captives,” Western Folklore, XXXII (Oct. 1973), 250–53.

  7. An English version of the peace treaty appears in Irene Marschall King, John O. Meusebach: German Colonizer in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), 175–76.

  8. Roemer, Texas, 14.

  9. The murder of the four surveyors is described in: John C. Hays to Robert S. Neighbors, July 15, 1847, and Robert S. Neighbors to William Medill, Aug. 5, 1847, Microfilm Roll M234/858, NARA; Winfrey and Day (eds.), The Indian Papers of Texas, V, 33–34; and Democratic Telegraph and Texas Register [Houston], July 26, 1847, 5, Aug. 9, 1847, 5, Aug. 30, 1847, 6, and Oct. 7, 1847, 4.

  10. Don H. Biggers, German Pioneers in Texas: A Brief History of Their Hardships, Struggles and Achievements (1925; reprint, Austin: Eakin Press, 1983), 75.

  11. Western Texian [San Antonio], Jan. 12, 1849, 2.

  12. Winfrey and Day (eds.), The Indian Papers of Texas, III, 134.

  13. Winfrey and Day (eds.), The Indian Papers of Texas, III, 181, and V, 127–28.

  14. The story of the Comanche boy captured and lynched by the Germans was recalled by two eyewitnesses, Fernandina Ottmers Otte and Julius Kott. Frontier Times, May 1927, 1–2; Frontier Times, X (Dec. 1932), 117–18; Fredericksburg Standard, May 1, 1946, Section 5, 1, 6. Both were children at the time, and their accounts vary in several particulars.

  15. G. W. Todd to D. N. Cooley, Oct. 14, 1866, Microfilm Roll M234/375, NARA-SW.

  16. San Antonio Daily Express, Sept. 2, 1877, 2.

  17. This assumption turned out to be correct. Rudolph Fischer later told his daughter, Lottie, that he had been captured by a Comanche warrior named Naahsueca. However, he was raised by another Comanche named Black Crow. Lottie Fisher to Arthur Lawrence, Sept. 14, 1958, Arthur Lawrence Collection, MGP.

  18. Vol. D, pages 442–43 (Mar. 10, 1851), Deed Records, Gillespie County Clerk’s Office, Fredericksburg, Texas.

  19. Rudolph Fischer’s grave marker states that he was born in 1850. However, the oldest sources, including those cited in the Mormon genealogy database, www.familysearch.com, indicate that he was born in 1852. Gillespie County census of 1860; A. Siemering to U.S. Secretary of State, Mar. 22, 1867, Microfilm Roll M234/375, NARA-SW; Rudolf Radeleff to Charles E. Morse, Nov. 22, 1869, J. Evetts Haley Collection, HML (copy of letter from NARA, Records of the War Department, U.S. Army Commands, Fort Concho, Texas).

  20. The contemporary transcription is esiwana. Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee, Taa Numu Tekwapu?ha Tuboopu (Our Comanche Dictionary) (Lawton: Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee, 2003), 4.

  CHAPTER 3: THE BOSOM OF THE COMANCHES

  1. Most of Dot Babb’s quotes in this chapter are from his autobiography, T. A. Babb, In the Bosom of the Comanches (1912; 2d ed., Dallas: Hargreaves Printing Co., 1923). Others are from his later writings and the numerous interviews he gave, cited in the Bibliography. Most of Banc’s quotes are from her brief captivity narrative, “A True Story of My Capture by, and Life with the Comanche Indians,” reprinted in Daniel J. Gelo and Scott Zesch (eds.), “ ‘Every Day Seemed to be a Holiday’: The Captivity of Bianca Babb,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, CVII (July 2003), 35–67. The Wise County Heritage Museum in De-catur, Texas, maintains a comprehensive file on the Babb family, which includes another shorter, untitled memoir by Banc Babb. Contemporaneous sources on the raid through Wise County and the Babbs’ capture, listed in the Bibliography, are scant and provide relatively little information. The Babb siblings’ earliest accounts of their captivity are the affidavits and depositions they gave in 1887 and 1898 in the Indian depredation claim of Hernando C. Babb, Record Group 123, Case No. 4606, NARA. This case file also includes the depositions of eyewitnesses Robert G. Cates, Daniel Waggoner, Rufus Booth, George I. Morrow, and George B. Pickett, taken in 1900.

  2. U.S. House of Representatives, Misc. Doc. No. 139, 41st Cong., 2d Sess., 8; and J.H. Leavenworth to G.W. Todd, Dec. 24, 1866, Microfilm Roll M234/375, NARA-SW.

  3. J. H. Leavenworth to Thomas Murphy, Dec. 14, 1866, Microfilm Roll M234/375, NARA-SW.

  4. San Antonio Daily Express, Mar. 3, 1871, 4. While there is very little contemporaneous documentation of Brit Johnson’s journeys (which some historians dismiss as mere legend), his redemption of his family from the Comanches in exchange for seven ponies is substantiated in Samuel A. Kingman, “Diary of Samuel A. Kingman at Indian Treaty in 1865,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, I (Nov. 1932), 447.

  5. In researching The Searchers, novelist Alan Le May studied sixty-four Indian captivities from Texas in the 1860s and 1870s, including five discussed in this book: Dot and Banc Babb, Minnie Caudle, Temple Friend, and Herman Lehmann. Alan Le May to Agnes L. Tucker, May 8, 1957, Alan Le May Papers, Collection No. 880, Box 23, Folder 1, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles. However, his surviving research notes suggest that the only “searcher” whose story he followed was Brit Johnson. Le May Papers, Box 22, Folders 2 and 3.

  6. E. L. Smith to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of the Arkansas, Apr. 3, 1867; also E. L. Smith to Jesse Chisholm, Apr. 3, 1867; Record Group 393, Part I, Department of the Missouri, Entry 2593, Box 32, NARA.

  7. S. C. Morrow to S. V. Babb, Apr. 14, 1867, in the possession of Babb descendants.

  8. I have not been able to verify McCleskey’s identity. Dot elaborated: “[Charles] Goodnight loaned McCleskey twenty dollars one time and ‘Mike’ bought whiskey with it and got drunk. He struck out toward camp and froze to death.” Dot Babb to J. A. Hill, June 17, 1926, T.A. Babb file, PPHM. I suspect that “Mike McCleskey” was actually Phillip McCusker, an interpreter who froze to death in 1885 while carrying messages from Fort Sill to Camp Augur. Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (1937; 3d ed., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), 292 n.13.

  9. H. H. Halsell, Cowboys and Cattleland: Memories of a Frontier Cowboy (1937; reprint, Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1983), 29.

  10. Clinton Smith did not indicate when he first met Adolph Korn, who lived with a different Comanche division, the Quahadas. However, the chief of Clinton’s group, Mowway, was known to have camped in the same region as the Quahadas as early as 1868 and had become closely associated with them by 1869. Nye, Carbine and Lance, 58, 104. Given Mowway’s close connection with the Qua-hadas, it is highly likely that the two boys met shortly after Clinton’s capture on February 26, 1871, at which time Adolph had been a captive for fourteen months.

  11. James Axtell, “The White Indians of Colonial America,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., XXXII (Jan. 1975), 82.

  CHAPTER 4: LEGION VALLEY

  1. San Antonio Daily Herald, Oct. 17, 1868, 2.

  2. Of the fourteen raids described in this book for which I have specific dates, only four occurred within a period between three days before and three days after the date of a full moon, when the moonlight was brightest. Those were: the capture of Caroline McDonald and her children on August 8, 1865 (full moon was August 7); the murder of Frank Johnson on October 12, 1867 (full moon was October 13); the Legion Valley raid of February 5, 1868 (full moon was February 8); and the capture of the Lehmann brothers on May 16, 1870 (full moon was May 15). The other ten raids were those involving: the murder of the Parks family on April 2, 1862 (new moon); the capture of Alice Todd on January 7, 1865 (first quarter); the capture of Rudolph Fischer on July 29, 1865 (new moon); the theft of Rance Moore’s cattle on August 8, 1866 (last quarter); the capture of the Babb children on September 14, 1866 (new moon); raids on Adolph Reichenau’s farm on December 10, 1868 (last quarter) and March 10, 1869 (last quarter); the capture of my uncle Adolph Korn on January 1, 1870 (las
t quarter); the capture of John Valentine Maxey on September 5, 1870 (first quarter); and the capture of the Smith brothers on February 26, 1871 (new moon). Dot Babb also refuted the myth that the Comanches raided mostly on moonlit nights. He said they went on raids whenever they got ready. Jonnie R. Morgan, The History of Wichita Falls (1931; republication, Wichita Falls, Tex.: Nortex Offset Publications, Inc., 1971), 45.

  3. William T. Sherman to J. J. Reynolds, May 10, 1871, “Early Fort Sill Letters” Box, FSMA.

  4. San Antonio Daily Herald, Aug. 11, 1868, 2.

  5. The raid on Legion Valley and its aftermath are extensively documented in a number of eyewitness accounts: affidavits of Matilda J. Friend and John S. Friend, Indian depredation claim of John S. Friend, Record Group 123, Case No. 3379, NARA; San Antonio Daily Herald, Feb. 19, 1868, 2 (report of Hardin Oatman); Tri-Weekly State Gazette [Austin], Feb. 14, 1868, 3 (report of E. R. Beeson); Llano News, Oct. 2, 1914 (recollections of John Oatman); Frontier Times, V (July 1928), 396–99 (recollections of Charles Haynes, a member of the posse); El Dorado [Kan.] Times, July 1, 1926, 3, 6 (interview with John S. Friend); Frontier Times, Jan. 1924, 20–22 (article based in part on interview with Minnie Caudle Benson); and Dallas Morning News, Nov. 26, 1922, Magazine Section, 6 (interview with Asa (Boy) Johnson). These accounts differ in some particulars. In resolving the discrepancies, I’ve relied on the statements of Matilda Friend and Hardin Oatman, which seem to be the most creditable. Secondhand reports include: San Antonio Daily Herald, Feb. 14, 1868, 3, and Feb. 19, 1868, 3; San Antonio Daily Express, Feb. 20, 1868, 2; Frontier Times, V (Nov. 1927), 49–52; and Houston Chronicle, Oct. 7, 1928, Automobiles and Highways Section, 10. Other valuable resources were the Betty Henning papers in the M. Beven Eckert Memorial Library, Mason, Texas, and the Legion Valley vertical file in the Llano Public Library, Llano, Texas.

  6. The identity of the Indians who raided Legion Valley was never determined. Most of the evidence points to the Comanches, from whom both Minnie Caudle and Temple Friend were recovered. However, the Comanches later denied any role in the raid, claiming the raiders were Esaqueta Apaches, who sold Temple Friend to them. “Record of Indian depredations, return of provisions received, etc., at Fort Sill, etc.,” Microfilm Roll KA6, OHS. The raiding party may have been a mixed group. It is uncertain exactly who the Esaqueta Apaches were. The name properly referred to the Mescalero Apaches, although it was sometimes applied to the Kiowa-Apaches. James Mooney, “Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians,” in J. W. Powell, Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895–96 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1898), I, 245. The Comanches also used the term to refer to the Lipan Apaches. Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee, Taa Numu Tekwapu?ha Tuboopu (Our Comanche Dictionary) (Lawton: Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee, 2003), 3.

  7. Minnie Caudle’s tale of the jokesters stampeding the horses was corroborated by two Comanches, Tasura (That’s It) and Post Oak Jim, who recalled occasions when young pranksters pushed a wild colt into the elders’ smoke lodge, where it kicked the men inside and tore things up. Comanche Field Notes, E. Adamson Hoebel Papers, Manuscript Collection No. 43, Series V, APSL; Comanche Field Notes, Waldo Rudolph Wedel and Mildred Mott Wedel Papers, Box 109, SINAA.

  8. U.S. House of Representatives, Misc. Doc. No. 139, 41st Cong., 2d Sess., 8.

  9. The date of July 27, 1868, comes from the diary of 1st Lt. Edward G. Mathey, in the possession of Cindy Gettelfinger. Mathey was at Fort Larned at the time.

  10. Minnie Caudle’s attachment to the doll the Wynkoops gave her lasted beyond her childhood. Around 1878, when she was married and living in Loyal Valley, Texas, a rumor broke out that Indians had been sighted in the vicinity, and that mothers should try to keep their children quiet. Minnie let her three-year-old son, Jay, play with the doll to keep him occupied. When she heard the doll’s head crack on a rock, she was furious and scolded him severely. Her sister pleaded, “Oh, Minnie, don’t make him scream. The Indians will come!” Even in her later years, she was still upset over the damage her son had done to the doll. Minnie told her daughter-in-law: “Jay, the little devil, broke my doll. I wasn’t going to take no chances with the Indians, but that doll was dear to me.” Bertie Oma Modgling to Johnie Lee Reeves, June 22, 1984, copy of notes in the author’s possession.

  11. E. M. Pease to Fort Arbuckle, Apr. 6, 1868, Record Group 393, Part V, Fort Ar-buckle, Oklahoma, Entry 1, Vol. 1, NARA; Acting Governor of the Territory of New Mexico to E.M. Pease, May 18, 1868, Records of Governor Elisha Marshall Pease, Box 301–57, Folder 38, TSA.

  12. Atchison Daily Free Press, Aug. 8, 1868, 1; Thomas Murphy to N. G. Taylor, Aug. 6, 1868, Microfilm Roll M234/59, NARA-SW; and Thomas Murphy to Chauncey McKeever, Oct. 31, 1868, Microfilm Roll 880, FLNHS.

  13. J. Norman Heard, White into Red: A Study of the Assimilation of White Persons Captured by Indians (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1973), 2.

  14. Dot Babb’s theory wasn’t exactly right; the Comanches raided for many reasons, but usually not to avenge thefts. Nor was his chronology accurate. The raid that culminated in his mother’s death happened in 1866; white horse thieves didn’t start to plunder the Indians’ herds on any significant scale until about 1874. William T. Hagan, United States—Comanche Relations: The Reservation Years (1976; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 121–22.

  CHAPTER 5: WARRIORS IN TRAINING

  1. San Antonio Daily Herald, Oct. 17, 1868, 2.

  2. Quoted in San Antonio Daily Express, Mar. 9, 1871, 4.

  3. New York Herald, Aug. 8, 1868, 4.

  4. The New York Times, May 10, 1870, 4.

  5. As told to S. M. Barrett, Geronimo: His Own Story, ed. Frederick Turner (1906; rev. ed., New York: Meridian, 1996), 35.

  6. Of all the Texas captives, Herman Lehmann’s life is the best documented. He was the subject of two “as told to” autobiographies: Jonathan H. Jones, A Condensed History of the Apache and Comanche Indian Tribes [Indianology] (1899; reprint, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1976); and Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870–1879, ed. J. Marvin Hunter (1927; reprint, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993). Although Nine Years is more carefully edited and is the version that Lehmann preferred, Condensed History is franker in many respects and contains a significant amount of additional information about Herman’s family and his return to white society. A third edition of Lehmann’s Nine Years (San Antonio: Lebco Graphics, 1985) includes an informative essay by Garland Perry and Kitti Focke. A. C. Greene’s The Last Captive (Austin: The Encino Press, 1972) is a synthesis of the two Lehmann memoirs, with footnotes and historical photographs. In addition to these various versions of Lehmann’s autobiography, a buffalo hunter named Willis Skelton Glenn, who knew Herman Lehmann in Oklahoma, recorded his stories in an unpublished memoir, written around 1910. “Shelton Glenn [sic; Willis Skelton Glenn] Buffalo Hunt Manuscript,” Ch. XIV, Microfilm Roll MF6, UTEP. Another valuable source is a 1906 newspaper article titled “Nine Years with the Apaches and Comanches,” written by Herman’s teacher, John Warren Hunter, and reprinted in Frontier Times, XXXI (July, Aug., Sept. 1954), 251–77.

  7. The oldest accounts of the capture state that Phillip Buchmeier had arrived at the house shortly beforehand and was eating lunch. San Antonio Daily Herald, May 19, 1870, 2; affidavit of T. Buchmeyer [sic; Phillip Buchmeier], July 2, 1870, Southern Plains Indian Agencies Collection, WHC; Jones, Condensed History, 217. However, both Willie Lehmann and his younger stepbrother, Henry Buchmeier, recalled that Phillip was working away from home at the time, and that Auguste could not go for help for fear that the Indians would return and take her other children. Greene, The Last Captive, 5; Gerda Lehmann Koth-mann to the author, Mar. 24, 2004.

  8. Herman’s memory of the events at the time he dictated his memoirs was quitegood. He recalled that the Indians who captured him stole some horses at Moseley’s Mountains. Later, they too
k a horse belonging to a Mr. Stone and finally passed by the Keyser ranch. Jones, Condensed History, 15; Lehmann, Nine Years, 4. The oldest news accounts confirm that the Indians stole eight horses from Moseley’s ranch at about four o’clock that afternoon. An hour later, Christian Keyser saw them steal Stone’s horse. The Indians hid in the bushes when they saw him. Keyser thought the reason they did not chase him was because they had “the captive boys along, and did not wish them to be seen.” San Antonio Daily Herald, May 21, 1870, 2, and May 24, 1870, 2.

  9. In his memoirs and interviews, Herman Lehmann did not specify which Apaches he was with, and his group has been variously identified in the literature as Esaqueta, Mescalero, Kiowa-Apache, Jicarilla, and Mimbres. However, Her man’s captors Billy Chiwat and Pinero were both Lipan Apaches, which indicates that Herman was affiliated with the Lipans. Hugh D. Corwin, Comanche and Kiowa Captives in Oklahoma and Texas (Guthrie, Okla.: Cooperative Publishing Co., 1959), 129; Omer C. Stewart, Peyote Religion: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 58–61. Nonetheless, some odd incon gruities remain. In writing about one of his fights with the Texas Rangers, Herman seemed to distinguish his Apache group from the Lipans: “Captain Roberts and Captain Gillett both say the Indians they fought were Lipans, but I know they were Apaches, for I was with them.” Lehmann, Nine Years, 104. When Herman met Captain Gillett in San Antonio in 1924, Gillett told him, “One of your boys we caught [a Mexican captive] said you were Lipans.” Lehmann smiled and replied, “Maybe he lied to you.” San Antonio Evening News, Nov. 6, 1924, 1. To confuse matters further, the name Lipan has been used carelessly to refer to other Apache groups of the Southern Plains, such as the Mescaleros and the Kiowa-Apaches. Frederick Webb Hodge (ed.), Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (New York: Pageant Books, Inc., 1959), I, 768.